Game Startup Options

[Richard Bruns]

It seems that there is a need for varying startup options to satisfy people with different play styles and preferences. As part of our continuing commitment to flexibility, we should discuss these options now and keep them in mind as we work on models.

I'll list the startup options I think it would be good to have. This is nothing like a finished list, and feedback from everyone is encouraged.

Planet:
Earth
Random: Default, uses map generator
Other Premade

Disasters, Ecology and Climate:
Earth: The models would force all climate changes and disasters to happen exactly as it did in our history. Only possible if Earth was selected as the planet.
Earth-like: Default, uses standard models.
Random: Several wild cards are tossed into the models to make it unpredictable, at the expense of scientific accuracy.
Wild: An entirely new set of disasters, terrain, plant life, and processes are generated at random. This will create a truly alien world.
Stored or Premade: A Random or Wild mix the player saved and wants to see again, or a custom ecology modeling.

Ecology Model Complexity:
1: Like Civ 2. The terrain never changes naturally, but you can alter it.

2: A "bare bones" version of the current model. A few of the processes are used to make the terrain change in simple ways.

3: Default, standard ecology model

4: Extra detailed ecology model

Races:
Human: Default
Fantasy Mix: The standard mix of human, elven, dwarven, orcish, and other races.
Wild: The population model generates alien races at random.
Stored or Premade: A Random or Wild mix the player saved and wants to see again, or a custom set.

Cultures and Nations: (These choices can only be made if Human race was selected. Other races will have Premade or Wild cultures and nations.)
Earth: (or "Historical Settlements") The model will try to duplicate all of our historical cultures and nations, forcing things to happen the way they did in our history. Only possible on an Earth map with Earth climate and disasters. Note that choosing this will lock almost everything else into an Earth modeling where all things happened as they did on Earth. If the other models are allowed to diverge, this option will become result in silly situations very quickly.
Earth-like: All cultures will be modeled as accurately as possible, but they make their own decisions using the game models.
Random: Default, all cultures are loosely based on our own, but names and attributes will be changed.
Wild: Cultures are generated entirely at random.
Stored or Premade

Population Model Complexity: A selection similar to the Ecology complexity (if the model lead figures out a way to include this)
Culture Model Complexity: ditto
Government Model Complexity: ditto
Riots Model Complexity: ditto
Characters Model Complexity: ditto
Diplomacy Model Complexity: ditto

Disease:
Earth: The model would force all diseases to happen exactly as it did in our history, if possible. This will be selected if Earth Cultures and Nations was selected. (Much of our history happened due to the effects of disease. If disease was random, a lot of things in the historical modeling would make no sense.
Earth-like: Default, uses standard model and Earth diseases.
Random: Several wild cards are tossed into the model to make it unpredictable, and the names of the diseases are random.
Stored or Premade: A Random set the player saved and wants to see again, or a custom modeling.

Disease Model Complexity: A selection similar to the other complexity options

Technology Development:
Earth: The model makes sure that tech advances the same way it did in history, within reason. This will be selected if Earth Cultures and Nations was selected, and cannot be chosen otherwise.
Earth-like: Default, tech advances normally and gives the same techs we are used to. This cannot be chosen if Wild races or cultures was selected.
Random: Culture specific things like Samurai are replaced by random things, and some techs are shifted around.
Wild: Most Applications and Tier 3 techs and some Tier 2 techs have their prerequisites changed around at random, and their names are changed.
Stored or Premade

Technology Model Complexity: A selection similar to the other complexity options (assuming I can figure out how to do it.)

Economy:
Earth: The model would force all economic decisions to be made exactly as they were in our history, if possible. All trade routes are the same and all guilds and businesses are the same. This will be selected if Earth Cultures and Nations was selected, and cannot be chosen otherwise.
Earth-like: Default, uses standard model and Earth economic systems.
Random: Several new rules are added into the model to make it unpredictable, and the names of the things are random. This will be chosen if Wild ecology or races was selected.
Stored or Premade: A Random set the player saved and wants to see again, or a custom modeling.

