S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

S3rgeus · Apr 14, 2015

counterpoint said:
I'm insane. Attempting a reply on my phone while on a plane. Ok, Tapatalk, prove your worth.

Woah, man, that's seriously impressive! This is a lot of stuff to write out on a phone! And using Tapatalk! I tried that app, but ended up uninstalling it - I can read the forum from a phone browser, but wouldn't try posting from there.

counterpoint said:
Obviously, adjusting other posts and other complicated things won't be happening now. Won't be able to add + gold and such to my earlier post.

No worries!

counterpoint said:
TWO campaigns? Which version, v5?
I miss it. I was in the middle of GMing an epic scifi campaign last year, but it fizzled when a player had to leave the country. It was awesome though. I had awiki set up with the lore and everything .

Oh, and naturally,we were playing on a home made system, which should surprise you very little

Yeah, both v5. Thankfully leaving the country isn't a problem for the groups I'm in since we're playing remotely on roll20.net. We're quite distributed, there are 3 timezones in total, with a difference of 11 hours from the farthest two.

Having your own wiki for the campaign must have been awesome! How long did the campaign go on for?

counterpoint said:
I don't view this as a problem. Rebels are exactly the same as rebel houses in my opinion. From the player perspective, their simply 'red units'.

I vote yes

Just to clarify though, "Rebels" would be fine. But the units won't be labelled Rebels. Base CiV says "rebels have appeared in your territory" in the notification (which is what you're referring to here?). But the units all say "Barbarian Infantry" when moused over or combat previewed, because CiV displays which civ owns each unit (in the same was it says American Scout or Venetian Trireme). So our "rebel house" will have "Dragonsworn Swordsmen" and such.

counterpoint said:
Ok, well we have no point of calibration set, so why not use this one? Every Aaron unit generates one point per turn?

I'm assuming Aaron is autocorrected Saidin? One point per turn generated by Saidin units sounds like a very sensible baseline. I've edited this into the misc summary.

counterpoint said:
I'm still steadily out of love with this idea. I will acquiesce if you love it though.

Can it please be a very minor element of the equation, though?

Definitely minor, male channelers should be a bigger piece of the pie by a significant margin, since they're a much more direct contributor to False Dragon incidence.

What is it that pushes you away from having female channelers contribute to FD rate?

Also, of the two, do you prefer if Aes Sedai do or don't contribute to FD rate?

counterpoint said:
Also, I should state I don't completely agree that fd spawn rate needs to vary tremendously. It can, but I don't view it as essential

More variance will mean that False Dragons are less likely to come in "waves" as each civ hits the subsequent FD spawn threshold at a similar sort of time. Having it work that way may not be a problem though. Are there benefits to more consistent FD spawn rate? It would make them more predictable-ish (still not very predictable, but a bit more so) for the players to prepare for, which could be good for the human from a planning point of view. (We wouldn't be throwing FDs at them seemingly randomly.)

counterpoint said:
well maybe instead we should be more fluid than this. Instead of big multiplier points, what if the changes were more gradual? Additionally, it seems fitting to also reward positive happiness, not just punish unhappiness

We could do it on a more sliding scale. Most other happiness bonuses seem to be tiered on positive vs -10 vs -20 though. (Food production and rebels being the major every-turn mechanical impacts of happiness.)

counterpoint said:
Like it!

Edited into the master list!

counterpoint said:
ok, a lot here.

I am fine with some threads being minor, and low level in terms of the epic factor

I don't think neutral civs need to choose good, then bad, etc. just because the SITUATION is moral, there will usually be CHOICES that are neutral. I definitely think every thread should likely have one or two if the options that generate very little alignment yield, if any

Consequently, I don't think a really need truly neutral threads. Each one should probably have some opportunity for alignment relevance, even if it is small

Ok, cool! Good to have that as a groundwork to draw from. Are we fine with there being some choices that do literally nothing? Some that provide some bonus, but contribute no Alignment? (These are individual choices, rather than whole Threads.)

counterpoint said:
I think this approach is fine. I empirically have to do this later, when on a computer, and evaluate yours as well at that time.

I don't see a problem with us doing out this way, saving the details for later. Though it likely won't be much later.. A few posts or something.

Ok, awesome! I thought we might be waiting much longer than that!

counterpoint said:
In some ways, we might benefit from doing all the number crunching in one tedious Swype later. That way, we can balance them with all of them in mind

This all said, there may be some wisdom to doing the merits number crunching further down the line. Several of our mechanics still don't have finalized numbers attached to them, so a case could be made that its best not to commit to three yields until we commit to those things

Beyond the endorsement for a third party keyboard application, this sounds good. Very true re concrete numbers for some mechanics, FD points and male channeler points are good examples.

counterpoint said:
ymmv. I think I like once per player

Done! I've removed the red from this in the misc summary.

counterpoint said:
I'm going to leave this decision to you. I've pretty much cone back to thinking this mechanic is to much trouble for a couple units in the game, so if you think you want it, I'm happy to go with whichever path you want to take

Ok, I think we can have this ability unlocked by a tech. Do you want to put it in the channeling summary?

counterpoint said:
I think I prefer going with a hard fast dfc number variance triggering the text change. It could be for or maybe even three. The reason is then I feel like that feels clear to the player. If they see sanctimonious, they know in all cases its probably going to require multiple heralds to get back to balanced, for example

Ok, DFC difference it is!

counterpoint said:
Right, I think the reason I put these as tolerance only is because they are sort of non choices if you are fear. Of course you'd do the anti Channeler thing as a fear civ. I guys I thought it was kind of lame to sort of force fear civs to choose shadow options, simply because they are anti one power

Ok, this makes sense. The more Fear-like choices correspondingly wouldn't be chosen by Tolerance civs either, right?

counterpoint said:
Cool. If be happy to let you do the yield suggestions if you wanted, but I will take care of it when at a pc

I've gone through and marked my suggestions in the master list.

After going through all of these, across both yours and mine, -Gold +Light seems to be a pattern in general. It's definitely something that makes sense - flavor wise it's often expensive to do the "morally right" thing. But I think mechanically we want to avoid that. I'll see if I can come up with some that run specifically counter to that next time!

counterpoint said:
hmmm.... I think the greyed out option is a good way to handle this. Let people know what they could have done, if only they had money!

Cool, I think this sounds good too. We want to be careful with the Alignment yields of the results in these cases though - we don't want a player to have make an against-character choice because they can't afford the only one that makes sense for them.

counterpoint said:
Ok. Wow. I got thorough it. Crossing my fingers as I click reply...

It made it up onto the forum, so that's a good sign!

counterpoint · Apr 15, 2015

OK, quick response! I still haven't had time to really digest your yield suggestions.

S3rgeus said:
Woah, man, that's seriously impressive! This is a lot of stuff to write out on a phone! And using Tapatalk! I tried that app, but ended up uninstalling it - I can read the forum from a phone browser, but wouldn't try posting from there.

it worked somehow! I wouldn't recommend it though.... but it was a six hour flight! How many hours in a row can one read aSoIaF?

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, both v5. Thankfully leaving the country isn't a problem for the groups I'm in since we're playing remotely on roll20.net. We're quite distributed, there are 3 timezones in total, with a difference of 11 hours from the farthest two.

Yeah, you aren't doing skype or g-hangouts for it, though? We always had such trouble making sense of it all when more than one person was using video...

S3rgeus said:
Having your own wiki for the campaign must have been awesome! How long did the campaign go on for?

hmmm.... probably almost a year. Maybe a dozen sessions or something. They almost discovered THE SECRET... and the campaign ended.

S3rgeus said:
Just to clarify though, "Rebels" would be fine. But the units won't be labelled Rebels. Base CiV says "rebels have appeared in your territory" in the notification (which is what you're referring to here?). But the units all say "Barbarian Infantry" when moused over or combat previewed, because CiV displays which civ owns each unit (in the same was it says American Scout or Venetian Trireme). So our "rebel house" will have "Dragonsworn Swordsmen" and such.

OK. don't hit me, but...

This makes me, once again, not want to call all barbs dragonsworn. I just... don't thin kit makes sense that there's always D-sworn. Even at turn zero - why would there be dragonsworn without false dragons?

I kind of feel like it cheapens the actual dragonsworn - which should appear when an FD appears.

Is it possible to have various "Teams" of barbarians, even if they're mechanically identical? Some called D-sworn, and some called something else... Brigands or Marauder or something, perhaps more encompassing of possible rebels ("Lawless" or something).

It's not a big deal, but it's never sat super well with me to have all of them be D-Sworn. Again, mechanically they can be the same...

Alternatively, if two names isn't possible, I'd be fine with renaming Dragonsworn in general, and saving that flavor for something else - the more appropriate name for the "Stewards of the Dragon" path, a Ghealdanin UU, etc.

S3rgeus said:
I'm assuming Aaron is autocorrected Saidin? One point per turn generated by Saidin units sounds like a very sensible baseline. I've edited this into the misc summary.

Yeah, Aaron is saidin. Fixed one of those. Missed this one!

S3rgeus said:
Definitely minor, male channelers should be a bigger piece of the pie by a significant margin, since they're a much more direct contributor to False Dragon incidence.

What is it that pushes you away from having female channelers contribute to FD rate?

Also, of the two, do you prefer if Aes Sedai do or don't contribute to FD rate?

I just don't see the flavor rationale, as discussed, and I'm not 100% sure the mechanical aspect is good, in terms of the cause and effect relationship existing between channeling and FDs. I don't necessarily think it's bad, I'm just not sure it's good.

I don't have an opinion about the Aes Sedai aspect of this.

S3rgeus said:
More variance will mean that False Dragons are less likely to come in "waves" as each civ hits the subsequent FD spawn threshold at a similar sort of time. Having it work that way may not be a problem though. Are there benefits to more consistent FD spawn rate? It would make them more predictable-ish (still not very predictable, but a bit more so) for the players to prepare for, which could be good for the human from a planning point of view. (We wouldn't be throwing FDs at them seemingly randomly.)

I can see why you think the variance is the preferable option, and I think I agree.

But I also think we'll get a lot of variance based on 1) use of saidin units 2) Fear vs Tolerance, and (later) 3) Philosophies. Those can have a huge effect, IMO.

S3rgeus said:
We could do it on a more sliding scale. Most other happiness bonuses seem to be tiered on positive vs -10 vs -20 though. (Food production and rebels being the major every-turn mechanical impacts of happiness.)

I'm fine with either way, though I think happiness should certainly help as well.

S3rgeus said:
Ok, cool! Good to have that as a groundwork to draw from. Are we fine with there being some choices that do literally nothing? Some that provide some bonus, but contribute no Alignment? (These are individual choices, rather than whole Threads.)

yes, I'm fine with there being some that do literally nothing. Not sure I love it, but I'm fine with it. As things are now, there are only a couple that have literally nothing, so perhaps it is best, for consistency's sake, that we remedy that and give those *something*.

S3rgeus said:
Beyond the endorsement for a third party keyboard application, this sounds good. Very true re concrete numbers for some mechanics, FD points and male channeler points are good examples.

lol, I was on an android, so of *course* it autocorrects swipe into Swype.

S3rgeus said:
Ok, I think we can have this ability unlocked by a tech. Do you want to put it in the channeling summary?

I will, but can you clarify exactly how you'd like it to be. At a tech, exactly how many are cured?

S3rgeus said:
Ok, DFC difference it is!

ok, it's in the summary. Here's the current verbage:

-if a civ with an overall Shadow Alignment has a city with too many darkfriends, that city will be said to be Chaotic. Too few: Cowardly. 4 or more Darkfriends too few: Sanctimonious.
-If a civ with an overall Light Alignment has a city with too few darkfriends, that city will be said to be Fanatical. Too many: Uncommitted. 4 or more Darkfriends too many: Corrupted.
-If a civ with an overall Neutral Alignment has a city with too many Darkfriends, that city will be said to be Corrupted. Too few: Sanctimonious.

S3rgeus said:
Ok, this makes sense. The more Fear-like choices correspondingly wouldn't be chosen by Tolerance civs either, right?

Well, not quite. I think, in the case of "Future False Dragon, Dangerous Fortelling those are both situations in which the civ's Tolerant nature is creating problems for the ruler... who might want to deal with them in "special" ways. You know, you can be Tolerant and still playe Evil. In a Fear civ, those things would probably never be happening anyways - no channeler who isn't a food would broadcast foretellings and such things.

S3rgeus said:
I've gone through and marked my suggestions in the master list.

ack! timing of this appears to be terrible. I actually went in and wrote some possible ones out as an EDIT. I don't have the time to compare our two versions and see which I prefer, but I will do so.

S3rgeus said:
After going through all of these, across both yours and mine, -Gold +Light seems to be a pattern in general. It's definitely something that makes sense - flavor wise it's often expensive to do the "morally right" thing. But I think mechanically we want to avoid that. I'll see if I can come up with some that run specifically counter to that next time!

Yeah, I think -Gold +Light seems appropriate, but we might want to go out of our way to vary some of them so there isn't a sense of sameness.... and so shadow players don't end up super rich.

S3rgeus said:
Cool, I think this sounds good too. We want to be careful with the Alignment yields of the results in these cases though - we don't want a player to have make an against-character choice because they can't afford the only one that makes sense for them.

well, should we express the Gold ones as GpT instead?

But, the truth is, this might be exactly what we want. You want to do the right thing... but you can't afford to do it. Thus the dude steals the loaf of bread, right?

On that note, we should try to make a few of these that are really agonizing. Like, stupid example illustrating my point:

Kill a kitten?
A - yes! +10000 gold
B - no! 100 unhappiness

or situations that seemt o have no good option. I know this isn't aSoIaF, but a little bit of having to break character for civ necessity is pretty realistic.

counterpoint · Apr 15, 2015

OK, have a bit right now to look through and offer comments on yields. As before, any ones I don't mention are A-OK to me.

I'll also be comparing my yields for mine vs your yields for mine, if that makes any sense.

Also realizing that we have no Faith ones. I'm sure some of these could lead to Faith.

