Cool, ok, this sounds good to me. Agreed about Ajah quests increasing your overall influence and that we don't need to have direct feedback the other way because of the multiplier!
Not sure if it's better, but it's simpler to make. I don't think the difference in difficulty is big though.
Having overall influence separate from the individual Ajahs' could lead us to situations where some Ajahs like you but the Tower doesn't (weird, but probably not bad?). That is unlikely though - given the way the two feed back into each other.
Also, given what you've said about players being able to have negative overall influence with the Tower, I think your suggestion (tracking the two separately) makes more sense.
OK, let's definitely try to go with tracking the two separately. I definitely don't see a problem in a player having a positive relationship with an Ajah, but a negative one with the Tower overall. Imagine a civ who totally rocks at destroying shadowspawn, but is otherwise pretty terrible - maybe the Green would like them, but the tower as a whole wouldn't.
The main difference between the two is how associated the opinions of the Ajah and the opinions of the Tower are. In the track-only-Ajah-influences approach, the Tower's overall opinion can't be discordant with the Ajahs' opinion of a player because the overall opinion is directly inferred from the Ajah ones. When we track them separately, it's possible for certain sequences of player actions to cause the Tower and its Ajahs to disagree, but we're discussing that above and it doesn't seem too bad.
It's a big difference underneath, in terms of what needs to be implemented to track what, so definitely good to choose now!
Right. I suppose I should ask, for your sake - is it substantially more difficult/painful to implement the dual-tracking system, from a modding perspective?
I think this will be quite clear to the player as long as the UI presents the information differently. With the base CSes, each player just fills up a bar and how far along that bar you get is affected only by how many influence points you have with that CS. (We might track overall Tower influence this way though?)
With the Ajahs, there's one bar (per Ajah) and every player sees the same bar. They never see how many 'points' of influence they have under the hood - they just see what % influence they have with that Ajah, and how that compares to other civilizations' influence with that Ajah.
The non-swing-y diplo relationship is one consequence, but we've also got definite consequences on the friend-like bonuses as well. Since they're tied to % values (not underlying point values) only a certain number of players can ever have each bonus with each Ajah. That's because any other player gaining enough influence to obtain the bonus will have made one of the others' influence worth less than the bonus's requirement.
For example, if there's a bonus for an Ajah at 51% then only one player can ever have that bonus at a time. If it's at 40%, then the maximum is two players, and so on.
Right. All in the UI. I think one of our main goals that we've established is to make this all very intuitive and simple - at least in presentation. Otherwise, this mod will be overwhelming.
Ah, I was under the understanding, from previous parts of the thread, that you wanted the Ajah bonuses to be available to all players who hit a certain mark - at least some of the bonuses at least. I see the merit in running things on this sliding scale - like a CS Alliance, not like a CS Friendship - but I do caution us on the flavor of it. While certainly an Ajah would only let their "main civ" affect their policy and such, probably they would grant some abilities/benefits to any civ that worked well with them.
In any case, I don't feel very strongly about it.
General or Tower Edicts works for me. These are really just for us to refer to, right? I don't see the players having access to the list of which Edicts are available from which Ajah.
OK, let's call them Generic Edicts, I guess.
I was thinking that players wouldn't stop trading because they couldn't - after BNW it's usually trade routes keeping civs in positive gold. Even when those routes yield a lot less, they'll still be a major contributing factor - the fact that it helps other civs more than you is something that you have to consider when refusing the Tower's Edicts.
Team games is a very good point, but there's significant drawback for the "losing" player in that arrangement. In general they'd be better off both working the best economies they could and then gifting the gold for whatever big buyout they're planning. (Doesn't lock them into which player does it and such.)
We could go with a bigger penalty rather than a reversal (nice part about the reversal is we don't need to "penalize" the player all the way down to almost 0 gold from the route in order to layer on the disadvantages), but once the gold becomes insignificant then civs will stop trading, which we want to avoid. Reversed trade routes mean civs will often trade with others that are far behind, to lessen the immediate impact, but potentially help that civ recover as a consequence.
Incidentally, I've found myself paying much more attention to the actual numbers in my trade routes since this this section of the thread began.
OK, I'm mostly fine with the reversed trade routes as a penalty. I'm struck, though, by binary nature of it. If you disobey an edict, you get the penalty, right? So, what's stopping you from disobeying 5 edicts? What more could/would they do?
I agree with your issues with a flat penalty, but the problem with the reversal is that it doesn't appear to be scalable. What do we do to differentiate a Tear (who disobeys a few key Tower policies, but in general follows them, and is in turn cooperated with) from a Seanchan (who spits in the face of the Tower, and consequently is not cooperated with)?
