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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:14
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first i wanna say that i am sorry that i haven't posted lately i have just been very busy...but i just got off of icq with the joker and we started a discussion about somethimg that has been pressing on my mind about this game VERY much in the past few weeks...
and that question is, how exactly is this game going to play
well in my mind up to now i have a civ like map type interface, where the player floats around over the map...however i have been thinking two things, that the models probably need to be simplified...and this is probably just a thought of my own, that wouldn't some sort of slow real time (quasi simcity, RRT2) being just great!
then me and joker started talking today, and what he was describing didn't sound like civ to me...it sounded like the games made by koei for the nintendo and super nintendo...games like nobunga's ambition, romance of the three kingdoms, and one of my all time favorite games ever ghengis khan
these games are not exactly like civ, but they are complex strategy games...and i think that it would be a good form to adopt for our games
yes they are outdated consol games but i think we could update them and that the style of our game would fit perfectly with these games...the ideas being presented in these forums sound closer to being in a koei type game than in a civ type game
but don't take my word for it check out these games through the wonder of emulation!
first you will need an emulator (which are easy to find)
but to make things easier for you here is a super nintendo emulator
http://www.zsnes.com/archives.html
roms on the other hand are hard to find...it's easy to find rom sites, and yes roms actually exist (roms are like mp3s, they are digital versions of the game you can play on your emulator) but the sites will send you round and round in circles...and most of the sites don't have any roms but they are like Th0uSaNdS oF rOmS iNsIdE!!! but they don't have anything except maybe some links to porn...if you look hard enough you can find them
try these sites
http://www.personal.u-net.com/~backyard/sne-roms.htm http://www.nailbomb.com/a/dr/Consoles/Nintendo/ http://get.to/emulation
look for super nintendo roms...i would recommend genghis khan (do not try genghis khan 2 it sux bad!), romance of the three kingdoms 3,2,4 (in that order i think), and nobunga's ambition
well i have to goto work now but check out those sites and after u play any of those games for a while please comment about if u think that ggs should play more like a koei game or more like civ
korn469
ps if you find any of those roms please post it here
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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Thanks for the links, Korn.
What I was telling Korn about the gameplay was, that I think that some part of the game would not be looking at the map, but be in windows, like the tax menu in Civ2, but more expanded, where you would handle diplomacy, economy, domestic politics etc. This would take up maybe 30% of the gaming time. The rest of the time would be with civ like tasks, like unit movement.
Generally there should be more macromanagement and less micromanagement. There should be more tools to use, but they would work for the empire as a whole and not just for individual provinces.
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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting
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Guildmaster
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Up your butt and around the corner
Jun 2000
time: 05:14
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Just a thought, but why not make the interface more like a role-playing-game? What the player really sees is anything a real world leader would see, their advisors telling them what's going on, maybe in a conference with generals you look at a map and decide what you want to to with the war, etc. and the generals go off and fight it. Then certain technology affects how you view your world.
In ancient times, you view your empire as a rough sketch of your country on a rolled-out stretch of papyrus depending of course on how good your mapmaking skills are. With the advent of global sattelite imaging you get to view your whole empire on a computer console instead.
This same technique can be used to accent the "delayed responce" thingy we were talking about a while back, say you send a messenger to your army in Gaul and then after a while if you're lucky you get a messenger come back to you telling you stuff. And who knows how far from the truth the message is... until the advent of writing, that is. Also this would allow you to personally fly out to another country to meet with foreign delegates.
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Goes down smooth when I get a clean hit of that skunky, funky, smelly green sh.t
- Cypress Hill
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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"Slow realtime?"
"Roleplaying game like interface?"
Ehh, guys?
Shouldn't we try to keep this a bit realistic? Here we are struggling to get a working version of a simple economy demo, and you are suggesting things that would need complete restructuring of everything. The reason we can succeed is, that we are reusing some of the basic game aspects from Civ2, and that we can therefore focus on more advanced things, like improving the gameplay and the historical accuracy.
I say we keep the Civ like interface, where the player hovers over the map, and where we use the preplanned turn system, which offers the best from both turn based and realtime strategy, and then focus our effort on making this the best game ever!
PS: I have just downloaded Ghengis Khan now, and I will try it today.
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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I think we are doing this pretty good already. We haven't really moved on to advanced features yet, but all the basic features that we are using are ones that we have developed ourselves.
But I agree, we should try to give the game many new features. Since Civ2 does such a great job doing what it wants to do there is no reason just trying to improve that. We have to implement new features that Civ2 doesn't have.