I note here that we have 38 so far, not including spin-offs of the Hawkwing one.

S3rgeus said:
Unrest in your Lands
Flavor: Dragonsworn are troubling your farmers and villagers. Do something about it.
Choice A: Drive them off (-Gold, +Happiness/Food, +Light)
Choice B: Let them fend for themselves (X Dragonsworn appear near your border)
Choice C: Encourage the Dragonsworn zealots (-Happiness,+Shadow, X + Y Dragonsworn appear near your border)

Here I just wonder if anybody would ever really take option C. Sure, you get Shadow, but it's by far the worst of the choices. Maybe, instead, option B can provide unhappiness, and C can provide merely a bunch of Dragonsworn - or maybe some FD points?

S3rgeus said:
Accused Darkfriend
Flavor: A man has been accused of being a Darkfriend and brought to your court for judgement.
Choice A: Execute him (Minor +Light)
Choice B: Let a jury decide (Minor -Gold, +Light)
Choice C: Free him (+Shadow)

I'm ok with Choice C only if it's supposed to be "Free him before his trial." Letting him go in and of itself might not be evil - he could be innocent. This should be shady.

S3rgeus said:
Darkfriend Escape
Flavor: A man has been accused of being a darkfriend and brought to your court for judgement.
Choice A: Arrange his disappearance to safety abroad (Minor -Gold, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Torture him to learn of his masters (+Shadow)
Choice C: Silence the accusers (-1 pop in <city you own>, +Shadow)
Choice D: Hang him (Minor +Light)

Is A a mistake? You get light for making him escape? But this doesn't seem to indicate he's innocent at all - you even get points for hanging him. I say make that a neutral choice, maybe.

Also, this brings back the whole "doing bad things for good" thing: Choice B. Finding out the names of his DF masters is, overall, a Light-guided action, it's just evil in its process. I understand getting Shadow for it, but there needs to be some Light benefit here. Maybe you get Faith? A Herald (allowing you to root out DFCs?)?

S3rgeus said:
Famine Near <city you own here>
Flavor: People are starving in the outlying villages near <city>
Choice A: Send aid (-Gold, +Food, +Light)
Choice B: Ignore them (-1 Pop in <city>, +Shadow)
Choice C: Incentivize merchants to trade there, in lieu of aid from the crown (Minor -Gold, +Food, Minor +Light)
Choice D: Smugglers near <city> can be convinced to spare some supplies in exchange for leniency (+Food, +Shadow)

I think maybe D should be "minor + Shadow"

S3rgeus said:
Looming Threat
Flavor: The Blight never sleeps and its borders must be constantly policed. You are asked to send soldiers to help keep the Shadow at bay.
Choice A: Refuse (+Shadow, +Happiness)
Choice B: Send soldiers (Sacrifice X power of military units, +Light)
Choice C: Hire mercenaries to go instead of your national army (-Gold, Minor +Light)
Restriction: must have revealed at least one hex of Blight (or, must have met a civ with lands bordering the Blight?)

why the happiness boost for A? Maybe it should be minor? Also, probably a diplo penalty with a civ on the Blight border.

S3rgeus said:
A Tower Divided
Flavor: A Sister from the White Tower has been residing in your capital for some time. Your spies report she has been associating with a suspected Darkfriend.
Choice A: Confront the Sister (-Tower Influence, +Light)
Choice B: Alert the Tower (+Tower Influence, +Light)
Choice C: "Silence" your men who have knowledge of these events (+Gold, +Shadow)
Choice D: Have her arrested (-Tower Influence, +Light)
Restriction: must have met the Tower

I think the results of these options are too similar. Why woudl you ever choose A or D? B is obviously superior, and I don't think this one is so compelling that the roleplaying aspect will cause people to elect not to just choose B.

Maybe B should have a smaller +Light boost, or perhaps *no* plus light boost? As far as A and D, I think they should have something to differentiate them. Maybe the Tower Influence hit for D should be greater, but.... B is tricky. Maybe a mild happiness hit?

S3rgeus said:
Cost of Progress
Flavor: Two inventors both claim to have made improvements to the simple horse-drawn carriage, allowing more goods to be transported by fewer horses. They have petitioned for sponsorship to continue this research further. One of the two is suspiciously more affordable than the other.
Choice A: Cheaper one (you know what they say about gift horses) (Minor -Gold, +Science, +Shadow)
Choice B: More expensive one (-Gold, +Science, Minor +Light)
Choice C: Our carriages work just fine as they are, thank you (Nothing)

Should the more expensive one create more science?

S3rgeus said:
Imported Luxury
Flavor: Your people clamor for <insert resource you don't have>. A merchants' guild have offered to supply it for significantly less than market price, though their practices have been suspect in the past. Foreign governments are willing to trade for a fair price.
Choice A: Propaganda campaign claiming <resource> is immoral and <other resource you have> is better, to convince people they're better off (Minor +Happiness, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Purchase trading rights from foreign diplomat (-Gold, +Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: Purchase from shady merchants (Minor -Gold, +Happiness, +Shadow)
Choice D: Ignore your people's demands - let them learn who is in charge (Minor -Happiness, Minor +Shadow)

I feel like B should be a minor + Light, or likely even totally neutral. I think D needs to be the most Shadowy, or something - otherwise why would you ever take it over A, which is mechanically better in every way, right?

S3rgeus said:
Hero in the Pattern
Artur Hawkwing has been ripped from the World of Dreams and now exists in the Pattern, isolated in Shadowspawn territory.
Option A: Send soldiers to help him (Sacrifice X strength of units, receive Hawkwing military unit, +Light)
Option B: Abandon him to the Shadow (+Shadow)
Option C: Rescue and Elevate Hawkwing in your Government (Minor -Gold and sacrifice X strength of units, gain <martial Governor type> Governor, +Prestige, Major +Light)
Restriction: one global instance, reach Era of Encroaching Blight

hmmm, I understand B being only + Shadow, but I wonder if anybody would ever take it. After all, you can get a powerful unique unit to *fight for the shadow* - that's probably worth taking some Light points. It could be Major + Shadow if you think that would make it more worth it.

OK, for these (mine), I'm including your proposed yields in red, and then mine after it in normal text, pasted from my Edited posts (which were edited, I think, simultaneous to you making your post)

S3rgeus said:
Ter'Angreal Cache
Flavor: Your scholars have discovered an ancient hoard of Items of Power.
Choice A: Send them to the Tower (+Tower influence, +Light) (+ Tower influence, Minor + Light)
Choice B: Take them into your possession (+Culture, +Prestige) (+ Spark for some amount of turns?, - Tower Influence, Minor + Shadow)
Choice C: Sell them (+Gold, Minor +Shadow) (+ Shadow, + Gold)
Choice D: Have them destroyed (+Shadow) (- Tower Influence, Diplo Bonus with Oppression/Fear)

I prefer: A: mine. B: yours, though I think it should have a Tower influence hit. C: I could go either way. your call. D: OK, think I prefer mine. I don't see this necessarily as a shadow action.

S3rgeus said:
Rogue Coven
Flavor: Discovered a sizable group of unregulated female channelers living in your capital.
Choice A: Report them to the Tower (-1 Spark, +Tower influence, +Light) (+ Tower Influence)
Choice B: Leave them alone (+1 Spark, -Tower Influence) (minor - Tower influence, + Light)
Choice C: Conscript them into your army (Gain Wilder/Kin units, Minor +Shadow) (Minor + Shadow, - Tower Influence, gain Wilder units)

A: ooh, yours is interesting. Maybe -1 Spark for X number of turns only, though? Also, I'm thinking maybe this is minor + Light., B: I like mine. C: Mine

S3rgeus said:
Class Warfare
Flavor: Reports indicate that the Nobility of your civilization are harassing and assaulting commoners.
Choice A: Legalize their conduct (-Happiness, +Gold, +Shadow)
Choice B: Criminalize their conduct (-GPT for X turns, +Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: Do nothing (Minor +Shadow)

A: same, B: I like yours, C: same

S3rgeus said:
Slave Trade
Flavor: Your patrols have found a merchant from another land transporting your smallfolk to be sold as slaves!
Choice A: Hang the merchant and free your people. Increase patrols in this area (-Gold and sacrifice X power of units, +1 Pop in <city>, +Happiness, +Light) (+ Happiness, sacrifice one military unit, + Light))
Choice B: Demand a percentage of his profits (+Gold, -Happiness, +Shadow) (+ Gold, + Shadow)
Choice C: Let the merchant go, but free your people (+1 Pop in <city>, Minor +Light) (minor + Light, minor + Happiness)
Choice D: Hang the merchant and sell your people yourself (+Gold, -Happiness, Major +Shadow) (major + Shadow, + Gold)

A: Yours, 'I guess, B: yours, C: yours, D:yours

S3rgeus said:
Four Kings in Shadow
Flavor: Discovered that an entire village is apparently full of Darkfriends
Choice A: Send your troops to burn the place down (-1 Pop in <city>, +Happiness, +Light) (major + Shadow, sacrifice one population point in one city, two free heralds)
Choice B: Order a Magistrate to investigate the matter (-Gold, Major +Light) (+ Light)
Choice C: Leave them alone (-Happiness, +Shadow) (minor + Shadow)
Choice D: Begin funneling them money and weapons (Gain military units, Major +Shadow) ( major + Shadow)

A: Wow, you have this as a Light action, and I have it as Major shadow. Killing an entire villiage is definitely not +Light... but it does achieve a "good" aim, theoretically. What should we do?.
B: Yours, but not Major light, just regular. C: yours, D: yours, but add some - happiness as well, I think.

S3rgeus said:
Unruly House
Flavor: A Rival house is plotting against you and undermining your authority
Choice A: Exile them, removing their lands and titles (+Gold, -Happiness, Very minor +Shadow) (minor - Gold)
Choice B: Offer them a position of leadership in your palace (+Gold, +Culture, Minor +Light) (minor + Light, free governor, - happiness)
Choice C: Publicly shame them (-Unhappiness) (minor + shadow, + happiness, minor - Gold)
Choice D: Extend their lands and wealth to gain their loyalty (-Gold, +Culture, +Pop in <city>, Minor +Shadow) (+ Shadow, - Gold)

A, you have + gold, I have minus. Hmmm.... what shall we do with this? I'm thinking you'd be losing revenues and stuff, but I think you're thinking you'd be seizing theirs.....
B: mine, but I'm not totally sure
C: mine? This should definitely be somewhat shadow.
D: yours, probably

S3rgeus said:
Stasis Box
Flavor: Your scholars have uncovered a stasis box. Unsettling sounds are heard inside
Choice A: open it! (+Science, +Shadow) (minor + shadow, minor - Gold, + culture)
Choice B: don't open it! Send it to the Tower (+Tower Influence, +Light) (minor + Light, + Tower Influence)
Choice C: destroy it (Major +Light) (+ Light)

A: OK, you say science, I say culture.... let's go with yours, I guess
B: same. C: yours

S3rgeus said:
Foreign Preacher
Flavor: A missionary of [Foreign Path] has been aggressively spreading his nonsense in your city.
Choice A: have him thrown in prison (+Faith, -Gold, Minor +Shadow) (minor + shadow, free "missionary")
Choice B: exile him (+Faith, Minor +Shadow) (+ shadow, foreign path in one city decreased), diplo penalty with founder of that path)
Choice C: give him the funds to construct a shrine (+Faith, +Light, +Pressure from [Foreign Path]) (major + Light, - gold, foreign path in once city increased)
Choice D: let him be (+Faith, Minor +Pressure from [Foreign Path]) (minor + Light)
Restriction: Must have founded a religion that still exists in your territory

A: yours, B: yours, but maybe add diplo penalty with founder of path, and cut +Faith (they ALL have it)
C: yours, but I'd say it needs to have a - Gold.
D: let's do Minor + Pressure AND minor + Light. No faith bonus.

S3rgeus said:
Resources Discovered
Flavor: One of your Lords has discovered valuable ore on his estate.
Choice A: good for him! (+Gold from trade routes, +Light) ! (minor + Light)
Choice B: take possession of the land, sell the ore (+Gold, +Culture, -Happiness, Minor +Shadow) (+ Shadow, + Gold, - happiness)
Choice C: demand a significant tax be paid to your treasury (+Gold) (minor + Gold)

A: hmmm, tough. I guess yours is ok, but only if it's less money than B and C.
B: why the culture?
C: yours

S3rgeus said:
Refugees
Flavor: Refugees from the wars in [Neighboring Civ] have come seeking asylum in your capitol
Choice A: allow them to stay, admit them into your city (+1 Pop in <city>, +Light, -Gold) (, + Light,+1 population in one city, diplo penalty with neighboring civ, - food)
Choice B: send them back home ( Minor +Shadow) (diplo bonus with neighboring civ, minor + shadow)
Choice C: kill them (Major +Shadow) (major + Shadow, diplo penalty with neighboring civ, - happiness)
Choice D: allow them to stay, but provide them no provisions, and keep them out of the walls. (+1 Pop in <city>, -Happiness, Very Minor +Light) (minor + Light, minor diplo penalty with neighboring civ, minor - Gold)
Restriction: A nearby civ must be at war with another civ (not you)

A: yours, B: mine? C: maybe major shadow and - happiness?,
D: yours

S3rgeus said:
Retainer is a Noble
Flavor: You have discovered that one of your servants is actually a Noble from a foreign land in disguise!
Choice A: let them continue their deception (+Influence with <foreign land>, +Gold from trade) (minor + Shadow, minor - gold, minor + culture)
Choice B: Come clean, and make them one of your advisers (+Culture, +Light) (minor + Light, free governor, - gold
Choice C: send them home, with apologies (-influence with <foreign land>) (diplo bonus with foreign civ)

A: hmmm, no idea. Yours is fine, but I'd say it's also somewhat Shadow.
B: I could go either way on this one. Yours is fine.
C: see I have bonus, you have penalty. I think we may be thinking of this in opposite ways. Your thinking more like aSpy, right? I'm thinking more like Alliandre. Yours is fine, though - it's not terribly clear either way.