It's tricky, because if you make it too scalable, the balance is tricky - how would we make a one-refusal penalty appropriately harmful, without making a five-refusal one impossibly so? The truth is, from a flavor perspective, the "scale" doesn't actually exist, at least not across the whole spectrum.. Tear is on the "scale," and are penalized. Seanchan is off the scale. They won't play the "game" and consequently the Tower holds little power over them.
Ack!
Yeah, I think things that are "constructed" even from the AoL will probably be needed as Wonders. In terms of Natural Wonders, Dragonmount and Shayol Ghul have been mentioned already.
I'm not sure if we want to make the two Choedan Kal natural wonders and have civs be able to create Access Keys toward the end of the game? Building the Choedan Kal themselves seems really cool though.
I'm not sure what else to suggest off the top of my head, I think I need to do some more wiki reading.
Not sure about the Choedan Kal. I definitely think some AoL (or earlier) wonders would be cool if they were "sacred" and existed without a civ building them.
A quick scan of the wiki for some geographical features - some of these aren't exactly as awesome as CiV ones... Also, some of these are bigger than what i'd assume a single tile would be.... Interesting.
- Shayol Ghul
- Dragonmount
- Bay of Remara (by Mayene - too big?)
- Kabal Deep (by Altara - same issue as above)
- Blinder's Peak, Favlend Mountain, and Mount Sardlen - various points around Andor/Murandy
- The Drowned Lands (too big?)
- Haddon Mirk (too big?)
- Garen's Wall (ridge by Ghealdan)
- Jangai Pass
- Tarwin's Gap
- Kinslayer's Dagger
- Windbiter's Finger (peninsula in extreme SW of westalands)
- various Rivers
- Alcair Dal (canyon where the Aiel Clan Chiefs meet)
- Alianelle Spring (oasis Gawyn and Younglings hung out at... perhaps too minor)
- Cliffs of Dawn (northeastern edge of Aiel Waste)
- Great Rift (canyon at south end of cliffs of dawn)
- Eldrene's Veil (waterfall in Two Rivers)
- Field of Merrilor (place they signed the Dragon Peace)
- Lake Somal (largest lake in westlands, in the west)
- Molvaine Gap (in Altara, pass through Damona Mountains)
- Malvide Narrows (narrowest point in Molvaine Gap in Altara)
- Shadow's Lance - weird southward extension of the blight into Kandor and Arafel
Looks like regular civ has 17 different Natural Wonders.
A question just popped into my head.... we aren't incorporating Portal Stones into this mod, are we?
We're going to have Guilds in the form of the Illuminators though - which I don't think this Edict crosses over with.
Ah... what's your current opinion, then?
Maybe - if a civ that isn't going for the diplo victory has gained significant pull in the Compact, they might be able to steer it towards inaction? I'm not sure if we want to make that an option though - diplomacy seems like it should be doing *something* all the time.
if you don't want inaction to be a part of it, I'm fine with that. I mentioned it here because it does seem like something people request from the CiV WC.
Awesome, that sounds good. Does the HK get to select a different 'tax' at a certain interval until they're dethroned? So they're not locked into the same bonus for the duration of their reign. You mentioned Golden Age-like bonuses before as well - that makes sense to me in addition to this.
It might be as simple as giving them an actual, regular Golden Age, and then applying whatever "tax" they choose. Thoughts?
How long would you anticipate their "reign" lasting? Maybe I could see them swapping their bonus once. Also, the reign ends "naturally" right? (i.e., whether they like it or not)
Yeah, this sounds good - it gives you a range of bonuses each time, regardless of how many players there are. So for numbers of players that don't divide evenly into the good/average/poor + 1 distribution, we would have known numbers set up? So, in order of Good/Average/Poor, for 5 players we'd have 1/2/2? Seven players would be 2/2/3?
yes. this looks good. I do think it might be best to reframe is as Good/Average/Poor/Nothing, though, and maybe create distributions like 1/2/1/1 and 2/2/2/1, or something.
Currently the benefits of DoF are: allows trading lump sums of gold; allows research agreements. I think that's it aside from the diplo ramifications of other actions (if an AI asks you for help and you've got a DoF with them and you say no, you get a diplo penalty. If you declare war with someone you have a DoF with, everyone hates you.)
Accords could provide benefits to trade routes between the two civs? We could actually prevent declarations of war, instead of just having diplo consequences. They could act as Defensive Pacts rolled in? Or what about them being Offensive Pacts too? (If you declare war with someone, anyone you have an Accord with must do so as well.)
That does make some AIs bad Accord-buddies, but maybe that's something you have to deal with if you're their ally. We could make that war refusable, breaking the Accord and giving you a massive diplo hit with the other Accord member? Not sure if that's in the spirit of it though - Defensive Pacts aren't optional and that's quite intentional on Firaxis' part.
hmmm... The more I think about this, the more I start wondering if it's a bit out-of-universe. I mean, this isn't a Song of Ice and Fire. There isn't much int he way of alliances, up until the very end. I'm fine with all of this from a mechanical perspective (though I think I'd opt to make it a bit simpler), but I wonder in general if this kind of super-alliance is really in keeping with the WoT feel.