Economy Model Complexity: A selection similar to the other complexity options

Wonders:
Earth: The model would force all wonders to be built or placed exactly as they were in our history, if possible. This will be selected if Earth Cultures and Nations was selected, and cannot be chosen otherwise.
Earth-like: Default, uses standard model.
Random: Several wild cards are tossed into the model to make it unpredictable.
Stored or Premade: A Random set the player saved and wants to see again, or a custom modeling.

Wonders Model Complexity: A selection similar to the other complexity options.

Military:
Earth: The game will try to make the same wars happen again. This will be selected if Earth Cultures and Nations was selected, and cannot be chosen otherwise.
Earth-like: Default, standard model
Random: Things that are common knowledge about war will no longer hold true. Terrain and units will interact in unusual ways.

Military Model Complexity:
1: No units will appear on the map. Combat will be a greatly simplified province based Risk type affair.
2: Combat is still provinced based, but the model will be more complex and will use things like supply and morale.
(I know there is a way to implement these. If the rest of you are unwilling to do it, I will find a way to do it, using the Java knowledge I will have developed by the time the game is finally finished. )
3: Simplified unit based combat
4: Default, the current model

Time Period and Victory Conditions:
Here the player chooses the starting time, ending time, and the conditions that will result in victory at the finishing time. We could have a variety of endgames, use the combat only option, or judge players by the happiness and prosperity of their civ.

Game difficulty: A logarithmic scale from zero to ten. Rather than using cheap tricks like AI production bonuses that good players will deal with anyway, this should control "Fate." High difficultues would hit the player with more setbacks like disasters, revolutions, pirates, etc.

I'd recomment a scale like the following. The scales assume default complexity settings for the models. Playing at low complexity or using the Earth history settings will increase the level players can complete sucessfully.

0: Pitifully easy. It is a challenge not to win.
1: Starting difficulty (tutorial) for people who have never played strategy games before.
2: Starting difficulty for people who are familiar with strategy games.
3: Starting difficulty for people who are good at Civ games.
4: Starting difficulty for the game designers or the truly adventurous.
5: Requires a good amount of playing experience.
6: Requires a lot of playing and a good strategic brain.
7: Requires more playing than is healthy and a brilliant strategic brain. Our best playtesters should have severe difficulty winning at this level.
8: Ridiculously difficult. Our best playtester should have extreme difficulty surviving in any condition.
9: Even more difficult.
10: Beyond any sane measure of difficulty. Everyone on the team will swear that this can never be beat. Winning at this level should be as unheard of as, say, sending a ship to AC before 1850 at Deity level using only one city

AI ability: Similar scale, with idiot at 0 and genius at 10.

That is about all I can think of. What do you think?

BTW, if you saw this before the edit went through and were wondering what happened, I hit the "Submit" button by mistake.
[This message has been edited by Richard Bruns (edited September 09, 2000).]

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Richard:

At least you didn't hit the 'Clear Fields' button by mistake. I've done that twice now over the last year, and lost substantial amounts of commentary both times

I like your general take on things, so as usual I'll only carp on the things I don't like

quote: Earth: The model would force all economic decisions to be made exactly as they were in our history, if possible. All trade routes are the same and all guilds and businesses are the same.

This is virtually impossible to achieve IMO, same for military. It would put the game in a straitjacket, And require Huge amounts of research and enormous 'game guide' files to get all the details even close.

quote: Rather than using cheap tricks like AI production bonuses that good players will deal with anyway, this should control "Fate."

We may well need production bonuses etc. There is only so much 'fate' you can throw at a player before they will get disgusted IMO.

