05-05-2002 11:36									#1
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How will this game be different from Civ?

Both in terms of nitty gritty mechanics and in terms of "positioning".

	05-05-2002 12:48									#2
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Good question, GP! To answer that, I would point to the following features we'll eventually be building into the game.

First, we're drawing on a large variety of sources to create the game shell. Unlike Civ, which is earth based, Candle'Bre's world is of our own devising....built from the ground up, complete with its own legends, myths, magic, and religion.

Second, unlike Civ, which is "city based," everything in the Candle'Bre world follows a more EU-oriented path of provincially based territory.

Third, religion plays an important role in the game world. While not a win condition in its own right, your standing with the church can add a powerful element to your game, should you choose to persue that strategy (as opposed to Civ, where the only real impact religion has on the game is in providing "happiness enhancers."

Fourth, we are fantasy based, so the game is not entirely human-centric...there is the possibility for incorporating fantasy creatures into the mix (MoM-style). Also, thanks to the fantasy setting, we've got magic to play with as well!

Fifth, an "event engine" that's like nothing the genre currently has anywhere in it. Fate plays an active role in the game, and while none of the events are game breakers (that would be annoying and heavy handed), they DO provide a certain level of uncertainty to the mix, which enhances replayability and can influence or enhance existing strategies (tho we're taking care that pandering to the Fates does not become a strategy in its own right).

There are others, but those are the key differences, in my mind's eye.

-=Vel=-

	05-05-2002 13:54									#3
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Good comments.

Will it be a "god game" in terms of player control?

	05-05-2002 16:05									#4
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quote: Originally posted by Velociryx Second, unlike Civ, which is "city based," everything in the Candle'Bre world follows a more EU-oriented path of provincially based territory.

Well, Vel, that's excellent. I really, really liked the basic engine in EU. But there were serious problem with it as well - as your empire grew, things became rather unmanagable, mostly due to a sever lack of decent macromanagement tools. As a refomed EU fanatic that conquered the whole world (that, is every single province in the game) twice - once as Russia and once as Sweden - let me tell you that the mind numbing MM entailed put me off the format enough not to buy EU2. Beware of that trap.

	05-05-2002 17:33									#5
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quote: Originally posted by moominparatrooper I really, really liked the basic engine in EU. But there were serious problem with it as well - as your empire grew, things became rather unmanagable, mostly due to a sever lack of decent macromanagement tools. As a refomed EU fanatic that conquered the whole world (that, is every single province in the game) twice - once as Russia and once as Sweden - let me tell you that the mind numbing MM entailed put me off the format enough not to buy EU2. Beware of that trap.

Yeah, I'm having the same problem getting into EU2 (never bit on EU1). I'm just learning the ropes now, but there are some parts of the game I'm just not interested in playing, like the colonization game, because the MM is just mindboggling. Some of this could be fixed just with some stratightforward MM-reduction tools. Other aspects would take good AI so you could turn parts of the game over to subordinates with just general direction. I even wrote a column quite a while ago touching on this issue called Civilization and its Discontents .

But hopefully the CB team (Hi All!) will work around these issues ok. One of the problems in EU is that the game was really designed for Mostly-Europe play originally at a guess. Then when it was scaled up to the whole world there are just too many #%$#@ provinces to be practical. Our provinces in Clash of Civs will be about 5-10x as large as those in EU on average, plus we're working hard to get the AI at Least smarter than a basket full of dirty socks, so you can turn parts of the game over to the AI.

Good luck with the project!

	05-05-2002 22:33									#6
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Morning all! Each question in turn....

GP: Yep...pretty much a "God Game" for the free release, in the sense that you'll have direct control over each and every province. We've not yet discussed building in an AI routine to handle provincial development, but with a total of sixty provinces in the initial game, I don't see it as being a real necessity (it, or some other mechanism for handling micromanagement will be vital in the sequel to Candle'Bre's commercial release, which will deal with the entire game world....that's where we'll need to be careful, lest we fall into the trap mentioned by Moominparatrooper!)

