Wow, that is
awesome. I'll respond to your stuff in order, but I'll just say that holistically I'm very impressed and like a lot of these ideas.
Also, does anybody have an idea why my subscription to this thread doesn't work? I told it to send e-mails when there's a new post and... nothing. Not in Spam folder either. Is this a common problem on these forums?
I think by default a subscription only lists a topic in your "My Account" section on the forum when there's a new reply. If you go to "My Account" -> "Edit Options" (on the left) -> "Default Thread Subscription Mode", you can change the drop down so subscribed threads send you emails.
First off, FYI, my posts will often not be tldr-friendly. This thread serves as a sort of design doc, though, so I think it's probably OK. Please let me know if that's not ture.
The nice thing about building a mod from the WoT books is that there are a lot of unique reframings of things we have already heard of gleemen instead of a typical bard or performer. So using these colorful terms and people, it's easy to give the vibe of the series without necessarily having to invent a whole lot of stuff.
From a design perspective, there are three ways of dealing with Great People (GP) that might make sense here:
1) GP are basically just translations of ones from Civ 5
2) GP are wholly new, and have new abilities
3) GP include both new and recycled abilities, and the recycled abilities might not be found in the same pairings (i.e, the Hurry Production GP (Engineer) might also be able to start a golden age (Artist)
From what I've gathered of your design aesthetic, I'm mostly going to steer clear of option number one. That said, if all you are looking for is a direct translation/re-flavoring, these might work:
Direct translation (not what I'm recommending):
Great Writer --> Great Historian
Great Musician --> [Great] Gleeman
Great Artist --> Great Craftsman
Great Engineer --> Ogier Stonemason
Great Scientist --> Great Scholar or Brown/White Ajah Aes Sedai (the latter being unfortunately too tied to channeling-friendly civs)
Great Merchant --> Great Merchant (Great Peddler is more in-universe, but is perhaps too stupid)
Great General --> Great Captain
Great Admiral --> Great... Admiral? Sailmistress is of course the in-universe analog, but is too tied to the Sea Folk
Great Prophet --> Great Prophet/Dreamer
Of course, I don't find the above very compelling at all. I think option 2 above is nice, but I think, frankly, Civ players are going to want to see certain abilities (hurry production, etc.), so option 3 is basically what I think makes the most sense.
In service of this, what I'm going to do when I propose a given person is provide a few possible abilities, and we'd choose the two we think fit best. This covers you if you want to do option 2 or option 3.
I agree, just transplanting the GP types over wasn't what I intended. There's some work to do with the way Specialists and GPs are linked behind the scenes, but I can pull those apart so that we're not particularly bound to the existing GP types without breaking the way cities working tiles works.
GP and Aes Sedai:
I'll post some ideas about channeling later, but it is worth mentioning here that I have some ideas for how channelers specifically, Aes Sedai might overlap with GP to some extent. I think, since Aes Sedai are usually independent agents and not really part of any one nation or anything they may need to be treated as rare and special (more on that in a later post).
In any case, since you already have the idea of training channelers with a given ajah, I was thinking that the Aes Sedai unit's promotions could be tied to training with an ajah. Better damage, "Green Ajah". Better healing, "Yellow". Etc. As a result, I wondered if it might be worth it (and not too complex) to include ALL the ajahs. Of course, with the Brown and White and such, what jumped out at me was that these could aid a city in its science output (like when garrisoned or something, a city gets +X science). Thus it is possible there'd be some overlap between rare and powerful Aes Sedai (with level-ups no less) and the standard roles of the Civ 5 GP.
Additionally, I've been thinking about the possibility of a civ being granted Aes Sedai in a similar manner to how they earn GP, but we'll think on that later.
I'll write more on this later, but for now it bears mentioning because we'll want to balance those things with the GP we choose having, for instance, no great scientist might be OK if some White Ajah unit served a similar purpose in the Civ.