S3rgeus said:
Troubling Origins
Flavor: You have discovered shocking pieces of history of your people
Choice A: bury the truth (+Shadow) (minor + Shadow)
Choice B: let everyone know their true heritage (+Culture, -Happiness, +Light) (+ Light, - happiness)
Choice C: claim these history belongs to a rival populace (+Prestige, +Happiness, +Shadow) (+ Shadow, diplo penalty with random civ)

A: yours is fine. B: yours, but let's go minor + culture, also.... Faith/turn hit?
B: Eh... I don't think I love the prestige thing. I say mine, but with a happiness bonus as well.

S3rgeus said:
Shady Merchants
Flavor: You have learned that some merchants in your cities are breaking their contracts with foreign caravans.
Choice A: have them hanged (-GPT for X turns, +Light) (minor + Light, minor + happiness, minor - Gold)
Choice B: it's none of your business (+GPT for X turns, Minor +Shadow) (minor + shadow)
Choice C: Force the Guild to terminate their membership (+Culture, +Light) (+ Light, minor + happiness), major - Gold)
Choice D: Demand a share of their profits (+Gold, +Shadow) (+ shadow, + gold, minor - happiness)

A: yours is fine, B: mine , C: yours, D: yours

S3rgeus said:
Shady Adviser
Flavor: A mysterious academic has arrived at your court. She is brilliant and offers her services. There is also something strangely unsettling about her.
Choice A: take her into your service (+Science, +Shadow) (+ science, + shadow, - food)
Choice B: send her away (+Light) y (minor + Light)
Choice C: have her killed (Minor +Shadow) (+ shadow)
Choice D: Expose her as a Darkfriend and force her to reveal her secrets (Minor +Science, Minor +Light)

A: I added the food penalty because she's shady, and brings ill luck to your civ, or something. Maybe Faith hit is best?
B: yours. C: yours:
D: ok, sure.

S3rgeus said:
Guild Mistake
Flavor: A Craftsmen Guild has made a terrible mistake, and several workers have died.
Choice A: That's a sad story (-Happiness, +Shadow) (+ Shadow)
Choice B: disband the guild (-GPT for X turns, +Light) (+ Light, - culture)
Choice C: Hire workers to help them complete the project more safely (-Gold, +Light) (+ Light, - Gold)

A: yours, B: um, I think I like mine, as it is more unusual. If it helps, we can brand it "Artisan's Guild" or something, C: same

S3rgeus said:
Darkfriends for Sale
A stranger has discovered the names of supposed darkfriends and will sell then to you for a high price.
A . Pay up (-Gold, Minor +Light) (minor + light, - Gold)
B . 'Question' him, warn the darkfriends (+Shadow) (major + Shadow)
C . No way (Minor +Light) (no change)
D . Throw him in prison (+Light) (+ happiness)

A: same, B: I guess yours is fine, C: mine - why would you ever do A?,
D: hmmm.... yours is fine, but why you ever choose A? Should probably be something else here. Thoughts?

S3rgeus said:
Future False Dragon
A young man is being declared the next dragon by a village, but hadn't personally made a claim.
A . Find him and Gentle him (-Happiness, +Tower influence, Minor +Light) (minor + shadow, diplo penalty with Liberation civs)
B . Convince him he is the Dragon, send him to another civilization. (Diplo hit with <neighbor>, Minor +Shadow) (major + Shadow, - Gold, False Dragon appears near random civ)
C . Ignore him, he has done nothing yet. (+Culture, +Light) (+ Light, + FD points)
Restriction . Tolerance only

A:, eh, yours could be fine, but I'd say it's shadow - the dude hasn't really done anything, right?
B: mine
C: yours, but with the FD points as well

S3rgeus said:
Abandoned Post
An entire company of troops abandoned their duty, and have been caught.
A . Grant them amnesty (+Light) (+ Light, - happiness, gain one military unit)
B . They must hang (Sacrifice X power of units, Minor +Shadow) (+ happiness)
C . To prison for them! (Minor +Light) (+ Light, sacrifice one military unit)

A:, mine, but with minor light B: yours, C: yours

S3rgeus said:
Channeler on the Run
A powerful Wilder has arrived at your palace, on the run for the crime of channeling.
A . Grant her asylum, upsetting your nobles (-Happiness, +Culture, +Light) (+ Light, - happiness)
B. Conscript her into forces (-Tower influence, Gain Wilder unit, Minor +Shadow) (gain one Wilder, - happiness, minor + Shadow)
C. Imprison her (+Happiness) (minor + happiness, minor - gold)
D. Give her to her pursuers (+Tower Influence, +Happiness) (+Shadow, minor + happiness)
Restriction. Fear only

A:eh, yours I guess.
B: we have Tower influence versus happiness. Either could work. Which is better?
C: mine
D: mine
I should clarify that I'm not thinking this is the tower chasing her. This is people that are going to kill her, probably - this is a Fear civ, after all.

S3rgeus said:
Dangerous Foretelling
A channeler claims to have Foretold your downfall.
A . Invite her to your palace. Seek her counsel (+Culture, +Light) (minor + Light - gold)
B . Spread rumors, discrediting her (Minor +Shadow) (minor + Shadow, + happiness, - Gold)
C . Make her disappear (-Gold, +Shadow) (+ Shadow, minor + happiness)
Restriction . Tolerance only

A: yours, but with minor happiness penalty - people believe her stories, B: yours, C: yours

S3rgeus said:
Overworked Scholars
Your Science Minister claims that great progress may be made if your scholars are required to work through the festival season.
A . Great idea (+Science, -Happiness) (+ Science, - happiness, minor - Shadow)
B . Fire your minister (+Happiness)r (minor + Light)
C . Do nothing (Nothing) (no change)

A: mine. this is pretty shadowey, should say minor + shadow,
B: this is minor + light, as well.
C: same

S3rgeus said:
Tax on Belief
Maintenance at shrines is becoming high. Require those making dedications at shrines to part a tax?
A . Yes (-Faith, +Gold) (+ Gold, minor + Shadow)
B . Never (+Faith, +Light)(minor + Light, free "missionary," minor - Gold)
C . Close the shrines (+Gold, +Shadow) Close the shrines (minor + Gold, all Paths influence discreased

A: mine, B: yours, C: yours, but -Faith

S3rgeus said:
Ogier Writer
An Ogier scholar would like to write a history of your rule.
A . Embellish the truth (+Culture, Minor +Prestige, Minor +Shadow) (minor + Shadow, minor + Prestige)
B . Tell only the truth (+Prestige, +Light) (+ Light, minor - happiness)
C . Bribe the Ogier to write as you direct (-Gold, +Culture, +Prestige, +Shadow) (- Gold, + Shadow, + Prestige

A: mine, B: mine. you don't get prestige - in fact, you should probably lose some.
C: yours

S3rgeus said:
Governor in Scandal
One of your Governors is embroiled in a corruption scandal.
A . Force her to resign and replace her (+Happiness, +Light)( minor - Gold)
B . Make the scandal go away, in exchange for some extra revenue (+Gold, +Shadow) (+Shadow, minor + Gold)
C . Imprison her and do not replace her, investigating the city's political situation (Governor in <city> dies?, Major +Light) (+ Light, lose one governor)

A: yours, but also -Gold
B: yours, though they';re quite similar
C: sure to yours

S3rgeus said:
Nym Guardian
Your scholars have found a valuable cache of artifacts, guarded by one if the legendary Nym.
A . Send scholars to study the creature (+Science, +Light) (minor + Shadow, minor - Gold, + Science)
B . Leave the construct in peace (+Culture, Major +Light) (+ Light)
C . Kill the creature and take its artifacts (+Science, +Culture, Major +Shadow) (+ Shadow, + culture)

A: I disagree that this is a light act. It is neutral, at best. I prefer mine, though maybe making it neutral.
B: I'd say Major Light alone
C: I say Major Shadow and +Culture, maybe minor +Science

S3rgeus · Apr 15, 2015

counterpoint said:
it worked somehow! I wouldn't recommend it though.... but it was a six hour flight! How many hours in a row can one read aSoIaF?

Much longer than 6 hours!

Where are you up to?

counterpoint said:
Yeah, you aren't doing skype or g-hangouts for it, though? We always had such trouble making sense of it all when more than one person was using video...

Roll20 has built in video chat, so we use that. It's not quite the same as all being in the same room, but it gets close. We just have to be more patient and not talk over each other. Once two people are talking at once, nobody hears anything!

counterpoint said:
hmmm.... probably almost a year. Maybe a dozen sessions or something. They almost discovered THE SECRET... and the campaign ended.

Oh noes, they were so close! Will they ever actually find out?

We're at 11 sessions now since November, so we've been keeping a pretty good pace! How long would your sessions be? Because of the time difference 4 hours is the longest we could ever get, most are closer to 2.

counterpoint said:
OK. don't hit me, but...

This makes me, once again, not want to call all barbs dragonsworn. I just... don't thin kit makes sense that there's always D-sworn. Even at turn zero - why would there be dragonsworn without false dragons?

I kind of feel like it cheapens the actual dragonsworn - which should appear when an FD appears.

Is it possible to have various "Teams" of barbarians, even if they're mechanically identical? Some called D-sworn, and some called something else... Brigands or Marauder or something, perhaps more encompassing of possible rebels ("Lawless" or something).

It's not a big deal, but it's never sat super well with me to have all of them be D-Sworn. Again, mechanically they can be the same...

Alternatively, if two names isn't possible, I'd be fine with renaming Dragonsworn in general, and saving that flavor for something else - the more appropriate name for the "Stewards of the Dragon" path, a Ghealdanin UU, etc.

Ok, I think I'm more inclined to agree here than I was before. In addition to these problems that we're running into with rebels (which I think is a problem in base CiV too anyway), I've also been thinking recently that having Barbarians be Dragonsworn in the early game (when they're most important) is a bit strange.

I'm just trying to think of how we could most elegantly solve this. There is a hard maximum number of players allowed in any game of CiV and the Barbarians occupy one of those slots. The Shadowspawn, given their importance and the necessity of their separate-ness from the Barbarian civ, are also taking up a slot. So there's actually one less slot available in WoTMod vs BNW at the moment. (Barbarians are player 63, meaning Shadowspawn are player 62.) 22 is the maximum number of major civs. Strictly, the maximum number of minor civs (CSes) is 63 - 22, so 41. Shadowspawn pushes that down to 40.

It seems to me that there should be a Dragonsworn civ, that they should be a separate civ from the Barbarians. That's jumping out at me as the solution that makes the most sense for what we want to do. This would mean that False Dragons and their Dragonsworn lackeys could be owned by their own separate Barbarian-like civilization. They could fight normal Barbarians, major civs, Shadowspawn, or CSes alike.

This would let us rebrand Barbarians, as you've suggested, to something more globally applicable, like "Lawless" or "Brigands."

What do you think? Is it worth us cannibalizing another player slot for the Dragonsworn? We'd be reducing the maximum number of CSes that could appear in a game by 1, but only the largest maps were ever going to encounter that restriction anyway.

counterpoint said:
I just don't see the flavor rationale, as discussed, and I'm not 100% sure the mechanical aspect is good, in terms of the cause and effect relationship existing between channeling and FDs. I don't necessarily think it's bad, I'm just not sure it's good.

I don't have an opinion about the Aes Sedai aspect of this.

I can see why you think the variance is the preferable option, and I think I agree.

But I also think we'll get a lot of variance based on 1) use of saidin units 2) Fear vs Tolerance, and (later) 3) Philosophies. Those can have a huge effect, IMO.

I'm not sure if we'll get the variance we want from just those sources. Philosophies don't come into player until later in the game, so considering the first two. I think the majority of players will Gentle or kill their male channelers somehow relatively quickly. We've created a lot of upsides for doing that and a lot of downsides to keeping them around. They would need to be crazy powerful to balance that out in the general case (which would unbalance the Domination victory). I think we generally want male channelers to be used for actual combat only by the desperate?

So that leaves us with Fear vs Tolerance for the first half of the game. I agree that these should have a big impact (civ wide modifier on one of the policies or maybe on entering the tree of like +/-50%). But now Population is the primary driving force for that time, for most civs. In a large game, False Dragons will tend to come in waves, first the Tolerance civs, then the Fear civs.

Philosophies later do more it more dynamic, with three branching choices that have modifiers in differing amounts in differing directions, and that stack with Fear or Tolerance. I still worry about the start of the game, and the fact that our main FD modifiers are massive decisions that players are likely to have to consider much wider concerns than just FDs for. (Early adoption Philosophies, assuming they work like Ideologies, could push a player one way because it's effectively two free policies.)

I think having a more general action that's frequently yet optionally available to all civilizations that affects False Dragon will keep the False Dragon spawning from becoming quite so synchronized between players. I think the use of female channelers makes flavor sense for this (reasons all before), but if there's another archetypal action that makes sense as a source of FD points, that would be cool too.

An alternative approach would be to have the False Dragon spawn rate be quite high by default, but the players could do things that decrease it instead. Given the disruption a False Dragon causes, I think those "optional" ways of making FDs spawn less frequently would effectively become mandatory for maintaining a stable civilization.

counterpoint said:
I'm fine with either way, though I think happiness should certainly help as well.

Cool, I agree. Let's go with tiered and modifiers on both sides of the happiness scale. I've edited this into the misc summary. It currently says:

-20 or lower Unhappiness: Quadrupled False Dragon rate
Less than 0 Happiness: Doubled False Dragon rate
+10 or more Happiness: 75% False Dragon rate
+20 or more Happiness: Halved False Dragon rate

counterpoint said:
yes, I'm fine with there being some that do literally nothing. Not sure I love it, but I'm fine with it. As things are now, there are only a couple that have literally nothing, so perhaps it is best, for consistency's sake, that we remedy that and give those *something*.

Ok, I'll go through and make some suggestions for the ones that are currently marked as "nothing" next time.

counterpoint said:
I will, but can you clarify exactly how you'd like it to be. At a tech, exactly how many are cured?