Moomin: TOTAL agreement there! EU is a fantastic basic design, but there are some serious issues in the mid to late game....another thing that I found to be....less than exciting about the way EU handles provincial improvements is that you get all of ONE improvement per territory, and they (the improvement you get) is pretty well dictated to you if you wanna get the most bang for your buck....not much thought there....

Mark: Hiyas! Just read your excellent article, and found myself in agreement with it. I think there are a number of lessons to be learned there!

One of the key things we've been talking about (and that reminds me, it'd be an OUTSTANDING thread topic right here, to solicit ideas on) for the commercial release is the question of how to handle delegation of certain aspects of the game. One thing that came up in the discussions we've held so far was the notion of giving each player a set number of "Governance Points." You can micromanage as much as you want....to the limit of your governance points. More of these points can be gained by hiring "Agents of the King" which come with an upkeep cost, but provide you greater control. The provinces you don't "look in on" will keep doing what they're doing till they're done, and then start working on something else (AI routine here) depending on the setup and needs of that province.

But, this is only in the general discussion stage....we're a long ways from needing to implement it anyway, so any input and ideas on this topic will be GREATLY appreciated!

-=Vel=-

	05-05-2002 22:42									#7
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quote: Originally posted by Velociryx One thing that came up in the discussions we've held so far was the notion of giving each player a set number of "Governance Points." You can micromanage as much as you want....to the limit of your governance points. More of these points can be gained by hiring "Agents of the King" which come with an upkeep cost, but provide you greater control. The provinces you don't "look in on" will keep doing what they're doing till they're done, and then start working on something else (AI routine here) depending on the setup and needs of that province. But, this is only in the general discussion stage....we're a long ways from needing to implement it anyway, so any input and ideas on this topic will be GREATLY appreciated! -=Vel=-

This is very much like that excellent, revolutionary concept of IFP (Imperial Focus Points - have to say I like your teminology a whole lot more) that Alan Emrich came up with for Moo3. As you probably know it was one of the things QS axed during the recent purges of the development team - they simply couldn't do the AI to make it a viable design, as I understand, although that's not what they said.

	05-05-2002 23:28									#8
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Hmmm....that's good to know, as it may well be a large technical hurdle for us to overcome as well. This is only tangentially on the current topic, but I gotta bring it up to show you where my thinking is on this part of it.

As I mentioned, the game itself is broken out at the province level, and as such, the province definition is where all the important information lives. There ARE cities in the game (or at least there will be starting with the commercial release), but players can't outright build them.

See, the way the draft of our society model works is that each province is populated by citizen archetypes (there are about eight of these, stuff like: The Pious, The Merchant Class, Vagabonds and Ruffians, Farmers, etc). Each archetype class has it's own "happiness/unhappiness forumla", and its own way of responding to happiness/unhappiness (could be anything from an armed rebellion to refusal to pay taxes on the down side, to extra tax money or greater efficiency on the upside).

Also, each archetype has a built in "level of organization." Taken as a percentage of the total provincial population, these measures of organization can be added together to arrive at the overall province organization level.

When population in the province reaches a certain point, if there is peace (no battle in the province for x turns), there is a per turn chance that the province will organize itself into a township (depending on population levels, this grows from a town, county seat, city, metropolis). Note too, that certain provincial builds increase the level of organization that the province has (ie - building a Library will increase the level of organization in the province)....thus, while players cannot "build cities" per se, they can influence the formation of cities in their realm. (Note too that this will be conspicuously absent from the free version....this is gonna be, IMO, the HARDEST part to implement well, and we'll be taking extra time on it).

The whole idea behind the governance point system is really appealing to me, cos if you really wanted to, you could purchase enough "agents of the king" to micromanage your whole empire....however, doing so will decrease your income (cos each agent has a per turn upkeep cost), so a balance must be struck, and this can become a piece of metagame strategy in its own right...determining which provinces are absolutely crucial for player control, and which can be left on auto pilot.

