Character/Dynasty Model IV

[Richard Bruns]

axi: I don't understand your point of view about variable changes. It seems to me that the "hard" variables are simply the results of calculations that use the "soft" variables. If a character improved the efficiency of a production process from 40% to 60%, then that character is multiplying the production output by 1.5. You seem to say that the change in efficiancy is acceptible but that the change in production is not. Mathematically thay would be the same thing. Could you give a specific example of a variable change you would oppose?

[Mark_Everson]

Economics model character usage -- first draft

Merchants -- able to transport x% more cargo, leading to higher profits
Bankers -- be able to lend more of their capital than usual, reduce economic cycle strength in their civ
Industrialists -- (I guess you had this down as guild leader/CEO) -- increased industrial production, possible problems from monopolies?
Economic Planner -- able to favorably influenced the economy in lots of little ways, would provide small production bonuses everywhere, generally resulting in better economic growth. Obviously if the economic planner were used at the whole-civ level, the effects would be relatively modest but broadly felt.

I'm sure I'm missing some things, but I think you get the drift. Whatever the realm of competence of the character, there should be an appropriate bonus. Once we get further along we can gauge the relative importance of all the different areas, and adjust the sizes of the bonuses appropriately so that a great character in each area is roughly of the same value.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Alright mark. That's exactly what i want. Also if you can tell me whether or not there can be specialist later on in the game...

I'll give an example from the tech model:

Scientists: Generally increase rp production all around by X percent.
(Specialist Scientist) Geologist: increases rp production in certain fields relating to geology. Does so more than a general scientist

Note that if he were assigned somehow to an area not of his expertise, the result would be slightly less than a scientist in general, but still an increase.

Also there can be negative modifeiers for really bad characters, remember this when thinking about how you want them to modify things.

[Mark_Everson]

LGJ:

I just had what I think is a good idea on one of the ways that we can give characters more personality. I may have said this before, but at the risk of repeating myself...

Characters can have well-defined levels of risk-taking. Because of the way we are doing the AI, different approaches to solving problems will not only have different levels of "quality" of solution, they will also have riskiness attached to them. So some characters would be risk averse, and others willing to stake it all on a big gamble. So in determining where they would like to utilize characters, the player will have to weigh things like whether a great general is overly conservative, or tends to be a loose cannon. This might make the general suitable for some tasks, and more of a harm than a help in others.

I know this is nowhere near the whole answer for how to give the characters the right flavor. But I think it could be an important part of it. What do you think?

[Richard Bruns]

The character risk tolerance idea sounds good to me.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Yes I believe it does have a lot of benifits, but that's not all. Here's some ideas of what i have right now for personality:

Daringness: How much risk the character is willing to take.

Morals: How much they abide by the morals of their inherant ethic group and/or civ.

Enthusiasm: How well they do the job task they are assigned to do. I'd like this to be able to be relative to specific tasks if possible.

Ego: Higher this is the more respect they will claim. Also those of lower economic classes will be treater more porely as well as those of opposing social classes.

Defiance: This is the measure of dislike for authority. I'd also like to make this one relative to different characters like Enthusiasm.

I think that covers most of the possible outcomes...anyway its a start...though i would like some ideas how the relative ones could work.

[Mark_Everson]

Sounds good to me! Now we just have to get a wizard to do the text scripting

[roquijad]

LGJ:

Here's a list of characters that for now at least could be useful for govt, social and riots models. I don't want to get involved yet in solving how exactly these characters will affect things (to avoid commiting myself in a lot of threads), so I'm just helping you have an overall idea of characters for these models.

Social Model
Profet: Increases spreading speed for a religion.
Nationalist leader: Increases nationalism for an ethnic group.
Religious Fanatic: Increases Importance of Religion in all ethnic groups with a given religion.
Ethnic Fanatic: Decreases Ethnic Tolerance in an ethnic group.

Riots Model
Extremist: Increases chances for events (protests, attempts of murdering the ruler, etc)
Special police agent: Decreases chances for events.

Govt Model
Ideologic leader: Increases spreading rate for a given ideology and also increases its attractiveness to the eyes of the people.
Govt propagandist: Increases people's support for the govt.
Wise politician: increases de facto political power for a given social class.