I don't think the tech itself should cure any Gentled channelers, just give Aes Sedai the ability to cure specific Gentled channelers. So something like:

After researching <late game technology>, Aes Sedai gain the ability to cure Gentled male channeler units, restoring them to their former strength, via a custom mission.

counterpoint said:
ok, it's in the summary. Here's the current verbage:

-if a civ with an overall Shadow Alignment has a city with too many darkfriends, that city will be said to be Chaotic. Too few: Cowardly. 4 or more Darkfriends too few: Sanctimonious.
-If a civ with an overall Light Alignment has a city with too few darkfriends, that city will be said to be Fanatical. Too many: Uncommitted. 4 or more Darkfriends too many: Corrupted.
-If a civ with an overall Neutral Alignment has a city with too many Darkfriends, that city will be said to be Corrupted. Too few: Sanctimonious.

Awesome, sounds good!

counterpoint said:
Well, not quite. I think, in the case of "Future False Dragon, Dangerous Fortelling those are both situations in which the civ's Tolerant nature is creating problems for the ruler... who might want to deal with them in "special" ways. You know, you can be Tolerant and still playe Evil. In a Fear civ, those things would probably never be happening anyways - no channeler who isn't a food would broadcast foretellings and such things.

Cool, good points! Makes sense to me.

counterpoint said:
Yeah, I think -Gold +Light seems appropriate, but we might want to go out of our way to vary some of them so there isn't a sense of sameness.... and so shadow players don't end up super rich.

Yeah, I don't think having a ton of gold to spare should be a prerequisite of playing super Light. If anything that seems quite counterintuitive.

counterpoint said:
well, should we express the Gold ones as GpT instead?

I've used GPT as a separate cost/bonus in my suggestion, but there's definitely a lot of merit to this. GPT yields for X turns amount to a lump sum the player would have gained (or gains extra), but doesn't require the player to be able to be able to out-guess a random number generator in order to have these choices available.

"I can't afford this Light option because I bought a CS alliance last turn. I would never have done that if I'd known this was coming, but I can't predict when a Thread will pop up." That all seems a bit ridiculous.

How about it? All +/- Gold is actually in GPT? (In which case players can choose to go negative.)

counterpoint said:
But, the truth is, this might be exactly what we want. You want to do the right thing... but you can't afford to do it. Thus the dude steals the loaf of bread, right?

I don't think this restriction creates that kind of moral issue though. It creates a much more mechanical issue for the human player. It will much more often be "I wouldn't have bought that other thing" than "I have no money to do this." Even the latter case is dubious, doing the "right" thing should be hard, but not necessarily expensive. A lot of quintessentially Light characters and actions in WoT were performed by people who had little at the time. It's the kinds of "small acts of kindness" that shore up the Light over a whole population that feel like they should be the more pronounced influencer in how Light a civ is.

counterpoint said:
On that note, we should try to make a few of these that are really agonizing. Like, stupid example illustrating my point:

Kill a kitten?
A - yes! +10000 gold
B - no! 100 unhappiness

or situations that seemt o have no good option. I know this isn't aSoIaF, but a little bit of having to break character for civ necessity is pretty realistic.

I agree that there should be some that are agonizing, but we have to be really careful. If the flavor isn't done right on these, the player will feel duped, not trapped/unsure. They can't look at it and go "All of these are stupid ideas, I'd do <other thing that is in character and totally reasonably possible in the situation> instead" - otherwise it will be super frustrating.

I'm thinking it should be something like the way the Walking Dead games by Telltale approach decision-making. I'm regularly impressed by those games, where you're put into situations where there are *no good choices* or nothing that you can obviously just say "Yeah, I'd do this," and yet don't have a good alternative.

I'm afraid I'm out of time for tonight! I'll come back for new Threads suggestions and responding to/unredding the choice suggestions tomorrow.

S3rgeus · Apr 16, 2015

counterpoint said:
Also realizing that we have no Faith ones. I'm sure some of these could lead to Faith.

Yeah, very few Faith ones. And none that give GP points or buildings yet! Fixes for that incoming!

counterpoint said:
I note here that we have 38 so far, not including spin-offs of the Hawkwing one.

Awesome, we'll get to 100, no problem!

counterpoint said:
Here I just wonder if anybody would ever really take option C. Sure, you get Shadow, but it's by far the worst of the choices. Maybe, instead, option B can provide unhappiness, and C can provide merely a bunch of Dragonsworn - or maybe some FD points?

This is about Unrest in your Lands. I agree, the choices as they are are unbalanced. Unhappiness is a big thing to put on 2/3 choices though. How about Dragonsworn on the third one and FD points on the second one? Or maybe the other way around?

counterpoint said:
I'm ok with Choice C only if it's supposed to be "Free him before his trial." Letting him go in and of itself might not be evil - he could be innocent. This should be shady.

Totally agree. This plays into something that comes up more later, I think we need to be more definite in our situations to confront the player with. We need to tell them the person is a Darkfriend (or not) for sure. Otherwise the Alignment feedback from the choices is entirely arbitrary. A lot of these situations completely reverse Light vs Shadow depending on some detail of guilt/innocence of a party involved.

I've unredded the results for this choice and amended option C to include "before his trial".

counterpoint said:
Is A a mistake? You get light for making him escape? But this doesn't seem to indicate he's innocent at all - you even get points for hanging him. I say make that a neutral choice, maybe.

Also, this brings back the whole "doing bad things for good" thing: Choice B. Finding out the names of his DF masters is, overall, a Light-guided action, it's just evil in its process. I understand getting Shadow for it, but there needs to be some Light benefit here. Maybe you get Faith? A Herald (allowing you to root out DFCs?)?

Yep, A is a mistake!

In terms of doing bad things for good, I put this as Shadow because when you originally suggested it, I believe you intended this option to be a "work with his masters" type situation, but I dropped that detail when I put it into the master list. Clearly that detail completely changes the context of whether the action is Light or Shadow. Which do you prefer? I'm thinking torturing him wouldn't be a Light action anyway, Neutral at best, even if you planned to kill them. Especially since killing them isn't part of the Thread.

counterpoint said:
I think maybe D should be "minor + Shadow"

As long as we go for Gold == GPT, I think this is fine. (Darkfriend Escape) Otherwise we fall into the trap of poor player having to choose Shadow. I agree that flavor wise, hanging him is Shadow-y.

counterpoint said:
why the happiness boost for A? Maybe it should be minor? Also, probably a diplo penalty with a civ on the Blight border.

People are happy that they're not being sent to where they can be killed by Shadowspawn. Minor works for me, there would definitely be dissenting opinions, so it wouldn't be a celebrating in the streets kind of situation.

Diplo penalty with a Blightborder civ makes me think we've got a lot of very strange and specific bonuses/penalties. Not just this one, but across the board. And yet, that variety should inevitably be what makes it compelling. Anywho, edited in.

counterpoint said:
I think the results of these options are too similar. Why woudl you ever choose A or D? B is obviously superior, and I don't think this one is so compelling that the roleplaying aspect will cause people to elect not to just choose B.

Maybe B should have a smaller +Light boost, or perhaps *no* plus light boost? As far as A and D, I think they should have something to differentiate them. Maybe the Tower Influence hit for D should be greater, but.... B is tricky. Maybe a mild happiness hit?

Very good points.

I think we're coming down on Happiness quite hard in a lot of places, and given that that affects the player more than the AI, I think we should err away from it for a while, just so it doesn't become a common feedback element in the Threads.

This is also one of the Threads where the guilt of the party involved (the Sister) completely changes what each of the options represents in terms of morality. If she's a Tower spy working against the Darkfriends, then arresting her is Shadow. If she's a Black Ajah Sister that you've discovered, reporting her to the Tower is big Light bonus. And all other combinations.

Now, an alternative to what I proposed above (make the guilt of the parties involved explicit) would be to emphasize the ambiguity in the final language of the Thread. Something like "Your agents have been unable to find out more, but you must move now if you wish to catch her before she leaves the country." But I'm also assuming that players can see the Alignment worth of each choice, which sort of destroys the ambiguity, and makes it look like we've tripped over ourselves instead.

In terms of the specifics for this Thread, I think we might want to tweak the actual choices - we've ended up with similar yields because the results lead to the same kinds of consequences. (Though after trying to change it, perhaps just modifying A works?)

A Tower Divided
Flavor: A Sister from the White Tower has been residing in your capital for some time. Your spies report she has been associating with a suspected Darkfriend.
Choice A: Blackmail the Sister in exchange for her secrets (+Science, +Shadow)
Choice B: Alert the Tower (+Tower Influence, +Light)
Choice C: "Silence" your men who have knowledge of these events (+Gold, +Shadow)
Choice D: Have her arrested (-Tower Influence, +Prestige, +Light)
Restriction: must have met the Tower

counterpoint said:
Should the more expensive one create more science?

I'm not sure, the idea was that the two accomplish the same technical goal but the cheap one has some Shadow ride-along that corrupts it somehow. Mechnically we could go for less science for that choice, if you prefer.

counterpoint said:
I feel like B should be a minor + Light, or likely even totally neutral. I think D needs to be the most Shadowy, or something - otherwise why would you ever take it over A, which is mechanically better in every way, right?

Agreed, these are unbalanced. I don't think ignoring people is particularly "evil" when compared to option C. The resource is most likely a luxury one, so people not having it isn't going to kill anyone. Maybe D should be Minor +Gold and -Happiness? (So no Alignment) Totally happy with B being minor +Light.

counterpoint said:
hmmm, I understand B being only + Shadow, but I wonder if anybody would ever take it. After all, you can get a powerful unique unit to *fight for the shadow* - that's probably worth taking some Light points. It could be Major + Shadow if you think that would make it more worth it.

I agree, changed!

counterpoint said:
I prefer: A: mine. B: yours, though I think it should have a Tower influence hit. C: I could go either way. your call. D: OK, think I prefer mine. I don't see this necessarily as a shadow action.

Agree on A and B. For both C and D, I think this kind of situation exposes a bit of a problem with Threads like this one. Whether or not some of these actions are Shadow arguably depend on whether the civ seeing it is Light or Shadow.

In either case, destroying ter'angreal you could use feels like it should give you points in the opposite direction to where you lean right now. You're depriving your side of a valuable advantage, therefore helping the other.

We only really get away with Light for A since the Tower "defaults" to a Light Alignment, and B is non-Alignment.

Same for "sell them" - they are presumably being bought by an enemy or someone relatively shady, since it isn't the Tower. (Though that may be too much of a books-timeline view of it.) There's some argument for likely helping Shadow on this one, but it could theoretically help a Light civ either.

counterpoint said:
A: ooh, yours is interesting. Maybe -1 Spark for X number of turns only, though? Also, I'm thinking maybe this is minor + Light., B: I like mine. C: Mine

Cool for A and C. B I'm not sure if this is necessarily a Light action. I also think the +/- Spark across two choices creates an interesting reversal.

counterpoint said:
A: same, B: I like yours, C: same

Done.

counterpoint said:
A: Yours, 'I guess, B: yours, C: yours, D:yours

Done

counterpoint said:
A: Wow, you have this as a Light action, and I have it as Major shadow. Killing an entire villiage is definitely not +Light... but it does achieve a "good" aim, theoretically. What should we do?.
B: Yours, but not Major light, just regular. C: yours, D: yours, but add some - happiness as well, I think.

I think if we drop the word "apparently" in the flavor, A becomes more definitively Light. Taking the literal meaning of "full of Darkfriends" to be "all citizens of this town are Darkfriends" a la Hinderstap. (Which is a name I remembered off the top of my head!)

D is objectively better than C with those changes, right? How about we drop the -Happiness on C and add it to D?

Agree on B.

counterpoint said:
A, you have + gold, I have minus. Hmmm.... what shall we do with this? I'm thinking you'd be losing revenues and stuff, but I think you're thinking you'd be seizing theirs.....
B: mine, but I'm not totally sure
C: mine? This should definitely be somewhat shadow.
D: yours, probably

Re A, yeah, that's what I was thinking. I think going with seizing their lands makes it more distinct from the other choices (two of which cost the player gold). It also means there's one Light and one Shadow choice always available. The fact that you're gaining money from the seizure of assets should definitely be in the final text to make it clear to the player why the bonus happens.

How about just a free Governor for B? It feels like most Light choices have quite high costs.

Agree on C and D.

counterpoint said:
A: OK, you say science, I say culture.... let's go with yours, I guess
B: same. C: yours

Science!

Done.

counterpoint said:
A: yours, B: yours, but maybe add diplo penalty with founder of path, and cut +Faith (they ALL have it)
C: yours, but I'd say it needs to have a - Gold.
D: let's do Minor + Pressure AND minor + Light. No faith bonus.

Agree on A, C, and D. That change to B would make it just (+Shadow, -Diplo with founder), I feel like there should be some kind of bonus to make that worth taking, even if just Minor +Faith?

counterpoint said:
A: hmmm, tough. I guess yours is ok, but only if it's less money than B and C.
B: why the culture?
C: yours

I think A's reward should be more profitable if you have tons of trade routes, but less if you have few. (It should say international trade routes. Edited.)

For B, I felt like there should be more to it that just Gold, but I agree Culture is a bit nonsensical. Anything else? We could give the player some Iron or something? (Then the Thread should probably say that Iron was found.)

counterpoint said:
A: yours, B: mine? C: maybe major shadow and - happiness?,
D: yours

For B, would sending them back be a diplo bonus? Seems like that should be a mild penalty, the civ isn't in a position where they want to deal with them right now, right?

For C I still think we're being quite tough on happiness (particularly for Shadow players).

counterpoint said:
A: hmmm, no idea. Yours is fine, but I'd say it's also somewhat Shadow.
B: I could go either way on this one. Yours is fine.
C: see I have bonus, you have penalty. I think we may be thinking of this in opposite ways. Your thinking more like aSpy, right? I'm thinking more like Alliandre. Yours is fine, though - it's not terribly clear either way.