Ten logarithmic AI levels is very restrictive compared to what I had in mind. I think for each area we need to give the player control of Any level of arbitrary bonuses or disads they want to give themselves or the AI. Anything less will Force people into micromanaging the things they do much better than the AI. If you do it my way, then the player can set the bonus level to compensate for their ability vs the AI and only play the parts of the game they want. I am Sure we cannot make a 'Brilliant' AI. Our hope is to make one that's Competent, as opposed to the industry standard of Pathetic.

There is more I could comment on, but I really need to spend my time getting the default systems designed and coded...

[Richard Bruns]

I dodn't know we had a plan for setting the AI difficulty. That should work well.

I put the Earth options in because Beör and (I think) some others wanted them. They wanted the game in a straitjacket, so I figured a lot of other people would also like that option. I didn't know that it would be so difficult to do.

My opinion is that a "fate" difficulty level of six to eight is the equivalent of the real world. Real rulers are constantly bring hit by nasty things that are beyond their control. Most countries and empires rarely last longer than a few hundred years. The common standard is to make the world much nicer than it was in reality, so the player has a decent chance of surviving.

So it wouldn't really seem like an artificially cruel trick to make these difficulty levels. As for nine and ten, those would be for the kind of people who invent (and win) the insanely difficult civ 2 challenges, so they should love the difficulty.

[Lord God Jinnai]

First off: Wonders

Wonders can be worked somewhat like you did, but what should we use as a standard? Original ones, middle age ones, modern term which vastly changes them yet again? Also we'd also haveto have historic destruction of these which might not be possible. And this isn't inculding the various levels of wonders that are posted. Check the wonder/achievenments model to see what i mean.

2nd: The bigger problem, consistancy:

Even with 'Fate' type variable used to control the way the world progresses, there is still almost very little likelyhood that everything will happen like it did or even close to it. Remember that chaos theory you quoted a few posts ago?

What happens if I kill of the 'character' Paul (who would be in the character model as prescribed) before he can travel around the Roman empire and spread the Christian religion? He is considered the whole reason it spread throughout the world. Or lets say i go a step further and kill the hebrew populace before Christ is even borne. Now Christianity can't spread across europe therefore Eruope becomes much more bloodier as their isn't a common religion linking people to keep them undel somewhat civil control. No Islam as Mohammed wouldn't have gone to Jerusalum and learned about Judaism and Chrisitanity so there would be no uniting arabic empire that sweeps across arabia, northern africa and India. Without that there are no crusades so no chance for a renisaunce and a chance for colonization and the city-sates of Italy. No Charlamge who conquered what is today Germany/France so the border dispute might not be like it has been throughout history and no holy roman empire which kept Germany from uniting until late last century as well as Italy. And that's only the beginning. There'd be no modern rivalry between india/pakistan, no mass GWR to rival Budhism and Confuscianism in the east and with no merchants coming from the west, no contact, no discovery of a new world which means that part has no western influence. No Holocaust in Germany, none in Japan either since the US was never created and never had a chance to show them what modern technology could do.

Also one thing about the americas. They had no animals like horses so that's why they didn't have much technology. It seems without animals like horses/yaks/etc. the wheel becomes useless and thus technology seems to suffer greatly. Without this which seems the tech model currently must have without a better ecology model to mimic this, because of this feature alone the world cannot be mimiced.
[This message has been edited by Lord God Jinnai (edited September 09, 2000).]

[Richard Bruns]

The Earth plan was something I put in to try to offer lots of options. It isn't my idea, but I put it on because I thought we might be able to get it to work.

And it would have a chance of working if we removed the randomness and let the game cheat to make it happen. If you killed the a certain character, a replacement would be created to do exactly the same thing. If you wiped out a certain race, another would be created with the same attributes. The tech advancement for the Native Americas would simply be ordered by the game to be a certain thing.

And even without this artificial fixing, the things that make chaos theory work would be removed from the game. If everything in the game that is usually random is locked into a certain plan, the only source of deviation will the player. The game will be like a set of linked scenarios that constantly fix themselves to the proper history.

Besides, I think that the type of person who wants to play that game will ususally want to keep things going the "right" way. They will usually refrain from doing something too disruptive because they want history to unfold properly.