In the current set up, Aes Sedai are units that you unlock at the Sisterhood tech, but I'm not particularly beholden to that idea. I like the flavor and gameplay of this a lot - they're not quite "hero" units, but something similar to that. I think this is something that would be good to add after the mod is basically functional/released. The existing use of Aes Sedai is markedly less work but can be swapped out for this new one fairly painlessly. GP levelling, which you discuss later, would also tie in well to being able to level up Aes Sedai.
Governors:
It looks to me like you have Governors (Great Leaders?) pretty under control for the time being. I don't know if they fit technically as Great People. I'm going to work as if they do, but essentially ignore them here.
A note on Balance:
In order to mix things up, some of the GP are a bit less focused than they are in Civ5. The Ogier Stonemason is obviously the replacement for the Engineer, but not all of its abilites are necessarily concerned with Hammers. We'll have to carefully consider whether this poses long-term balance problems (e.g., by having to emphasize one type of resource (production related wonders, for example) in order to gain a different one (hapiness from a Grove, for example)).
The way I have Governors set up now is that any GP (or any one set by XML - check out the Unit_GovernorClasses table in
this file) can become a Governor in a city in the same way that they activate their other abilities. The type of GP determines the type of Governor created (as specified in that XML file). I hadn't yet decided whether or not Governors could "revert" to being GPs later, but that idea is sounding more attractive given all of the content you've suggested. I plan to have Governors gain EXP/Levels, which would link well to GPs having a similar system (which you discuss below).
With regards to the Ogier Stonemasons, I was thinking of having them as units that are gifted by Stedding to their allies (kind of like Militaristic City states) but that they're superpowered workers. I do like the flavorful way this uses Ogier though, and I'm not sure how useful upgraded workers will be. This is the same kind of thing as Gleemen (which I'll discuss specifically when I get to that part of your post), where I've added these very WoT-specific characters as new units, but that they actually could make good GP substitutes instead.
If we go with a very GP-focused system, I'm wary that we'll need to balance the game a bit so that wide empires don't suffer for their comparative weakness in GP generation.
Great Prophets/G&K:
I don't know what to say about the Great Prophet, since you haven't mentioned Religion at all in this thread. Does this mod use G&K? Espionage would probably be a welcome addition to the mod, but religion does seem like an odd one. Obviously religion itself doesn't make much sense they all seem to follow the same one but, perhaps some other thing to spread around would be a good gameplay addition? In any case, I'm not touching the Great Prophet much here.
The mod does use G&K and I've been considering some espionage-related features. (Assassinate the Amyrlin to upset the balance of power in the Tower?) Religion is something I've been quite conflicted about. Worshipping the Light is really all we have in the traditional sense. But stretching the definition a bit, The Way of the Leaf, Ji'e'Toh, the Shadow, I remember the Sea Folk having some unique beliefs, and the Seanchan's omens could flesh out the numbers for choices. That's still too few for all of the religions on a huge map though.
Tourism:
Obviously the Great Artists, Musians, and Writers from Civ 5 all concern themselves with Culture and eventually Tourism, so GP are thus entwined in the cultural victory. Since Tourism as a concept makes little sense in the WoT world, and there is very little discussion of well-developed, masterworks of art, wrting, or music, (the vast majority are folk works or crafts), adjustments to this make a lot of sense. This makes intuitive sense, too, since WoT appears to exist in a semi-rennaissance era, which is, on Earth, really where artistic aesthetics and stuff first were even being standardized the idea of a great artist didn't exist before then in quite the same way. But I digress.
I am assuming you want to replace the three kinds of great works (4, if we continue with artifacts or some non-GP-related great work) and not reduce the number to two. I'm proposing we include the following, based on the kinds of things emphasized in the WoT books. The first two seem great to me, and the third is a bit less cool.
Prophecies WoT is FULL of this stuff, from Viewings, Dreams, Foretelling, etc. This one is somewhat analogous to Writing, in that it might be stored in science buildings and such.
