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ElmoTheElk
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Leiden, The Netherlands
Jul 2000
time: 06:14
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My answers:
- yes, i think we can make this work good enough
- no, there are just some people living at your starting location. Also, you won't start with an cities, but with an (military) unit that you will need to conquer more land and so find cities.
- no, definatly not. there are only regions where civs are.
- yes, but not player definable. they are the result of cities, tech, wealth, etc. in the region and where in the region improvements are an people live.
About nomads and stuff: we may add them later, but not as a civ but more like the barbarians in civ2.
Good post Vet!
Also extra questions that arised from the meeting:
- Are there more ways to win the game?
- When yes, are they set at the start of the game/scenario?
- Are the GUI windows during the game dynamic (resizable and moveable) or static (like in most rts games, like Red Alert 2)?
My answers:
- yes, but i think we all agree with that.
- yes, at the start of a game and they can't be changed after that.
- Dynamic, this may be harder to program but it's really nice for users to set there own priorities about window sizes, etc. I can live with static ones though.
Discussion...
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chrispie
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Manchester UK
Oct 2000
time: 05:14
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- Do we have only one type of tiles?
Yes
- Do we start in a previousely inhabited world or not?
Yes, but only limited inhabited area's, like the game sets out the world as inhabited in certain area's, and picks civ starting points from them if we use random maps.
- Does world start already devided in regions?
Um, no I think probably not also, regions are defined by players but only to a certain extent.
- Do we allow dynamic borders of regions?
Maybe after a region has been defined, it can only be changed by x amount per 'turn'.
And..
- Are there more ways to win the game?
Yep, for sure. 
- When yes, are they set at the start of the
game/scenario?
Absolutly!
- Are the GUI windows during the game dynamic (resizable and moveable) or static
Hmm, well making them have a limited amount of dynamicness we could get away with. I'm thinking static interface but with some level of UI movement. One thing for example, could be an icon that when you hover over it, a menu bar with more icons or text "slides" out. I'll have a go at some menu stuff soon.
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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To explain my votes...
Only one type of tiles:
We all agree on this, so not much explanation needed here.
Previously inhabited world:
I think that the world at the start of the game should already be inhabited by primitive people, as well as the civs that would be in the game. It would not be very hard to program, since these people would not be organized in any way, and would therefore not be active. The main things I like about a previously inhabited world is, that it creates more realism. For examble, we are using Amjayee's unit movement model. And an important part of that is to make unit movement more realistic, and therefore much faster than in Civ2. But that would mean that a player, even at the beginning of the game in an uninhabited world could send his troops to far away places in no time - propably just 10-20 turns for crossing a continent. But that makes the game weird and unrealistic, since that can not be done in reality, and since it would mean that the player could conquor an awful lot of land in no time. Having people in all hexes removes this oddness. What it would mean is, that to conquor a hex would require beating up these primitive people. So if you want to get a larger civ you would have to fight them. And doing that these people would act as a very pathetic unit, that would just damage your unit a little bit. Nothing big when conquoring a few hexes, but it would kill a unit to conquor a continent.
Furthermore these people would be fun to have, despite their (complete) inactivity. So when you conquor a hex you would get more people as well as more land to your civ. But these people would obviously not be of your nationality. Rather they would be "primitive". And as always having too many foreigners in your civ creates problems. Another way to reduce the dumb, early and ultrafast expansion we could otherwise have.
Finally each civ would have it's sphere of influence, showing how much influence you would have over other people. And if your influence over the primitive people in nearby hexes gets high enough (it would just mean that you were much more advanced and mighty than them) they could join your civ. This whole sphere of influence might seem advanced. But it really doesn't have to be. It would just be a function of each civ's size and wealth and power, plus it's cultural significance. Futhermore it could be used between two civs as well. If you have a small neighbor civ whose culture it greatly influenced by you, and whose largest trading partner is you, and you have a good relationship, the small civ might join yours as a protectorate.
Not having the world already divided into regions:
I think regions should be a thing of civs, not primitives. And I think regions should be made by the players. This is why I don't think regions should exist at the beginning of the game. I honestly think that each of the starting civs (other civs could join later on) would start with just one hex, and the sole region of the civ would be that hex. The rest of the world should be free for conquest and expansion, and for new civs to emerge.
Having dynamic regions:
We all agree on this (don't we?), so I don't think I need to explain that much. I think static regions are evil. That's it. Regions are a cultural, not a natural thing. It should be so in the game as well.
And finally...