I understand the difficulties involved with making the game follow a certain path. But if most of the work is researching and creating a huge list of things that need to happen, there will probably be players willing to do it.

I'm not saying that I like the idea or that it is a game I'd want to play. I'm just trying to keep different options open.

[Lord God Jinnai]

Well as far as the fixing up would go, i guess it would be okay, but then the player would also be restricted too very much otherwise there's no sence in it.

I might want to try something like that, like a 'what if' scenerio so i think that should be added here too.

However, the ecology model would haveto be changed to track the use of animals like horses,oxen, etc for the tech model to work because many other places didn't have them until they migrated there. See the Americas developed the wheel and there is much use for the wheel without horses or whatnot, but without that first practical use with animals it seems they don't use it much except for toys. Egypt was the same way, until horses were brought in. Camels don't seem to work with this for some reason....i don't know of any historical places where their was camel driven modes of transportation, but i could be wrong. Anyway much of Africa remained like this because of that.

[Richard Bruns]

LGJ:

You wouldn't have to do that in the Earth game, because you would be limiting the tech tree artificially. Basically, the normal routines would be disregarded and the game would choose the tech path automatically.

But you actually make a good case for putting that in the standard game, so I'll discuss it in the ecology thread.

[Beör]

I seem to have been causing some disturbance with my wish for historical/realistic scenarios. This was never my intention, believe me. I think that entirely fictitious scenarios can be as fun to play - after all I originally popped in from the Apolyton SMAC forums. SMAC has nothing to do with life on Earth or even human life on a planet in a nearby solar system except from the terminology used - and it is very still very entertaining. This is mainly because the different fractions are well balanced and mastering each takes a lot of effort. Another favourite passtime is chess in which the modelling of human relations is even more vague to say the least.

However, I do think that if the team behind CLASH manages to create the kind of realistic and flexible modelling that has been envisioned, I would really want to try playing what-if scenarios as proposed by LGJ. I don't propose a strict simulation of history - the two examples of 'would-like'-game experiences posted in the social model thread definitely did not turn out the way history did (one had Rome destroyed by Greeks of southern Italy, the other had the Visigoths ending up in the British Isles). What I would like is the option to choose scenario start-up conditions that are close to history, and maybe a few restrictions on gameplay, like a general direction of migration, a starting alliance between two civs, or a state of war between two civs. Starting terrain, population etc. would be randomised to a degree: the Alps would be in place, but fertility of the Po valley might differ from game to game. It is entirely possible that migrations from Central Asia would end up in China or India in stead, but if the models and the starting condotions are detailed enough this would be the exception rather than the rule. What I would not like is beginning as the Aztecs in northern Africa, or having trade relations with the Romans placed in the Molucas from the beginning of the scenario. In that case I would definitely prefer a random map.

The above historically start-up conditions might place some constraints on gameplay, but I do not think for a minute that this would be like wearing a straitjacket. Even without somewhat randomised starting conditions I think that the models will be sufficiently detailed to never make the gaming experience the same twice. This is - I guess - the very essence of chaos theory, that has been mentioned as the fundamental way of making this an interesting game. Small changes in conditions might cause vast differences in outcome. If the models are complex enough, randomness is not even necessary to create this - it can be created even if the models are entirely deterministic.

Remember: This is only one vision of the game. The idea of flexibility has been there all along. I do think, however, that it might be necessary to limit the initial development to the default scenario, and if that begins at 4000 bc, on random maps, playing Kukkuk of Pulimut, with GWR of Gnomish, Dversha and Tuttut, thats fine with me. Following the application and testing of the models, flexibility can be added, and in the long run I know there will be players like me that would like to play real nations, on historically acurate maps, with GWRs with their true names and (I almost dare not say this) attributes similar to real world religions.

[F_Smith]

Boer:

What you want is already the plan, fortunately.