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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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I'm quite positive about having many new advanced features. Just remember that the more features, the longer the game will take to finish. Also I think that the basic features, like economy, population, warfare would be the same even if we are moving to some new direction eventually. So, I think we can well continue the work with the basic models as we have done this far, and meanwhile make ideas about the "bigger" things. About the rpg-like system, I like that idea; also it would be done mainly with UI, so we could well add it later. About slow real-time, that seems to be beyond the reach; the game will require quite much calculations, so a real time game would consume lots of resources. It would also change the game system quite much. Basically I think making ideas is good, but for now we should perhaps assume that we will make a game somewhat like civ2-smac, but reserve the possibility to change the system later.
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I agree with Elmo here. We can't change the entire system later on. But I don't think we would really want to.
I think we all have pretty much the same idea how the system should work.
But I don't really get what RPG would add to the game. Would that mean you would have a little man that you could move around and talk to your generals or what? I wouldn't want that to happen. I like the Civ2 game perspective and UI, as it seem to be the very best way to play an RTS game/historical simulation. Of cause we would have special features, like the delayed responce, which is an idea that I really like. But basically I think we should stick with the known UI - Civ2's UI.
Of cause if anyone comes with a truly great RPG UI, that can be added to the game without having to change the other game features I am not saying that I would necessarily vote no on that. But I don't think we should spend our time thinking of one at this moment.
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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:14
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i also agree with elmo here
if we decide on a radical design change about halfway through the process it would basically mean that we had wasted time and effort with no reward and would probably be just a nail in the coffin
i however do not think that we have the same idea on how the system should work...
personally i would like to create the "thinking man's warcraft III" i think that would be different and fresh
i think that the roleplaying in the game should be on managing characters in the game...these characters should work something like the continental congress in colonization
some characters should be generals represented on the map, with areas of influence that confers special bonuses on surrounding troops, these areas of effect should work like the paladin's auras in diablo 2
other characters should not be represented on the map (or if they are maybe they could be included with a special king/HQ unit) some of the jobs they could hold would be economic advisors, chief of secret police, secretary of state and so forth...these important characters should have special influences on your empire as a whole...for example Henry Ford is your nation's economic advisor, he confers the efficent manufactoring techniques on all of your factories, so they produce goods cheaper and quicker, but people become twice as restless during an economic downturn or something like that...
as for system resources, if we have the resources to find out something as abstract as the exact amount of tuna fish that lower class people wanna buy then we could probably find the resources to add in other things, like characters
if RT is beyond the scope of this game please give me something to work with besides the tired (dull) smac/civ2 concept...because we are going to be competing with CtP2/CtP2x, Civ3/Civ3x, and CtP/SMAC/Civ2, Freeciv etc
there isn't any point in making another civ2 clone, and especially not one that doubles or triples the amount of micromanagement while taking away the fun tasks and putting them in the hands of the AI
korn469
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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truly great post, korn. I may not agree completely, but you really make the reader (me) think about the game, and what we should do.
We really must find out what we want to do with this game, what features we should have and how we should make it better than the competition.
Characters:
I think we should have this game be close to reality. I like realism, and I actually think making this game more realistic than Civ2 could make it a funnier game than Civ2. But characters, at least not as they are implemented in many games, are not really "realistic". I don't want characters (other than yourself) that live for millenia. Characters should only live as long as they would do in reality. And characters should be realistic in all ways. They should not take over the rest of the game's aspects.
But when that is said I can actually become a supporter of characters. They actually work good with the domestic politics system that I think we should implement. For an early look check out my old SI model. I haven't worked on this for months (I have focused on economy), and it is not at all complete, but it should make it possible for the social classes in your civ to have a mind of their own. Maybe the workers will revolt and demand communism if you don't give them what they want. If it is done intelligently I feel it could truly make the game great. Imagine being forced by the nobility (who is the most powerful class in your civ) to go to war with another civ! You could either refuse, and cast your civ into a civil war, or accept and go to war against your own will! Lots of great things could be done. you could get influence in other civs from the back door by supporting classes there. You give them money, which they can use to get power in their civ, and in return the give you some special goodies if they get to power!
I think that the domestic politics thing could either be a historically correct version of the characters, or be used with them by having characters as class leaders. Other characters would be commanders, which would be used to give certain bonuses to your armies.
The politics system combined with the econ system that we are working on now will make virtually anything and everything possible. I feel they could become the very core of the game.