It occurs the me also that provinces can, and likely will (in the commercial release and beyond) be coaxed toward areas of specialization....say, one province is coaxed into forming a city, and the merchant class from surrounding provinces are, over time, coaxed into the city, while the farmers eventually resettle in neighboring provinces focusing on food production. Your food producer provs can be left in the hands of the AI governors for the most part, cos all they'll really be doing is that one thing. Optomize them for food production and forget them. Since that's static, it strikes me as being pretty easy to accomplish, but we shall see....

-=Vel=-

	05-05-2002 23:47									#9
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Who will tha game appeal to? In terms of market?

	06-05-2002 01:12									#10
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I think that, in terms of marketing, the society model we're working on will appeal to pretty much any fan of the genre who has been left a bit dissatisfied with the rather simplistic notion of how population is handled in most games of this kind.

We can structure it in such a way that population and happiness management is a sub-game in its own right (in much the same way terraforming in SMAC can be seen as it's own little "minigame" sitting in the midst of the larger whole), and we can do so without requiring a lot of tedious management by the player.

What I envision the archetype population model as being is essentially a series of fairly simple linear programs operating in tandem....it is this "operating in tandem" bit that gives the whole a sense of mind boggling complexity, as some of the archetypes will have conflicting wishes and desires, which will make keeping the population happy a bit of a juggling act (perfect example: in Civ, if you have unhappy people, you build a temple, and poof, they're happy....not true with our model....if you build a temple, then members of The Pious archetype will be happier, but doing so will make members of the Merchant class LESS happy....thus, keeping your finger on the pulse of exactly what types of people you're ruling over becomes relatively more important, and must be added into the mix of your thinking.....this will have implications throughout the entire fabric of the game....true, you might really NEED or want another temple to increase your standing with the church, but will the people you rule over stand for it? Or do they have other desires that you'll need to meet first? Also, it will make conquest a little trickier....true, the province over yonder is an attractive one, but will the people IN the province be easy to integrate into your holdings, or will it require a significant effort/dramatically new development direction that you may not be willing to take?

All this should add an exciting element to the game that's not currently found in any 4x game using the 'generic citizen' model.

-=Vel=-

	06-05-2002 02:16									#11
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Wow, and I thought Clash's social/govt model was complex and dynamic. (Well, it is ) But at least our social classes overall respond to inputs like "happiness spending" in the aggregate.

Vel, I hate to be a party pooper, but have you considered the difficulty of generating an AI that can in any way reasonably handle the sort of complex multi-dimensional optimzation that would be required to get decent results with a model that complex? The tradeoffs it needs to consider will most likely be prohibitively difficult to do well. And if you can't do it well, then you end up with another game that has cool models of the world with crap for AI. Seems to me the design and what the AI can realistically do need to go hand-in-hand unless you want the game to be MP-only.

Hate to be a wet blanket... but if you're gonna have a real game these points seem mandatory to address up-front.

-Mark

	06-05-2002 02:30									#12
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Quite so, Mark, and yep...I've been thinking a lot about that, although so far, most of that stuff has stayed in my head...here's where my brain is on it, though:

As I see it, there are two basic ways we can cut through the complexity where AI handling of the social model is concerned:

First, and probably easiest to implement, is to simply have the social model not apply to the AI. That is to say, give the AI very linear choices where dealing with unhappiness effects are concerned. In this way, the player gets the benefits of a very intricate game, without bogging the AI down in the complexity of it all. On the surface, it would appear that the AI was just really managing it's populations well (which is what we want), while behind the scenes, the REASON the AI is handling its population happiness so well is that it is dealing with a more simplified set of rules.

The second option would be to allow the AI an easier time/faster options where population relocation and resettlement are concerned.

One of the possible ways an unhappy archetype can react to his unhappiness is to simply leave the province....sometimes, if it's a province deep in the heart of your holdings, this really doesn't amount to much, since you probably want the citizens in question to move to another area you control where things are set up more to their liking....others, in the case of a border prov (your border with a rival), you run the risk of having those population points "defect" to your rival's territory, if he's set up in a way that makes those citizens happier.

