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S. Kroeze
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the Hague, the Netherlands, Old Europe
Dec 1999
time: 05:14
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Dear Amjayee, ElmoTheElk, Joker, Korn469, Leland and others,
I am most glad and feel flattered, that at least one person, i.e. Amjayee, liked my contribution. It is indeed also my impression that my realism factors are completely compatible with the idea of preplanned action/orders. And it would certainly contribute to reducing the advantages of large overextended empires and create a real difference between pre-industrial and modern warfare/command structures. Building and maintaining good roads, having disposal of a well-equipped merchant marine, inventing railroads and telegraphy, would truly benefit your empire!
In CivII the player seems to be not only all-powerful, but also all-knowing. I know this is just my opinion, but it didn't elevate my gaming pleasure. On the contrary, it is my belief that uncertainty, some randomness, and many unpredictable elements will raise the excitement.
I also would like to make some remarks about warfare in general. Most games -and Civilization is no exception- present a completely distorted picture. The units in CivII seem to possess some 'divine' immortality. In reality most military campaigns were relatively short and armies disintegrated as quickly as they were recruited.
'Disease was a greater threat to the health of Civil War soldiers than enemy weapons. This had been true of every army in history. Civil War armies actually suffered comparatively less disease mortality than any previous army. While two Union or Confederate soldiers died of diseases for each one killed in combat, the ratio for British soldiers in the Napoleonic and Crimean wars had been eight to one and four to one. For the American army in the Mexican War it had been seven to one. Only by twentieth-century standards was Civil War disease mortality high. Nevertheless, despite improvements over previous wars in this respect, disease was a crippling factor in Civil War military operations. At any given time a substantial proportion of men in a regiment might be on the sicklist. Disease reduced the size of most regiments from their initial complement of a thousand men to about half that number before the regiment ever went to battle.(!)
Sickness hit soldiers hardest in their first year. The crowding together of thousands of men from various backgrounds into a new and highly contagious disease environment had predictable results. Men (especially those from rural areas) who had never before been exposed to measles, mumps, or tonsilitis promptly came down with these childhood maladies. Though rarely fatal, these illnesses could cripple units for weeks at a time. More deadly were smallpox and erysipelas, which went through some rural regiments like a scythe. If soldiers recovered from these diseases and remained for some time at the training or base camp -where by poor sanitary practices and exposure to changeable weather they fouled their water supply, created fertile breeding grounds for bacteria, and became susceptible to deadly viruses- many of them contracted one of the three principal killer diseases of the war: diarrhea/dysentery, typhoid, or pneumonia. As they marched southward in summer campaign, many of them caught the fourth most prevalent mortal disease: malaria. A good many Union occupation troops in southern cities as well as Confederate soldiers camped near other cities -especially Richmond- experienced another soldiers' malady, venereal disease, of which there were about as many reported cases as of measles, mumps, and tonsilitis combined.
Disease disrupted several military operations. Lee's West Virginia campaigns of 1861 failed in part because illness incapacitated so many of his men. One reason for the abandonment of the first effort to capture Vicksburg in July 1862 was the sickness of more than half of the Union soldiers and sailors there. Beauregard's decision to abandon Corinth was influenced by illness of epidemic proportions that put more than a third of his army on the sicklist. By the time Halleck's Union army had established its occupation of Corinth in early June, a third or more of the Yankee soldiers were also ill. Nearly half of the twenty-nine Union generals came down sick during the Corinth campaign and its aftermath, including Halleck himself and John Pope with what they ruefully called the "Evacuation of Corinth" (diarrhea) and Sherman with malaria. Halleck's failure after Corinth to continue his invasion into Mississippi resulted in part from fears of even greater disease morbidity among unacclimated northern soldiers in a Deep-South summer campaign.'
(source: J.M.McPherson: 'Battle Cry of Freedom',1988)
Here are some hard figures about the Thirty Years' War(1618-1648), underlining this same point:
'One might wonder why any man would freely join such a force; and indeed, many soldiers served in the ranks against their will. The troops from Sweden and Finland, for example, were recruited by a form of conscription known as the indelningsverk, which obliged a specified community to provide a certain number of soldiers. Most of them were peasants: in the voluminous (but as yet little analysed) records of the Swedish and Finnish forces serving Gustavus Adolphus and his daughter, bönde (peasant farmer) is by far the commonest entry in the enrolment lists. They came from villages like Bygdeå in northern Sweden, which provided 230 young men for service in Poland and Germany between 1621 and 1639, and saw 215 of them die there, while a further five returned home crippled. Enlistment was thus virtually a sentence of death and its demographic impact was profound. The number of adult males in Bygdeå parish steadily decreased -from 468 in 1621 to 288 in 1639- and the age of the conscripts gradually fell as more and more teenagers were taken, never to return. The social impact was also high: at first, the 'idle poor' tended to furnish most of the recruits, but after a while it became the turn of the younger sons of more prosperous families, and finally the only sons of even rich peasants were called to die away in Germany. In some smaller settlements, by the end of the 1630s, every available adult male was either on the conscription lists, already in the ranks, or too crippled too serve. Total losses in the Swedish army between 1621 and 1632 have been estimated at 50,000 to 55,000; those between 1633 and the war's end were probably twice as high. Clearly the war was causing depopulation in Sweden and Finland on an unprecedented and -ultimately- unbearable scale.
(NB.: Since the population of Sweden in 1600 is estimated at only well over one million these were unbearable losses indeed; Finland had only about 200,000 inhabitants)
Of course, there were many other causes of military losses unconnected with fighting. When Christian IV's headquarters were at Tangermünde on the Elbe, in 1625, "the stink of the camp got up one's nose" (in the words of a chronicler) and, before long, disease had reduced the Danish forces substantially. The Imperialists quartered in Hesse-Darmstadt during the winter of 1634-35, after their victory at Nördlingen, were forced to sleep ten and twenty to a house; it was therefore not long before illnesses due to overcrowding took their toll. In the Scots Brigade serving in Germany between 1626 and 1633, some 10 per cent of the regiments were sick at any one moment, with epidemics increasing the rate dramatically from time to time. For example, the Scots who garrisoned the lower Oder in 1631 lost 200 men a week from plague, and more still from camp fever (typhus) and the other illnesses common among early modern armies.'
Wastage rates in selected regiments:
4 English regiments:
1627 June: 4,913
1627 Oct.: 3,764
1628 Apr.: 1,882
1628 May : 1,630
4 Scots regiments:
1630 Jan.: 1,900
1632 Mar.: 1,300
1634 Oct.: 200
3 Swedish regiments:
1631 Sept: 2,577
1632 Mar.: 1,212
1632 Dec.: 828
(source: G.Parker: 'The Thirty Years' War',1997)
Parker arrives at a monthly loss of lives ranging from 2 to 20%.
And here is an example of an army that almost literally melted away:
'Meanwhile, Napoleon's Grande Armée was shambling across the Russian plain. It was a long, hot summer and thousands of soldiers succumbed to heat exhaustion before it was decided to march only at night. Discipline had degenerated. Supplies were short. Evidently, Napoleon's quartermasters had counted on scavenging to meet a large part of their daily requirements, but the retreating Russians left behind them little that was edible. Most successes that were achieved in foraging were made by the more experienced French soldiers and this, added to the stingy paternalism of the French quartermasters when distributing supplies to the contingents of their allies, intensified the hostility of the non-French towards the French. The horses suffered even more from the supply shortage; many of the died from bad feeding, while others were themselves eaten by the soldiers. By the end of August many of the non-French troops were barefoot and their dust-caked uniforms little better that rags. Stragglers were numbered in the thousands; some of these were merely ill, for typhus and dysentery were spreading, but the majority were lagging behind voluntarily as a tactical preliminary to desertion and return home. Above all, water was short. The few good sources were usually tainted; occasionally a corpse or an amputated limb would be found in a spring or pond, deposited by the retreating Russians and perhaps recalling to the French soldiers Napoleon's utterance at Smolensk: "how sweet smells the corpse of an enemy!"
Thus, despite the legend of the subsequent retreat from Moscow, it was the advance which caused most damage to the invaders. There was never any need for the Russian army to fight a set-piece battle, for Napoleon's forces were disintegrating day by day. However Kutuzov was persuaded by public opinion, pressure from St.Petersburg, and the enthusiasm of his junior officers, to make one stand before Moscow. So in early September the Russian army stopped retreating and formed up in a defensive position on high grounds near the village of Borodino, commanding the Smolensk-Moscow highway about seventy miles west of Moscow. The Russian forces numbered about 120,000, of whom 10,000 were hastly raised and half-trained militia sent out from Moscow.
By this time the French army had shrunk from the half-million, with which it had begun the campaign, to a mere 130,000, and was already slightly inferior to the Russians in artillery. Napoleon decided to make a frontal attack on the opposing positions, probably fearing that otherwise the Russians would be tempted to retreat once more and deny him his long-desired victory. At the end of a hard-fought day, in which positions changed hands time after time, the Russians began a slow and orderly withdrawal. Although the French had won the battlefield they had not won the war, for they had not destroyed the opposing army. At Borodino, which Napoleon later adjudged his most expensive and terrible battle, the French suffered 30,000 casualties and the Russians 40,000 (some Russian historians give the French casualties as 68,000; some French historians give the Russian casualties as 60,000). Bagration was mortally wounded and died some weeks later at his country estate. Barclay, as though conscious of his recent unpopularity, deliberately exposed himself in the battle, emerging a hero and uninjured.
A week after leaving Moscow there was a heavy engagement with Kutuzov, resulting in both sides retiring to lick their wounds. Napoleon was forced to retreat along the road by which he had advanced, via Borodino with its still-unburied corpses. Although Kutuzov, to the disgust of the British general who was attached to his headquarters, avoided close engagement with his retiring opponent, Cossacks and partisans were quick to bring a bestial death to stragglers or lagging detachments. The first snow fell in the first week of November. Neither the cavalry nor the artillery had been supplied with winter horseshoes and it was not long before most of the army's horses disappeared. Without horse transport the supply situation became catastrophic and more men dropped out by the roadside. At the end of November the Russians were outmanoeuvred for a few precious hours, enabling most of the army to cross the river Berezina, but thousands of stragglers and camp followers were killed at this point, drowned, trampled underfoot by their comrades, or massacred by Russian guns. It was not until early December that the really cold weather set in. Contrary to the impression given by Napoleon's apologists, there was no early winter that year and the French were not defeated by the cold. The cold, when it came, only finished the job. In the final count probably four-fifths of the half million men who followed Napoleon into Russia were lost, and only a few of these died from cold.'
(source: J.N.Westwood: 'Endurance and Endeavour, Russian History 1812-1992',1993)
So in the end Napoleon -who is generally considered a fairly good general- was defeated by an efficient use of scorched earth policy, inadequate supplies, weather conditions (summer heat and winter cold), diseases and mass desertions.
Finally I would like to remark that it seems to me rather premature to condemn a game system not yet existing as inevitably boring, because it could incude an element one doesn't like, whether preplanned turns or realistic delay of information/command dissemination. By far the most exciting and demanding game I have ever played is the board game Diplomacy, which has preplanned turns, but no information lag. Yet I do not doubt there also exists some boring game with preplanned turns! In the end tastes differ.
Sincere regards,
S.Kroeze
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ElmoTheElk
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Leiden, The Netherlands
Jul 2000
time: 06:14
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I reread some post I, amjayee, korn and others made and it seems Korn's system and mine aren't that different as we might thought. We both agree with the real-time turn-based system. Some differences though:
The turn lenght isn't just based on the units action points, and units don't move each by each, but simultanous in my system. The time a turn takes is fully dependent on many things like # of armies (I don't like to use the word units), # of regions, # of players and most likely much more. This is because the player can change things like tax rates, order queues, build queues and more real-time, so the time needed for this kind of planning when it's your turn is reduced (to a minimum). So, turns go by relatively quick (good for other player during multi-player) and it's still turn based.
Don't really know if Korn's system is also real-time as you can change such things all the time or just in your turn, but then it's a (big) difference too.
Further, both systems seem to have much things in common. To get amjayee happy, we might figure out some sort of way to include some of the simultanous turn system features into ours.  This system also have some nice features (as much time to plan as you like, within time limit).
Can others also give there opinion about this? Since this is a really -=BIG=- part of the game design, I think we should at least have to agree with all designers.
ElmoTheElk
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I haven't been able to post for a while now, so I'll be commenting some pretty old stuff. But first, let me get over with the mandatory positive reinforcement part: S. Kroeze, you can count me in your fan club.  Your posts are most useful in providing the necessary background information to achive the goal of realism. Keep up the good work. And Korn, thanks for the enlightening new ideas regarding action points, this is surely something that could be incorporated in the game in one for or the other.
