Who is the player and what is the player controlling?

[Richard Bruns]

I know this question seems silly, but I have not been able to find a clear, concise answer to it. I have been working on the game without knowing exactly what position the player is supposed to have.

There are three options that I can think of:

1) The player controls a government.

2) The player controls a country.

3) The player controls a civilization.

I had assumed that the player is in charge of the country, no matter what the government is. However, this would mean that if a player's bad domestic policies caused a revolt, the player would get to continue as the new revolutionary government. It would also be in the players' best interests to make things easier for the rebels if they knew they would be defeated, so players might attempt to sabotage their own war effort in a civil war, knowing that they could control the other side when it won.

Option three is the most interesting and unusual. It would mean that the player could be controlling many countries at once. The Chinese civilization included many different countries, and sometimes they fought among each other. I don't think that the player is meant to control all of the countries, but that is the consequence of controlling an entire civilization. I think this would be fun in a way, but it could be too unusual for some people and the game does not seem to be going in that direction.

Anyway, could someone tell me exactly who the player is supposed to be?

[axi]

One obvious solution:

We can have the player choose who he wants to be. The standard choice would be #2, but #1 should be quite commonly played, via the characters/dynasties model, as an option of increased difficulty (but probably not for a whole game, but for a given time period, as in a scenario). The 3rd choice is really odd, but I feel it could be achieved via the diplomacy model.

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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[Mark_Everson]

This stuff has been discussed (although without firm conclusion). The lastest bits are in a thread called Revolutions . My vote is actually for an amalgam of all 3 together, although it does cause complications.

Richard: When you start a thread like this can you put links to threads with relvant info? (You should know where they are from your searching on the topic) Otherwise there is a danger lots of people will wade in not knowing what previous arguments have been made about it etc. and we just waste a lot of time rehashing old positions.

[edit] added link to Revolutions thread.

[Lord God Jinnai]

We haveto be careful with number 3 since otherwise the player could then try to minimize purposefully the internal conflicts...that's my only qualm with that.

[Richard Bruns]

Mark: I couldn't find any relevant information on this topic. That was the reason I made this thread. I'll look at the Revolutions thread.

axi and F_Smith: You are right; the game should be flexible enough to do all three. I will try to make my models flexible enough to cover all three situations.

This has already answered my immediate question, but we may need to discuss the implications of the three options. I'll look in the Revolutions thread and then see if I have any more questions or comments.

[Richard Bruns]

LGJ: Attempting to minimize internal conflicts would be part of the fun in option #3. If the different countries in your civ want to do different things, you would have to use diplomacy to prevent internal conflicts and the sertbacks they cause.

The goal in #3 would be to advance your civilization and spread your civilization (convert nearby tribes). The individual countries would not be a huge concern; Chinese civilization survived for millenia even though many countries got wiped out.

[Lord God Jinnai]

I'm saying so long as the player doesn't assume direct control over all of them. Maybe like a fedual state i could see...that'd work well, esp with the character model.

[F_Smith]

I'm currently coding under the assumptions it can be any of the three, depending on how the scenario designer sets up the scenario.

In other words, you can play the 'Greeks' in a 'Persian Wars' scenario, play 'Athens' in a 'Rise of Greece' scenario, or play 'Pericles' in a 'SimAthens' scenario.

Or play any of the three in a 'Rise of Civilization' scenario.

So I think this is a scenario-design decision, not a game-rule decision.

Does that work for ya'll?

[Richard Bruns]

I think the player in game type #3 would be more like a cultural leader, someone who all the different countries respect. There is no direct real life example, but the Vatican comes close. The player would influence, but not control, anyone who was a member of the civilization. The player would want to make sure all members of the civilization were successful, and would probably want to spread the civilization by many means. For example, the player in control of the Chinese civilization might try to arrange a marriage between the Mongol leader's family and a royal family in the Chinese civilization. This way, they are preventing a war and hopefully spreading the civilization. And if that didn't work, the player could call for a crusade to eliminate the rival culture.

In addition to influencing the government, the player would have influence over the people that support them. This means that they could call for a revolution of the people support their culture but the government does not. Or, they could get the people to support the government in exchange for the government's help with something.