The thing with that though, is for the player, that's a pretty slow process....but, we could fix it so that for the AI, those types of moves happen relatively quickly, so that the AI's provinces would quickly stratify themselves by archetype, making it a pretty simple linear equation at that point....the drawback here though, is that doing it this way makes conquest and control of AI territories relatively easy (since they're already stratified by archetype, there's really no particular challenge in keeping them happy).

Other thoughts here?

-=Vel=-

	06-05-2002 02:33									#13
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Wow. Vel, all of this sounds excellent! The population management is for me a refined strategy feature that should be present in any empire-building game, and your game seems to be approaching it in a very interesting way.

	06-05-2002 02:40									#14
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That's what we're aiming for, Sir Alex! Nothing less than trying to improve on the coolio aspects of the genre, add in our own unique ideas, and make the kinna game that drives folks nuts to play....

-=Vel=-

	06-05-2002 02:42									#15
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quote: the drawback here though, is that doing it this way makes conquest and control of AI territories relatively easy (since they're already stratified by archetype, there's really no particular challenge in keeping them happy).

One possible way to handle this would be to have a "unstratification" of the AI population whenever one of its provinces is conquered. Then the population would automatically divide itself in archetypals, following some random numbers or something like that. I know it is not the best solution, but...

	06-05-2002 02:49									#16
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::nodding:: That's not a bad idea....given that we would know the default starting population arrays of each province, it'd be simple enough (I would think), to have them revert to whatever they were on turn one....this might lead to strange situations in particularly long games where the population gets "weighted" in a particular direction....dunno, but it'd be interesting to see! (what I'm thinking is....population of a prov controlled by the AI gets stratified out (all the farmers and merchants leave for neighboring provs). Province gets taken by a human player....some of the (insert group that currently resides in the province) get "converted" to other archetypes...net result is an increase in those other archetypes. Still, I agree that it's a doable thing, and probably would not cause notable shifts in populations except for in the very longest of games....Hmmm.....

-=Vel=-

	06-05-2002 03:21									#17
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I'm very glad this social model is being discussed again. It came up in a fairly early stage of the project's start-up and hasn't been talked about too much since then.

In my opinion this has the potential to be the most interesting and strategic feature of the game (perhaps even more so than the Fate Engine). The world of Candle'Bre could become a dynamic and organic entity ... with its fluctuations being something that the player has to respond to, not something that they dictate.

As has already been pointed out, though, fine-tuning it and balancing it is going to be a HUGE task and one that we are unlikely to have much time to do for a long long while.

You can never start the discussions too early, though.

	06-05-2002 03:30									#18
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Amen to that, Stoo! I've got a number of other ideas relating to the social model that's floating around in my head, but before I go tooooo far along down that path, I figured I'd give others a chance to voice any ideas they might have. Again, absolutely nothing is set in stone just yet....this is something that won't see the light of day till the commercial release....nonetheless, it's addition into the mix will, IMO, do GREAT things for the overall depth of gameplay!

-=Vel=-

	06-05-2002 04:14									#19
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Do you think that the game will appeal to all civers equally? Will it appeal more to wargamers or builders. Will it appeal more to girls than civ? Will it be more (or less) intellectual? More or less action/graphics oriented?

	06-05-2002 04:50									#20
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Lemme see:

Wargamers or Builders: Hmm, tricky - I'd say builders, but leaning towards Hybrid players. While it will be possible to win the game peacefully, it will not be easy. You can't do what you could in Civ or SMAC and just sit in your cities cranking up the tech tree until you win. OTOH, the tactics should become a really integral part of the game. You will not be able to win with a simple rover rush - your opponents will expand, gain in tech, economy and influence - and you will beat yourself senseless on unforgiving walls. Plus, the 3 buildings/province rule should brink in some very interesting decisions...

girls: Who knows? My gut reaction is no though, since the battles will be less abstracted. The game will require a lot of (turn-based) military strategy and your units will be more human than just a 3-figure entity with a number of repairable hit-points. They will actually die. Now, I may be doing the fairer sex a disservice, but I think that may put them off a bit. Which is a shame, because I know some girls who'd be fantastic at the other aspects of the game.