Right, I was definitely thinking more like a spy. That would make A a non-moral choice, but more a strategic one (feeding the enemy false intel). This Thread didn't make that much sense to me first time through, but it definitely does more so now. How would be phrase this so that a player would definitely make the Alliandre-like connection?

counterpoint said:
A: yours is fine. B: yours, but let's go minor + culture, also.... Faith/turn hit?
B: Eh... I don't think I love the prestige thing. I say mine, but with a happiness bonus as well.

For B, faith/turn hit instead of -Happiness, or as well? I'd be happy (ha!) to swap them.

For C I think Prestige makes a lot of sense. It's the representation of other civs wanting to be more like your civ. If they think their own people have a dark past, it seems like that would cause them to want to be more like their neighbors instead?

counterpoint said:
A: yours is fine, B: mine , C: yours, D: yours

Done.

counterpoint said:
A: I added the food penalty because she's shady, and brings ill luck to your civ, or something. Maybe Faith hit is best?
B: yours. C: yours:
D: ok, sure.

Faith hit sounds good. All edited in.

counterpoint said:
A: yours, B: um, I think I like mine, as it is more unusual. If it helps, we can brand it "Artisan's Guild" or something, C: same

Done

counterpoint said:
A: same, B: I guess yours is fine, C: mine - why would you ever do A?,
D: hmmm.... yours is fine, but why you ever choose A? Should probably be something else here. Thoughts?

How about we swap the Alignments of A and D? So A is (-Gold, +Light) and D is (Minor +Light)? Agree on B and C.

counterpoint said:
A:, eh, yours could be fine, but I'd say it's shadow - the dude hasn't really done anything, right?
B: mine
C: yours, but with the FD points as well

Agree on B and C.

Maybe A could be Neutral? There's still the whole madness he's going to go through and likely hurt people, especially if he's got a group of people who think he's some kind of savior.

counterpoint said:
A:, mine, but with minor light B: yours, C: yours

Done.

counterpoint said:
A:eh, yours I guess.
B: we have Tower influence versus happiness. Either could work. Which is better?
C: mine
D: mine
I should clarify that I'm not thinking this is the tower chasing her. This is people that are going to kill her, probably - this is a Fear civ, after all.

For B, I think Tower influence, since -Happiness will usually be a bigger penalty.

I originally thought it was the Tower chasing her, as you've brought up! I changed the flavor to say "on the run from a mob" to make that more clear - that ok? Agree on A, C, and D.

counterpoint said:
A: yours, but with minor happiness penalty - people believe her stories, B: yours, C: yours

Done

counterpoint said:
A: mine. this is pretty shadowey, should say minor + shadow,
B: this is minor + light, as well.
C: same

Done

counterpoint said:
A: mine, B: yours, C: yours, but -Faith

I'm not sure about Shadow points for A. That seems more like a fiscal decision than a moral one. Taking the fiscal hit and standing up for people's right to those shrines for free I can see as Light and closing them (removing people's access permanently) I can see as Shadow. But offsetting the costs of making the shrines available doesn't seem evil. I'm wondering about the phrasing of the second sentence though - this is the shrines paying a portion of the money they receive as a tax, right?

counterpoint said:
A: mine, B: mine. you don't get prestige - in fact, you should probably lose some.
C: yours

For A and B, I was thinking the embellishments would be relatively transparent to external viewers. Helps your opinion at home, so +Culture, and marginal good will abroad so Minor +Prestige. No embellishments mean people don't like it at home, so no Culture, but others do like it abroad, so +Prestige.

It also makes all of the choices relatively complementary - they all help in some ways, but the player needs to decide what they're willing to do based on morals + results.

counterpoint said:
A: yours, but also -Gold
B: yours, though they';re quite similar
C: sure to yours

Done

counterpoint said:
A: I disagree that this is a light act. It is neutral, at best. I prefer mine, though maybe making it neutral.
B: I'd say Major Light alone
C: I say Major Shadow and +Culture, maybe minor +Science

Agree on B and C. A being Light or Shadow depends entirely on how the research is characterized. If it's an invasive kind of "destroying his habitat" kind of thing, then that's Shadow. But if it's a "learn more to conserve his species" kind of thing, then that's Light.

Which Alignment is lacking more in Science objectives? The flavor works either way, so I think we should pick the one that we like mechanically and have the full text explain accordingly.

Phew, that was a lot of editing! I'm out of time again, so new Threads will have to wait until tomorrow.

counterpoint · Apr 17, 2015

Sorry for the radio silence. Been a bit sick. Today I'm still not well enough to do *real* work - but well enough for a post!

S3rgeus said:
Much longer than 6 hours! Where are you up to?

I'm in the middle of the book where bad things happen to everybody. Oh, more specifics? I'm around 200 pages into aFfC.

S3rgeus said:
Roll20 has built in video chat, so we use that. It's not quite the same as all being in the same room, but it gets close. We just have to be more patient and not talk over each other. Once two people are talking at once, nobody hears anything!

Yeah, that was the problem we had. It was a sci-fi game, and the Captain of the ship was the guy on Skype. Was really tricky to hear his "orders" when nobody could hear him.

At this point the campaigns probably dead. I'll probably explain The Secret to people over beers one day.

I miss RPing though!

As far as session lengths... probably around the 4-5 hour mark. But they were really infrequent - once or twice per month. Gone are the college-era days of all-day games once per week.

S3rgeus said:
Ok, I think I'm more inclined to agree here than I was before. In addition to these problems that we're running into with rebels (which I think is a problem in base CiV too anyway), I've also been thinking recently that having Barbarians be Dragonsworn in the early game (when they're most important) is a bit strange.

I'm just trying to think of how we could most elegantly solve this. There is a hard maximum number of players allowed in any game of CiV and the Barbarians occupy one of those slots. The Shadowspawn, given their importance and the necessity of their separate-ness from the Barbarian civ, are also taking up a slot. So there's actually one less slot available in WoTMod vs BNW at the moment. (Barbarians are player 63, meaning Shadowspawn are player 62.) 22 is the maximum number of major civs. Strictly, the maximum number of minor civs (CSes) is 63 - 22, so 41. Shadowspawn pushes that down to 40.

It seems to me that there should be a Dragonsworn civ, that they should be a separate civ from the Barbarians. That's jumping out at me as the solution that makes the most sense for what we want to do. This would mean that False Dragons and their Dragonsworn lackeys could be owned by their own separate Barbarian-like civilization. They could fight normal Barbarians, major civs, Shadowspawn, or CSes alike.

This would let us rebrand Barbarians, as you've suggested, to something more globally applicable, like "Lawless" or "Brigands."

What do you think? Is it worth us cannibalizing another player slot for the Dragonsworn? We'd be reducing the maximum number of CSes that could appear in a game by 1, but only the largest maps were ever going to encounter that restriction anyway.

Coming back from what you are suggesting here, it looks like we have two options for changes:

1) Re-brand the DSworn in such a way that they are generic and all-encompassing.
2) Separate the DSworn from the Barbs.

You spoke at great lengths about option 2, and that's probably the best bet. But, we could instead consider calling *nobody* Dragonsworn and simply using the notification to provide the flavor. Like, we call them ALL brigands, and the only real Dragonsworn aspect to the DSworn moments will be due to 1) their proximity near a FD, and 2) Our notification, e.g. "Mazrim Taim has declared himself the Dragon, and has raised an army of Dragonsworn" and just leave it at that.

This isn't pretty, but it also might be good enough. I'm not sure its so immersion-breaking for people to highlight the unit and see that, in fact, it's just a Brigand, and not a Dragonsworn. Plus, again, that reserves the "Dragonsworn" term for use elsewhere.

Additionally, is there a *mechanical* reason why separating helps us? Will there be some policies/buildings/units that have mechanics that work with one and not the other? If so, then we should definitely separate them, but if not, it might be overkill to have there be two separate "civs." But if they have different behavior (like guarding the FD), units, etc. then I'm sure separating them would make your life easier.

That said, the Separation option probably works too. I don't think the loss of CS number 41 will be felt all that much. Oh, and don't forget that we're already taking a CS for the Tower, anyways....

What should we name the barbs, then? Lawless" Brigands? Bandits? Renegades? Outlaws?

S3rgeus said:
I'm not sure if we'll get the variance we want from just those sources. Philosophies don't come into player until later in the game, so considering the first two. I think the majority of players will Gentle or kill their male channelers somehow relatively quickly. We've created a lot of upsides for doing that and a lot of downsides to keeping them around. They would need to be crazy powerful to balance that out in the general case (which would unbalance the Domination victory). I think we generally want male channelers to be used for actual combat only by the desperate?

So that leaves us with Fear vs Tolerance for the first half of the game. I agree that these should have a big impact (civ wide modifier on one of the policies or maybe on entering the tree of like +/-50%). But now Population is the primary driving force for that time, for most civs. In a large game, False Dragons will tend to come in waves, first the Tolerance civs, then the Fear civs.

Philosophies later do more it more dynamic, with three branching choices that have modifiers in differing amounts in differing directions, and that stack with Fear or Tolerance. I still worry about the start of the game, and the fact that our main FD modifiers are massive decisions that players are likely to have to consider much wider concerns than just FDs for. (Early adoption Philosophies, assuming they work like Ideologies, could push a player one way because it's effectively two free policies.)

I think having a more general action that's frequently yet optionally available to all civilizations that affects False Dragon will keep the False Dragon spawning from becoming quite so synchronized between players. I think the use of female channelers makes flavor sense for this (reasons all before), but if there's another archetypal action that makes sense as a source of FD points, that would be cool too.

An alternative approach would be to have the False Dragon spawn rate be quite high by default, but the players could do things that decrease it instead. Given the disruption a False Dragon causes, I think those "optional" ways of making FDs spawn less frequently would effectively become mandatory for maintaining a stable civilization.

Alright, I could be fine with this, in general. I think making the FD rate more unpredictable - or varied, I guess - is better than making it happen in waves as you say.

I will say, though, that accumulating an FD point every time a female channeler makes an action seems way too much - especially if every male channeler is only generating a point every turn. Should it be something like you get a clump of points when you produce a female channeler? That makes a little more sense to me.

In any case, I'm thinking that this is what affects FD rate, listed in order from most dramatic effect to least dramatic effect. These are negotiable, of course.

1) Philosophy
2) Population
3) Unhappiness
4) Social Policy (Fear vs Tolerance or specific policies)
5) Use/existence of male channelers
6) Wonders
7) Use/Production of female channelers

What's your ranking? Certainly some of these could be slid up or down a rank or two.

you are right that we want to, in general, discourage the use of male channelers.

S3rgeus said:
Cool, I agree. Let's go with tiered and modifiers on both sides of the happiness scale. I've edited this into the misc summary. It currently says:

-20 or lower Unhappiness: Quadrupled False Dragon rate

Less than 0 Happiness: Doubled False Dragon rate

+10 or more Happiness: 75% False Dragon rate

+20 or more Happiness: Halved False Dragon rate

ok, this has the potential, of course, to make happiness the #1 source of FD points, actually. Maybe that's fine.

Before we decide this for sure, consider the alternative - using a flat amount of points generated per turn because of unhappiness (or reduced due to happiness).

Take an Oppressive, Fearful civ that uses no male channelers - very low FD point generation. Say they are profoundly unhappy. That unhappiness would effect their FD generation very little - like 4 points per turn up to 16. Compare that to a Tolerant, Liberated civ that uses plenty of males - very high rate. If they are unhappy, we could be talking something like 100 points per turn or something, up from 25

Is that how we want it to work? In these cases, the happiness ends up a minor factor in the first - 12 points - while in the second, it's tremendous - 75. Maybe that's ok, but it makes happiness a much more important mechanical consideration for civs that use a lot of channelers, which is a balancing aspect I'm not sure we're ready for in general.

The alternative is to simply make your happiness generate or subtract FD points per turn. Or, instead, simply tone down the multipliers a bit.

S3rgeus said:
I don't think the tech itself should cure any Gentled channelers, just give Aes Sedai the ability to cure specific Gentled channelers. So something like:

After researching <late game technology>, Aes Sedai gain the ability to cure Gentled male channeler units, restoring them to their former strength, via a custom mission.

got it, right. inputted!

EDIT:
I just went through and "updated" the Channeling summary, which mostly involved linking to the other summaries. There are a few things in there that are red now, but they're mostly things we don't need to worry about yet.

On point, though, an older version of it mentioned that Gentling can be cured by AS AND Asha'man. Should this be true?

S3rgeus said:
I've used GPT as a separate cost/bonus in my suggestion, but there's definitely a lot of merit to this. GPT yields for X turns amount to a lump sum the player would have gained (or gains extra), but doesn't require the player to be able to be able to out-guess a random number generator in order to have these choices available.

"I can't afford this Light option because I bought a CS alliance last turn. I would never have done that if I'd known this was coming, but I can't predict when a Thread will pop up." That all seems a bit ridiculous.

How about it? All +/- Gold is actually in GPT? (In which case players can choose to go negative.)

While I'll miss the lump-sum option here, it may make sense to simply convert them all to GPT.

Or, maybe we go half-way - income can be Flat sum OR GPT, but penalties must only be GPT? Certainly some of the earnings ones seem to make little sense as GPT, but I think most of the penalties could be phrased in a way that makes it feel right.

This might be something to consider following for all of our Threads - taking AWAY flat science makes little sense, but SPT would be fine, for example.

S3rgeus said:
I agree that there should be some that are agonizing, but we have to be really careful. If the flavor isn't done right on these, the player will feel duped, not trapped/unsure. They can't look at it and go "All of these are stupid ideas, I'd do <other thing that is in character and totally reasonably possible in the situation> instead" - otherwise it will be super frustrating.

I'm thinking it should be something like the way the Walking Dead games by Telltale approach decision-making. I'm regularly impressed by those games, where you're put into situations where there are *no good choices* or nothing that you can obviously just say "Yeah, I'd do this," and yet don't have a good alternative.