Epics or Stories or Legends This is one of the only "art forms" consistently represented in the series. This is either analogous to Music or to Art. Artifacts could conceivably be stored with these. Like in Civ.
Crafts Much to the chagrin of many readers of the mid-late series, Jordan spent a lot of time detailing clothing, pottery, and other doilies. Better name is needed. Mostly analogous to Art. Artifacts could conveivably be alternatively stored with these.
Alternatively, depending on what you're doing with Archaeologists, Crafts could be axed for "Ancient Artifacts" or "Ter'Angreal" something, which are discoverd by certain GP (and could be distinct from those found by archaeologists."
The end result of this is not Tourism but what I'm currently calling Prestige. The idea behind the cultural victory in this Mod could thus be slightly different and in some ways becomes sort of similar to the Diplomatic victory thematically (we'll need to work on this). Basically, by ammassing culture, the tales of yesterday, prophecies of what will come, and useful crafts and artifacts, your civilization is the most well regarded as the world prepares for Tarmon Gaidon. Maybe this results in you being elected the leader of their armies, similar to Elayne at the end of the books, though this obviously has major overlap with your Diplomatic Victory. Maybe if you spelled out for me more precicely what the diplo victory and gaining the favor of the Hall of the Tower really means, then we can make these two distinct and come up with a solid replacement for Tourism.
As it stands though, if you think about it, in Civ 5 the diplo and cultural victories are also kind of the same. In both, your civ is the most popular in the world.
Of course, the mechanism for victory is the same your culture and your reputation (your Prestige) is greater than the culture of your opponents. This makes intuitive sense, as it's essentially the same as Popularity or Reputation.
This is pure gold, I love this idea. There are even already techs that tie into this kind of system, despite my not having considered it. It's very WoT-ish and also should play well. I'll say that I'm a huge fan of BNW's cultural victory and I think we should keep the core gameplay of that. I think there's a fair amount to differentiate the Cultural and Diplomatic victories with this kind of approach.
I've been thinking the Diplomatic victory is more about the Ideologies - which I've been thinking of as the different ways that nations treat their channelers. That inevitably has an effect on their relationship to Tar Valon. I figure the three pillar choices are: complete freedom (channelers do what they like, with no central authority, a la Age of Legends, White Tower isn't happy about this, but they tolerate it), authority of the Tower (the Aes Sedai and Westlands from the books, all formally trained channelers come from the Tower, the Tower obviously likes Civs that choose this), and throw them in chains (like the Seanchan, they're weapons, less than people who should be captured and caged for their own and others' safety, the Tower hates Civs that choose this and tries to sabotage them). Since players support Ajahs and their actions can affect Ajahs' influence, the ones participating in the Diplo victory (options 1 & 2) are trying to get their supported Ajah into a position of power where they can be voted into a "World Leader" type position. The ones who chose option 3 (like Order in the main game) are trying to conquer the Tower (or everyone else) before an election causes someone else to have undeniable control over the world's politics (winning the game).
My goal is to pull GP that are iconic in the lore of WoT, and have good gameplay implications. Again, I'm proposing 3-4 abilities per GP. I fugure we'll choose two, but I suppose you could wish for some to have more, or some to have fewer.
I've also proposed a couple more of these than fit the normal 8 from Civ, so we have some options. Of course, some abilities can be shuffled and rebranded to other GP.
All abilities consume the GP unless otherwise stated.
I assume these are created in a fashion similar to in the main game.
Great Leader/Governor
Covered by you already.
Ogier Stonemason (or Ogier Builder)
These are a fixture in the backstory of WoT, though none of them are characters in the story, really. Some ability options are below
Hurry Production: the obvious choice, and makes sense in-universe.