GUI windows:
When I think about it I have actually come to the conclusion that static windows would propably be best. I think that all games with dynamic windows have poor looking ones. They are always dull, grey and windows like. And I don't like that type of interface. I am sure that we can make something that looks great, and I am sure that Elmo and Heardie can draw something that looks good. But dynamic regions just makes everything so much more dificult, and reduces the room for artistic liberty greatly.
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"My whole cheerleading career has been a lie."
- Bring it on
GGS Website
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VetLegion
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Units dont have to fight unorganised people
If they are not organised, they wont fight.
Units should take damage, but due to supply lines mostly.
World inhabited with primitives on "no mans land" is strange, and never was a case. But again, I am not concerned about realism, so we can make it.
But to me it can be two ways:
- world is uninhabited, and you and other "players" start in one place and expand your population
- world is inhabited, then it is also divided between tribes, warlords, despots, city states or other primitive forms of government. This means that you should also border someone from the very start.
Do we all agree that we start after hunther-gatherers?
Nomads are more fitting, although I think they should not move very great distances. They should be a civ (tribe) with a leader etc and their territory. They would migrate (seasonal) inside that teritory, so in effect, they would be a civ with specific economy.
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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The people would not be completely unorganized. They would just be organized at too low a level to be used gamewise. There would be local warlords etc, but none of these would control very many people, and so there would be several in every hex. And these people doesn't have to be hunter/gatherers. They could be farmers as well, there would just not be any central authority controling anything as big as a 50 km hex.
And I think it is completely realistic. The world does not evolve at the same speed, and should not be at the same level at the beginning of the game. 4000 BC thriving farmers were developing the first civs in the Fertile Crescent, Egypt, China and elsewhere. But what about the people of France, UK, Croatia and Denmark? They were propably farmers at that point. But to call them civs would be a big mistake, since they were not organized at a high enough level. Like I said there were local tribes with warlords, controlling only a few hundred people each. These societies should be portrayed, since they would be an important part of the life of an early civ.
I think nomads has to be modelled too. The Mongols travelled thousands of kms, conquoring everything they encountered. That alone is reason enough to include them. Fall of the Roman empire, Vandals, Huns, Gots. All nomads of some sort.
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"My whole cheerleading career has been a lie."
- Bring it on
GGS Website
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VetLegion
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Well, I am not going for realism, so as I said we can do it so that we have "non-owned primitives" or "disorganised natives" living on tiles you can conquer. But as chrispie said, tile needs additional info then. Or do you just conquer a number of people, without specific characteristics?
As I said, it makes sence to me to have either uninhabited world or inhabited and divided to "tribes" at the start.
As for nomads, in gameplay terms:
Mongols would be a nomadic (nomad economy) civ in Mongolia, which sent massive troops (military) to the west and south to conquer. They based rule on military suppression of population.
Visigoths on the other hand moved the entire tribes. This can be portreyed as massive migration - disbanding of towns to settler units (or woman and children units) and moving them together with military (this should be costly in lives). Each of those units should act as a "mobile city", so it would have ability to move at the begining of turn, settle, then move again. Every civ could do that, but you should invest in animal food tecnologies heavily then, since crops demand permanent settling.
nomadic economy - a system of production of food based on animals.
So nomad civ is possible, but a settled civ should always, except very early, be in advandage over nomadic one. This can be achieved by making animal domestication/exploitation technologies easier to achieve than agricultural ones and making them incopatible with cities and big population density.
Nomad civ should be a tool for player who is not satisfied with his starting location. By switching to nomad economy and investing in related tech, he can move cities around with less cost, maintain a population growth (not huge, but some) and develop a relatively superior fighting force (at the age).
In terrain which can not support extensive agriculture this should pay off and allow civ to grow, however nomadic civs would have a limit for development of technology, which would force player to make permanent cities and switch to agriculture as soon as possible, but certainly before he hits the limit. A player deciding to rule a nomadic civ forever should eventually be destroyed by lowland civs with superior technology and numbers.
A nomadic civ would also have external borders, and it would have government, just that its internal workings would be different (smaller cities, no agriculture, no roads, no high tech) and it would have some bonuses: easier military tech, switching city/settler in same turn(?), primitive and thus homogenous population with small number of classes and no rioting.
In any case, you should see nomads in only 10% of the game time, the earliest, after that, they would be seriousely behind in tech and pop.
Nomad civs would generally ne inable do develop far, due to lack of cities, but they do develop riding animals, and also usualy have superior military skill. This would allow player to adapt to his starting conditions and would be simmilar to the The Wheel (chariot) or Bronze Working (Phalanx) choice/dillema in civ, just with more depth.
A nomad civ would only have one region.