More or less intellectual: More, definitely, for the reasons listed above. You will have to choose what to build, what you need rather than what order you need it in. I can see balancing the various factors of province-worth, income, population dynamics and strategic positions as being much more finely balanced, and thus more stimulating than anything that's gone before - particularly in the commercial release.

Action/graphics: Yes, there'll be more of this - but not in an "it's the sole point of the game" way. The battles will take place on 3D terrain (using Bryce and Poser atm), and good tactics will be required to make the battles swing your way. But those tactics will be turn based, and no massive click-fest will arise.

Good questions, the lot of them!

	06-05-2002 06:25									#21
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to everything Chowlett said! Superb answers to superb questions. I'm in total agreement.

Personally, I feel that the game will almost HAVE to be played out in Hybrid fashion....as Chowlett mentioned, it's not totally beyond the realm of possibility to win a game without resorting to warring at some point, but the fact is that if you don't expand early and your opponents do, you'll find yourself disadvantaged in almost every category you can imagine (consider this akin to the "landgrab phase" in the early game of Civ). The meat of what we're going for though, is a truly strategic game. This quote by Master Chowlett sums it up perfectly:

You will have to choose what to build, what you need rather than what order you need it in.

With only being able to build three provincial improvements per territory, with military units requiring a hefty upkeep pricetag, there won't be a lot of wasted effort. Everything you do is pretty well going to have to mesh well with your overall strategy, or you won't be getting the most you possibly can out of your position. So...some hard choices will have to be made pretty early on, and those choices won't get much easier as the game grinds on.

Add to that the fact that there are a number of "alternate" things you can do in-game that, while they will not net you a win in and of themselves, can be incorporated into your overall strategy for surprising effects. The two that spring immediately to mind here are the influence that Religion has over the game and the Fate Engine.

Influence with the church is a massive boon to those who make proper use of it....the ability to toally stall an enemy's attack is simply enormous. Totally unnecessary for the trip to victory lane, but when used properly, you can devastate your opponents by either paralyzing their forces or choking off their expansion. That's really deadly.

Likewise, playing with the Fates can really enhance your position, though in this case, it's a bit like playing Russian Roulette. The Fates can be unkind at times, so to rely solely on their favor as a means to victory would probably not get you very far....however, some of the events can be used to stunning effect, and can really turn the tide of what, on the surface, appears to be a hopeless position.

So...it's elements like that, thrown into the 4x, turn based mix, that will make the game a truly strategic affair.

-=Vel=-

	06-05-2002 08:55									#22
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quote: You will have to choose what to build, what you need rather than what order you need it in.

Amen. This is the single thing that I miss the most in Civ games. This kind of decision-making exists, yes, but only in the earliest part of the game, when you have to decide your path: war, then build barracks; culture, then build temples.

I think that the importance of religion over the game, and the Fate Engine, combined, can truly generate some very interesting strategic decisions.

	06-05-2002 17:36									#23
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Hm, the alarms go off after I plow through the messages in the thread.

In summary: too complex. I think your first task is to streamline the whole thing so it will take less time to finish a turn.

	06-05-2002 17:39									#24
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You could be right there UR, but until there is a version available for playtesting we won't know how much streamlining is needed and where it could best be achieved.

Certainly if we have any aspirations of this being a good MP game (which we do) then we need to make sure that the turn times (and thereby the game times) are as low as possible.

	07-05-2002 08:39									#25
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I don't think you can afford to delay the process until you have everything programmed. This is one of the main reason why Quicksilver is in such bad shape.

There are difficult decisions to be made here for sure. Is "technology" a core idea or is it merely something nice to have? What about deities?