I agree with this sentiment. Hard decisions must not equal - unfair decisions.

counterpoint · Apr 17, 2015

S3rgeus said:
This is about Unrest in your Lands. I agree, the choices as they are are unbalanced. Unhappiness is a big thing to put on 2/3 choices though. How about Dragonsworn on the third one and FD points on the second one? Or maybe the other way around?

Unrest in Your Lands
FD points for the seonc, and DSworn for the 3rd.

S3rgeus said:
Totally agree. This plays into something that comes up more later, I think we need to be more definite in our situations to confront the player with. We need to tell them the person is a Darkfriend (or not) for sure. Otherwise the Alignment feedback from the choices is entirely arbitrary. A lot of these situations completely reverse Light vs Shadow depending on some detail of guilt/innocence of a party involved.

I've unredded the results for this choice and amended option C to include "before his trial".

Good. I'll comment on this Darkfriend innocence thing later, when you bring it up in more detail.

S3rgeus said:
In terms of doing bad things for good, I put this as Shadow because when you originally suggested it, I believe you intended this option to be a "work with his masters" type situation, but I dropped that detail when I put it into the master list. Clearly that detail completely changes the context of whether the action is Light or Shadow. Which do you prefer? I'm thinking torturing him wouldn't be a Light action anyway, Neutral at best, even if you planned to kill them. Especially since killing them isn't part of the Thread.

Accused Darkfriend
I was thinking it's to find and kill his masters (which you are right, isn't part of this), an act with a "good" aim that is accomplished through evil.... not sure how to do this. Probably should be eithe rShadow or Neutral at best... but should have some additional component that reflects its "goodness", right?

S3rgeus said:
As long as we go for Gold == GPT, I think this is fine. (Darkfriend Escape) Otherwise we fall into the trap of poor player having to choose Shadow. I agree that flavor wise, hanging him is Shadow-y.

Darkfriend Escape. Sounds good.

S3rgeus said:
People are happy that they're not being sent to where they can be killed by Shadowspawn. Minor works for me, there would definitely be dissenting opinions, so it wouldn't be a celebrating in the streets kind of situation.

Diplo penalty with a Blightborder civ makes me think we've got a lot of very strange and specific bonuses/penalties. Not just this one, but across the board. And yet, that variety should inevitably be what makes it compelling. Anywho, edited in.

Looming Threat
Minor it is. As far as the blightborder thing.... I could go either way on this.

S3rgeus said:
I think we're coming down on Happiness quite hard in a lot of places, and given that that affects the player more than the AI, I think we should err away from it for a while, just so it doesn't become a common feedback element in the Threads.

OK. You're right. Let's try to back off on that.

S3rgeus said:
This is also one of the Threads where the guilt of the party involved (the Sister) completely changes what each of the options represents in terms of morality. If she's a Tower spy working against the Darkfriends, then arresting her is Shadow. If she's a Black Ajah Sister that you've discovered, reporting her to the Tower is big Light bonus. And all other combinations.

Now, an alternative to what I proposed above (make the guilt of the parties involved explicit) would be to emphasize the ambiguity in the final language of the Thread. Something like "Your agents have been unable to find out more, but you must move now if you wish to catch her before she leaves the country." But I'm also assuming that players can see the Alignment worth of each choice, which sort of destroys the ambiguity, and makes it look like we've tripped over ourselves instead.

OK, I definitely and solidly come down on the side of leaving it ambiguous. We can have a *few* threads where someobody's guilt (or innocence!) is known - that provides some interesting political situations, financial ones, tower diplomacy ones, etc.) but I think the spirit of most of what we're doing is best found in keeping it ambiguous.

Part of the drama of the books is the never-knowing-who's-bad thing. In our mod, of course, the chickens won't ever come home to roost, though - i.e., freeing someone who turns out to be guilty of being a darkfriend won't come back to haunt you later. But still, I think these threads are more about determining your actions, and the kind of ruler you are that anything else. So what if there's an innocent sister who has been hanged? That's merely one "unit" in a game that spans millenia. What's important is that you were willing to hang her, without proof

I'd say let's be very clear about what you *do* know. Sometimes you know nothing, and it's just finger pointing. Sometimes we can say that your counselors are convinced of the person's innocence, or something like that. Sometimes, it seems the person is totally guilty, but based on who they are (a foreign noble or a Sister) there is extreme political pressure to let them go. I think *these* are the kinds of choices we're looking for. In most of these cases, the guilt of the person is probably ultimately unknown, but what's important is what the player does with this information.

Also, how the heck is the AI going to handle these threads?

S3rgeus said:
In terms of the specifics for this Thread, I think we might want to tweak the actual choices - we've ended up with similar yields because the results lead to the same kinds of consequences. (Though after trying to change it, perhaps just modifying A works?)

A Tower Divided
Flavor: A Sister from the White Tower has been residing in your capital for some time. Your spies report she has been associating with a suspected Darkfriend.
Choice A: Blackmail the Sister in exchange for her secrets (+Science, +Shadow)
Choice B: Alert the Tower (+Tower Influence, +Light)
Choice C: "Silence" your men who have knowledge of these events (+Gold, +Shadow)
Choice D: Have her arrested (-Tower Influence, +Prestige, +Light)
Restriction: must have met the Tower

A Tower Divided
Why would Silencing your men generate gold? Wouldn't it cost gold?

This is an example where we'd need to be really clear about the situation. Why is arresting her a Light act? She "associates" with Darkfriends, does she? How can we be sure she isn't trying to trap them, extract information, or Sister in other ways?

I think the truth is, specifically this thread is really tricky because Sisters essentially have diplomatic immunity. That's why it makes less sense as a light action. Perhaps we rephrase D?

Now, an interesting thread might be a Sister obviously and flagrantly violating specific laws. Like, hurting people or stealing. You have proof, but do you have the jurisdiction to arrest her?

S3rgeus said:
I'm not sure, the idea was that the two accomplish the same technical goal but the cheap one has some Shadow ride-along that corrupts it somehow. Mechnically we could go for less science for that choice, if you prefer.

Cost of Progress
OK, I see you rationale. I was kind of missing the point.

S3rgeus said:
Agreed, these are unbalanced. I don't think ignoring people is particularly "evil" when compared to option C. The resource is most likely a luxury one, so people not having it isn't going to kill anyone. Maybe D should be Minor +Gold and -Happiness? (So no Alignment) Totally happy with B being minor +Light.

Imported Luxury
ok. let's go with your suggestions.

S3rgeus said:
Agree on A and B. For both C and D, I think this kind of situation exposes a bit of a problem with Threads like this one. Whether or not some of these actions are Shadow arguably depend on whether the civ seeing it is Light or Shadow.

In either case, destroying ter'angreal you could use feels like it should give you points in the opposite direction to where you lean right now. You're depriving your side of a valuable advantage, therefore helping the other.

We only really get away with Light for A since the Tower "defaults" to a Light Alignment, and B is non-Alignment.

Same for "sell them" - they are presumably being bought by an enemy or someone relatively shady, since it isn't the Tower. (Though that may be too much of a books-timeline view of it.) There's some argument for likely helping Shadow on this one, but it could theoretically help a Light civ either.

Ter'Angreal Cache
I think the shadowy nature of Selling them comes from the fact that you don't really have the "right" to sell them in the first place... and you have no real way of knowing where they'll end up .

As far as destroying them, I can see that it's pretty ambiguous as to whether it's light or shadow. I was thinking it's sort of a "prevent them from falling into the wrong hands," but it's also something like "prevent them from helping people..."

Why don't we clarify this, and have them be something specifically scary and/or dangerous? Not just Ter'angreals, but Ter'angreal weapons or something liek that - maybe even Power Wrought Weapons. Then we can take the "destroy them" angle very clearly in the vein of "this is for the good of humanity," which would certainly be a light action.

S3rgeus said:
Cool for A and C. B I'm not sure if this is necessarily a Light action. I also think the +/- Spark across two choices creates an interesting reversal.

Rogue Coven
I can see the appeal of the Spark duality, but we might just have C be +1 Spark instead of +1 Wilder.

I like B as a Light action because you're leaving people to their own devices. They will probably be arrested or something from the tower, if caught. The books seem to paint these sorts of unlicensed channeler groups as a good thing and not to be ruined... though of course, Egwene then "incorporates" them into the Tower fold (is there a way to bring that whole thing in somewhere?)

S3rgeus said:
I think if we drop the word "apparently" in the flavor, A becomes more definitively Light. Taking the literal meaning of "full of Darkfriends" to be "all citizens of this town are Darkfriends" a la Hinderstap. (Which is a name I remembered off the top of my head!)

D is objectively better than C with those changes, right? How about we drop the -Happiness on C and add it to D?

Agree on B.

Four Kings in Shadow
So, I still don't think A would ever be a light action, "apparently" or not. This is not a battalion of Shadow troops. You're not supposed to just go and kill tons of people. They should be arrested, tried, etc. This kind of thing ain't good karma, bro. Definitely shadow.

But yeah, can drop the -happiness from A.

Nah, Hinderstap isn't full of DFs! You're Thinking of "Four Kings" (cited in my thread name above), and even then, 4K isn't necessarily literally ALL DFs.

Hinderstap is the one that was caught in that weird time loop, where they'd all kill each other at night and then wake up the next morning alive. It was a bubble of evil, or something - remember that Mat opened a gateway (or had someone do it, obviously) to some battle during the LB so they could like die and then fight again the next day?)

Is there a way to bring in Hindy or other Bubble situations into Threads? Pretty neat flava.

S3rgeus said:
Re A, yeah, that's what I was thinking. I think going with seizing their lands makes it more distinct from the other choices (two of which cost the player gold). It also means there's one Light and one Shadow choice always available. The fact that you're gaining money from the seizure of assets should definitely be in the final text to make it clear to the player why the bonus happens.

How about just a free Governor for B? It feels like most Light choices have quite high costs.

Agree on C and D.

Unruly House
Happy to go in either direction, providing we balance it right and flavor it right.

S3rgeus said:
Agree on A, C, and D. That change to B would make it just (+Shadow, -Diplo with founder), I feel like there should be some kind of bonus to make that worth taking, even if just Minor +Faith?

Foreign Preacher
I think this is a great situation where the "right thing to do" is by far the worst for you. In civ, there's very few reasons to want a foreign religion in your cities. Here you are actively encouraging it, because it is somewhat Just and nice. I'm fine with a hefty Light bonus being essentially the only benefit. It is the only choice here that offers much light, right? minor faith could be ok, if you feel like it's necessarily.

S3rgeus said:
I think A's reward should be more profitable if you have tons of trade routes, but less if you have few. (It should say international trade routes. Edited.)

For B, I felt like there should be more to it that just Gold, but I agree Culture is a bit nonsensical. Anything else? We could give the player some Iron or something? (Then the Thread should probably say that Iron was found.)

Resources Dscovered
I'm fine with both of these, though I think it should be [Era Relevant Strategic Resource] instead of iron, specifically.

S3rgeus said:
For B, would sending them back be a diplo bonus? Seems like that should be a mild penalty, the civ isn't in a position where they want to deal with them right now, right?

For C I still think we're being quite tough on happiness (particularly for Shadow players).

Refugees
Yeah, I can see how it would be a penalty. Actually, maybe we just make diplo a non-factor here?

I'm fine with your C.

S3rgeus said:
Right, I was definitely thinking more like a spy. That would make A a non-moral choice, but more a strategic one (feeding the enemy false intel). This Thread didn't make that much sense to me first time through, but it definitely does more so now. How would be phrase this so that a player would definitely make the Alliandre-like connection?

Retainer is a Noble
I think we can phrase it in a way that states the noble is hiding in order to escape threats on their life, or they are from a fallen kingdom, or something like that. I don't remember exactly why Alliandre did what she did.

Maybe there's a restriction that "One civ must have been eliminated" or "One Original Capital must be occupied" or something.

In any case, I'd say it comes down to the fact that keeping them around is highly inappropriate, but somewhat merciful, and perhaps useful.

S3rgeus said:
For B, faith/turn hit instead of -Happiness, or as well? I'd be happy (ha!) to swap them.

For C I think Prestige makes a lot of sense. It's the representation of other civs wanting to be more like your civ. If they think their own people have a dark past, it seems like that would cause them to want to be more like their neighbors instead?

Troubling Origins
I know you aren't in love with all the happiness penalties, but I think this is one case where they are justified. The Aiel practically had a rebellion on their hands when the Secret came out. Faith per turn could be good too, though.

I sort of see what you're saying about Prestige. It's a bit of an indirect relationship, though. The truth is, it would give THEM a happiness penalty. Is there any other way we can approximate that (without literally doing it) within your own civ? If Prestige is the only way, then so be it.

S3rgeus said:
How about we swap the Alignments of A and D? So A is (-Gold, +Light) and D is (Minor +Light)? Agree on B and C.

Darkfriends for Sale
sure, it's better mechanically. Somewhat weird flavorfully, but well within the range of acceptability.

S3rgeus said:
Agree on B and C.

Maybe A could be Neutral? There's still the whole madness he's going to go through and likely hurt people, especially if he's got a group of people who think he's some kind of savior.

Future False Dragon
yeah, neutral is fine.

S3rgeus said:
For B, I think Tower influence, since -Happiness will usually be a bigger penalty.

I originally thought it was the Tower chasing her, as you've brought up! I changed the flavor to say "on the run from a mob" to make that more clear - that ok? Agree on A, C, and D.

Channeler on the Run
ok, good.

S3rgeus said:
I'm not sure about Shadow points for A. That seems more like a fiscal decision than a moral one. Taking the fiscal hit and standing up for people's right to those shrines for free I can see as Light and closing them (removing people's access permanently) I can see as Shadow. But offsetting the costs of making the shrines available doesn't seem evil. I'm wondering about the phrasing of the second sentence though - this is the shrines paying a portion of the money they receive as a tax, right?

Tax on Belief
Well, the idea of A being sort of shadow comes from 20th and 21st century notions of freedom or religion and stuff like that. Possibly anarchistic, but... in general WoT's sense of morality and such is somewhat anarchistic, in some ways, so I'm ok with it.