Roads:
One has to bear in mind that the game will attempt to cover human history from prehistory to modern times. There will be vast improvements in technology and infrastructure. So what is the most sensible way of buiding roads, for instance, and how should the improvements be shown on screen? For example, the muddy path between St. Peterburg and Moscow may not even be categorized as a road in modern terms, but in its time it playd quite an important role in Russia. If such (and worse) roads are visible on the map, there will be a time when almost every tile would have to have some sort of road to be realistic. I believe it was chrispie who pointed out earlier that this does not look good.
One solution would be to have two kinds of roads: visible pathways between two points, and a region improvement. The former would indeed show on the map, and it could even be drawn by the player, but the latter would be just some sort of movement bonus added to every tile within a region. The same idea could be applied to other kinds of infrastructure as well: electricity, water pipes, schools and who knows what else we'll come up with. what do you all think, would this system work?
Map:
A week ago in the meeting the differences between GGS and Civ2 were discussed. As a kind of a conclusion it was realized that when the "small" (relative small in terms of tile count) map in Civ2 encourages players to think "this tile has a mine and a phalanx", in GGS the player would (or should) instinctively conceptualize the situation as "there is some mining and military presence in this area". That is, individual "tiles" and their properties would be secondary (in fact, only terrain is something that is tile based, other entities could use convenient abstractions like "areas" and "paths"), they would be more like coordinates where other entities refer to. The difference may not be so large, but I believe I should explicitly state this approach in the design doc to avoid misunderstandings.
Game time vs. real time:
It has been planned elsewhere that the game should span from the rise of the first cities to modern times, that is approximately 6000-10000 years (okay, my memory isn't what it used to be ... correct me here!). if one turn translates to one year, that gives 6000 turns. If one turn lasts fifteen minutes, one game would go on for about two months, 24/7. Doesn't sound too bad. But if the turns would be partitioned to months, it would take two years to go through one game. This is something undesirable to most players, expecially since 15 minute turns aren't that long. Also, the amount of time a single player can afford to a gaming session is something between 1-5 hours, in other words 4 to 20 years. Is this enough? When the player logs off, the game world goes on and the next session might not come until 80-100 years. What guarantees are there that the civilization isn't completely wiped out by then?
The speed of the game will be configurable, of course, but there is always the tradeoff between providing enough action for on-line players and not ruining the game for the off-liners. Unless we give up on the concept of logging in and out of the game, but it is my humble opinion that this is one of the cornerstones in this project. AI won't be the magic bullet, because an AI which could not only keep the civ up and running, but also follow the path laid out by the human player is pretty difficult to implement. "Dummy AI" just isn't enough.
Finally, I believe that if a fast paced semi-real-time system is adopted, this will inevitably make the game immensely more complex. Seasonal changes, weather conditions, delayed information and lots of other details have to be taken into the model, whereas a simple one year/one turn system would work with more abstract terms. Needless to say, this is the reason why I am inclined to disagree with the suggested model.
Multiplayer:
The discussion in this thread has seemed to assume that all players all on-line all the time. Problems arise when we have a human player against a bad AI substitute. If the AI is not cheating, the absent player will be quite dissatisfied with the result once he logs in to see that his army has been crushed. On the other hand, if AI is cheating, it frustrates the human player posed against it. If the old system of one year turns would be used, the problem would not be quite as bad since strategies would not be quite as complicated as they are in real-time. One more reason why I am against the new system.
What about PBeM games? This is impossible in real-time mode, so should we support it at all? Then again, it would be a perfect way to play with long preplanned turns.
Diplomacy:
I must disagree with the notion that diplomacy should be delayed or restricted. If players cannot contact each other within the game, they'll just use ICQ. Not everybody will, of course, but those who do have an advantage over those who don't so I think every player should be guaranteed equal chances for communication, even in the expense of realism.
Another troubling thing that was suggested somewhere above is that player could call a diplomatic summit and effectively pause the game by doing so. This I highly disagree with: the players who needed more time to move/think could call the summit just to finish whatever they're doing, thus making the game slower for others. I think that diplomacy with other players should be done completely independent of the rest of the game flow.
Turn order:
So far, I think there are three different proposed systems. First, there is the old preplanned turn order, where conflicts between players' commands would be resolved without any additional input from the players. I kind of like that approach. Anyway, then there is Korn's suggestion which adds more real-time elements to the mix and Elmo's system which has great resemblance to simultaneous turns in Civ2. I think these two turn order models have some problems, but because this may be only because I haven't understood them properly I would like to have some thing clarified:
Korn, how long would the turns in your model last, and what is the length of the turn dependent on? Is there just a fixed time limit, within which the player should move his armies? Also, what level of strategy do you have in mind? How many armies at any given time (maybe compared to the number of regions), how specialized would they be, how detailed the combat situations? You also mentioned that mines among other things should have action points, so how fundamental to the game would you make the action point philosophy? What are the things that are done on a turn-by-turn basis, and what happens gradually with action points? Production? Riots? Economy? Migration? Disease outbreaks? Building? Science?
Elmo, in your system I see the problem that people have to respond to each other's actions. What of someone chooses not to? And what if a player waits close to the end of the turn before using all his action points, then he'd have an advantage because of the knowledge what everybody else moved. The way I see it, this would result in games where everybody waits for the last possible moment before quickly moving their armies, and in such situations fast clickers would certainly be rewarded.
I think that simple, preplanned year-by-year turns are sufficient for the purposes of the game. This allows us to make many simplifications. For instance, the delayed information is not such a problem because even though it could take months for a message to travel from one end of the empire to another, it rarely takes years (granted, sometimes such delays happen, but based on the examples provided by S. Kroeze, such cases are not the norm). Also the strategies of armies could be kept more simple. Wars wouldn't take more than 5-10 years or less, though this number varies in different points of history. Anyway, the combat would inevitably be strategic for the simple fact that there is no tactical level. So, there is also no need for an AI to handle the tactical decisions and carrying out a multitude of orders. Thirdly, again inspired by S. Kroeze's rambling  , it seems that the most serious threat to an army is deterioration, not a superior tactical genious on the opposing side. Thus, logistics, infrastructure and simple straightforward campaigns become more emphasized than military tactics, IMHO.
(As a sidenote, even if I don't yet accept the real-time model, if it was used then why is there a need to have any turns at all? Everything could just flow real-time, and the players could pause the game whenever they wanted, but the "pausetime" would be limited and would regerate slowly. Just a thought)
Anyway, in the beginning of this post I did compliment the idea of using action points. This is because I think they are an excellent way of resolving conflicts between different units, even if they wouldn't be visible to the player. A great idea, actually.
Summary (for those who didn't bother reading ):
Amjayee, you always crack me up with those "all we need to do is design" comments.
Seriously, I think that the following issues should be solved:
1. Game length, turn length, average game session length, pace of the game?
2. Delayed information vs. the integrity of the civilization from POV of the player?
3. Real-time or preplanned turns?
4. Number of thingamajigs to move around on the map? (I suggest that there will be less armies than regions)
5. How the turn order affects all the other aspects of the game beside combat?
Hopefully we can come to a solution which satisfies us all enough to be put in the design doc, at this point I am not going to make any suggestions for changes because I am not yet quite sure what we want. Maybe later. Ciao.
Leland
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Those are pretty important questions you asked. It seems that everyone has his own vision what the game should be, but due to lack of communication there isn't yet a very comprehensive mutual agreement on many important issues like combat, for instance. The purpose of design doc and this thread is to come up with some sort of consensus on these things, which is why we need to present different alternatives and see what we really want from this game.
Here's my vision (more accurately, my current vision, since I have noticed that the game evolves in my head quite rapidly while I think about this stuff ):
The game indeed resembles Risk et al in the sense that the map consists of regions rather than tiles. Sure, the tiles are there, but there are so many that the player probably won't be concerned about them, much like a computer user is not interested in the pixels on the screen. The difference between Risk and GGS is that in our game the regions are dynamic, not static. At the beginning of the game the regions maybe as small as one tile, but when the game progresses the largest regions could consist of over thousand tiles. On the other hand, the difference between Civ-clones and GGS is that here regions pretty much take the place of cities. In Civ, however, there is the problem of ever-growing number of those cities and this causes tedious micromanagement. Again the dynamic scalability of regions would prove to be an asset: The number of regions would not grow linearly with the conquered land area. I believe these properties of the game would be quite revolutionary, if done correctly.
Ideally, it would be best if we could simulate the whole world in great details, so that there would be strategic, operational, tactical and maybe even "grunt work" levels of abstraction. The player could just choose the level he wants to work with and a superintelligent AI would do the rest. However, I find this implausible and quite difficult to realize. Making the turns shorter (that is, having some shorter periods of time within turns, such as ticks, months or whatever) will require the modelling of the actions occuring within those time frames instead of just approximating them on the long term. Similarly, having lots of detailed units will force us to come up with interaction between them. Finally, there are many other aspects to the game than just moving, so if tactical combat is included it would be needed to include "tactical" resource production, politics and social order as well or the game would become a slightly inconsistent.
In my opinion, GGS should have strategic and operational levels, and perhaps some tactical decisions. Tactics like "seize that ridge" are not applicable simply because of the granularity of the map.
In short, I think I'd like to be a lazy Steve Ballmer... not even touching the tactical and grunt levels, but instead deciding strategies and carrying them out (or letting AI do it, sometime in the far far future). I disagree that preplanned turns, relatively small number of stuff to move or simplified strategies will necessarily be boring. It's all a matter of how the situation is presented to the players. Th movements of armies would still be *shown* on the map, the plans would be represented by (animated?) arrows, the player would give the orders by dragging and dropping, pointing and clicking and so on. It's not just "take over tumbolia, 60% casualties accepted, 20% annual budget available", but actually taking a couple of armies, choosing where to cross the borders, allocating the weak spots of the enemy, deciding best course of conquest (quickly through the plains, or safely through the mountains?), making sure logistics with mother civ works, assimilating the conquered area to your civ and suppressing rebels, ...
(Ok, perhaps it is a little bit boring , but I see great difficulties in making a realistic game any other way without compromising with the world-wide, entire history spanning scope.)
Leland
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:14
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at one time i was helping one of my friends design a RTS with the working title warblobs...here is the stuff that we came up with (this was before i ever knew apolyton existed...this is unchanged since about 1998)
quote:
Name slots cost time to build speed effects
Hit points1 1 10 80 +0 +35hp
Hit points2 2 25 145 +1 +75hp
Hit points3 3 45 210 +2 +125hp
Hit points4 5 115 295 +5 +245hp
Armor1 2 25 150 +2 -2 to weapons damage/8 attacks in 15 ticks
Armor2 3 70 200 +3 -4 to weapons damage/8 attacks in 15 ticks
Armor3 5 195 280 +6 -9 to weapons damage/10 attacks in 15 ticks
Shield1 1 45 100 +0 +60sp
Shield2 2 115 190 +0 +145sp
Shield3 4 385 350 +2 +375sp
Battery1 1 35 90 +0 +1sp/45ticks
Battery2 3 65 205 +1 +1sp/20ticks
Area Shields 6 750 800 +7 +725sp/4squares distance
Area Battery 5 225 450 +2 +1sp/20ticks/+5 units max 4squares distance
Warp1 2 65 100 +0 unit can warp 9 squares
Warp2 3 145 135 +1 unit can warp 15 squares
Area Warp1 6 315 380 +7 +5 units 3squares away warp 12squares
Area Warp2 10 620 540 +12 +10 units 3squares away warp 12squares
Cloak 1 95 100 +1 cloaked until attack cloaks recloak in 60ticks
Cloak2 1 135 100 +1 like wraith
Cloak3 3 195 250 +3 unit is always cloaked
Area Cloak1 4 360 275 +5 4squares distance like wraith
Area Cloak2 7 500 450 +9 6squares distance all the time
Detection 2 65 100 +1 spots cloaked units
Camouflage 1 40 90 +1 -2 from enemies sight
Mimic 4 235 445 +0 can make a unit look like the enemy
Notes:
1. Don all components always need to cost something, and hit points aren’t harmless. Every hit point a unit has it let us the unit live longer and shoot more. We must also give a person a reason to get shields. You could cheat if everything was free. For example a six slot unit costs 65, you had hit points one cost nothing. The gun on your weapons chart also cost nothing, so that means you could create a 65$ unit that has a gun and 150 hit points. (I choose six slots because it was cheapest per slot). A twelve-slot unit with an ultra AC20 shield3x2 and battery2x1 costs 2080 and that is 32 times as much as the six-slot unit. That 12 slot unit only has 800 shield points and 50 hit points, and if I’m reading your first chart right he does about 5 times as much damage as the six slot unit. That unit also has about six times as many shield/hit points as the six-slot unit. However, 32 six-slot units would take him any day and would probably lose only one or two units. In effect, he is totally useless.
2. Don we also shouldn’t have unique components and charge more for a component if it’s on a bigger slot guy. We should use the size of a component to make one a must have for a unit and more than that to be a waste. Bigger slot guys should be more effective than little guys.