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Do we have only one type of tiles? Yes, I think everybody has agreed on this.
Do we start in a previously inhabited world or not? Yes. Increasing a population by reproduction only is incredibly slow, and the tribes outside civilizations function both as a source of new populace as well as a threat much like barbarians. It also forces the civ to cope with multiculturalism right from the beginning.
Also, in multiplayer games some players will hop in later than others, so from that point of view the game does not only start in an inhabited world but also in a world with existing advanced civilizations and fierce competition.
Does world start already devided in regions? Do we allow dynamic borders of regions? Yes, both issues are dealt with in the new region/population model.
Are there more ways to win the game? Sure. I think that the main goal for the game should be just staying alive as long as possible, and other objectives can be cutomized at the beginning of each game. Some alternatives I can think of include:
Conquering the world: reaching a position where only one civ is standing. Multiplayer don't always need to end here since new civilizations could keep on challenging the conqueror, but it is one obvious optional ending point for the game.
Holocaust: Kill the human race. This would require the development of nuclear weapons (or highly advanced biological ones) and would obviously end every multiplayer game.
Unified world government: Achieve a high level of cooperation with every other civ. Determining a winner in this situation would be difficult though. Perhaps one civ could gain enough influence in the social movements of others that it could blackmail a formation of world government? Other players would either agree and end the game with their current points, or keep going and risk civil unrest or severe dents in their score.
Economical victory: One civ (or an alliance of civs) makes all other economically dependent on it while itself not depending on the outside world. This is highly subjective, and will require some quantitative limits to define what is actually meant by "dependent".
Scientific knowledge: discover all tech first. Or a set of predefined techs.
Ideological utopia: In the beginning of the game it could be defined that the civ who first implements democracy, communism, anarchy or whatever wins. Also, this ideal government type should probably have some extra attributes so that simply having a revolution would not be sufficient. Maybe the players woudl need to keep up their government working for a certain period of time or meet some social requirements. Also, perhaps it should be possible to define different ideal governments for different civs.
Engineering project: I find the colonization of Alpha Centauri rather pointless, but maybe due to the end of the game there could be similar projects. Having a working colony on the moon, for example. Or simply going to space. Or having a global network of computers. Or creating a human level AI. Or, in case of earlier times, building a wall around earth or something. I do believe that not only modern engineering projects should be taken into account, the game should have such projects to end all projects throughout history.
Nationalistic victory: Wipe out other nationalities except one, or all that are sufficiently closely related to that one. Again it is difficult to see who is the winner, and I am not quite sure how to actually make this kind of objective work in open MP games.
Religious victory: much like in the nationalistic one, here the goal is to convert the whole world to a single religion. A little bit problematic.
Enlightment/Happiness/Submission/Health: A civilization reaches a point where its people meet certain criteria. Purely quantitative measure.
When yes, are they set at the start of the game/scenario? Yes indeed. It should also be possible to be able to customize the end conditions for each game: something like "90% of land area is discovered or tech reaches level X" or "the largest civ has twice the population of the second largest". I think the game will have a universal scripting language which should be able to do this, as well as GUI support and ready-made templates for all sorts of alternative victories. After all, since the focus is on multiplayer game there is no reason to limit into simplified goals.
Are the GUI windows during the game dynamic or static? Static is sufficient in most cases I think. The positions of windows should be movable and configurable nevertheless. The goal in programming is to make the UI such that it can be easily be altered (that is, reprogrammed) without touching the rest of the game, so the final UI may look radically different from what we're doing now. I don't have much worries regarding the UI though: surely chrispie, amjayee and Vet know what they're doing. 
Leland
[This message has been edited by TempLeland (edited February 12, 2001).]
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True, the game shouldn't just end abruptly. And most goals should be achievable without ending the game, especially the "special" goals like engineering projects or wonders (or whatever will resemble wonders most in the game). But I think that for each game a set of goals could be defined as a form of conditions which cause the game to end. To avoid abrupt ending, maybe the exit conditions could also incorporate a warning level? Conditions which would cause a notification for all players that the game is about to end. For example, when an engineering project is initiated it would serve as a warning, or if one civ gains 90% of whatever was needed to end the game.
So, to end the game would be kind of optional. Long multiplayer games could go on indefinitely. I think that the end conditions are more important in scenarios.
How about scoring? Should there be one universal scoring method, or should each score be comparable only to the particular game and scenario options?
Leland
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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I agree with Leland and Amjayee on this ending issue. Often the history mp games would go on and on (obviously there would be an end to the new advances you could discover). But if you wanted to, for scenarios or whatever, you could have a victory mode.