RT:
I think Amjayee's turn system is really great. it removes the unfair advantage that war starters has, it takes a lot of the great things from RT and still keeps the relaxation provided by RPG: you can sit down, have a cup of coffee and think about things without having to worry. It also opens the path to some really cool multiplayer game options: imagine having loads of players in a multiplayer game, and the rule is just that every day each player sends in his moves to the server. The server then processes the data from all players, and whenever the players want to they download the new game stats, see what happened that turn and do their turn again. Multiplayer gaming would become much more convenient for us who don't want to stay online for 10 hours straight. Plus, there would be no waiting time what so ever.
Fun tasks:
Let's see. What are the fun tasks of Civ2? Moving around hundreds of units tile by tile? Moving around little heads on a city map? No. The fun tasks are thinking out strategies for your next war, prioritize production and research, doing diplomacy with other civs. And while removing much of the tedious micromanagement from GGS with the economy model, by simply having some predefined algorithms handle it all. The player would do what the government does in reality. If you don't feel like managing econ you can just set a tax rate. If you like to mingle around with it you could set tariffs on individual goods, make a progressional tax rate and many other things. One of my dreams for the project is to make it useable for education purposes as well as entertainment. Imagine a highschool class that just plays GGS for social studies. They would choose a country today, and just do what countries do. They could even play against each other. That is what realism provides.
And the fun tasks of Civ2 will be a much larger part of GGS. There would be diplomacy with foreign nations as well as with your own classes/characters. You would manage large armies in stead of single units, which would give you more time to think out a strategy. More realism in combat would also make it suicidal to not spend time on your war strategy.
That is my dream for GGS.
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"I chose not to choose life. I chose something else."
- Trainspotting
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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Joker has my absolute support for his message. This is also my vision of the game. The character thing would surely add much to the game. We just need to think it over really carefully so that it is realistic, does not ruin the scope of the game, and does not include any unnecessary micromanagement.
Some ideas to consider so this could be achieved;
-What would the characters be? I think they would include the King, the President or whoever is the supreme leader of the nation. It would also include the Governors of the regions. Then there would be the Advisors, who make up the Government, and perhaps class and economic leaders. Of course also religious leaders would be included. And not forgetting the Generals, one for each army.
-The characters would have realistic life-span - or perhaps more preferably the years of service. That would be from 1 to 60 years or something like that.
-Characters would be created automatically, when they need replacing. I think it would be really good if your task would be to set some properties for the different leaders, what kinds of personalities you would like to have in that position. Then the program would create randomly a person in that position. (S)He could have some bonuses, some spacial traits, or even some traits harmful for you, like over-ambitiousness. Mainly the person would be close to the properties chosen by you.
-The player could at all times see some information about the characters in his team, and via espionage also about the characters of other players. You couldn't see all the information for all characters; some information you could gain by "spying" on your own people; some traits would turn out only in time. For example your spies could reveal a conspiracy run by one of your governors; you could have him arrested and executed for an example.
-Your social settings would affect the possibilities of managing the character things. For example in monarchy, you can't choose the king. You could get totally randomly perfectly fine king, or a lousy good-for-nothing one. You could of course have an embarrasingly bad king assassinated, and hope for better heir. Also it would perhaps be cool to have a list of the heirs available, so you could conspire to get a better king - of course you couldn't see all the stats for the candidates, so it would be a little risky. Also it might be possible, that in certain point there is no more heir for the throne, and you would need to deal with that.
-basically the player would be the government of the nation, or the "spirit" of the government, so he would basically choose what kinds of people he wants.
Just some thoughts. This, I think, would really add something new to the game. Also, as Joker said, we are going to have a new turn system, and most basic things are completely different from civ2 and smac, so we are definitely not cloning.
Also I agree that the most intriguing part of civ2 was making strategical, large-scale decisions. Moving units one by one & tile by tile, optimizing cities and choosing over and over again the same technologies to discover were the things that I quite openly hated after couple of games, and which are the main readon for the fact that I don't play civ2 very much anymore. If those things are removed from our game, I don't think it is bad. Of course we then must concentrate on giving the players other things to do, and that is what we are doing. I think one turn would not take very long to play, but making the big decisions for them might take longer. Remember we are making a game of global history for thousands of years; that kind of game can't be played very quickly.
The ideal situation, I think, would be that when players don't have much to choose, things are going fine and as they have planned, the player could just view some statistics, make small corrections, and then end the turn, perhaps after having admired his progress. Then when there are big decisions to be made, he would really stop to think and consider the different possibilities and consequences for them. Anything the player doesn't want to bother himself with, he could delegate to someone else.