Here is a mental exercise for you. If you are to describe CBR with one sentence, what is it?

	07-05-2002 09:22									#26
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UR is telling you stuff you need to hear. Don't think of a perfect project. Think of a prject that gets done and is good enough to showcase your talents.

right now, I've heard enough good ideas to let me know that you all have the creative spark to make something good.

But I'm not impressed with the sense of reality and trade-offs.

there is a much bigger danger of the project not finishing than of it finishing with something not "good enough".

	07-05-2002 09:35									#27
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My one sentence description of Candle'Bre would depend on what version of the game we're talking about. In the case of the free release, it'd be something like this:

A turn-based strategy/war game encompasing many 4x features and set in a fantasy world.

If we're talking about the eventual commercial release (which is where most of the ideas we've been kicking around here will reside, including the societal model), it'd be something along the lines of:

A 4x, turn-based empire building game set in a fantasy world built from the ground up that expands on two areas largely ignored by other titles in the genre (religion and society).

I would regard both technology and deities as essential to the mix, and to the direction we hope to eventually expand the core game.

For the early (free) release, both of these elements, however, will be vastly simplified, and the societal model will be nonexistent. It is something planned for the future, though. The ideas being roughed out here are, no doubt, mere sketches of what they'll eventually be hammered into.

For this iteration of the game, religion is made simpler by virtue of only having one "church" and one deity to deal with. There are no divine powers in play....influence with the church manifests itself in only one way, but it's a kicker...the ability to summon men of the cloth to prevent a battle from occuring.

Magic is likewise taking a minimalist approach in that there are only three "spells" represented in the game, and all three are in the hands of a singular faction.

Both ideas, however, will be expanded on in later releases.

At this point though...when sketching out ideas, it's important in my mind not to limit ourselves by talking inside any predefined borders of what's technically feasible or possible. At this early stage, I think we will find more success by talking about the ideas themselves, which will breed even MORE ideas, with the understanding that when it comes time to sit down and write specs for this stuff, we may have to trim certain things down to make it fly.

In my writing, I have always found it easier to cut material though, than to tack more on.

There is a very real risk/danger in doing things that way as well....the result being something like Civ3, where the resource and culture model is just haphazardly bolted onto the existing framework for "filler"....we gotta take care not to walk too closely to either extreme, but that's why I feel so strongly about not limiting our options much in terms of talking about what would be cool to see.

If it's really REALLY cool, and we get a lot of excitement generated around a particular concept, then we can examine it more closely, to see how we can make it codable....what might need to be pruned from the core idea to make it fly, and hang together nicely with the rest of what we've got.

-=Vel=-

	07-05-2002 13:59									#28
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quote: Originally posted by Velociryx A 4x, turn-based empire building game set in a fantasy world built from the ground up that expands on two areas largely ignored by other titles in the genre (religion and society).

Vel, did you ever play EFS?

	07-05-2002 14:25									#29
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quote: Originally posted by moominparatrooper Vel, did you ever play EFS?

Now downloadable from the underdogs I might add

	07-05-2002 19:35									#30
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quote: Originally posted by Velociryx At this point though...when sketching out ideas, it's important in my mind not to limit ourselves by talking inside any predefined borders of what's technically feasible or possible. At this early stage, I think we will find more success by talking about the ideas themselves, which will breed even MORE ideas, with the understanding that when it comes time to sit down and write specs for this stuff, we may have to trim certain things down to make it fly.

Agreed. As long as you are just letting the ideas brew in a pot, there's no harm in having a whole bunch of them.

quote: Originally posted by Velociryx In my writing, I have always found it easier to cut material though, than to tack more on.

Maybe writing is different from game design in the sense that, in game design, you are trimming ideas, not words and details.

I found it very difficult for me to remove features from my game designs.

quote: Originally posted by Velociryx There is a very real risk/danger in doing things that way as well....the result being something like Civ3, where the resource and culture model is just haphazardly bolted onto the existing framework for "filler"

I like the culture idea