Have to say I had to look this up.
your nerd card has been revoked.... though perhaps you not being an estadounidiense is *some* excuse. I suppose such excuse would not be valid for Dr. Who references, though (which I would fail at, actually)...
So trade routes with every capital then? Do we want to change any of the others to make them a bit more challenging?
OK, looking at them again:
- accumulation of DoFs
- trade route with every capital
- HK's palace
- capture half of the capitals (or X number or cities or something)
- hit some technology
Is that all of them? Honestly, it's hard to say if they're too easy or not - I suppose playtesting will tell. The Tech one would have to be thing the kind of thing where just beelining to it is probably a pretty bad idea, overall.
Yeah, we could have it on a schedule. That would definitely be in keeping with our discussion from earlier about civs generally keeping toward the higher end of the allocated Aes Sedai slots. Linking them to techs or something else that "progresses" through the game would make them more scarce though - potentially more valuable? Players would be more inclined to keep them safe if it's difficult to regain them after.
I like the idea of there being some element of randomness to it - like, if it's on a Turn schedule, maybe it's somewhat unpredictable. I feel like it should probably be global, though - or do we want some civs getting their Sisters *faster* (instead of just more of them)?
I do think it is best for us to pace it in a way such that you do definitely want to keep your sisters alive - if you lose 4 of them in a war, it's be awhile before you get new ones. In fact, letting them die should probably cost you Tower influence!.
Herbalist Training?
Sounds good to me - Compact resolutions remain and are unrefusable. Won't the tendency towards voting as a group with Alignments make resolutions succeed more often during the Last Battle though?
Well, I do suppose the Compact will vary hugely based on how the LB divides. A game that has a majority of players (or, Diplo votes, at least) on the Light will have a lot of easy votes - since all other victory conditions are locked, everybody's only working towards winning the LB. Games with a large number of Shadow and Neutral civs, though, this wouldn't be the case, as each of these civs still needs to hit their own victory conditions to win, and thus might do stuff against the best interest of their colleagues.
Yeah, that is weird. We could keep the CS ties the same as how they work now, and CSes can switch back and forth between the Alignments? Declaring for the Light/Shadow doesn't automatically make them the embodiment of either, and given the secondary nature of CSesm I can see them being bought and sold to both sides. Because of the way influence works, a "sniped" CS would have to be won over by a neutral civ and then re-acquired by its "original" ally afterwards during the Last Battle for an "Alignment swap" to actually happen. (Since Light/Shadow are at war.)
Or do we want to track alignment for each CS independently? Seems like they wouldn't have that many Alignment-relevant decisions. We could track a CS's Alignment based on the alignment of its allies over time? It might be annoying if you've locked in a CS 20 turns ago and it chooses the other side of the Last Battle because of its previous ally though?
Wow, this is a challenge!
I do think the neutral middle-ground is important to us. I think we should probably let the allegiance of CSs remain fluid, even during the LB - otherwise it changes the mechanics of the diplo victory hugely, right? - but I do think using Neutrality as a middle ground we can lessen the impact of the swingy-ness of this. Maybe, if a CS is shadow, and is bought buy a Light civ in the LB, the CS goes neutral for 10 turns, or something. In this period, neither civ is an ally. Of course, neutral civs are somewhat by definition the enemy of the Shadow civs, though (and to a lesser extent the light ones).
Is there a way to make something like this work, considering the impossibility of negotiations while at War with a CS's ally? What should we do?
It isn't the mirror of the Free Tyranny one then though - Free Tyranny is liberating *any* city (not a targeted one) that used to belong to an Authority civ. I think this makes sense - the Tower likes it when anyone does that, regardless of the politics of who did the liberating.
Capturing the Oppression city is less overall-liked by the Tower. A second Oppression civ benefiting from it is kind of weird, right?
ok, this makes more sense to me now.
Do we want to make Novices a unit that civs can train in order to send to the Tower? (They could be like trade units, so they aren't useful for anything else - you'd just train them to do this.) Once the Novice reaches the Tower, the civ chooses which Ajah the Novice is aligned with.
That is a bit non-canonical, since Novices and Accepted don't have affiliation with Ajahs in the books, but gameplay wise I think we have to make that the player's choice, otherwise it's all a bit random. Unless, when the Novice eventually becomes a Sister (more on that in a moment), she does join a "random" Ajah, gaining you influence with that Ajah. Having the Common Quest "send a Novice" would allow players to gain influence with specific Ajahs that way, immediately on the Novice joining the Tower. But making the Novices' ascension random will mean that most players will have *some* influence with quite a few Ajahs, which is good! Lots of small contributors can skew the percentages for the major players within an Ajah.