3. Don on armor I see what you mean but I have an idea. Make the armor only effective against so many attacks in a certain time. Therefore, like with armor1 if it were attacked 9 times in 15 ticks it wouldn’t help against the tenth attack. Also another idea for armor. Either be able to put armor deep or put it wide. If it’s deep that means if you have two armor1 that means it blocks four damage from an attack but it only blocks eight attacks in 15 ticks. If it’s wide and you have two armor1 then it only blocks 2 damage per attack but it can block 16 attacks in a 15 tick period.
4. Just to clarify, Area batteries charge surrounding units shields and not the unit with area batteries. Area shields surrounds a four square grid and normal shield batteries recharges it.
5. Shields cost more but can fit more shield points per slot than hit points, so it’s cost versus protection.
6. Camouflage shouldn’t be able to be detected.
7. Mimic would make your mimic unit look like the enemies unit. It should also have a feature where your mimic unit can infiltrate the enemy. You turn on infiltrate and suddenly the enemy could click on him and tell him where to go and what to do. When infiltrate is on the only order you could give to the mimic is to cut infiltrate off. When the enemy looks at a mimic the screen should say that it is a completely healthy unit with zero kills or whatever. The mimic should also be unable to be detected by a detector. It’s not cloaked it’s just a fake. But unless the mimic has the necessary component it can’t have the abilities of the unit is impersonating. In addition, if the unit it is faking is a 5-slot unit then the mimic has to be five slots. If it’s a nine slot unit then the mimic would have to be nine slots. Also a mimic should always appear fake under CLOSE scrutiny. That’s why detectors won’t work on them. Mimics would be great for spying, suicide bombings, and converting the enemies units. In addition, when the enemy he is infiltrating attacks the mimic then he immediately goes back to your control. A mimic should be the probe that is always just standing outside of the refinery and never going in and acting odd. Then when you click on your fully upgraded probe it tells you that it isn’t upgraded and it’s just a basic unit. Then if you don’t think anything of it suddenly when your refinery is blown up or on f your other probes switches sides then you should figure it out if not you just aren’t too bright. (I compared it totally to star craft just to give you an idea of what I was thinking when I created mimic. I know it would be a little different in warblobs)
8. Area cloak2 works all the time just like an arbiter, those units are always cloaked but the area cloak1 and 2 don’t actually work on the unit that has area cloak. You would have to buy cloak separately if you want it to cloak.
9. I’m still thinking on weapons but I want to have specialty ammo. For example ammo that is more effective against armor and less effective against unarmored units, or hollow point ammo that kills unarmored units but armor is way more effective against
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quote:
Name size cost time to build effects
Warp1 small 0.8 100 unit can warp 9 squares
Warp2 MED 1.6 135 unit can warp 15 squares
Area Warp1 LG 2.1 380 +5 units 3squares away warp 12squares
Area Warp2 XXL 3.5 540 +10 units 3squares away warp 12squares
Cloak small 1.6 100 cloaked until attack cloaks recloak in 60ticks
Cloak2 small 1.9 100 like wraith
Cloak3 MED 2.5 250 unit is always cloaked
Area Cloak1 MED 3.3 275 4squares distance like wraith
Area Cloak2 LAR 4.5 450 6squares distance all the time
Detection small 2.2 100 spots cloaked units
Camouflage small 1.2 90 -2 from enemies sight
Mimic MED 3.5 445 looks like the enemy
Search Light small 1.1 85 -2 sight range at night +1 to enemy
Night vision small 1.7 145 full sight range at night
Sensors1 small 0.8 95 +1 to sight
Sensors2 small 1.0 105 +2 to sight
Sensors3 small 1.2 125 +3 to sight
Radiation Proof MED 2.6 195 radiation has no effect
Gas Mask MED 1.8 165 chemical weapons have no effect
After Burners LAR 2.2 175 flying unit times 1.5 times as fast
Notes:
1. Radiation includes neutron bombs, atomic bombs fallout, and ion cannons.
2. I think we have hit points shields and armor worked out so I didn’t put them on here.
3. Tell me what you think so far.
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quote:
The game does stuff every 50 milliseconds, so there are 20 ticks per second. All components that charge up get1 mana per tick. The default move rate is 15 ticks per square. units get 4 slots for free. Additional slots cost more. Units start with 50 hit points.
Slots total cost
1-4 50
5 55
6 65
7 80
8 100
9 125
10 155
11 190
12 230
Component that cost +x/s cost x for each slot above 4.these are for abilities that seem to multiply the usefulness of a unit. A 4 slot unit that can permanently cloak would cost 70.a 12 slot unit that can permanently cloak would cost 410.
Name slots cost speed effect
hitpoints1 1 0 0 +30hp
hitpoints2 1 20 0 +50hp
hitpoints3 1 100 0 +100hp
heal1 1 0 0 30mana/hp
heal2 1 50 0 15mana/hp
heal others 1 50 0 6,000 max mana,30 mana/hp
armor1 1 0 0 +1armor
armor2 1 20 0 +3armor, at most one per unit
shield 1 10 0 +50sp 45mana/sp
battery 1 0 0 +1mana/tick
recharge shield 1 0 0 can apply batteries to another units shields
fly 1 20+10/s 0 unit can fly
speed 1 0 -1 max speed is 8 ticks
permanant cloak 2 30+25/s 0 unit is cloaked all the time
charged cloak 1 10+10/s 0 like a wraith
no-attack cloak 1 15+15/s 0 unit is cloaked when not attacking.
no-move cloak 1 10 0 unit is cloaked when not moving or attacking. re-cloaks 60ticks after attack
mobile observer 1 30/s 0 can spot cloaked units
building obs 4 25 0 can spot cloaked units
warp 1 10+5/s 0 can warp 12 squares, cumulative
weapons
name slots cost speed damage RoF RoR ammo extra/ammo range targets
gun 2 0 0 8 15 15 - - 5 al
minigun 3 50 0 5 2 15 30 20 5 l
ac10 2 10 0 10 15 20 8 4 7 al
ac15 3 25 0 15 15 20 6 3 7 al
ac20 4 40 +1 20 15 20 4 2 6 al
ultra ac20 6 100 +4 20 8 20 10 5 6 al
air missle 2 50 +2 30 15 - 5 - 7 a
land missle 2 50 +2 40 15 - 5 - 7 l
sniper 4 50 +2 20 25 25 - - 10 al
blades1 1 0 0 15 15 15 - - 1 l
blades2 2 0 0 30 18 18 - - 1 l
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quote:
Name slots cost time to build speed effects
Hit points1 1 15 100 +30hp
Hit points2 1 45 250 +60hp
Hit points3 2 100 250 +120hp
Armor1 2 20 100 -2 to weapons damage
Armor2 3 30 175 -3 to weapons damage
Armor3 4 50 275 -5 to weapons damage
Shield1 1 75 100 +50sp
Shield2 2 170 225 +110sp
Shield3 4 450 600 +225sp
Battery1 1 45 100 +1sp/4ticks
Battery2 3 60 250 +1sp/2ticks
Area Shields 6 550 800 +400sp/3squares distance
Area Recharge 5 300 500 +1sp/2ticks/+5 units max 4squares distance
Warp1 2 40 100 unit can warp 9 squares
Warp2 3 65 200 unit can warp 15 squares
Area Warp1 6 220 400 +5 units 3squares away warp 12squares
Area Warp2 10 450 750 +10 units 3squares away warp 12squares
Cloak 1 65 100 cloaked until attack cloaks recloak in 60ticks
Cloak2 1 85 100 like wraith
Cloak3 3 115 200 unit is always cloaked
Area Cloak1 4 175 250 4squares distance like wraith
Area Cloak2 7 235 450 6squares distance all the time
Notes:
1. Area cloak should only affect other units and not the unit with area cloak. If you want that unit to cloak you will have to buy cloaking for it
2. Area recharge should only affect other units and not the unit with area recharge. If that unit has shields you will have to buy batteries for them.
3. How far can units see? We also need to have a device to increase an units sights range.
4. Units that use more slots should be slower but I’m still thinking of how to do that.
5. Cloak2, Area Cloak1, and all the warps will need to use energy but I’m still thinking on that.
6. This is all off the top of my head. It just felt right.
7. Flight, detect cloak and speed are good. But how fast do flying units go? Maybe we should have a way to speed them up.
8. Time to build is in ticks.
9. I still haven’t thought of how to do healing. Should it cost money or just energy?
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NAME DAMAGE RELOAD COST SIZE TTB AMMO RANGE
Blades 8 20tcks 0.1 small 20 none 1
Submachine gun 6 10tcks 0.6 small 45 S/H/A 5
Rifle 10 18tcks 0.9 small 55 S/H/A 8
Assault Rifle 9 10tcks 1.0 small 55 S/H/A 7
Sniper Rifle 15 25tcks 1.1 small 65 V 12
Shot Gun 12 18tcks 0.9 small 50 G 6/spread
Auto Shotgun 9 12tcks 1.0 small 55 G 6/spread
Flame Thrower 7/burn 15tcks 1.3 small 70 N 6
Machine Gun 12 9tcks 1.4 MED 75 A/V 9
Mini Gun 5 4tcks 1.5 MED 80 V 9
Grenades - - - - - - -
*Fragmentary 10/splash 20tcks 0.8 small 75 - 6
*High Explosive 15/splash 20tcks 0.9 small 75 - 6
*White Phosphorous 9/burn 20tcks 1.0 small 80 - 6
RPG 16 18tcks 1.2 MED 85 E 10
Tow Missile 18 18tcks 1.4 MED 105 E/E2 12
Stinger Missile 16 18tcks 1.4 MED 110 E/E2 12
Gattling Gun 9 6tcks 1.7 MED 115 A/V 10
105mm gun 25 30tcks 2.2 LRG 195 E/E2 14
125mm gun 28 30tcks 2.5 LRG 205 E/E2 14
155mm gun 35 40tcks 2.9 XL 230 E 17
MRLS^ 18 2tcks 4.5 XXL 275 E 15
Gecko Missile 20 25tcks 2.8 XL 215 E/E2 15
Scud Missile 70 55tcks 5.6 XXL 350 E 30
20mm cannon 12 16tcks 1.7 MED 95 A/V 9
30mm cannon 14 16tcks 1.9 MED 105 A/V 9
Zulu rockets 6 2tcks 2.3 MED 135 E 10
GAU Avenger 17 3tcks 4.9 XXL 335 DUAPI 14
Sidewinder Missile 8 12tcks 1.7 MED 125 E/E2 9
Scorpion Missile 12 12tcks 2.1 MED 145 E/E2 10
Harpoon Missile 18 14tcks 2.2 LRG 165 E/E2 16
Spiral Missile 16 14tcks 1.9 MED 145 E/E2 8
Bombs - - - - - - -
*High Explosive 25 24tcks 1.6 MED 120 - 0
*Napalm 18/burn 24tcks 1.8 MED 130 - 0
*Cluster Bomb 14/disperse 22tcks 1.8 MED 130 - 0
Laser Rifle 6 8tcks 3.3 small 220 J 6
Laser Cannon 12 14tcks 3.9 MED 340 J 9
Disrupter 9/splash 16tcks 3.1 small 235 J 5
Heavy Disrupter 18/splash 24tcks 4.2 LRG 410 J 11
Field Disruption 3 1tcks 8.6 LRG 700 J 8
EPP Rifle 14 25tcks 3.4 small 250 J 4
EPP Cannon 32 50tcks 4.6 LRG 435 J 10
Particle Cannon 12 8tcks 3.75 MED 300 J 14
Ion Cannon - 20tcks 2.8 MED 285 J 7
Wide Area Ion Cannon -/area3x3 25tcks 3.15 LRG 415 J 9
? DR. Device */area2x2 30tcks 15.0 XXL 1000 J 15
ICMB
*Neutron Bomb 1000/area4x4 - 1500 - 800 - 500
*Atomic Warhead 800/area 5x5 - 2000 - 750 - 500
*Thermonuclear Warhead 2500/area6x6 - 2500 - 950 - 500
*Chemical Weapons 600/area 4x4 - 1000 - 650 - 500
Ammo
*Standard-SR/(S) no special effects average ammo
*Hollow Point-HP/(H) against unarmored targets add 2 damage against armored targets subtract 3
*Armor Piercing-AP/(A) subtracts 1 damage and ignores three armor levels
*High velocity-HV/(V) adds one damage and two range
*Armor Piercing Incendiary-API/(A2) adds two damage and ignore three armor levels
*Shot Gun Rounds-SGR/(G) no special effects
*High Explosive-HE/(E) adds four damage
*High Explosive Armor Piercing-HEAP/(E2) adds four damage and ignore three armor levels
*API (depleted uranium) –DUAPI/(D) add six damage and ignore four armor levels
*Joules-J powers energy weapons
Notes:
1. I had some thoughts I wanted to try out. About cost when you see 3.0 it doesn’t mean the weapon costs 3 minerals it means that if you have that weapon you multiply the base cost of the chassis by three. Multipliers are cumulative. Therefore, it’s more effective to have six guys with a gun than one guy with six guns. I know it will take major tweaking though but this is just a test.