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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Truly great ideas, Amjayee. With them characters would be taken to a whole new level in gaming!
I now agree with both Amjayee and Korn. We should have characters, and we should try to implement them as Amjayee suggested.
Characters should have some effect on the history created by us, since, well, they have in real history. They should be more or less loyal to you, and some times they would try to throw you away and take over power.
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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.
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Guildmaster
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Up your butt and around the corner
Jun 2000
time: 05:14
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Hmm characters?
I have to be honest I don't like the way most games handle characters. Once you add them, then the game becomes someone else's story. And I play civ games to make my own story not to play someone else's.
I always thought characters could be used differently, like the way Joker was saying...
but here's a thought-
Why don't we have characters outside the realm of military? I mean, there are a lot of great people throughout history that have made many contributions that have nothing to do with war, so why don't we have a variety of characters that appear and do their thing and die, based on the circumstances?
eg.
Suppose you take the southeastern US in the 1950s. Here we have a problem with a group called the KKK and this thing about radical racism. In the midst of it all two characters appear: Adolf Hitler and Martin Luther King Jr. You as a leader of a nation could do just about anything you wanted with this...
1) Continue to play whites against blacks in order to distract the public from dark deeds you are involved in
2) Support MLK in his crusade to end racial inequality and use this to unify the country
3) Support Hitler in his rantings against Blacks and use the hatred he stirrs to motivate your country for war
Or however you want to play it. Characters shouldn't be confined to military generals, and some should just appear for no apparent reason. Or at least no reason you are aware (Suppose Albert Einstein comes to your country and does his theory thing. You didn't know Jews were being persecuted in Germany...)
A player will inadvertantly do things to cause characters to appear in his own or someone else's civ.
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The night is young and so are we... Let's make love and dance the night away
- Debelah Morgan
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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What I think we definitely need to avoid with the character system is naming those characters after real world people. That would definitely make the game "someone else's story"; you would just feel that you are repeating our world's history. Well, perhaps even naming the characters with imaginary names would be harmful, not even speaking about being difficult to make and unrealistic.
There would surely be people like Hitler and Martin Luther King, and they would act in somewhat same kinds of ways, but we have to make sure they play parts in something thst is a completely unique story that you are directing. And most of the characters would be non-military, I think.
I agree with Elmo's idea. Most of the characters would just bring some bonuses and penalties; some of them would have "power" in the game; but I think this would just mean that they affect the game AI, not that they have AI of their own.
Main things, as said, would be that the characters are random, affect the game in reasonable ways, without ruining the scope or player's enjoyment, and also that they don't have connections to real people.
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I agree that characters should not become the main aspect of the game.
Guildmaster:
Yeah, nonmilitary characters should of cause be included. Some characters would be the commanders of each army (these would often not have great importance), some would be the leaders of each social class (spokespersons for the workers, the corporations etc) and others would be "special" characters like Einstein and such.
Elmo:
Yep, that is how characters (especially the military ones) would often work. But some characters would be special, would add really large bonuses and would have a lot of ambition. They would usually be leaders of the social classes, and would often demand a new government where their class were the leading one. You could then choose between giving them what you want and have the possibility to give your civ some quantum leaps within certain areas, or you could work against them, which would often send your civ into a civil war.
Amjayee:
I actually think it gives a bit atmosphere that the characters have names after real life ones. It should propably remain an option, but I think I personally would find it more funny to have a new general called Napoleon than have one with some imaginary name that I can not relate to.
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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.
GGS Website
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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Elmo:
I don't really understand what you mean by having characters provide the bonuses from an improvement you made. Would it mean that if you increase spending on research you would get an einstein character in stead of just getting more research done?
If so, then I don't think I agree. Characters should work on their own.
I do, however, agree with you on having a character represent you. You are, after all, immortal and lives on for millenia. Characters should be ones you could use, and interact with. Maybe there should be a character representing the leader of your civ (the king). He could be a good or bad king, and if we was bad you could have him assasined. But he shouldn't be you.
Ramo:
I am not very fond of a tactical wargame mode. It isn't very civish, and I don't like having my game interrupted by having to wage a battle. You should run the big things in your civ, and have people to handle the actual battles. It would also, as you said, require an enormeous amount of work to implement that, work that we could spend on other things.
But we are going to have stacking, like in CTP. Only more advanced. And we will call it armies. We are going to encourage people to put lots of units into a few armies, by giving them bonuses (so an army of 2 tanks would beat up 1+1 tank). This will reduce micromanagement.