There should be several types of victory. Economic, cultural, military, diplomatic etc.
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"If you are to hurt someone you better do it so good that you don't have to fear revenge."
- Machiavelli
GGS Website
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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Agreed, one game will not be fun forever.
But the question is whether to give it a fixed ending, or just let it slide away. A truly great examble of the latter being succesful if done right is Sim City.
But I am not saying that we should necessarily do it like that. I think opening up for both possibilities is the best thing to do at this point.
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"If you are to hurt someone you better do it so good that you don't have to fear revenge."
- Machiavelli
GGS Website
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Thsi definitely won't be massively multiplayer game, it's just impossible with the current scope and scale. The number of players probably won't exceed 10-20, but there will be no other hard-coded limit except the computing power available for the server. But otherwise, multiplayer will be slightly more important than the single player game because it will be implemented first and because creating a decent AI is damn difficult.
The multiplayer game will be "open" so that new players can hop in at any point. Though this aspect of the game can be configured as well, I'm sure. The rise and fall idea is necessary to make this possible, otherwise the old civs would have an unfair advantage compared to the new ones. A clever player should be able to rise to power regardless of the time when he starts the game, and because there is a limited land area available some other civs will have to make room. The problematic aspects of how the civs will stay up when the player is not overlooking and how exactly new civs will arise in already populated world are not exactly solved yet, but I'm sure we can come up with something.
The stuff I most like about Civ is the development. Discovering new land, new tech, new trade routes, new improvements. This will end at some point, and the same is the case with GGS. That's why I think multiplayer games lasting forever are definitely not the only aspect, players want to reset the clock every now and then and start from scratch. The number of players is perhaps too large to leave the ending of the game entirely to mutual agreement, so in the beginning of the game it should be possible to configure all kinds of ending conditions. Scoring will probably be used just to figure out the "winner", I am not convinced that scores can even be compared between differently configured games.
Leland
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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Korn is right here; the key idea in the tech system is, that it requires also some science to preserve the discovered technology. Most other things should go similarly; backward steps could occur just as steps forward. This is only realistic, and would give new challenges to the long games; you would start over again. Also this could solve the game ending issue. Since we start counting time from 0 and don't use our chronology, the players don't have any reference to our history. The new history could have dark ages just as ours. Perhaps each civ could start its own chronology from 0, so the year could be different for different civs?? Then there would be also a global year of course. Then, one of the game conditions could be allied victory; when all players agree to draw to game, the game could end. Usually this would happen when all technology has been discovered. If some players don't agree to draw, there could be a world war to wipe out those reluctant players, and that might create a new dark age, and the game could continue if players wish...
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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Well, I hope we will, Ron.
The R&F part we are including. But mmp is pretty hard to create, and we don't know how possible it will be with the complexity we are having. So it is not what we are focusing on now. At the moment we are creating a mp game with as many players as we can fit into it (honestly, none of us have any idea how many this is - Leland's estimate of 10-20 might be better than my 100 player max, but we are not by any means sure). Sp and mmp is for later.
About the ending of the game. I agree that an end is a good thing. I always felt a bit down when my SimCity game just faded away, since it became less and less fun.
But a world conquest fits very poorly with R&F. Personally I think world conquest should be impossible. What should be possible is for one player to be superior in many areas, and then invite (or force) all the other civs to join him as protectorates. But both military power and diplomatic wiz should be needed to do this. A truly large project could also be used as a victory mode. And an economic victory, where one player controls a large percentage of the vast majority of all goods (in one way or the other) in the world. Or a cultural victory, where one player convinces all of the people of the world to eat McDonalds and drink Coke every day.
There are loads of possibilities, and they should propably all be related somehow. But they should still be more advanced and complex than simply conquoring the world. Plus when creating a game it should be possible to turn any one of them on or off, which could make it possible to play a game with no end at all.
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"If you are to hurt someone you better do it so good that you don't have to fear revenge."
- Machiavelli
GGS Website
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I don't think technical development goes backwards as much as forwards. After a certain point, constant improvement is almost inevitable, barring catastrophies. Once something has been invented and spread to the world, getting rid of that knowledge would mean killing nearly everyone on the planet. On the other hand, are there instances of decaying technology in the history? I cannot think of anything... maybe the middle ages caused a minor setback for Europe, but still the arabic countries kept up the mathematical knowledge, for example.
This "destroy the world" theme brings me to another point: there is at least one certain way to end the game which cannot be directly disabled. Total extinction of all humans. If there is the technology, then it is possible. Though I am not sure if the game will have technology that advanced...
Leland
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25-01-2001 15:57
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