A glance at the beast might show the direction we're heading, altho most of the scenarios are still largely not fleshed out, since it's too early to do so. Each 'scenario' is entirely loaded from a file that anyone can easily write/modify. There would be as many 'scenarios' as people want to make -- hopefully hundreds/thousands/millions. We could/should even have scenario design contests.

Each 'scenario' would be up to the scenario designer completely, and could be a one-day battle with 15 minute turns or a 100,000 year long 'magical' universe, with each turn a decade. Or anything in between.

[Beör]

quote: Originally posted by F_Smith on 09-11-2000 02:50 PM A glance at the beast...

What is this beast? Where is it? How do I tame it? Explain Pleeease.

[roquijad]

First of all, I like Richard's list of possible options. Most of it sounds realistic in terms of adjustments to the models we already have.

Mark's right about letting the player choose more specifically what AI level he wants and in what parts of the game he wants more/less AI.

About all the options that try to recreate history as it happened, I believe it's close to impossible. IMO we can provide a few historical options for things easily modeled, but that should be it. Pushing for more would lead IMO to a very complicated system.

Once the player chose "Earth" and "4000bc" as the world to play in, I think it's no problem to provide the following historical options:

Historical Religions: Names and attributes of religions would fit real world's. They appear also in the right spot and in the right date.

Historical Tribes: Names and attributes of ethnic groups match real world's.

Historical Locations: My idea about telling ethnic groups where to migrate and when.

Historical Disasters: Disasters happening according to history.

Historical Diseases: Same as disasters.


And that's all. The above should be seen strictly as they're presented. So, FE, choosing historical religions ON would make christianity appear, but nothing gurantees its success or its spreading through Europe and not Asia.

[F_Smith]

Boer:

Oh, sorry --

The beast is the applet that is our tool for testing the government code. The graphics are very minimalist (altho I'm getting use to the stick figures!), and the Gui is make-shift and constantly changing.

Beauty, it isn't. So I call it the beast.

To run it, Click here.

The only scenario that is 'fleshed out' is the '4000bce' one. The others have a varying degree of data.

Warning -- because of the slow server, it takes a while to load. And when opening a frame/window you haven't before, it can be slow. Run locally, this is not a problem.

And rest assured, the real game looks much better. I'm just coding the database and middle tier. The 'front end' stuff will be handled by people with skills in that sort of thing.

It's almost time for another 'Test Case', once I get a few hours to myself (last week was swamped). Your help with that would be most welcome, when the time comes. Watch for a Thread titled 'Test Case'.

[This message has been edited by F_Smith (edited September 11, 2000).]

[Richard Bruns]

bump

[Twinge]

Yeah, I see what your talking about. That all sounds pretty much sound and good.

Basically what your getting into when you were discussing 'mimicing earth excessivly' is a movie. Maybe you could rig up a few automated movie like scenarios where history is played out, famous battles, fictional fun, etc. While this is not at all needed it might be an interesting option in the scenario editor.

quote: Ten logarithmic AI levels is very restrictive compared to what I had in mind. I think for each area we need to give the player control of Any level of arbitrary bonuses or disads they want to give themselves or the AI. Anything less will Force people into micromanaging the things they do much better than the AI

Again, I suggest you guys use both. I definetaly think having super customization like Mark talks about is good, but having a more generic 1-10 style difficulty is a nice side feature, espcially good for certain players who don't like customization as much.
Having major customization is #1, but a 1-10 system would be a nice extra option.

[This message has been edited by Twinge (edited December 16, 2000).]

[Twinge]

Another idea I just came up with: Having the option of playing the game as if it were more Civ-like. What I mean is having an option of an "easy" game, where some of the more complex areas of the game, such as internal bribery, are 'turned off'. That way, any new players (Especially ones that are new to Strategy Games) won't feel so uncomfortable And confused.
This is kinda important because simpler SGs such as Civ1 are still quite complicated to someone new or relativly new that hasnt carefully read the book.

Just another thought.