Build Grove: The Ogier groves could also make sense as a building, but since they are only found in certain (big) cities, it may make sense to include them as a Great Improvement instead. As far as benefits, there's two ways to do it. Either A) + Local Happiness or Culture, or B) + Production by producing Sung Wood. "A" makes more intuitive sense, but "B" keeps the unit more focused on hammers. Also, I didn't know if you were planning on including sung wood in the game elsewhere (perhaps as a stedding-only luxury resource, which could be cool).
Unlock Waygate: I don't know how you were hoping to implement the ways (I see them listed as a wonder), but expending a GP in a city to create a fast-travel network node is a neat idea. Of course, the ways are hazardous, so travelling between cities would cause a given unit to lose a fair bunch of HP. Useful during huge uprisings or surprise attacks.
Enhance Building: This is a weird one. Chooses a random building you already have in the city, and enhances the functionality of that building somehow (maybe a generic +1 or +2 to its output?)
Sing Another weird one. Grows a few tiles of forest. Maybe it's enhanced with an additional bonus or something.
This is interesting and I think I like your version of the Ogier stonemason more than mine now. (Thankfully mine is not implemented, so no loss of work!) As you've said, I've put the Ways as a wonder and Waygates as late game buildings already. I think they parallel airports from normal CiV quite well, but with an added chance of everything going horribly wrong when you use them. They'll also have drawbacks during Tarmon Gai'don, where the Shadowspawn can move armies directly through the Ways.
Great Captain
These are of course very much a big part of the story in the final book. I have elected to combine this with the Great Admiral, since there isn't really a WoT equivalent, in that the only real sea-faring we see involves the seanchan fighting the sea folk, and merchants. Of course, we could still have the Admiral as well, but it might be nice to simply combine their functionality in one unit. Of course, his embark speed would need to adjust over time so he could keep up with any fast late-game naval units you've designed.
As far as abilities, I'm not 100% sure on this one. I have literally never used the citadel in Civ5, so it's hard for me to know if it's useful (I guess I question that notion). The healing of naval units could work. Of course, I'd plan on including the +15% bonus like the Generals and Admirals in the regular game. That all makes sense. As far as stuff inspired by the WoT universe:
Recruit: Inspired by the katamari-like way armies in WoT grow as they move through the countryside. This converts a civilian unit or units on an adjacent tile into a random era-appropriate fighting unit. Useful for when your capitol is cornered, or if you capture an enemy worker while out fighting. Since it expends the GP, the unit should be either a decent type, or somewhat upgraded.
Ancient Memories: Inspired by Mat and the crazy stuff he appears to immediately know. Provides adjacent units a bonus to experience. Handy to provide a free level up or so to some units.
This is also really cool, I'd been considering how to WoT-ify the Great General (had also decided on Great Captain as a name - makes sense!). From some of your ideas, I'm liking the general concept of a GP that can enter combat. I always found that to be quite jarring about the Great General in CiV. Maybe other players will disagree - that the combat bonus is enough - but I always want to use them in battle.
I'm also very ok with merging the Great Captain with the Great Admiral - where the Captain is an equivalent unit while embarked. I've always found Great Admirals quite underwhelming in base CiV.
Dreamer/Dreamwalker/Doomseer
As far as the name for this, it depends on whether we want it to be power-based or not (which could alienate the Seanchan and Tear, etc.). Dreamers are obviously channelers. Dreamwalkers might be. I like the idea of the Doomseer which is the only name I ever saw (from the Seanchan) for the people who have Viewings (like Min though that specific name is stupid. There's also Foretelling, but there's no good name for this.... Forteller?
Create Prophesy this creates a Great work. Based on which title we give for this GP, this would be anything from Karaethon Cycle to a Viewing of death, or some good or bad omen. It's all just color, though. There is a LOT of prophesizing in these books.
Enter Tel'aran'rhiod This is obviously dependent on either choosing Dreamer or Dreamwalker. This could do one of several things: A) serve a Spy-like function, providing some info/espionage, even steal a technology, B) reveal a portion of the map/remove fog of war again, following the snooping-around aspect of the world of dreams, and C) Sound Sleeping Citizens defeating Nightmares, etc., provides boost to hapiness or production or food.