So, about Accepted. If we track each civ sending Novices to the Tower and those Novices' eventual ascension to being Aes Sedai, then Accepted seems like the middle rank that those tracked Novices reach after X (random, weighted?) turns. Maybe the original sender civ gains overall Tower influence when their trainee goes from Novice to Accepted? Do we want the civ to do anything to cause that to happen? (I'm not sure - I think just time's passage makes sense - makes it more difficult to "rush" for influence, and is more in keeping with Tar Valon's isolationist approach to trainees.)
OK, I'm liking where this is going. Some expanded thoughts on this.
I'm not sure the Novices need to be units, per se, since that's a little weird, but given that it is an established concept in the game, that could work.
I was previously thinking it would be based on Population, but I'm thinking now that we already have a perfectly good abstraction of that to use - Spark. I think you should be able to send 1 Novice for every 1 Spark you have. Should it cost you anything else besides a little production time (if that?)? Also, should they all happen at once, or incrementally over time, like a Spy? Monitoring the novice situation does seem somewhat like a Spy menu, which might suggest we not use a trade unit.
Some civs would invariably refuse to do this, right? Any benefits to doing this? (the population point loss thing is a potential thing).
I'm kind of liking the novice thing to be something essentially out of the control of the player, maybe even with some randomness. Consider:
- Player sends X number of novices to the tower (whether all at once or over time). This raises Overall Tower Influence, not Ajah influence (donating female channeler units is the way to raise Ajah influence). Your number of novices in the tower acts as a sort of cushion-offset to your Tower Influence - it's "resting influence" is higher, as long as they are there (sort of like the Sea Folk Sisters, maybe).
- After X number of turns (or a range), the Novice(s) have a % chance to A) drop out of the Tower, or B) advance to Accepted.
- If the Novice drops out of the tower, the civ can send another, but the process starts over
- If the Novice advances to become an Accepted, a significant boost to overall Tower Influence is given (and a higher resting influence)
- After some amount of turns, an Accepted either A) drops out, B) remains an Accepted, or c) becomes an Aes Sedai
- If the Accepted drops out, the civ can send another *Novice*.
- An accepted who advances to become a sister will choose an Ajah, mostly randomly, though there could be slight percentage modifications based on the affiliations of the parent civ. Whichever Ajah she chooses provides a good deal of thumbs up to the parent civ.
- we could additionally have their be a certain % chance that your sisters are elected to the Hall of the Tower and/or the Amyrlin Seat.
I'm also assuming that these are abstractions, and that these sisters don't literally do anything in the game - like, they don't get killed or anything).
Thanks! Yeah, Cleansing Saidin probably has enough rewards as it is - we can drop that one.
Cool, but there is the other option of having the Tower gift you a different GW in return? That could actually be quite valuable, since I often find I'm short on foreign GWs when going for culture.
Eh.... I think having it be a swap is sort of a non-sacrifice. like, why wouldn't everybody immediately complete the quest? Will it be a really specific artifact?
I'm not sure, probably depends on the progression through the game at the time. I imagine there are usually quite a few in the run up to the Last Battle. We could have this quest scale with time as well as map size?
Yes, I think that makes sense.
I figured they were getting the bonus every turn with each unit, until it was fully healed (that's why I went as low as +1). To abuse it they'll need a repeatable source of damage, which if they've got, they probably need to attack it in some way. It's only really an incremental gain to prevent that being too lucrative.
Alright. Should be fine.
I think if you've just advanced an era, then that's just unfortunate. Most of the quests are better at certain times than others, depending on what you've done. If you've just beelined for a far-ahead tech, it's much easier to win the "most techs in 30 turns" because you have a bunch of low-cost ones to finish quickly. (Also helps to finish a tech on turn 1 or 2 of that quest.)
The quest is targeted at a single player, so they have the same era progression requirements as normal - research any tech from the next era. Which one they should beeline for will vary depending on which techs they've already finished when the quest is given.
Sure. that makes sense. I guess all quests have a degree of luck associated with when they are offered.
Yeah, I think it makes sense for each Ajah to have the same number of quests available. The Yellow Ajah was really difficult to come up with quests for, that's the main reason they had so few. I think we want to go for like 6-8 for each Ajah + an Amyrlin quest? A few of the quests available to each Ajah should be easily "recyclable" as well - like "destroy that Dragonsworn Camp" has the same requirement every time, but the context of where that Camp is can make the quest quite different.
Cool. We'll be able to get that many for each Ajah, I think. The Yellow is weird, which is somewhat surprising considering they have a very video-gamey area of interest.
OK, that's it. We're almost done with diplo, yes?
Happy New Year everyone!