2. The reason I put small medium large and extra large is no matter what system we use we’ll know the relative sizes of components. For now small=5tons medium=10tons large=15tons XL=20tons XXL=25tons. And again this will need tweaking
3. Ammo is separate from the weapons and weighs one ton.
4. For the weapons like MRLS with a very low reload time ammo is very important when you run out of ammo you have to wait for the ammo to be replenished unless you have a lot of ammo boxes.
5. Atomic weapons and chemical weapons should poison the ground for like thirty minutes unless you have radiation hardened or gas mask equipped troops it will hurt them to be in that area.
6. DR. DEVICE would be potentially the most lethal weapon in the game you shoot a unit with it and he dies but an echo beam bounces off of him. This echo beam has a very short range but if units are close they die to and send off echo beams. If you had two hundred troops bunched together one shot would kill them. I’m not sure if we should implement it yet.
7. Shot gun spread works like this first two space full damage net two spaces 2/3 damage last two spaces 1/3 damage.
8. Burn damage works like this. You get napalm on you and for the next 20 ticks you lose one hit point every tick.
9. Splash damage works like this square one full damage squares around it 2/3 damage squares around them 1/3 damage
10. Area damage every unit in the matrix takes the same amount of damage then there is splash damage.
11. Take a look and see how you think it works so far. I know it’ll take a lot of tweaking.
12. The GAU Avenger is air to ground, the harpoon is air to ground the Zulu rockets are air to ground the spiral missile is air to ground bombs are air to ground.
13. The side winder missile and the scorpion missile are air to air.
14. The stinger missile and the gecko missile are ground to air.
15. The scud missile the MRLS the 105, 125, and 155mm guns the tow missile the shot gun the flame thrower grenades and blades are ground to ground.
16. All other weapons can shot targets on both the air and the ground
17. ICBMs are built in silos
18. Ion cannons immobilize enemy units work like lock down.
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korn469
ps when trying to format these files it totally messed up the thread but for anyone who wants them i can mail u the documents
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 10, 2001).]
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That system is closer to "grunt work" than tactics, am I right? Hmm... I am not personally interested in that level of detail, if that's what you're after. However, I'm not totally against it if we can devise a system that can make it work. (That's enormous "if" there...)
Leland
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heardie
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Turn Order Model
I will start with a brief summary about the turn system. The key elements in the system number 3 are: all players plan their turns simultaneously, in "pause mode". This is called "planning phase". This speeds up multiplayer significantly. In single player mode, AI players plan their turns simultaneously with the human player. When all players have finished the planning, the actual turn starts. All units move simultaneously, and players have limited possibilities to change their orders during the turn.
The idea behind this system is to combine the best parts of real time and turn based games. We would keep the turns, and the turns would work like in civ2; for example, a turn could be one year in game time. Players would have plenty of time to plan things, without the hassle of real time games. Combat would be more fair, since all units move simultaneously, and unit AI could be ordered to react to enemy actions - war starter would not anymore be in unfair advantage, since he could not destroy half of his enemy's army with a surprise attack. Here comes a better explanation of each phase:
1) planning phase
I think we should separate empire management and unit movement. In the beginning of each turn, the players would be presented some statistics of the empire's state, about what things are being produced, how the population stats have changed etc. Then they could change the orders. Empire management includes building orders (usually large queues of orders are used), economy and budget fine-tuning (usually players make long term plans, that are only slightly modified), government and social issues (also these are not needed to change very much during average turns) and diplomacy (both international and domestic).
As I said, most empire-management things the player doesn't need to worry about in most turns, perhaps only fine-tuning. Usually building orders are the main event of this phase.
When all changes are made, player gives orders to his units. Units are not moved tile by tile as in earlier games, since the player is only _planning_ the unit movement. Units are given chains of commands, that work like building queues. The planned actions are shown on the map. For example, when you order a unit to move to a specific location, the unit's path is shown; you can drag and drop the path on the map as you please. If all orders cannot be carried out during the next turn, they will take several turns, of course.
Also you could order a unit or army to hunt down an enemy unit and attack it; in this case, a path would not be shown (since the enemy unit is usually on the move, too), but rather a straight line, and attack symbol, or something. The unit would take the best path it can find. The would be given orders, what to do if the sight to the unit is lost; it could return to location x and stand guard, or try to figure out the most propable destination of the unit and locate it (you could order it to stay in your territory if you like, or order it to return after x turns if no success).
Units and armies could use scouts to extend their field of vision; armies could have special scout units. Depending on the army's scouting capabilities and movement speed, their field of vision would vary.
You could order some units to guard your border, or man the defensive structures, fortification lines etc. you have built. Also you could order some units to garrison in certain fort, and regularly scout the area you show them; this are would the become their field of vision. The enemy could use small sneaking parties and commandos, who would have better chances to cross the area without being noticed.
One of the key ideas is, that you give your units orders, how to react to certain events. If enemy attacks and is won and retreating, your units could pursue them carefully to your border, watching out for ambushes. If enemy airplanes enter your territory, your fighters could scramble to intercept before they penetrate to your mainland, and try to make them turn back; if no success, they are attacked. If nuclear attack is noticed by civ x, you could pre-set the goals for your missiles and strategic bombers. Then, if attack is noticed, you would be asked: nuclear attack noticed by Russians - launch counter-strike? And so on.
Another key idea is the more realistic movement system I have proposed earlier. The units would have two movement properties: deployment range, and operating range. Inside the deployment range they could be deployed freely, outside it deploying would take several turns. Enemy could intercept the units when they are deploying. Inside the operating range, the units could carry out any legal operations freely, like scouting, pillaging land or attacking units. Deploying units, and carrying out time-consuming tasks reduces the "action points" available to the unit, or something, to prevent unlimited actions.
The third key point is better unit ai. They should be capable of responding to surprising situations.
The player could also change the empire management orders when moving units. When planning is finished, the players hit "start turn" button. When all players have done this, the turn starts!
2) Turn execution phase
First, all empire management orders of all civs are made "official". Those orders will affect all the calculations made for this turn. Diplomacy things might become official already during the planning phase. In emergencies, players could change the empire management orders. Also some diplomacy can occur during the execution phase.
When ready, the units are moved. They all move simultaneously according to their speed. In most cases, the units don't encounter enemy units, but if they do, the player could pause the game, or he could set the unit orders so, that in such situation game is automatically paused and he is asked what to do. Usually, the units should be able to solve the situation themselves.
During wars, the players could be given more time to coordinate their unit maneuvers. For example, your scouts could see, that enemy units are approaching city x. You could order your units to move to point y to confront the enemy in a battle. The enemy scouts would see this, and they could choose to confront you, or try to outmaneuver you, or move to another spot, more favorable to them, and make a camp there. All this should be quite smooth, especially since armies are used instead of single units.
Anyway, most wars don't be endless waves of units crashing against each other, but rather they include scouting, patrolling, controlling area, organizing war industry, small clashes between small scouting parties, and then occasional major, decisive battles between large armies. Even WW2 was like this. This is even more true, if the soldiers need to be recruited from your population - you can't waste them in mindless attacks.
All this sounds complex, and I admit it is more complex than the traditional system. But with some thought put into it, the amount of work should be reasonable. And I think this is one of the most decisive changes for the game; we don't have any use for better population, economy and military systems, if the traditional turn system prevents us from using them properly.
I think the game would still remain civ-like, if we use this system. Many of the details of the system can be debated, this is only my view. I just hope you could see the potential in it from my explanation. Too much automation is bad, but we could remove the most tedious tasks of civ2, like moving the units tile by tile, and skimming through every city every turn. For example notice, that we could as well use civ2-like unit movement, but you could draw the path of the unit on the map as you would move it manually; without moving the unit across the continent (or ship across a sea) tile but tile, you would draw the route, and the unit would take the required amount of turns to move there. This is important, if the map will be 40 times larger than in civ2, as planned. Anyway, everything in this text is now open for debate. Please make your comments for it.
[This message has been edited by heardie (edited March 11, 2001).]
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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I just read all the ideas here, and the system starts to form in my head - I'm sure it will be great when we get it ready! Anyway, this is an important thing as Elmo said, so let's pay attention to it.
I actually liked a lot Korn's idea of the extended game. I have a further idea; this game could be made a kind of PBEM game. Game would go on and on on a server for a year. Those who have an ADSL or similar could be logged on the server continuously. Those who don't could at any time receive the game situation as an "email" message and get updated. If one hour is 5 months, you could not lose much by not being present all the time. So kinda like traditional PBEM, except that if someone doesn't send his turn, the game can continue... Also those who have got ADSL don't get any unfair advantage; they would receive the update of the game situation just as often as others, yearly or monthly.
I think it would be great to engage in a year-long game, spending just 10-15 minutes for the game when you have time, without losing very much. And when the game is over, you would actually feel that you have achieved something for sure! This system might be technically a little tough (mainly making sure that server data is not lost etc.) but could be very interesting and revolutionary, and what best it would definitely allow 100 player games. Server would not be burdened, when it has to send update to players only once in two hours or something. I think this idea should be elaboratedm it could be great.
Of course we need also the other kind of game, where the entire game is played in 1-3 sessions, each session lasting souple of hours, and the number of sessions depending on the game speed. A nice 5 hour game could be interesting too.
I will make more ideas later, I'm in hurry now.
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:14
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ok
i surrender...i think that i could almost be in favor of generic preplanned turns and the Risk/Diplomacy interface if at least one person agree to help me design/program/construct a Tropico/Emperor:Battle for Dune type game
now to business
about the extended game here are somethings that we need for the extended game
[*]Password Protected Civilizations and Clans: When you log onto the Extended Game server for the first time you are prompted to choose a civilization from a list of open civilizations. An open civilization is not always an unclaimed civilization, because a game of this scale should (almost requires) that more than one player can exercise control of a civ.
Once you have choosen you civ then you are prompted if you want to password protect your civ or not. If you choose not to password protect your civ then anyone who wants to can log on and play that civ. If you choose to password protect your civ then you are prompted if you want to make you civ available for clan play. If you choose no then you and you alone would control your civilization. However if you choose yes you could let other play on your team and control your civ. The originial player would be the team leader and he would have the following option. He could determine the number of clan slots open. He could set the clan password, and he could set the order priority for clan member. The order priority would be (for now) Override AI commands (the lowest possible setting...any clan member could override the AI), override clan members, and override all. So if you have a six person clan, two members could have the override AI...this would allow them to issues orders to any play piece that didn't already have orders from the clan member. The next two members could have the override clan members, which would allow them to change orders issued by the two lower priority clan members and the AI but not the two highest ranking clan members. With the override all command they could issue orders to any playing piece...these orders would automatically replace orders by lower priority clan members and by the AI.
If a civilization is password protected but nobody logs on and plays that civ for 8 days (filler number...real number would be decided by playtesting) then that civ defaults to open status.
Clans could ease the burden of the game and could allow a persistant world to actually be a viable way to play this game.
[*]Turn Updates: The game would update (carryout orders) every five minutes. One hour of real time would equal five months of play time. Each five minute update (turn) would represent about 12.5 days of game time. Units that do not have specific orders or stances (general orders such as explore, defend, seize object X, etc.) would be under the AI's control until a player issued that unit orders.
[*]Rise and Fall: If a civilization is destroyed the players should have ample oppertunity to switch to a new civ. As long as civs remained open then a player could change civs. New civs should appear because of game circumstances and rules should make it difficult for a single civ to last intact from the begining of the game to the end.
Players should be able to switch civs once every two days. Players should usually (ie agreed upon by all before the game starts or maybe on a specific server or something) only be allowed to play on one civ at a time.
so how does that sound?
i think that we may be on to something here. the extended game ideais something i could really get behind 100%!
korn469
[This message has been edited by korn469 (edited March 13, 2001).]
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I'm in a bit of a hurry right now (well, most of this week actually), so I can just give some quick comments. I do think that we're making some real progress here, though some fine tuning is needed.
quote:
Originally posted by korn469 on 03-13-2001 02:21 AM
i do not know about the rest of you but to me i think that i finally have a fairly solid overview of the game...it began dawning on me when i realized that this railroad tycoon 2 map that i had in my head wasn't exactly what everone else had in mind
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In my opinion, Railroad Tycoon and civ maps differ in the respect that in Civ the units are rather abstract. They don't represent "real" units as the trains in RT represent real trains. Civ is more like a complex chess game. Also, we don't have the resources to come up with fancy 3d graphics quite yet, so we'll start out with something simpler.
quote:
also the extended game concept seems like the way to go, all of our programming resources should be dedicated to it. some things like UI and artwork could be used by any concept but i propose that we shift the design and planning to the extended game and to extended game scenarios...