Start Golden Age this one is kind of random, but could be linked to the notion of seeing a civ's future/reading its omens and helping lead that civ to success because of it.
Royal Advisor Provides a bonus for a limited number of turns to the bonuses provided by Great Leaders. Similar rationale to GA above.
Secrets of the Pattern provides a one-time boost to science (equivalent to the discover tech of Great Scientists).
This is interesting and I hadn't even considered how Tel'aran'rhiod interacts with the game. I like this idea. It gives the player choices where one isn't the obvious right answer all the time - which can be good.
Gleeman / Great Performer / Great Storyteller / Great Bard
This is pretty much the only real "artist" in this list, since its the only one really covered by the books. I know you were planning on having Gleemen be regular units, but to me they seem to perfectly fit in as GP here, especially considering the Great works I have thought of. Of course, you could keep your Gleeman units and have this guy be called something slightly different.
Create Epic (or Legend or whatever we call it) creates great work
Spread Heroic Lore this is similar to the Tour of the great musician. Gleeman goes to another civ and talks you up, raising your Prestige.
Legendary Performance provides a large blob of culture, much like the political treatise from the base game.. OR, does what the gleemen you invented do (provide a bonus to hapiness).
So I've actually already put the Gleeman in as an early game unit. Currently he's a civilian unit that has a mission which generates happiness (which is restricted based on proximity - you can't have 2 gleemen performing within 4 hexes of each other). I wasn't sure how turning production into repeatable happiness like that would affect game balance, but thought it was worth a try. I do quite like your idea as well, I think we'll see how the rest of the GP system comes together. I can easily swap the Gleeman's existing abilities onto other units or just leave them out if it comes to that.
Wolfbrother
Obviously, like Min's Viewing, this ability is very rare. But it's also very iconic in the books, and provides some interesting ideas.
Wolf Brothers would have terrific sight, probably like an upraded scout, and would also move through terrain very well. They also are decent combat units (or could be, at least)
Call Wolves similar to the Horn mechanic. Consumes the wolfbrother and summons a few wolves. These units are particularly strong against shadowspawn. Probably these have a cooldown until they disappear (i.e., lose interest in the Two Legs). Would need to be balanced to make sure they're worth consuming the Wolfbrother.
Enter Tel'aran'rhiod any of the effects listed under Dreamer, assuming they aren't used there.
Travel through Tel'aran'rhiod similar to the waygates. Can essentially teleport anywhere in the civ's territory. Probably should be limited in number of uses or something.
Another good one! Like above, combat GPs is interesting to me. I'm fairly sure that players who play base CiV on high difficulties build up highly experienced armies over the course of the game (as opposed to pumping out loads of units, which the AI always beats us at) and adding GPs to that mix could be fun. Given the current state of the AI, it's also favoring the player, since they'll be able to more effectively prioritize combat to level and protect GP units that are harder to produce. I'm planning to do some AI improvements as a part of this mod (and will need to make the AI aware of some new systems), but that's a long and arduous process, because the AI code is complex. It's also computationally intensive (as you'll notice, when waiting for that spinning gold globe) so making it do loads more "thinking" can affect turn times. But it's no time for optimization now.
OK, this is the last one for now, I swear!
Great Historian/Great Scholar/Great Inventor
Think Herid Fel and the other people hanging out in the Cairhien Academy.
Research Tech similar/equal to in Civ. Could be tweaked to be instead a massive increase over a few turns or something.
Build Academy again, the same or similar to in Civ 5. As much as I'd like to rename it, the fact is that's what they call them in the books, if I recall correctly.
Build Curiosity/Build Advanced Technology this is inspired by the weird stuff they were building at the Academy, way above the tech level of the WoT books (telescopes, steam engines, etc.). Either A) builds a random unit one or two tech levels ABOVE the civ's current level (or era or something), or B) builds a random building one or two tech levels above the civ's current level or era. Could instead upgrade an adjacent unit to the same.