Yeah, I don't really see closing the shrines as necessarily Shadow, myself. Maybe minorly. The truth is, any Evil Civilization would absolutley want a healthy religion to control their populace. Closing the shrines would perhaps cause a big faith hit (not listed here, stupidly), but I'm not sure it's shadow.

Profiting off their worship, though.. that's more evil.

Maybe it's just a rephrase that's needed? As far as my initial conception, yes, it was a tax off of donations and such, or something. I originally wanted it to instead simply be more like "Your shrines are popular, one of your advisors has recommended you impose a tax to gain revenue blah blah blah" because that makes a lot of sense for A and B. The problem is, that flavor leaves very little room for a C (closing) option, as there's really no benefit, aside from some Athiestic aim (it would be weird if we made closing the shrines provide +Science or something).

S3rgeus said:
For A and B, I was thinking the embellishments would be relatively transparent to external viewers. Helps your opinion at home, so +Culture, and marginal good will abroad so Minor +Prestige. No embellishments mean people don't like it at home, so no Culture, but others do like it abroad, so +Prestige.

It also makes all of the choices relatively complementary - they all help in some ways, but the player needs to decide what they're willing to do based on morals + results.

Ogier Writer
I see what you're saying, re: B. That makes a lot of sense, but I don't like it, mechanically, because Prestige and Culture are so interlinked.

Also, why do the embellishments need to be transparent? This is an Ogier writer after all. I'd say objectively, the lie helps your global image... it's just a bad thing to do.

S3rgeus said:
Agree on B and C. A being Light or Shadow depends entirely on how the research is characterized. If it's an invasive kind of "destroying his habitat" kind of thing, then that's Shadow. But if it's a "learn more to conserve his species" kind of thing, then that's Light.

Which Alignment is lacking more in Science objectives? The flavor works either way, so I think we should pick the one that we like mechanically and have the full text explain accordingly.

Nym Guardian
I was thinking its sort of invasive. I mean, this guy is supposed to sit there for all eternity guarding stuff, after all. Definitely not conservationist research. More like "learn how he works to make more constructs" and stuff, which is probably not fun for him. Even if it's not hurting him, it probably involves taking him from the place, etc.

S3rgeus · Apr 17, 2015

counterpoint said:
Sorry for the radio silence. Been a bit sick. Today I'm still not well enough to do *real* work - but well enough for a post!

No worries, feel better soon!

counterpoint said:
I'm in the middle of the book where bad things happen to everybody. Oh, more specifics? I'm around 200 pages into aFfC.

Nice one, good stuff ahead! Book 5 was my favorite. I don't think my favorite character has even appeared yet in A Feast for Crows.

counterpoint said:
Yeah, that was the problem we had. It was a sci-fi game, and the Captain of the ship was the guy on Skype. Was really tricky to hear his "orders" when nobody could hear him.

At this point the campaigns probably dead. I'll probably explain The Secret to people over beers one day.

I miss RPing though!

As far as session lengths... probably around the 4-5 hour mark. But they were really infrequent - once or twice per month. Gone are the college-era days of all-day games once per week.

We try to get most weeks in, but in practice it's usually 3/4 or 2/4 weeks in a month. I've been quite impressed with the roll20 chat because we haven't had much dropping or difficulty hearing (bar the obvious occasions when people's internet actually cuts out momentarily).

counterpoint said:
Coming back from what you are suggesting here, it looks like we have two options for changes:

1) Re-brand the DSworn in such a way that they are generic and all-encompassing.
2) Separate the DSworn from the Barbs.

You spoke at great lengths about option 2, and that's probably the best bet. But, we could instead consider calling *nobody* Dragonsworn and simply using the notification to provide the flavor. Like, we call them ALL brigands, and the only real Dragonsworn aspect to the DSworn moments will be due to 1) their proximity near a FD, and 2) Our notification, e.g. "Mazrim Taim has declared himself the Dragon, and has raised an army of Dragonsworn" and just leave it at that.

This isn't pretty, but it also might be good enough. I'm not sure its so immersion-breaking for people to highlight the unit and see that, in fact, it's just a Brigand, and not a Dragonsworn. Plus, again, that reserves the "Dragonsworn" term for use elsewhere.

Additionally, is there a *mechanical* reason why separating helps us? Will there be some policies/buildings/units that have mechanics that work with one and not the other? If so, then we should definitely separate them, but if not, it might be overkill to have there be two separate "civs." But if they have different behavior (like guarding the FD), units, etc. then I'm sure separating them would make your life easier.

That said, the Separation option probably works too. I don't think the loss of CS number 41 will be felt all that much. Oh, and don't forget that we're already taking a CS for the Tower, anyways....

What should we name the barbs, then? Lawless" Brigands? Bandits? Renegades? Outlaws?

We'll be losing CS 40, but I agree, I don't think it's too much of an impact. The Tower doesn't cost us a CS in some ways - they're still listed with other CSes in the diplo window (though you can access the Tower-specific stuff once you've met them via an alternate menu). They still occupy territory like normal CSes, it's really just the lack of a specific "friend/ally bonus" system #39 means we only have 38 "traditional" CSes.

The way I've made sure the Tower ends up in the game is relatively direct - "Tower" is a CS trait type (like Maritime or Cultured) and there's only one CS that has that trait - Tar Valon. When the game starts and player slots have been allocated, it runs through the CSes and if it doesn't find a Tower type CS in the game, it swaps out one of the other CSes for a Tower CS (always Tar Valon in our main game case) before anything loads.

So, back to our friends the Barbarians. Given the quite separate roles of False Dragons and their entourage from the normal Barbarians, I think separating them could be good for us mechanically that way. As you've brought up, combat bonuses relating to one or the other seem like they could be quite appropriate as well.

Separating them also means that False Dragons and Dragonsworn would fight Barbarians they encounter. This seems quite reasonable to me. (And may make early game False Dragons more manageable, at a time when they could otherwise be civ-threatening.)

A name then! I quite like Brigands, Lawless, Bandits, and Outlaws. I think Brigands sounds the most WoT-ish (and a cursory Google shows that it crops up a few times in official canon).

counterpoint said:
Alright, I could be fine with this, in general. I think making the FD rate more unpredictable - or varied, I guess - is better than making it happen in waves as you say.

I will say, though, that accumulating an FD point every time a female channeler makes an action seems way too much - especially if every male channeler is only generating a point every turn. Should it be something like you get a clump of points when you produce a female channeler? That makes a little more sense to me.

Totally agree, every use of a female channeler generating FD points would be too much. A lump sum of points when you train the unit makes sense. This means that small, highly experienced armies will generate fewer FD points.

Alternatively we could make it probabilistic, so attacking has a 10% chance of generating an FD point for female channelers, 75% for male?

counterpoint said:
In any case, I'm thinking that this is what affects FD rate, listed in order from most dramatic effect to least dramatic effect. These are negotiable, of course.

1) Philosophy
2) Population
3) Unhappiness
4) Social Policy (Fear vs Tolerance or specific policies)
5) Use/existence of male channelers
6) Wonders
7) Use/Production of female channelers

What's your ranking? Certainly some of these could be slid up or down a rank or two.

you are right that we want to, in general, discourage the use of male channelers.

Yeah, this ranking seems very sensible to me. Pending our discussion below, Happiness might move up one, but they're definitely the right kind of area. At first I figured we might want to shift Population down a few - maybe swap it with Social Policies. But having the base driving force common to all civs ensure that at least some False Dragons appear everywhere makes sense.

counterpoint said:
ok, this has the potential, of course, to make happiness the #1 source of FD points, actually. Maybe that's fine.

Before we decide this for sure, consider the alternative - using a flat amount of points generated per turn because of unhappiness (or reduced due to happiness).

Take an Oppressive, Fearful civ that uses no male channelers - very low FD point generation. Say they are profoundly unhappy. That unhappiness would effect their FD generation very little - like 4 points per turn up to 16. Compare that to a Tolerant, Liberated civ that uses plenty of males - very high rate. If they are unhappy, we could be talking something like 100 points per turn or something, up from 25

Is that how we want it to work? In these cases, the happiness ends up a minor factor in the first - 12 points - while in the second, it's tremendous - 75. Maybe that's ok, but it makes happiness a much more important mechanical consideration for civs that use a lot of channelers, which is a balancing aspect I'm not sure we're ready for in general.

The alternative is to simply make your happiness generate or subtract FD points per turn. Or, instead, simply tone down the multipliers a bit.

Yeah, this is a very good point. I'd be happy to switch to flat point generations at these intervals, or to reduce the multipliers. Leave the Happiness ones the same and make unhappiness +50% and doubled? (Instead of doubled and quadrupled)

counterpoint said:
got it, right. inputted!

EDIT:
I just went through and "updated" the Channeling summary, which mostly involved linking to the other summaries. There are a few things in there that are red now, but they're mostly things we don't need to worry about yet.

On point, though, an older version of it mentioned that Gentling can be cured by AS AND Asha'man. Should this be true?

We can make it true. Let's do the proportion of power thing then as well, right? (So Asha'man units only bring the unit back at X% its max strength.) Given that we don't have Stilled female channelers to balance that out, it seems the female ability would be mechanically superior in all cases.

counterpoint said:
While I'll miss the lump-sum option here, it may make sense to simply convert them all to GPT.

Or, maybe we go half-way - income can be Flat sum OR GPT, but penalties must only be GPT? Certainly some of the earnings ones seem to make little sense as GPT, but I think most of the penalties could be phrased in a way that makes it feel right.

This might be something to consider following for all of our Threads - taking AWAY flat science makes little sense, but SPT would be fine, for example.

Having lump sum gold still available as a reward sounds good to me.

Flat science subtractions do work though - we just reduce the player's progress toward their current technology (that's measured in beakers). The same way we could do for Culture or Faith. I think lump sum removals are more impactful in these cases (Culture, Faith). But they do introduce the possibility for negative totals, for players who have just faith purchased something or adopted a policy.

I'm assuming any GPT or Science/turn bonuses/penalties only last for X turns?

counterpoint said:
Unrest in Your Lands
FD points for the seonc, and DSworn for the 3rd.

Done

counterpoint said:
Accused Darkfriend
I was thinking it's to find and kill his masters (which you are right, isn't part of this), an act with a "good" aim that is accomplished through evil.... not sure how to do this. Probably should be eithe rShadow or Neutral at best... but should have some additional component that reflects its "goodness", right?

Darkfriend Escape. Sounds good.

Woops, I broke this quote block two posts ago. I said Darkfriend Escape but this was actually about Famine Near <city>. I've edited famine near city. But now I'm totally confused about Darkfriend Escape. Our suggested edits seem to lead to this:

Darkfriend Escape
Flavor: A man has been accused of being a darkfriend and brought to your court for judgement.
Choice A: Arrange his disappearance to safety abroad (Minor -Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Torture him to learn of his masters (+Faith, Minor +Shadow)
Choice C: Silence the accusers (-1 pop in <city you own>, +Shadow)
Choice D: Hang him (Minor +Shadow)

Or something similar (possibly Light for option B). That doesn't seem very balanced.

counterpoint said:
Looming Threat
Minor it is. As far as the blightborder thing.... I could go either way on this.

Done

counterpoint said:
OK, I definitely and solidly come down on the side of leaving it ambiguous. We can have a *few* threads where someobody's guilt (or innocence!) is known - that provides some interesting political situations, financial ones, tower diplomacy ones, etc.) but I think the spirit of most of what we're doing is best found in keeping it ambiguous.

Part of the drama of the books is the never-knowing-who's-bad thing. In our mod, of course, the chickens won't ever come home to roost, though - i.e., freeing someone who turns out to be guilty of being a darkfriend won't come back to haunt you later. But still, I think these threads are more about determining your actions, and the kind of ruler you are that anything else. So what if there's an innocent sister who has been hanged? That's merely one "unit" in a game that spans millenia. What's important is that you were willing to hang her, without proof

I'd say let's be very clear about what you *do* know. Sometimes you know nothing, and it's just finger pointing. Sometimes we can say that your counselors are convinced of the person's innocence, or something like that. Sometimes, it seems the person is totally guilty, but based on who they are (a foreign noble or a Sister) there is extreme political pressure to let them go. I think *these* are the kinds of choices we're looking for. In most of these cases, the guilt of the person is probably ultimately unknown, but what's important is what the player does with this information.

Cool, ok, this all sounds good. But because the player can see what Alignment they're going to get from each choice, I think it means we'll need to think about the morality of the choices slightly differently. The Alignment feedback from the choices shouldn't be based on any actual outcome but instead, as you've mentioned elsewhere, that the player was willing to do whatever that choice entailed, regardless of how everything turned out afterwards.

counterpoint said:
Also, how the heck is the AI going to handle these threads?

It will make a value comparison of the actual results. I've gleaned only a passing understanding of how the AI's flavor system works (this makes different leaders/situations/strategies prioritize different things), mostly from reading whoward69's posts about it. I'll be able to say with more authority exactly how we could flavor (CiV flavoring, which is separate from "flavor" as in-universe canonical themes, as we've been using it) the choices, or even if we'll use the flavor system at all for it, after delving into more AI logic.

counterpoint said:
A Tower Divided
Why would Silencing your men generate gold? Wouldn't it cost gold?

This is an example where we'd need to be really clear about the situation. Why is arresting her a Light act? She "associates" with Darkfriends, does she? How can we be sure she isn't trying to trap them, extract information, or Sister in other ways?

I think the truth is, specifically this thread is really tricky because Sisters essentially have diplomatic immunity. That's why it makes less sense as a light action. Perhaps we rephrase D?

Now, an interesting thread might be a Sister obviously and flagrantly violating specific laws. Like, hurting people or stealing. You have proof, but do you have the jurisdiction to arrest her?

Some rewriting is definitely in order! How about this?