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Frankly, what I liked about your initial ideas as well as the active/extended suggestion was that they are general solutions, from which special cases can be extracted by tweaking some parameters. So, I don't think we should have an exclusively extended game, but something which can accomodate both longer and shorter playing cycles. At this point I think it's important to decide the variance between these parameters, and once we got a working piece of software we can balance the system.
quote:
for example we could have relatively short games that work on the extended game premise...World War 2 is one example that comes to mind. If we ran it one the flat 5 months per hour time frame simulating 1939-1945 it would take less than a day (about 17 hours of total real hours) to play
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I think the focus of the game should be a little larger than 6 year scenarios. I just think it's too short a time to do anything. When I think of scenarios, I think of time spans between 50-300 years. How about the rest of you?
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this is my feelings on which direction we should go with GGS...please tell me what you think...if we do decide that this is the best course of action then i think a Design Doc .3 is in order
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Yup. I should start making a list of stuff that needs to be changed in 0.3, and maybe write out the new version out sometime. But I still have some problems with this extended game system, which I unfortuntely didn't have time to comment in this post very thoroughly... gotta go now.
Leland
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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The current extended game ideas are good. That might become the main for of the game. About ww2, it's a short period of time, and usually there would not be much to do in such a short time. But in ww2, it's different; there would be loads of things to do, even for some small countries, not to speak of Germany, Britain, Japan and US.
About the extended game system, I think in the year-long game the players would receive a game situation update from the server, check what has happened, and send updated orders to the server; those updates would take place in the next possible update cycle (monthly or yearly). So I view this much like an e-mail game, and it would become like a hobby to run your civ little by little...
Generally I think this would be a pre-planned turn system. Players would plan the coming turns, they would not change orders "real-time". The orders you give would be buffered, and at the beginning of the next turn they would become effective. This would simplify the system, and reduce the hassle.
So, my idea is; time goes by at constant speed. Units and regions have general orders they follow. Player watches the game as it goes by, and changes the orders. The new orders are buffered, and they are updated at the beginning of the next "turn" or update cycle. The orders could be sent to server and buffered there, or buffered at the client machine and sent in one package at the beginning of the update cycle - the first option would reduce the traffic of course. When there is no pause between the turns, we have a real-time system with pre-planned turns; you plan the next turn while you watch the current turn go by. The original pre-plan turns system could be got by having a pause mode between turns. The players could change orders during the turn execution phase, but that would in effect be "planning the next turn". So, if your units screw up during the turn, you can't change the orders until next turn... which is only realistic I think, the leaders don't have very much they can do in the finer details.
So this system would combine real-time and pre-planned turns. It would be very flexible; the turn could be one month, one year, ten years, anything. The turn speed could be any desired speed. You could play real-time, pre-planned, extended mode, quick action-games, anything, with the same system. What would this system sound like? I think it's the best compromise to obtain all the ideas presented here. Or is this a completely foolish idea?
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I must be delusional... it seems as if we're reaching an agreement! In fact, the system amjayee just described is exactly what I have had in mind for a long time. Except for the minor fact that I didn't seriously consider making the game time per turn a variable, but that is only an improvement.
Ok, now for the potential problems I foresee:
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Originally posted by korn469 on 03-13-2001 03:47 AM
so we need to make the following things Host machine options
[*]how often the game updates
[*]how long each turn represents
[*]overall length of the scenario/game
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My answers:
Turns in real time: 5 to 60 minutes
This game will be quite complex. This means that the orders sent to the server will be big, the time the server needs to calculate them is not negligible and the final results will also take their time to arrive. Perhaps the first delay can be reduced to a minimum by sending new commands to the server all the time instead of one single package, but the two other bottlenecks still remain.
I just wish to avoid situatations where the turn is already being resolded in the server while the players still think it is not. This is why a some sort of notification in the lines of "hey, if you give orders now they won't come into effect until the year n+1. Don't move" is needed, whilst it must not take a big portion of the time spent in one turn. In a five minute turn the time the server takes to update all clients might conceivably take over a minute or two, which is a lot if the whole turn is supposed to be just five minutes.
I also wish to point out that the player might be flooded with information at the beginning of each turn. Sure, the events of new messages may be turned off but it is possible to end up in a situation where even little details might be important ("Hey guys, I just figured how to unite the proletariat of the whole world... what do you mean, revolution? Hey, put down that gun!"), but there are compelling reasons not to be speanding half of the turn just skipping the messages. If the turns are longeer than five minutes, the time spent in just analyzing the situation is taking a relatively smaller chunk of the action. Connected to this problem is, how will the updates be shown to the player anyway? Is each advance of units shown separately (that is, you first show the army attacking Brazil, then Hong Kong, then Turkey, while all this takes place at the same time) or do they happen simultaneously (which makes it impossible to follow them all if you don't happen to turn on a map of whole world)?
Turns in game time: 1 to 12 months
Korn, you suggested that each turn would depict a time span of 12.5 days. i think this is absolutely impossible, it is one 30th of a year. At this level of detail we should, in order to keep the game realistic, model things like weather (for instance, individual storms), delayed command (which I am not fond of, though I admit it is realistic and easier to ignore on longer time spans), smaller amounts of people (when recruiting armies, showing the casualties of diseases or violence) and a more complicated resources extraction (it takes several turns to harvest the crops, for example) among other things. The game is already complex enough, methinks, and needs no further complications. Of course, if we are willing to compromise with realism then this is not a problem, but I would have to protest.
Previously I was strongly against turns shorter than a year, mainly because I didn't want to involve the seasonal changes. A static map is a lot easier to handle. But now that I think of it, perhaps some seasons are conceivable. So, I think maybe 4-8 turns per year might be good. Perhaps even 12, but I think that is stretching it. Of course, it should be possible to set the turn length to any multiple of the minimum time.
Overall length of a game: 50 to 6000 years, or 1 to 12 months (real time)
I don't think even all the scenarios should have a time limit. If the game stays interesting for over ten millenia, then why stop it artificially? The WW2 scenario I still don't find very fascinating, except for the fact that it was kind of a crossroads of history: anything can happen, and the rest of the 20th century depends on the outcome. The few years of actual war sound pretty boring since you cannot play around with the Third Reich you manage to create.
As for the extended game lasting a whole year, from the dawn of civilaztion to modern times, I think that is not what everybody would like. I think that it should be possible, certainly, but I also think the whole human history should be playable in a month or so. Maybe even less in terms of server uptime. This not only makes the game testing easier, but also gives the players a feeling of actually doing something, and seeing the rapid growth of their civilizations. That's the thing where I get my rush at least.
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this way the game could automatically tell you about how long the game will take to play...i still think that we should have a default setting where people join the game and play from the the beginning of history to present day and the total gameplay time would be about one year with the game running 24/7
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I think the default should be something like 2 months of server uptime. But of course we should experiment with different kinds of cycles, and incorporate them as alternatives (for instance, a player could choose from a variety of modes for the game, and if he is not happy with them he could script/configure his own).
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[*]GGS being basically multiplayer
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I think we all agree on that.
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[*]giving general commands to units (a specific order system will harm GGS...this has been my problem with preplanned turns all along...though many of you might have always defined preplanned turns as nonspecific commands to the unit AI i assumed that preplanned turns was a very specific and detailed way of telling your units exactly what to do)
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Yes, I envision general rather than very specific orders. Generality is imposed by the granularity of the map as well as the relatively long time span of one turn in the game (several months).
quote:
[*]turns update automatically as long as the server is unpaused
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Yup. Though I would say "suspended" rather than just paused, because the server may be off-line completely or maybe even moved to another computer. A lot of changes can happen during a year, and no Windows based computer can stay up that long.
quote:
[*]making this game as point and click as possible
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Agreed.
We really do seem to agree on the general stuff, now we just need to tweak the details to make everyone happy. Mainly, the lengths and variations of the properties which korn listed above. Please give your input, as many of you as possible! We need at least an illusion of consensus here.
I can already warn that I'll be busy this week. I'll update the design doc as soon possible though. And hey, if korn or anyone wants to write a short passage about the turn order, combat or whatever to the design doc, just do so. No one is stopping you.
Leland
[This message has been edited by TempLeland (edited March 13, 2001).]
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:14
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Leland
ok to address what you brought up...
yes there will be server/IP bottlenecks but i think that those can be overcome...
now on to the second part of your first point...the time it takes a player to play a turn should be shorter than what it takes to play a civ turn, because we are dealing with a much smaller time frame...if i recall correctly the smallest unit of time in civ2 is one year per turn...the largest unit of time is 200 years per turn
if we do as you suggest and make each turn a month then each turn should be easier to handle although our game is much more complex than civ...each turn would have less to do and yet would still be more realistic
so how does this sound
default settings on the server updates the turn every ten minutes and each turn represents one month
that should solve not having enough time to play the turn...also as your issues orders to units they could be sent to the server but not carried out until the turn updates
but now i must make a stand...if the game updates slower than 10 minutes then it will be hard to ever get into this game because gameplay would be too elusive...i think that updating the game six times an hour is better than updating it once
also shorter amounts of time per turn are better for realism
also i think you should have to be connected to the server to play...this way you could leave the game running...lets say while you typed a paper for class...ever now and then you bring up the game and see what's going on, tweak the orders some and then go back to your research paper
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quote:
The game is already complex enough, methinks, and needs no further complications. Of course, if we are willing to compromise with realism then this is not a problem, but I would have to protest.
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of course we are going to have to compromise with reality...i would rather GGS but less realistic than civ and be fun than to be the most precise simulation of history ever created and but be the most mindnumbing computer program ever created...plus we are already compromising with realism, so it's no big deal to bend reality a little more to suit our pursuit for fun
if i had to put a blurb about how GGS's game play on a hypothetical box here's what i'd say
"GGS is the strategic cousin of the Sims. A must have!"
By that what i mean is this...in the Sims people create a person and then they mircomanage that person in this absract sim world, and what hooks the player is that they imagine stories about their sim.
In GGS you micromanage a civ and basically what would turn GGS from virtual aversion therapy into a virtual crackhouse would be players micromanaging their civ. Now when i say micromanaging i don't mean complicated interfaces that take twenty click to do anything, or stupid units that you have to click on 100 times to get them to do anything but the ability to exert complete control to lead your civ in any path you choose.
I mean could u imagine if basically you and ten of your friends form a clan and customize your civ to become the icon of truth, justice, and the (insert clan name here) way...then you begin to butt heads with an equally strong civ who quickly becomes to the evil empire...
soon we are locked in a cold war...two powerful clans competing against each other in every area...militarily, economically, religiously, culturally, diplomatically...the game is going to be decided when one side falls...yet because of good playing and MAD neither side can win for months...imagine playing six months just to get a slight advantage over the other civ to exploit while not opening yourself up to any trickery by some of the peripherial players
this is emersion...to achieve emersion (which is the goal not realism) we need elements of reality...but like in chemisty class where a simple formula H2O represents water that's all that GGS needs...who needs water, its fairly hard to work with and hard to see a chemical reaction like corrosion by using real water...where you can clearly see the effect of corrosion with a chemical formula
in GGS we need to find all of the best parts of reality (in terms of an emersive strategical experiance) and then add to the GGS fun/emersion formula
yes we need religion...but that doesn't mean getting up at 8am on a sunday morning to goto sunday school and listen to a boring old preacher (i am not very religious so please don't be too offended i'm making a point)...we need something else entirely...we need an economic model, not a McDonalds simulator...forget realism! lets make this game fun first, relistic second
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ok to recap
the player streams orders to the server...at predefined intervals the processes these orders and then updates all of the clients connected to it...for players not connected to the server they couldn't send order to the server until they connected to the server and received an update
default settings could be server updates every ten minutes with each update representing one month
we need to focus on fun first and realism second...not that we should ignore reality but we should not be slavish devotees to the Idol of REAL
if we are simulating disease...i say lets add a simple weather model to game...this could also help us to predict/simulate crop yields, energy usage, etc
teams should be of the utmost importance to GGS and without a large team a continant spanning world empire should basically be impossible to maintain
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slighty off the subject...but in responce to your post Leland i think that we need a news ticker/overview/search tool to help keep a player on top of things in GGS
this could be a box outside of the game, one that would have an always on top option like ICQ...so while we are typing that research paper with GGS running in the background we could see a message in red on our news ticker than announces one of our provinces has revolted...we type in happiness in the search box nd we see that numerous provinces are about to revolt because of insurgence sponsored by a rival empire...basically this tool alerts you to any problems you might have, to any glorious victories and it allows you to search demographics...we could also have one of these UI add on for diplomacy...so we could plot the demise of our enemies in our free time while GGS runs in the background
korn469
ps but i also think that we are getting very close to reaching an agreement that we can all learn to love 
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S. Kroeze
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the Hague, the Netherlands, Old Europe
Dec 1999
time: 05:14
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quote:
Originally posted by TempLeland on 03-08-2001 06:52 PM
Game time vs. real time:
It has been planned elsewhere that the game should span from the rise of the first cities to modern times, that is approximately 6000-10000 years (okay, my memory isn't what it used to be ... correct me here!). if one turn translates to one year, that gives 6000 turns. If one turn lasts fifteen minutes, one game would go on for about two months, 24/7. Doesn't sound too bad. But if the turns would be partitioned to months, it would take two years to go through one game. This is something undesirable to most players, expecially since 15 minute turns aren't that long. Also, the amount of time a single player can afford to a gaming session is something between 1-5 hours, in other words 4 to 20 years. Is this enough? When the player logs off, the game world goes on and the next session might not come until 80-100 years. What guarantees are there that the civilization isn't completely wiped out by then?