We don't really have a combat model yet, but we have Victor G's combat model, which we will base ours on. You can find it somewhere on this forum, a few months back.
Anyway, it is cool to see that you are posting here again. So you want a title with that?
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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.
GGS Website
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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The leaders need to be characters; the player is not the king, or president, but the whole government, or the "spirit" of the government. So kings would be only parts of those, just like advisors and governors and such.
About naming the characters, I think it makes the game unrealistic; it would not be fun to have Einstein in an Assyrian civilization. At least not after couple of games. Also we can't make up names for all civilizations, as there are so much of them, and who could come up with proper names for Assyrian wise guys or economic geniuses? Also I don't mean we should have imaginary names; in the contrary I was against that. The characters should not have names at all. They are just science advisors, economic advisors, kings, and governors. Remember the life span of the characters is quite short, and there are lots of them! Also real leaders are not interested in the names of characters, that's nonecessary details. They just want to know the statistics so they know how to deal with them. I think we might make a possibility for the player to name the characters if he likes, but not make "automatic names" for them. That is too much detail and out of the scope, IMO. But if people really like, we _can_ make that an option. Just some extra work.
Also remember the characters are just a "touch of realism", this will not be an RPG. Also about characters being represented on the map, I think we would usually have only Generals as units, sometimes the kings and governors; but usually not.
Just my thoughts.
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I see your point, Amjayee.
Often you wouldn't have time to get to know the characters, due to their short life span. And then we might as well call them commander X.
But in scenarios naming characters would be really important. Imagine playing a WW2 scenario without General Montgomery, or Hitler!
Elmo:
You are propably right. Characters shouldn't be units, although they could be captured or killed (especcially military ones) by the enemy.
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Vote Gore. For the sake of people, not god.
GGS Website
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Guildmaster
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Up your butt and around the corner
Jun 2000
time: 05:14
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Yuo know, a character doesn't always have to be helpful to you. You could for example, have a character in your civ that was a very good speaker, and he uses this ability to trash you. go figure
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How will you make it if you never even try?
-Macy Gray
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Leland
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Still bugging you guys with my questions and comments... first, how can you see all the thread in the forum? I found this one by clicking "next oldest thread", but I can't see it on the top level???
I'm against incorporating characters with individual stats or AI, apart from the exception of advisors. This stems from the idea that history isn't made by the people, but history makes people. You can't have Hitler in medieval times; Attila the Hun wouldn't have a chance in modern times. Even more obtrusive is the thought of having a puppet King to control, because I don't want my long term plans being ruined by such trivial events as not being able to find a heir to the throne. THAT would be frustrating.
The only way I see characters as useful are as some sort of spice to the whole. Advisors are a handy UI element, if their number is kept low enough, so you should keep them. Having these advisors show some personal traits might also be a good idea: they could get old, for example, or be modernized based on the state of your civilization. The names, looks and modes of speech could vary even though the function would be the same: "spiritual advisor" could sometimes be called "high priestess" or "the oracle", and it might be a good touch to formulate the phrases a little bit differently based on the importance of the field that the advisor represents. "The wrath of gods will be upon you if you don't stop persecuting the righteous!" and "Fundamentalist groups are discontent. Exterminate?" have slightly different tone even though the final options presented to the player might be exactly the same.
There are instances in history where single individuals have had a profound effect, I agree on that. In the game these could be implemented as random events rather than characters: suppose you are leading the russians to the 20th century, and you need to deal with WW1 until you can extinguish the revolutionary material. The riots have not yet broken out, and you just need a few more turns... but then a revolutionary leader unifies the proletariat and you have a civil was in your hands. Tough luck. What I don't want is negotiation with that particular people: all that happened was that your people's loyalties randomly shifted one step downwards. No dealing with the revolutionary leaders, the player would just have to either undertake heavy social changes or otherwise cope with the situation.
The advisors, however, need to be in the game to get rid of micromanagement. It's an UI matter how the advisors will be implemented: UI would only show them as characters so that the player would have something to relate to. For his amusement there could also be the possibility of getting rid of advisors or choosing the replacements. UI could also represent other AIs in the game as characters, but I don't think you could be able to choose your governors for instance, a character should be as good as another. However, since advisors are going to be a major outlet for player interaction (or is it? I may have totally wrong view of your visions...) it migth be a good idea to leave room in the implementation for incorporating improvements, whatever those might be.
Just my two cents. I apologize if I've been writing complete drivel here, this is just a very interesting project and I have a tendency to get carried away...
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19-10-2000 23:17
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