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This is a follow up to Locutus' "DESIGN: End Game Options/General Strategy" Thread. Its been fleshed out a little, and also includes a large helping of abstracted unconventional unit action.
What I'm aiming to do is to present a consistant theme that the whole varied end game (different approaches) can work, in a balanced way, and make the unconventional action balanced and popular.
First point is that there is a lot of support (well.. as much as those who concern themselves with voting here,) for abstracting most unconventional units (Thread.)
The rational is that abstracting these is both more realistic, and balanced. The AI has a very tough time competing with unconventional war; it doesn't find them very well, or get its through, particularly over water, and thus the feature is unbalanced towards the human.
Unconventional units and actions are important for varied victory types, since military conquest is basically the focus of the game, right now.
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The first way that we can develop different game approaches is spread out the government choices...
Some have been borrowed from various mods, including MedMod, Cradle and Conquest.
Here's a list, although a tree would be clearer, that i'll work on in a bit, will demonstrate even better...
Government choices aren't linear; you can switch between them, given you have the prequisites, as you can right now... I'm demonstrating the progression of philosophies and ideologies, more than anything.
The intention is that you get governments in a particular age and they shape what you are for the majority of the next age... giving real personalities to civs... and a really different feel to play within each.
The government branches have would have varying empire cap sizes, military support abilities and so on, and so forth. I'll produce a more detailed spec for my ideas on values a little later.
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Happiness, Religion and Media
Happiness, right now, for the most part, is resolvable in a deus-ex-machina kind of way... you get theatres very early and then can very easily control happiness. Happiness wonders are nice. Happiness buildings are more important for only the smallest of cities.
What I'm suggesting is that happiness be refocused so that religious buildings and luxury trade and later Media (Newspaper Presses, Movie Theatres and TV's) be the preeminent form of dealing with happiness.
Nations should need to build these buildings to solve their happiness problems... and that would cause an opportunity for civs of different ideologies to exploit... for instance...
An Absolute Monarchy... a military style government... is building its forces, looking to defend itself, and expand its territories... it has a certain degree of problems with war weariness, bordering on unrest... and to solve this, it liberally builds religious happiness improvements.
Each of these it produces, strengthens the power of religion, making those civs more potent, and having more influence. A cities religion, outside of a religious government, starts "neutral". Individual or alliances of religious civs can "fight" to influence what kind of allegiance the religion of the city is.
A civ without religious improvements can't be influenced by unconventional religious attacks, but would have big problems dealing with happiness, crime and unrest.
Media would work much the same way, except being based in corporate (Federations in the tech tree) influence. Media can "fight" for control with religious influence and/or other Media influence.
Trade Federation Governments would have intentionally small empire caps, since they would work, intially by having very generous growth, production and commerce bonuses, and later by gaining resources and power from other influencing other cities, by corporate infiltration.
These interrelations should make for fascinating interplay between civs (and a necessity, to... you guessed it, playtest and carefully balance...)
Imagine the Monarchy... who's just built all these religious city improvements, and set up luxury trade routes, so that it can support its army to go to war with its neighbors... a small Early Republic and a smallish Theocracy.
The Republic might do some diplomatic tech dealing with the Absolute Monarchy's trade partner, to get it to embargo the luxury trades, and the Theocracy might furiously be sending papal envoys and missionaries to the Monachy's cities to convert them to their religion... thus when the Monarchy declares war on, and attacks that Theocracy, his own cities turn unhappy due to their religious allegiance.
---
The intention in implementing this is to make it as simple to produce and respond to the effects.
Conceptually.. you wouldn't have (many) actual unconventional units, although you'd still build them via cities, just like caravans.
In an unconventional screen you'd have a couple of tabs... one for action, one for information.
In the information screen you could see your, and other civ's unconventional effect values
In the action screen you'd have several categories, with two main columns... Offensive and Defensive...
So, for instance, for Relgion you'd have two columns... where you'd see your quantity of Missionaries on the Offensive side, and Clergy on the Defensive side.
You could click on the Missionaries to see how they are currently assigned and assign new tasks to them.
---
Thoughts, comments, suggestions?
What I'm aiming to do is to present a consistant theme that the whole varied end game (different approaches) can work, in a balanced way, and make the unconventional action balanced and popular.
First point is that there is a lot of support (well.. as much as those who concern themselves with voting here,) for abstracting most unconventional units (Thread.)
The rational is that abstracting these is both more realistic, and balanced. The AI has a very tough time competing with unconventional war; it doesn't find them very well, or get its through, particularly over water, and thus the feature is unbalanced towards the human.
Unconventional units and actions are important for varied victory types, since military conquest is basically the focus of the game, right now.
---
The first way that we can develop different game approaches is spread out the government choices...
Some have been borrowed from various mods, including MedMod, Cradle and Conquest.
Here's a list, although a tree would be clearer, that i'll work on in a bit, will demonstrate even better...
Government choices aren't linear; you can switch between them, given you have the prequisites, as you can right now... I'm demonstrating the progression of philosophies and ideologies, more than anything.