The speed of the game will be configurable, of course, but there is always the tradeoff between providing enough action for on-line players and not ruining the game for the off-liners. Unless we give up on the concept of logging in and out of the game, but it is my humble opinion that this is one of the cornerstones in this project. AI won't be the magic bullet, because an AI which could not only keep the civ up and running, but also follow the path laid out by the human player is pretty difficult to implement. "Dummy AI" just isn't enough.
Finally, I believe that if a fast paced semi-real-time system is adopted, this will inevitably make the game immensely more complex. Seasonal changes, weather conditions, delayed information and lots of other details have to be taken into the model, whereas a simple one year/one turn system would work with more abstract terms. Needless to say, this is the reason why I am inclined to disagree with the suggested model.
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Dear Amjayee, Joker, Korn469, Leland and others,
Of course you are fully capable of forming your own opinion. It is also my opinion that a simple one year/one turn system could work very well. I would be more than satisfied with such a system. And it was principally to oblige the bellicose like Korn469 and VetLegion that I did an alternative proposal. Korn complained somewhere that with preplanned turns the player wouldn't be able to control his armies sufficiently,
(like heardie:
players have limited possibilities to change their orders during the turn)
so he invented various alternative solutions to avoid preplanned turns.
Since I think preplanned turns are the only feasible solution I still prefer the original proposal as formulated by the Joker in his design document, though some of Korn's alternative ideas are certainly good. I still have to admit I do not understand all details of his proposals, perhaps I am really slow-witted.
I have always found moving units a usually boring task and attach decisive importance to the idea of simultaneous movement of units and armies. In my opinion this makes preplanned actions unavoidable!
My favourite gameDiplomacy is a good example of how exciting such a system can be. And in addition, the inevitable delay of both information and command dessimination makes that before ~1850 this would be quite realistic. Actually it is this limited control that makes preplanned military movement most realistic for 95% of human history.
I am happy to observe there are many issues on which we agree, like the idea that the game should unrelentingly pursue its course night and day, while the players will log on and off. But your argument that we should guard the interests of those who are sleeping seems to me mainly a reason to proceed rather cautiously when time speed is the issue. With my proposal of twelve months lasting exactly 15 minutes, every twenty four hours eight game years would pass. I admit this is slow, yet this increases the chance your empire is still there during your next game session. Since the average empire should realistically last less than 600 years this seems to me still an amount of time most people can handle. I have played Diplomacy by post and enjoyed it very much, though I prefer to play it face-to-face. Between deadlines there were four weeks, so the average game lasted about one and a half year!
Just one example to demonstrate the relative short life span of empires: according to the 'Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare' in 1500AD the world's most important military powers were: the Ottoman Empire, the Mameluke Empire, Safavid Persia, the Lodi Sultanate of Delhi, Ming China, Russia, Poland-Lithuania, the Venetian Republic, Portugal, Spain, France, the Songhai Empire, Bornu, Adal, the Inca Empire, the Aztec Empire and the Maya Empire. Some of them are still clearly there: Turkey, Iran, China, Russia, Portugal, Spain and France. Yet quite often this apparent continuity of these powers turns out to conceal a reality of foreign conquest, disintegration and other intermittent developments. Ming China was completely conquered by the Manchus in 1659 and only became truly Chinese again in 1911. The Russian Empire lived twice through periods of anarchy and civil war: 1604-1613 and 1917-1922. The history of Safavid Persia is even more complicated: during the seventeenth century the power of the Safavid monarchy gradually declined; in 1722 Persia was conquered by Afghans. After the assassination of Nadir Shah in 1747 a period of anarchy followed during which tribal warlords ruled the country. An attempt to pacify the country was temporarily effective, yet followed by a second period of tribal anarchy. Only after Aqa Mohammad Khan Qajar, claiming Safavid descent, had reunified the country in 1794, the authority of the monarchy was gradually restored. And while today Poland and Lithania are again independent, for more than a century (1795-1918) their territories were part of the Prussian, Austrian and Russian Empires.
The other once powerful states have all been conquered or destroyed by foreign powers. Often some of their cultural traditions lived on, influencing states that later arose on their former territory, like Egypt, Mali or Pakistan. Other civilizations were utterly destroyed, like the Aztec, Maya and Inca civilizations.
I arrived at my proposal of twelve month periods after one of my best friends, who once introduced me to CivII, had told me about the way he often played Pharao, a computer game resembling Caesar. He has three little children who need a lot of care, while he also studies Indonesian history and the language and does most of the housekeeping -his wife earns most of their income. So he usually sets the game speed as slowly as possible, and only occasionally glances at the development of his Egyptian kingdom. It will probably not constitute the ultimate gaming experience for most people, but he certainly derives pleasure from it.
When every turn/year would last 15 minutes, 96 years would pass each day. The risk that one's neglected empire would be completely wiped out when one would miss one gaming day, would be a reality in most cases!
I am not suggesting that my proposal will solve all problems. A year could alternatively be divided in two half-years, three trimesters, four seasons, six two-months or eight periods of 45 days.
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Multiplayer:
The discussion in this thread has seemed to assume that all players all on-line all the time. Problems arise when we have a human player against a bad AI substitute. If the AI is not cheating, the absent player will be quite dissatisfied with the result once he logs in to see that his army has been crushed. On the other hand, if AI is cheating, it frustrates the human player posed against it. If the old system of one year turns would be used, the problem would not be quite as bad since strategies would not be quite as complicated as they are in real-time. One more reason why I am against the new system.
What about PBeM games? This is impossible in real-time mode, so should we support it at all? Then again, it would be a perfect way to play with long preplanned turns.
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I truly dislike all cheating by the AI, though I only play CivII at Deity level. In my opinion, civil wars, peasant revolts and feudal risings, random elements like crop failures, weather conditions and epidemics, the unpredictable influence of religion and economics, dangerous barbarians and the brilliant actions of the other players should provide the CHALLENGE!
I am probably most ignorant but could you please explain how PBeM games operate, since I don't know?
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Diplomacy:
I must disagree with the notion that diplomacy should be delayed or restricted. If players cannot contact each other within the game, they'll just use ICQ. Not everybody will, of course, but those who do have an advantage over those who don't so I think every player should be guaranteed equal chances for communication, even in the expense of realism.
Another troubling thing that was suggested somewhere above is that player could call a diplomatic summit and effectively pause the game by doing so. This I highly disagree with: the players who needed more time to move/think could call the summit just to finish whatever they're doing, thus making the game slower for others. I think that diplomacy with other players should be done completely independent of the rest of the game flow.
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Again you are fully entitled to have your own opinion. Yet I think your concern for players using ICQ and thus gaining an unfair advantage is unfounded. Instead I think this would make any game a lot more interesting, creating many possibilities of treachery and deceit! You really should play Diplomacy to understand what I mean!
"1. Combinations and agreements among the players may affect the course of the game a great deal. These are determined during the diplomacy period which takes place before each move. This period lasts 30 minutes before the first move and 15 minutes before each move thereafter. These periods may end sooner if all players agree at the time.
2. During the diplomacy periods, a player may say anything he wishes. Usually, the players go to another room or off to a corner in twos and threes. They try to keep the content of their conversations secret. They may try to overhear the conversations of others. The conversations usually consist of bargaining or joint military planning, but they may include such things as exchanging information, denouncing, threatening, spreading rumors, and so forth. Public announcements may be made and documents may be written and made public or not, as the players see fit. The rules do not bind a player to anything he says; deciding whom to trust as situations arise is part of the game."
(source: Rules for Diplomacy,1971)
I'll try to make up one illustrative example:
The Portuguese and the Venetian Republic have formed a military Alliance, confirmed and agreed upon by their official diplomats and ambassadors, to make war against the Ottoman Turks, who control a large empire. Yet so far the alliance has been quite succesful, partly as a result of rebellions in several parts of the empire. One day the king of Portugal receives a message by ICQ from the Porte, admitting defeat, proposing to make peace on favourable conditions for the Portuguese. The Portuguese king likes the idea: his treasury is rather empty and the proposals of the Porte are quite reasonable. They discuss the details of the treaty and the king of Portugal promises to send an official Embassy to Constantinople with a Peace Treaty (which would be binding within the rules of the game). And so he does, in the meantime trying to contact with his allies the Venetians. The Porte has hinted that he has made similar proposals to the Venetians, who also seem willing to make peace. Yet the Venetians do not react, unfortunately...
The king of Portugal gives orders to his fleet not to capture Tripoli, since the Porte has promised to surrender it in the Peace Treaty anyway.
Two months later the king receives a report of a naval victory: the combined Venetian-Portuguese fleet has crushed the Turkish fleet. Now it seems a pity the king didn't order the contemplated attack on Tunis and Tripoli. Again he receives by ICQ a worried message from the Porte: where's the official Embassy, delivering the Peace Treaty for ratification? This is rather strange: an Embassy has been sent and would normally arrive within two months. Perhaps a storm at sea has caused some delay?
Meanwhile the Venetians continue their offensive in Greece, while the Portuguese fleet -as a result of the commands of the government- floats around.
Two months later a message from the Portuguese Embassy in Constantinople arrives in Lisboa: so far the Porte has declined to grant an audience!
Next month the Venetians complain -through an official Embassy- about the lack of Portuguese support during their last offensive: When the Portuguese are unwilling or unable to pursue their combined goals more vigorously, they will annul the Alliance and make a seperate Peace! etc.
(I could go on, but I think my point is made sufficiently clear)
Neither do I like the idea of a diplomatic summit, effectively pausing the entire game.
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Turn order:
So far, I think there are three different proposed systems. First, there is the old preplanned turn order, where conflicts between players' commands would be resolved without any additional input from the players. I kind of like that approach. Anyway, then there is Korn's suggestion which adds more real-time elements to the mix and Elmo's system which has great resemblance to simultaneous turns in Civ2. I think these two turn order models have some problems, but because this may be only because I haven't understood them properly
I think that simple, preplanned year-by-year turns are sufficient for the purposes of the game. This allows us to make many simplifications. For instance, the delayed information is not such a problem because even though it could take months for a message to travel from one end of the empire to another, it rarely takes years (granted, sometimes such delays happen, but based on the examples provided by S. Kroeze, such cases are not the norm). Also the strategies of armies could be kept more simple. Wars wouldn't take more than 5-10 years or less, though this number varies in different points of history. Anyway, the combat would inevitably be strategic for the simple fact that there is no tactical level. So, there is also no need for an AI to handle the tactical decisions and carrying out a multitude of orders. Thirdly, again inspired by S. Kroeze's rambling , it seems that the most serious threat to an army is deterioration, not a superior tactical genious on the opposing side. Thus, logistics, infrastructure, and simple straightforward campaigns become more emphasized than military tactics, IMHO.
(As a sidenote, even if I don't yet accept the real-time model, if it was used then why is there a need to have any turns at all? Everything could just flow real-time, and the players could pause the game whenever they wanted, but the "pausetime" would be limited and would regerate slowly. Just a thought)
Anyway, in the beginning of this post I did compliment the idea of using action points. This is because I think they are an excellent way of resolving conflicts between different units, even if they wouldn't be visible to the player. A great idea, actually.
Summary (for those who didn't bother reading ):
Seriously, I think that the following issues should be solved:
1. Game length, turn length, average game session length, pace of the game?
2. Delayed information vs. the integrity of the civilization from POV of the player?
3. Real-time or preplanned turns?
4. Number of thingamajigs to move around on the map? (I suggest that there will be less armies than regions)
5. How the turn order affects all the other aspects of the game beside combat?
Hopefully we can come to a solution which satisfies us all enough to be put in the design doc, at this point I am not going to make any suggestions for changes because I am not yet quite sure what we want. Maybe later. Ciao.
Leland
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Here we agree again on many issues. Yet I really doubt whether a player will have sufficient influence on and enough overview of military operarions when all orders should be programmed a year in advance, information delay or not. There would still exist a dissemination delay, sometimes of eleven months! I fear this could result in unpredictable actions at the end of one turn/year (December). Players might try to exploit this, giving strange orders at the end of a series of commands, when many armies will already have lost most of their soldiers through wastage.