Write work of history culture blob, like the political treatise (not to be used if the gleeman has the same ability).
Discover Artifact IF we decide to completely replace Crafts with Artifacts, this guy would probably discover them.
Great Merchant/Peddler
I can't think of a better name. Peddlers are ubiquitous in WoT, so Great Peddler could work, but that might be a bit too small-time. (on that note though, Peddlers are probably a great replacement for caravans in the mod). This is also one that was hard to be really creative with.
Build Merchant's Guild same/similar to custom's house improvement in base game.
Enhance Trade Routes similar to the caravansary/east india, provides extra gold from routes coming from this city. Alternatively, simply increases gold output of that city.
Shrewd Negotiation either A) (not sure if this works, mechanically) allows the player to buy one unit, building, or whatever, at a hugely discounted rate, OR B) provides the civ with more of something they have traded for diplomatically (e.g. Extra iron, extra gold, extra... open borders....?). For balancing purposes, shouldn't remove extra commodities from the other civ.
Spread Tales similar/equivalent to the Tourism boost from a Musician in civ5 (don't use it along with the Gleeman version of the same thing).
Conduct Trade Mission equivalent to Civ 5's trade mission.
Acquire Artifact same as Historian above.
Ta'veren
This one is very generic, since ta'veren (people who the pattern sort of builds itself around) come in many shapes and sizes. Inspired mostly by Mat and Rand and Hawkwing.
Dark One's Own Luck Inspired by Mat, of course. Don't know if this is mechanically possible, but the math/random number generation would work out slightly in your favor for a few turns (attacking, defending, etc.). Balancing this could be hard maybe it only applies to one or a few units. Perhaps redundant with the Great Captain bonuses.
Ta'veren Influence either A) a one-time huge boost to favor with a particular city-state, or B) a one-time ok boost to favor with ALL city states or C) some sort of diplomatic boost in the Hall of the tower, or D) some sort of diplo boost with other civs... not sure how that'd work.
Legendary Journey another reskinning of the+Tourism/Prestige musician's tour
Shape Pattern either A) a boost to global happiness, or B) starts a golden age.
Legacy like the Ogier enhance-building, this either does the same or enhances workable tiles in the area.
Great Craftsman
This isn't very glamorous, and isn't super in-universe, but I think it needs to exist. I guess, actually, considring all the time Jordan describes clothing and porcelain, maybe this is super in-universe.
Create Craft there's gotta be a better name for this, but creates a Great Work.
Create Guild A Great Improvement, providing either A) Production, or B) gold, depending on which of these is still left to be covered.
Start Golden Age someone's got to, right?
Great Traveller
This is based on Jain Farstrider and other such people. Likely redundant with some of the other GP's I've proposed.
Like the wolfbrothers, Great Travellers have incredible movement and sight (if both GP-types exist, they shouldn't both have this). Travellers could maybe even pass through all borders.
Gather Knowledge another version of the Science dump
Discover Artifact another way to get one of these, if that becomes our third great work.
Write memoir one-time culture dump
Ambassador/World Traveller similar to the spy-like functions described above with dreamers. Possible map revelation, enemy intentions, etc.
Start Golden Age why not?
I really like all of these. If your ideas for other topics are as thorough and fun as these ones, then that's a lot of great design for me to work with. I should get on this whole implementing stuff process again.
Alriht, thats all I got. There were a few other things that part of me wanted to try sniffers, tinkers, etc. Those characters are very memorable, but they just aren't very "great," in a global sense.
Hopefully you don't hate ALL of this!
I think Sniffers and Tinkers and such would work well as normal units in some capacity, but I haven't thought much about them yet. I think it's been too long since I've read the books, because I'm remembering a lot of content from reading your posts that I had forgotten about!