ANCIENT AGE:
Tyranny
IRON AGE:
Dynasty
CLASSICAL AGE:
[Warlike branch]
Oligarchy /or
Dictatorship
[Science/economic branch]
City State
MEDIEVAL AGE:
[Religious branch - branching from Warlike]
Theocracy
[Monarchy branch - branching from Warlike]
Absolute Monarchy
[Science branch - branching from Sci/Eco branch]
Early Republic
[Trade branch - branching from Sci/Eco branch]
Trade Federation
RENAISSANCE AGE:
[Religious Branch]
Orthodox Theocracy
Calliphate
[Monarchy Branch]
Machiavellian Monarchy
Parliamentary Monarchy
[Science Branch]
Republic
[Trade/Eco Branch]
Mercantile Federation
INDUSTRIAL AGE:
[Religious Branch]
Social Theocracy
Emirate
[Militarist Monarchy branch- branching from Machiavellian Monarchy]
Fascism
Communism
[Commonwealth branch- branching from Parliamentary Monarchy]
Colonialist Commonwealth
[Science Branch]
Democracy
[Trade Branch]
Industrial Trade Federation
MODERN AGE:
[Religious Branch]
Fundementalism
Orthadox Democracy
[Militarist Branch]
Peristroika
Totalitarianism
[Commonwealth Monarchy branch]
Modern Monarchy
[Science Branch]
Technocracy
[Balanced Branch- branching from Science branch]
Corporate Democracy
[Trade Branch]
Corporate Federation
POST MODERN AGE:
[Relgious Branch]
Thearchy
[Militarist Branch]
Totalitarian Empire (or Stratocracy?)
[Balanced Branch]
Universal Democracy
(later- Environmental Democracy?)
[Science Branch]
Tech Republic
[Trade Branch]
Global Federation
Tyranny
IRON AGE:
Dynasty
CLASSICAL AGE:
[Warlike branch]
Oligarchy /or
Dictatorship
[Science/economic branch]
City State
MEDIEVAL AGE:
[Religious branch - branching from Warlike]
Theocracy
[Monarchy branch - branching from Warlike]
Absolute Monarchy
[Science branch - branching from Sci/Eco branch]
Early Republic
[Trade branch - branching from Sci/Eco branch]
Trade Federation
RENAISSANCE AGE:
[Religious Branch]
Orthodox Theocracy
Calliphate
[Monarchy Branch]
Machiavellian Monarchy
Parliamentary Monarchy
[Science Branch]
Republic
[Trade/Eco Branch]
Mercantile Federation
INDUSTRIAL AGE:
[Religious Branch]
Social Theocracy
Emirate
[Militarist Monarchy branch- branching from Machiavellian Monarchy]
Fascism
Communism
[Commonwealth branch- branching from Parliamentary Monarchy]
Colonialist Commonwealth
[Science Branch]
Democracy
[Trade Branch]
Industrial Trade Federation
MODERN AGE:
[Religious Branch]
Fundementalism
Orthadox Democracy
[Militarist Branch]
Peristroika
Totalitarianism
[Commonwealth Monarchy branch]
Modern Monarchy
[Science Branch]
Technocracy
[Balanced Branch- branching from Science branch]
Corporate Democracy
[Trade Branch]
Corporate Federation
POST MODERN AGE:
[Relgious Branch]
Thearchy
[Militarist Branch]
Totalitarian Empire (or Stratocracy?)
[Balanced Branch]
Universal Democracy
(later- Environmental Democracy?)
[Science Branch]
Tech Republic
[Trade Branch]
Global Federation
The government branches have would have varying empire cap sizes, military support abilities and so on, and so forth. I'll produce a more detailed spec for my ideas on values a little later.
---
Happiness, Religion and Media
Happiness, right now, for the most part, is resolvable in a deus-ex-machina kind of way... you get theatres very early and then can very easily control happiness. Happiness wonders are nice. Happiness buildings are more important for only the smallest of cities.
What I'm suggesting is that happiness be refocused so that religious buildings and luxury trade and later Media (Newspaper Presses, Movie Theatres and TV's) be the preeminent form of dealing with happiness.
Nations should need to build these buildings to solve their happiness problems... and that would cause an opportunity for civs of different ideologies to exploit... for instance...
An Absolute Monarchy... a military style government... is building its forces, looking to defend itself, and expand its territories... it has a certain degree of problems with war weariness, bordering on unrest... and to solve this, it liberally builds religious happiness improvements.
Each of these it produces, strengthens the power of religion, making those civs more potent, and having more influence. A cities religion, outside of a religious government, starts "neutral". Individual or alliances of religious civs can "fight" to influence what kind of allegiance the religion of the city is.
A civ without religious improvements can't be influenced by unconventional religious attacks, but would have big problems dealing with happiness, crime and unrest.
Media would work much the same way, except being based in corporate (Federations in the tech tree) influence. Media can "fight" for control with religious influence and/or other Media influence.
Trade Federation Governments would have intentionally small empire caps, since they would work, intially by having very generous growth, production and commerce bonuses, and later by gaining resources and power from other influencing other cities, by corporate infiltration.
These interrelations should make for fascinating interplay between civs (and a necessity, to... you guessed it, playtest and carefully balance...)
Imagine the Monarchy... who's just built all these religious city improvements, and set up luxury trade routes, so that it can support its army to go to war with its neighbors... a small Early Republic and a smallish Theocracy.
The Republic might do some diplomatic tech dealing with the Absolute Monarchy's trade partner, to get it to embargo the luxury trades, and the Theocracy might furiously be sending papal envoys and missionaries to the Monachy's cities to convert them to their religion... thus when the Monarchy declares war on, and attacks that Theocracy, his own cities turn unhappy due to their religious allegiance.
---
The intention in implementing this is to make it as simple to produce and respond to the effects.
Conceptually.. you wouldn't have (many) actual unconventional units, although you'd still build them via cities, just like caravans.
In an unconventional screen you'd have a couple of tabs... one for action, one for information.
In the information screen you could see your, and other civ's unconventional effect values
In the action screen you'd have several categories, with two main columns... Offensive and Defensive...
So, for instance, for Relgion you'd have two columns... where you'd see your quantity of Missionaries on the Offensive side, and Clergy on the Defensive side.
You could click on the Missionaries to see how they are currently assigned and assign new tasks to them.
---
Thoughts, comments, suggestions?
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