Personally I think some influence of the weather (storms at sea, frozen harbours, muddy roads in wet seasons) would be a nice realistic addition. Excessive rain and drought are a normal part of every-day life, having far-reaching consequences, occurring a lot more frequently than disasters like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
I also hope the trench warfare of CivII, that made warfare rather boring and profitless, can be avoided. Actually only Elephants/Crusaders and Howitzers were efficient assailants in this game.
Yet in history many succesful or disastrous military campaigns were decided in only several months. Hannibal marched from Spain to Italy in less than a year, twice defeating the Romans heavily(218BC).
In the beginning of 1812 Napoleon was at the height of his power, controlling most of Europe: Austria and Prussia were almost reduced to satellites, only Britain, Russia, Sweden and the people of Spain were actively hostile to his regime. Yet after his disastrous Russian invasion, he was defeated in the 'Battle of the Nations'(Oct.1813) and forced to abdicate(April 1814). The sailing of the Armada(1588) was accomplished in two months and could have ended differently when the weather conditions had been more favourable. The expedition of Alexander lasted less than ten years. Most large empires of history were conquered in a relatively short period of time. Here is some information about the Mongols, underlining this same point:
'The Mongols were inspired by a zeal for world conquest begun by their creato, Temujin, later called Chingiz Khan (1167-1227). By 1206 he had united the tribes of Mongolia under his leadership, symbolized by a kuriltai. Chingiz created an army of horse-archers on the traditional steppe model, employing a decimal unit structure from 10 to 10,000, which facilitated command and control. Before the full development of gunpowder and firearms, they were almost invincible in battle against sedentary enemies.
Such nomads traditionally lacked siege techniques, but the Mongols learnt them, and in 1215 took Beijing. The conquest of China was completed, incredibly, by 1234, although it took another fifty years to subdue. Meanwhile, Chingiz had turned his attention to the empire of the Khwarizm Shah, who ruled from Samarkand. In a brilliantly organized three-pronged attack, the Khwarizmians were overwhelmed (some of their soldiers, fleeing west, ousted the last Latin troops from Jerusalem). Chingiz spent his last years securing the Asian steppe, and this is what gave his empire such durability. Ögedei, Chingiz's successor, who ruled from the Caspian to the China Sea, was said to command an army of 129,000 men.
Much larger numbers are often cited for the Mongol hordes, based on Islamic sources, but the sheer logistical problems of moving cavalry armies in which each soldier had several horses, contradicts exaggerated claims. Their invasion of Russia consisted of twelve to fourteen tumans, each notionally of 10,000 men. What made the Mongols so superior, though, was their strategic flexibility and rigorous discipline. When they fell upon Russia in 1237, the princes could respond with neither.
The Mongols attacked in winter, the favoured season because frozen marshlands facilitated rapid movements by their cavalry. The first place to fall was Ryazan, taken after a five-day siege (21 December). A relief force sent by grand prince Yury of Vladimir was surrounded and defeated at Kolomna. Yury fled his capital and took his main army north-west to the river Sit, placing all available Suzdalian troops in a defensive position between the Volga and the Mologa rivers to the east and north. The Mongol general Batu first took Vladimir (3-7 February 1238) then swept through the rest of the principality, while a subordinate attacked on the river Sit. The Suzdalians fled, possibly even offering up their prince's head, without a fight (4 March). Meanwhile, another Mongol force besieged Torzhok, the southernmost town of Novgorod, which fell on 5 March. But Novgorod itself was spared, the Mongol cavalry getting to within 60 miles (96 km) of the city before turning back, possibly because the spring thaw threatened to cut them off if they began a siege.
After regrouping, the next phase of the Mongol campaign began in spring 1239. Möngke's army swept through Chernigov, besieging its capital with 'a giant catapult capable of hurling stones, which could only be lifted by four men, a bowshot's distance'. A relief force from Kiev was defeated, and Chernigov fell on 18 October. The main Mongol army then withdrew to encampments on the Kipchak steppe. In autumn 1240, the third and last phase of the campaign was directed against Kiev. An army of ten tumans surrounded the city which was pounded by artillery in the area of the Polish Gates, before the city was stormed on 6 December. Concentrating his forces near Galich, Batu was poised to strike into Europe.
News of the Mongol invasions caused panic in Europe. Their unified command and purpose contrasted strongly with a divided response. German bishops and the only supranational authority -the papacy- preached crusades against the impending attack, but the Mongols were superior in both their strategy and tactics. In the spring of 1241, Batu launched a twin-pronged attack into Poland and Hungary. The Mongol advantages of discipline, manoeuvring to the directions of their horse-tail banners, flexibility, as they fled in front of an enemy charge to return when it was blown, and the arrow-storm created by their bows, gave them superiority in the field.
The northern army encountered a force led by Henry, duke of Silesia, and the Prussian master of the Teutonic Knights, supported by German town militia infantry, at Liegnitz (9 April 1241). The crusaders were lured into a trap by the classic Mongol tactic of feigned flight and encirclement. In Hungary, it was the same story. Despite king Bela IV's attempts to block the Carpathian passes, Batu's forces swept into the Hungarian Plain, heading for Gran at a speed of 60 miles (96 km) per day. Desperately, Bela mustered his forces on the river Sajo at Mohi. The Mongols then threw a pontoon bridge over the river to outflank the defenders, forcing the crossing against the main body with firebombs. Despite withdrawing into a wagon fortress, the Hungarians were overwhelmed.
Throughout the rest of 1241, Mongol forces ravaged eastern Europe, almost reaching the walls of Vienna. Then, in early 1242, news came that Ögedei was dead and that all the Mongols were recalled for the kuriltai to choose his successor. Batu retired to the Eurasian steppe where he established the Golden Horde, but Mongol armies never returned to Europe. In 1258-59, Möngke Khan conquered Baghdad and Persia, establishing the Il-Khanate in the region. But his death in 1259 meant that further advances into Syria were led by Kitbugha, in command of two weak tumans largely made up of subject Turks. As a result, he was defeated and killed by the Mamluk sultan Qutuz at Ain Jalut (3 September 1260). Later attacks on the Mamluks were also defeated.
It used to be thought that only chance spared Europe from Mongol domination. Certainly their troops were superior in the field, and their Chinese (and later, Persian) siege engineers could take any city they wished. Yet the Mongol army depended upon its horse-power for strategic and tactic mobility. Once away from the grasslands of the Hungarian Plain it is possible that they would not have been able to feed their horses. The Mongols' failure to conquer Syria would seem to confrim this, althought the Mamluks did beat them at their own game with better-equipped horse-archer troops. But crucial to the Mongol military decline was the splitting of their empire into seperate regional, sedentary dynasties.'
(source: 'The Cambridge Illustrated Atlas of Warfare: The Middle Ages, 768-1487',1996)
So basically I hope that warfare in GGS will present on average more opportunities for bold, aggressive attacks and will be a lot more dynamic. Finally I think I should answer an important question put forward by Korn:
in your vision are you playing Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer? (the former is the CTO and Chairman of MS, the latter is the CEO) in my vision we are Steve Ballmer, making many strategic decisions and many operational ones(strategic --> Operational --> Tactical --> Grunt work in the trenches)...
in your vision are you bill gates and never handle anything less than a strategic decision?
Essentially I agree with Leland's answer: quote:
In my opinion, GGS should have strategic and operational levels, and perhaps some tactical decisions. Tactics like "seize that ridge" are not applicable simply because of the granularity of the map.
In short, I think I'd like to be a lazy Steve Ballmer... not even touching the tactical and grunt levels, but instead deciding strategies and carrying them out (or letting AI do it, sometime in the far far future). I disagree that preplanned turns, relatively small number of stuff to move or simplified strategies will necessarily be boring. It's all a matter of how the situation is presented to the players. The movements of armies would still be *shown* on the map, the plans would be represented by (animated?) arrows, the player would give the orders by dragging and dropping, pointing and clicking and so on. It's not just "take over tumbolia, 60% casualties accepted, 20% annual budget available", but actually taking a couple of armies, choosing where to cross the borders, allocating the weak spots of the enemy, deciding best course of conquest (quickly through the plains, or safely through the mountains?), making sure logistics with mother civ works, assimilating the conquered area to your civ and suppressing rebels, ...
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In my opinion a government only makes Strategic and Operational decisions, apart from deciding who will be the commanding general/admiral, which could be one of its main decisions. Here is an example of the sort of commands I would like to give:
"Move from Paris to Roma by the shortest possible route; when encountering any resistance, enforce passage!
In Roma take up defensive positions in the vicinity (~100km) of Roma!
Suppress all local opposition!
Avoid battle with a superior force!
Defend Roma at all costs!
When forced to retreat, retreat in the direction of Firenze, taking up defensive positions!"
So the combat system shouldn't at all resemble RISK, which is a completely absurd game, nor Diplomacy, which has a very abstract, though brilliantly simple yet irrealistic combat system. Units in Diplomacy are terribly slow: it takes a year to march from Spain to Paris, though the year is 1900AD!
In RISK the map consists of only 42 regions and the entire world seems one large army camp. The Diplomacy map contains 19 sea regions and 56 land provinces; the number of units on the board is constant, making eternal warfare possible. This is something to avoid at all costs: warfare should generally be dynamic, consisting of relatively short military campaigns, where units/armies move from a political centre to a clearly circumscribed goal.
Sincere regards,
S.Kroeze
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:14
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S. Kroeze
The primary reason i rejected preplanned turns is because i imagined trying to play a civ2 turn in advance...to me that would be impossible. Lets say two Rifle Men hold a city, you have four armor units...ok you attack the city with your first armor unit...then do you bring in your second armor unit or do you attack again with your first armor unit? You don't really know because you have no idea what the specific outcome of your action will be, so it is impossible to make a determination of what to do...also for all you know the player might be reinforcing his rifle men or he might pull one back...it is impossible to give specific orders in advance to your units because the possibilites make your guesses inaccurate at best...so then the only sure way to play the game would be to use a Sledgehammer to swat every fly...or use ten howitzers and ten armor units to take each city. Specific preplanned turns will NEVER EVER work!
Now however if in GGS we could give some kind of general orders to our four armor units, something to the effect of:
Seize City X, fortify that city with X number of units and then advance with healthy units after those objective have been secured.
then that could work, especially if the scripting language was easy to understand and use and if it was truly powerful enought so that you could basically anticipate virtually any contingency. This is what I support when I say I support simultaneous preplanned turns.
What lead me to this is that the focus of the game would have more in common with diplomacy than civ...more overarching concepts and less tactical operations, when i really began to see what many of you were talking about that is when i changed my mind
I think that having turns represent one month and last ten minutes would be quite adequate...i still think that we could solve communication problems between the client and server and get away with five minute turns...so S. Kroeze our opinions are very close on this matter
by the way if we are going to have less units than in Civ2, and all around less micromanagement and each turn only represents a month Why in the #$&% do we need to take so long to play a turn? I bet that most late game civ2 turns last ten minutes or less...with the turn representing a year and lots more units than what everybody has proposed to be in GGS so far...
Most likely with month long turns we are not going to get bombarded by completly new information, except on truly bad months...I mean not every month is going to be the start of an Operation Barbarossa on an unsuspecting Soviet Union...if the average turn (granted some turns will be different and more time would be a luxery you don't have) is taking longer than 10 minutes to play a month then we must have one of two problems in the design
[*]either the UI is horrible and it takes far to long to accomplish a given task
[*]or the scale of the game is just too large and we need to make the map smaller and scale back on someother things too
i mean if it takes a player close to fifteen minutes to play a month long almost everytime then the AI will fail under that burden and we could not have the game be a persistant world, and with 15 minute month long turns we would bore simply bore virtually everyone (including me and probably most of you too) instead of entertain them
most turns should be tweaking your oders...not issuing completely new orders to each and every unit every single turn...this is part of overcoming excessive micromanagement of units...
so basically for the most part in GGS units should have multiturn orders that reuire tweaks every so often and the player should not have to issue new orders to all units every turn
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here is something off topic but i think that it relates to the game...Supply lines and unit readiness
I think that all units should have to trace a supply line back to a supply node. if a unit cannot trace a supply line the unit should start to atrophy, lose men, equipment etc.
the length of the supply line should be based on transportation technology...therefore before you have invented the wheel supply lines should be very short compared to civs that have hypersonic space transport VTOLs that can operate anywhere and can lift hundreds of tons of supplies
also all units should have a stat called unit readiness which has 100 points (and no more than 100)...