An interesting aspect of this game style would be that rival cultures and religions would be a direct threat to the player's survival. If the social model determines that a country no longer shares your culture, you would lose your influence. The player would lose the game when there are no countries left that support the culture. This would give the player a very different set of priorities and force them to make different types of decisions.

I have an idea for a new type of multiplayer game. If it works, it would be incredible. Suppose some players were civilization leaders and some players were country leaders. The country leaders would be playing a standard game, while the civilization leaders play as I described above. The civilization leaders would be trying to get as many countries as possible to join them, and the country leaders would be trying to make the country powerful and successful. This would lead to entirely new types of diplomacy and conflict. The civilization leaders would need the country leaders to help them spread the civilization, while the country leaders would need the civilization leaders to help control the people. The civilization leaders would want all of their countries to fight an external enemy, while the country leaders might want to concentrate on taking a large chunk of land from a neighbor in the same civ.

If there were enough people playing and we did a good job implementing it, this type of game would be great. I think we could make it work. What does everyone else think?

[axi]

I think you've given it alot of thought, lad! You're a true visionary.

I have previously had similar thoughts about multiplayer, too. Not about civ leaders and state leaders, of course, but at the intra-state level, where two or more players would cooperate to form the govt of one civ. F.e. one could be in charge of external affairs: military and diplomacy, while another of internal affairs: government and economy. So a warmonger and a perfectionist would combine to make an unbeatable duo. The political system, with the negotiations and all that, would be useful for them to determine policies (the ruler's pol.power would be divided in two, while the special actions distributed among the lines of responsibility (f.e. the MC obedience would benefit the warmonger, while only the perfectionist would be able to bribe). This sort of specialisation can be extended as much as the complexity of the game models rises. If we had an extremely complex military model (which we might already have, I don't know), then probably there would even be a place for human generals in Clash. Of course in singleplayer any of these positions can be handled by the AI, but that's already meant to happen.

The problem with this otherwise great idea is to define certain (and more or less equipotent) areas of responsibility and assure bugfree and leakproof interface for all of the participants. It will all depend on the quality and flexibility of the game models that we will end up with.

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"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."
George Orwell

[Richard Bruns]

I like axi's idea of having multiple people share control of one country. This means that model complexity and micromanagement opportunities could be turned into a new type of gaming experience. Cooperative civ management would be a great addition to the game. I think we should keep exploring the possibilities of the game . . . after we get the basic stuff to work. But we should be flexible and plan for things like this. Such features will make the game truly stand out.

[Richard Bruns]

I believe we had planned on including guilds and corporations in the game and giving them quite a bit of influence over things. How much effort would it take to turn these entities into things that the player could control? We would already have a game environment that is more detailed than most business games, so we should be able to add playable businesses by creating a few new rules and interfaces. That would add more depth to the game, and the combination of businesses and governments opens up new multiplayer possibilities.

[roquijad]

I think Axi's and Richard's ideas are really cool. If in multiplayer players can be playing the same civ but in different levels it'd be fun whether they play cooperatively or not.

On the general issue of this thread, I believe defining who the player is, has a lot to do with the actions he/she can do. FE, can the player choose the religion his/her people will follow? In games of this type, these sort of magical decisions are common. If we choose the player is character (FE, the current ruler), then all the things he can do are constrained to what a human being can do being a ruler (no magical stuff).

Having this in mind, I wonder what exactly means the player being the leader of a civilization... what powers or actions a player would have in this situation?

My stand is a player must always be a character/dynasty and as such he should never be allowed to do magical things. The exact list of actions he'd have available would depend on who he/she is. FE, if he/she is the ruler, would have then the ability to play the govt model (negotiating policies), but if he/she chooses to be a religious leader, then not.

[Lord God Jinnai]

You can be a religious leader and the ruler of a government, what do you think Pharohs of egypt were?

Anyway i do agree with rodrigo though. You shouldn't have any magical type powers, but be limited to what you could do if you were actually rulering the country IRL

[Richard Bruns]

Twinge, your comment on "god mode" reminded me of this thread; you might be interested in it. It disacusses the powers the player has, and tells a bit of our visions for the game environment.