[*]every turn a unit carries out a non-combat action it loses one readiness point if it is in supply and two readiness points if it is out of supply
[*]every turn a unit engages in combat it loses two readiness points if it is in supply and four readiness points if it is out of supply
[*]every turn a unit either rests or trains it gains two readiness points if it is in supply and one readiness point if it is out of supply
when unit rediness drops below 75 points that unit gets a 1 percentage point negative combat modifier for every point it drops below 75; also if a unit has a 90 readiness points or above it gains a 1 percentage point positive combat bonus...so for example a unit at 100 readiness points would get a +10% combat modifer, while a unit at 80 readiness points wouldn't have any modifer, and a unit at 25 readiness points would gain a 50% negative combat modifier
Also units not inside of cities/supply nodes/military bases should not be able to heal above 75% of their hit points
these ideas would stop a conquer from using a very small high experiance task force to spearhead through all of his enemies without ever stopping because of supply, or morale, or readiness considerations.
korn469
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amjayee
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Oct 1999
time: 07:14
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I really start to like the new planned game system. It could be a real Experience to play such a game. If we manage to make it so, that the game is something like S.Kroeze wrote, it would be really interesting.
So, your main task in the game would be to build up the structures of your empire.
1. You would negotiate and conspire to build the relations to the other nations and look for allies and try to gain as much advantage from the current situation as you can. Game situation would be dynamic, and you would have real humans to compete with, so you would need all your cunning.
2. You would take care of the resources of your nation; you would supervise the production of necessary supplies and organize trade to buy what you can't produce and to make money.
3. You would take care of your domestic politics. You would try to negotiate with the powerful factions of your own civ and try to keep your people content and hold your nation together.
4. You would organize the building of defensive structures, invest for better military technology and train your forces. You would need to think carefully how large military you can afford, and decide when you have your opportunity to attack and when you are better to defend.
5. Also you would need to allocate your resources correctly.
S.Kroezes post was very inspirational. I could almost see myself playing the game. Your posts are very long; I have to ask, how long does it take to write them? Do you write those quotes by hand or do you use scanner or something? Also, how old are you, and what's your profession? Thanks again for your efforts!
I agree with supply and unit readiness, that sounded ok. I also agree with Korn's realism thoughts.
About orders, I think most orders would be "for time being" kind of orders; general enough so they could be followed if player doesn't give new orders, so basically you would need only give new orders to change the old orders. Of course offensive moves require short-term orders, but also they couldbe multi-turn. Basically, I think in warfare more decisive would be moving your pieces into position (organizing your military, training them, organizing your resource management systems, creating supply and negotiating with other nations) than the actual offensive, like in chess. The most enjoyable part would be the offensive, but preparing for it is what should make this game GGS.
About turn length, it would depend on the game type; the extended game turns could (and should) take longer. I agree that usually giving the orders and doing the work for a turn would not take very long; 5 minutes should suffice for most turns. But diplomacy and thinking would of course require some time, too. But I think we can make also quite short games possible, perhaps y reducing the complexity of the game in shorter games... we'll have to test these things before we make excact decisions. For now, we will need to make some general plans for the game system and agree on them. Who would like to write a document of this. I could, but can't for some time do that.
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Well, this thread is about all there is on the new turn order model. We all seem to be getting to an agreement, and perhaps I should write a short description of the ideas presented here in the design document and we could start working on a more detailed model. Sorry that my posting sprees are rather sporadic, hopefully I will be able to contribute more frequently.
Of course, nothing prevents any of you to write a paragraph or two summarizing turn order if you get the inspiration.
Anyway, just for the record let me say that I do agree most of what korn and S. Kroeze have been writing, but there are some minor details which I would like to bring up (again).
korn469:
The server and network bottlenecks will probably be very significant at first, but later when the code is optimized, high-speed internet access becomes more commonplace and Moore's law keeps doubling the computing power the problem will at least partially solve itself. However, if we are to have even half of the proposed features, the game will be mindbogglingly complex. At least from a hobbyist programmer point of view. So, at the development phase we may not yet have the luxury of shortest possible turns, neither in game time or real time. It could be that even ten minutes per turn becomes difficult to handle and as a result the game will be balanced favouring longer time periods.
Nevertheless, it would be foolish to set any precise limits at this phase. I have been against turns as short as 1 month, but I see no reason why it shouldn't be included as one option. One turn could maybe be configured to last something between 1 to 60 months, and the final "default setting" could be determined later when there is a more exact view on how the turn order model would actually work. Similarly, the turnaround in real time could be anything between 5 minutes and 24 hours, so that it could accomodate both casual players as well as those who crave action.
Other parameters may include how the players can log in and out of the game. I foresee eight possibilities:
1) Closed on-line game without clans. All players have to be present, no new players are admitted during the game and there is only one civ per player.
2) Closed off-line game without clans. Same as above, except players can be off-line. In those cases the civs are controlled by an AI, as bad as it may sound.
3) Closed on-line game with clans. Same as 1) with the exception of multiple players steering same civs.
4) Closed off-line game with clans. Same as above, but players can go off-line.
5) Open on-line games without clans. Here new players could join at any time, but once they log off they will have to lose their civs. I don't think this alternative would be very interesting, and I suggest the game is not balanced based on this mode of play.
6) Open off-line game without clans.
7) Open off-line game with clans.
The combination of on-line play and clans in an open play is really not different from the corresponding off-line game, so I left it out. But these six or seven (number 5 is kind of controversial, IMHO) should be possible, though of course some may turn out to be more interesting than others.
I think the notion of clans is a brilliant idea. It should of course be optional, and the clan size should not become very large, but otherwise I believe it could turn out to be interesting. My understanding of the clans is that they would be just a way of several people who know each other to cooperate, and definitely not an alliance where you would need to do diplomacy or struggle for power. There should be plenty of those between different civilizations without internal disputes.
You mentioned your vision of GGS being a civilization micromanagement game, and I have to agree with that opinion. I do not want to be a head of state, I want to be the state itself. I want to be able to drill down on the areas that interest me and not be restricted by bureocracy or any predefined "role" I am supposed to play. This contradicts with realism, of course, but I think it is one area where that compromise can be taken. This is why I am an advocate of instantaneous information flow and nearly omnipotent ability to know what is going on within the borders of your nation.
This brings me to the issues of immersion and realism. I have considered the difference and under "Game philosophy" it is mentioned that
quote:
Our philosophy here is, that reality is both immersive and intuitive to the player and that ruling a country through history would be fun.
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This is partially an article of faith, but I have a strong belief that immersiveness and realism are not against each other, but the former can be achieved through the latter. If the game mechanics would be blatantly different from how history works, then the players could surely enjoy the game but they would not necessarily feel that they're making history any more than chess players feel that they're controlling monarchies. To some the difference may be irrelevant, but to me and to many others a realistic or at least a plausible setting is a big factor in a game. The stuff that I think are important with realism include, but are not restricted to
- Population growth
- Domestic politics, religion and social tension
- Military campaigns and combat (no more lonely triremes sailing about for centuries)
- Climate (if applicable), terrain and resources
I also think that some things need not be done very realistically, namely the information a player has of his own civilization and the diplomacy between players.
In a nutshell, we should aim for immersion through realism. Some people are more demanding in this respect than others, but our goal should be at least one notch above Civ2. Just for the challange, if nothing else.
I'd also like to comment your vision of two competing clans ending up in a cold war that lasts for months and progresses very little. Personally I would probably find that boring. I'd rather see lots of dynamic changes in political atmosphere. It would make a nice scenario though.
I have been against modelling weather and climate, but now I am beginning to change my mind. Maybe it would be nice to play a game where one turn lasts for a quarter of a year, thus introducing seasonal changes into the game play. Naturally this is just my subjective point of view, and I could live with shorter turns as well. Just that I am now beginning to get excited about the idea of less-than-a-year turns.
Okay, this is pretty much everything I have to say about your two posts above.. just some final notes that came to my mind while typing: About the UI, it will most likely be "traditional" at first, occupying the whole screen and thus making it difficult to play on the background, but who knows what will happen in the future. You are absolutely right in pointing out that there has been a minor inconsistency in my mind regarding the length of turns and the amount of micromanagement. And yes, turns would definitely have to be multiturn, I think we can all agree on that.
S.Kroeze:
One year turns sound just fine to me too, in fact I think we agree on several issues. I just want to point out that we shouldn't lock many parameters of the game at this phase. It's essential to just set some very broad limits where the game would actually fit, and those limits will be further narrowed whenever the detailed turn order model is devised. Longer turns I find better than very short ones because withing longer time spans it is easier to lull myself into the suspension of disbelief that the instantaneous information flow would require. If the turn is just one month, it may be suspicious to receive up-to-date news from another continent until the modern times, but it is less striking if it happens within a year.
The compromise between real-time and preplanning is something that I cannot escape as easily. In turn based games the idea is that you can stop playing any time, have a cup of coffee and go back to your computer when you see fit. In real-time mode there will be constant hurry, though it depends on the pace of the game and the attention span of the players how hurried they will subjectively feel. If there is only one single player, the turn-based solution would of course be superior to real-time one, but unfortunately this will not be the case with GGS for some time. I'd dare to say that I am busy enough to value the slower games (in game time), but also too analytical to be annoyed by long turnaround time. In fact, I could tolerate one turn per one day approach and could even find it stimulating.
But people are different. From your posts I have concluded that you are what I would call a hard-core strategist. I prefer less efficient strategies and like to play around with history, and apparently Korn is after intensity in his gaming sessions. I'd like to have a game which as many people as possible would be able to enjoy, if not together then at least by altering the settings to one direction or another and playing with their likeminded friends. The development of this game is and will be constant negotiation with different people, and I have a strong belief that the more viewpoints we have, the better the game will be. Personally I would like to see almost all of your visions come true in the final product, apart from the delayed information.
Speaking of which, I am not convinced by your example. I cannot imagine any compelling reason for the Portuguese player to wait for a formal confirmation of the peace treaty, if making such treaty would be very difficult. A peace can be arranged by simply not attacking, and a war likewise by doing the opposite. Of course, I also think that a formal agreement should have an impact in the populations of the involved nations, but if the overhead caused by informalism surpassed the penalties of bad PR then at least some players will take the easy way. And it doesn't necessarily take more than one such player to ruin the fun for the rest. There simply shouldn't be an opportunity for such mischief.
* * *
Okay, I think this is enough for the day. I'd like to hear your opinions on the delayed information, that seems to be the only area in which may cause disagreements. But it shouldn't stop me from rewriting the proper sections of the design doc... just you wait.
Regards,
Leland
[This message has been edited by TempLeland (edited March 25, 2001).]
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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As usual I agree with virtually everything Leland says. And as usual I agree with virtually everything S. Kroeze says. I am not sure about the delayed information, though. It might be interesting, but it might also be annoying.
I think turn lengths should be very flexible. A 1 turn (1 year) per day model has to included. This would make the game a hobby that people would just use a few minutes every day on. For instance one of my friends have just moved to Nice, and him and me are now playing a game of email chess with each other, by just emailing our moves every few days. GGS could be like that.
But would someone PLEASE describe the turn model for me? Please?
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I distrust those who pray; for they are putting their lives in the hands of strangers.
GGS Website
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VetLegion
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I think extremely long games are totally unplayable. Whatever system we go with it has to have reasonable speed.
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The Joker
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Copenhagen, Denmark
Aug 1999
time: 06:14
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Although I do not agree completely with VetLegion (especcially not if the clans are implemented) I do agree that we have to have some games that progress at a reasonable speed. Therefore I think the monthly turns are just too unplayable and will make the game too slow. If we can have monthly turns of 10 minutes each, then why not have yearly turns of 10 minutes each?
And COME ON, guys! Describe that turn model for me!!!!!!
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"I have an idea for a movie. It's about a killer robot driving instructor, that travels back in time for some reason."
- Homer J. Simpson
GGS Website
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ElmoTheElk
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Leiden, The Netherlands
Jul 2000
time: 06:14
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Well Joker, I think it's not that we don;t want to descipe it, but as long as we are not sutre about what to descipe in the description, what's there to descripe? 
I reread most of the posts in this topic. I agre with most of the thing presented here, including:
- I agree with the actions you'll have to make during the game as amjayee descriped.
- I agree about the turn system used now. (Altough I REALLY want to keep the lenght of the 'turns' open now, since I think I DON'T like month-long turns)
- I agree that It's damn difficult to write a summary of this system! (I tried..)
Extremely long games (1 year or so) are unplayable in my opinion. These type of games can easaly get boring. I rather see games with the playing type of 3 civ2-length games or so. I know we have a much more complex game, but we also have much more options to give general orders in stead of moving unit-by-unit.
I don't think that we have to make 2 game types however. This will result in mch more work (since we have to make 2 'games') and I think we can use the extended one for short-always-online-scenario games too.
About clans: I think a civ is always accesable by any player who has the right to. (Password protected if you like.) This would keep games rolling and prevent very-often-off-line-civs to get a disadvantage.
I realy, really hope we can settle this this week or so. I tried to write a summary of the system, without succes. I haven't got the feeling for it enough. However, I will give it another try asap.
ElmoTheElk
ps. as you may noticed i think in developer's thoughts, not in programmer's ones...
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08-03-2001 04:02
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