A Tower Divided
Flavor: A Sister from the White Tower has been residing in your capital for some time. She is working with a known Darkfriend scholar, apparently expecting you to stay your hand rather than risk retribution from Tar Valon if you move against her.
Choice A: Blackmail the Sister in exchange for her secrets (+Science, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Alert the Tower (+Tower Influence, Minor +Light)
Choice C: "Silence" your men who have knowledge of these events (-Gold, Minor +Science, +Shadow)
Choice D: Have her arrested (-Tower Influence, +Light)
Restriction: must have met the Tower

counterpoint said:
Cost of Progress
OK, I see you rationale. I was kind of missing the point.

Done

counterpoint said:
Imported Luxury
ok. let's go with your suggestions.

Done

counterpoint said:
Ter'Angreal Cache
I think the shadowy nature of Selling them comes from the fact that you don't really have the "right" to sell them in the first place... and you have no real way of knowing where they'll end up .

As far as destroying them, I can see that it's pretty ambiguous as to whether it's light or shadow. I was thinking it's sort of a "prevent them from falling into the wrong hands," but it's also something like "prevent them from helping people..."

Why don't we clarify this, and have them be something specifically scary and/or dangerous? Not just Ter'angreals, but Ter'angreal weapons or something liek that - maybe even Power Wrought Weapons. Then we can take the "destroy them" angle very clearly in the vein of "this is for the good of humanity," which would certainly be a light action.

Totally up for reflavoring to make it clearer. Something like this?

Ter'Angreal Cache
Flavor: Your scholars have discovered an ancient hoard of Power Wrought Weapons, potentially more powerful than any ever since the Age of Legends. However, those who wield them seem to suffer from withdrawal whenever they put them down.
Choice A: Send them to the Tower (+Tower influence, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Take them into your possession (+Culture, +Prestige)
Choice C: Sell them (+Gold, +Shadow)
Choice D: Have them destroyed (Major +Light)

Does B still make sense? I do quite like that bonus.

counterpoint said:
Rogue Coven
I can see the appeal of the Spark duality, but we might just have C be +1 Spark instead of +1 Wilder.

I like B as a Light action because you're leaving people to their own devices. They will probably be arrested or something from the tower, if caught. The books seem to paint these sorts of unlicensed channeler groups as a good thing and not to be ruined... though of course, Egwene then "incorporates" them into the Tower fold (is there a way to bring that whole thing in somewhere?)

Cool, edited in the stuff you've said here.

In terms of integrating the incorporation of the Kin into the Tower. I'm not sure if that should be a part of Threads, possibly part of the Tower quests instead. That would be if we want a player to have a hand in "making it happen." Otherwise it could be an edict.

As a quest:

Integrate the Kin
The Ajah that proposed this quest will reward you for gifting Wilder or Kin units to the Tower in the next 30 turns.

As an edict:

Kin Brought into the Fold
One Kin unit per player is replaced with a <majority Ajah color> Ajah Sister. (Or Ajah of the player's choice.)

Alternate form:

Kin Brought into the Fold
Civilizations receive influence (+10) with the Tower for each Kin unit they control.

counterpoint said:
Four Kings in Shadow
So, I still don't think A would ever be a light action, "apparently" or not. This is not a battalion of Shadow troops. You're not supposed to just go and kill tons of people. They should be arrested, tried, etc. This kind of thing ain't good karma, bro. Definitely shadow.

But yeah, can drop the -happiness from A.

Right, I'm convinced! I've made the changes (I think, this one got quite confusing as to what we've decided on).

counterpoint said:
Nah, Hinderstap isn't full of DFs! You're Thinking of "Four Kings" (cited in my thread name above), and even then, 4K isn't necessarily literally ALL DFs.

Hinderstap is the one that was caught in that weird time loop, where they'd all kill each other at night and then wake up the next morning alive. It was a bubble of evil, or something - remember that Mat opened a gateway (or had someone do it, obviously) to some battle during the LB so they could like die and then fight again the next day?)

Is there a way to bring in Hindy or other Bubble situations into Threads? Pretty neat flava.

How about:

Trapped in Time
Flavor: A village of formerly ordinary folk have been trapped in a Bubble of Evil, murdering one another in the night and reawakening in their beds the next morning.
Choice A: Fortify the border of the town and allow no one in or out (Minor -Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Unleash them on the Shadowspawn (+Light)
Choice C: Order your troops into the village to be killed, creating an immortal legion (Gain 4 military units, Major +Shadow, -Happiness)
Choice D: Put your scholars to work, there must be a way to free them from the curse. (-Science, Major +Light)
Restriction: World era has reached Era of the Dragon

I can't think of a better cost for C than happiness?

counterpoint said:
Unruly House
Happy to go in either direction, providing we balance it right and flavor it right.

Done

counterpoint said:
Foreign Preacher
I think this is a great situation where the "right thing to do" is by far the worst for you. In civ, there's very few reasons to want a foreign religion in your cities. Here you are actively encouraging it, because it is somewhat Just and nice. I'm fine with a hefty Light bonus being essentially the only benefit. It is the only choice here that offers much light, right? minor faith could be ok, if you feel like it's necessarily.

Right, I've changed C. I was asking about adding Faith to option B here though. +Shadow and -Diplo seems like a poor combo compared to the others?

counterpoint said:
Resources Dscovered
I'm fine with both of these, though I think it should be [Era Relevant Strategic Resource] instead of iron, specifically.

Done

counterpoint said:
Refugees
Yeah, I can see how it would be a penalty. Actually, maybe we just make diplo a non-factor here?

I'm fine with your C.

Done

counterpoint said:
Retainer is a Noble
I think we can phrase it in a way that states the noble is hiding in order to escape threats on their life, or they are from a fallen kingdom, or something like that. I don't remember exactly why Alliandre did what she did.

Maybe there's a restriction that "One civ must have been eliminated" or "One Original Capital must be occupied" or something.

In any case, I'd say it comes down to the fact that keeping them around is highly inappropriate, but somewhat merciful, and perhaps useful.

Awesome, yes! Requiring a civ to be eliminated and then having that person be a "monarch from [extinct civ]" sounds great!

So something like this?

Retainer is a Monarch
Flavor: You have discovered that one of your servants is actually the former Monarch of <extinct civ>, serving you out of fear for their life.
Choice A: let them continue their deception (+Culture, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Come clean, and make them one of your advisers (Free Governor, +Light)
Choice C: send them home in exchange for a bounty, to be executed by their conquerors (+Gold, +Shadow)

counterpoint said:
Troubling Origins
I know you aren't in love with all the happiness penalties, but I think this is one case where they are justified. The Aiel practically had a rebellion on their hands when the Secret came out. Faith per turn could be good too, though.

I sort of see what you're saying about Prestige. It's a bit of an indirect relationship, though. The truth is, it would give THEM a happiness penalty. Is there any other way we can approximate that (without literally doing it) within your own civ? If Prestige is the only way, then so be it.

Ok, sounds good re happiness penalty.

I think Prestige is the only way to model that. I think it's a really good one though. Especially since it may actually lead to a happiness penalty in the foreign civ, if they follow a different Philosophy and the lump sum from the choice pushes you past an influence threshold.

counterpoint said:
Darkfriends for Sale
sure, it's better mechanically. Somewhat weird flavorfully, but well within the range of acceptability.

Done

counterpoint said:
Future False Dragon
yeah, neutral is fine.

Done

counterpoint said:
Channeler on the Run
ok, good.

Done

counterpoint said:
Tax on Belief
Well, the idea of A being sort of shadow comes from 20th and 21st century notions of freedom or religion and stuff like that. Possibly anarchistic, but... in general WoT's sense of morality and such is somewhat anarchistic, in some ways, so I'm ok with it.

Yeah, I don't really see closing the shrines as necessarily Shadow, myself. Maybe minorly. The truth is, any Evil Civilization would absolutley want a healthy religion to control their populace. Closing the shrines would perhaps cause a big faith hit (not listed here, stupidly), but I'm not sure it's shadow.

Profiting off their worship, though.. that's more evil.

Maybe it's just a rephrase that's needed? As far as my initial conception, yes, it was a tax off of donations and such, or something. I originally wanted it to instead simply be more like "Your shrines are popular, one of your advisors has recommended you impose a tax to gain revenue blah blah blah" because that makes a lot of sense for A and B. The problem is, that flavor leaves very little room for a C (closing) option, as there's really no benefit, aside from some Athiestic aim (it would be weird if we made closing the shrines provide +Science or something).

It's worth noting that our Paths are different from Religion here, and actually make C more plausible with your explanation. Something like this?

Tax on Belief
Shrines to the Creator are flush with donations from your people. One of your advisers has implied you could siphon gold off to fund your government.
A . Do it (Minor -Faith, Minor +Gold, +Shadow)
B . Fire your adviser (+Faith, +Light)
C . We have no need for these places, shutter them and let the people direct their wealth elsewhere (-Faith, +Gold, Minor +Shadow)

counterpoint said:
Ogier Writer
I see what you're saying, re: B. That makes a lot of sense, but I don't like it, mechanically, because Prestige and Culture are so interlinked.

Also, why do the embellishments need to be transparent? This is an Ogier writer after all. I'd say objectively, the lie helps your global image... it's just a bad thing to do.

Mechanically I think the link between culture and prestige makes the rewards even more fitting this way. A culture player wants Prestige the most (since that's how they win and they'll have enough culture incidentally) so they'll go for C if they can afford it, or B if they want to be moral about it. (This is obviously a Culture-targeted Thread.) But then a Culture Shadow player doesn't necessarily need money for their choice to be helpful to them, because they can choose A.

I can understand the flavor going both ways, but I think the above means we should go the foreign transparency route, since it jibes with the above mechanical advantages.

counterpoint said:
Nym Guardian
I was thinking its sort of invasive. I mean, this guy is supposed to sit there for all eternity guarding stuff, after all. Definitely not conservationist research. More like "learn how he works to make more constructs" and stuff, which is probably not fun for him. Even if it's not hurting him, it probably involves taking him from the place, etc.

Cool, I'm fine with Shadow points if we describe the research as removing him from where he's living now! I've changed the choice text to:

Send scholars to retrieve the creature for study

Phew! That was also a lot of editing! Time for some new Threads!

S3rgeus · Apr 17, 2015

I've been thinking a bit more carefully about the balance and Alignment flavor of these ones, taking on what we've been talking about for the first batch. That's meant it's a bit slower to create new ones, but I think they're of better quality than my first attempts.

I've also tried to create a few that are "all upside" - so none of the choices have costs. I think these ones are potentially really rewarding for the player (in a player experience kind of way, rather than just that they get stuff). It's just clearly quite difficult to come up with a situation that has multiple, balanced results that could feasibly not require some investment/have negative consequences. In fact, they've even made me consider whether we should do away with costs across the board? Or maybe reserve costs for the most extreme cases, accompanied by huge payoffs, rather than being a frequent thing?

Spoilage
Flavor: The Dark One's influence is spoiling your people's food and your farmers need aid to produce enough for everyone.
Choice A: We cannot help (-Food, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Send soldiers to help till the fields (Sacrifice X power of units, +Food, +Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: Subsidize farming efforts to increase production (-Gold, +Food, +Light)
Choice D: Appeal to the Dark One's forces for aid. (+Food, Major +Shadow, Shadowspawn appear near your border)
Restriction: World era has reached Era of the Dragon

Coolness in D ensues because Shadow players are at peace with the Shadowspawn civ after the LB starts.

Inquisition
Flavor: One of your advisers suggests putting suspected Darkfriends to the Question, in an attempt to root out the Dark One's followers.
Choice A: Questions for everyone (-Culture, +Shadow)
Choice B: Only Question those you are certain are Darkfriends (+Culture, Minor +Light)
Choice C: Putting our people to the Question will only engender hatred in them. (+Happiness, +Light)

Pledged to the Shadow
Flavor: One of your spies believes the leader-elect of <city state> has pledged himself to the service of the Shadow, but he has no hard evidence. The new leader is to be crowned tomorrow, what should your agent do?
Choice A: Expose the potential corruption before he is crowned, potentially sullying your reputation (-Influence with <city state>, +Light)
Choice B: Assassinate him (+Shadow)
Choice C: Send cordial greeting to <city state>, welcoming their new leader (+Influence with <city state>, Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: Continue surveillance and prepare to act against the crowned monarch if he is truly in service to the Dark One. (Minor +Light)

Volunteer Construction
Flavor: A group of volunteer citizens have begun to construct a <early faith building> to the Creator in <city without that building>.
Choice A: It is wonderful to see these people working together. (Minor +Light, <early faith building> is constructed in <city>)
Choice B: Send workers to help with construction (-Production in <city>, <early faith building> is constructed in <city>, +Faith, +Light)
Choice C: Disband these commoners, we have no need of a shrine (-Faith, +Shadow)

Alternates of the above could exist for any building type, just swap out all instances of the word "faith" for the appropriate yield for the building in question. We'd probably want to choose only a subset of buildings to allow this to spawn for.

Organized Cult
Flavor: Many of your citizens have been taken in by a cult that worships the Shadow, calling the Dark One a savior.
Choice A: They must be brought to see the error of their ways. Re-educate them. (-Gold, +Light)
Choice B: They are beyond help. Kill them. (-1 Pop in <city> and <other city>)
Choice C: Encourage this cult. (+Faith, +Shadow)

Source of Food
Flavor: Some of your forces ranging in the Blight have found that Trolloc meat can sustain a man as well as normal food, but your scholars caution longer term side effects of consuming Shadowspawn.
Choice A: Consume away, our men need their strength in the Blight! (Minor +Food, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Caution your soldiers to only consume Trolloc meat in the direst of circumstances (Gain 1 Military unit, Minor +Light)
Choice C: That sounds like a good source of food for the winter. (+Food, +Shadow)
Choice D: Outlaw consumption of Trolloc meat. (Minor -Food, Major +Light)
Restriction: Must border on the Blight

Immoral Scholar
Flavor: A scholar has been denounced by his fellows for immoral conduct, but his research appears to be bearing fruit.
Choice A: Take what results he has so far, but prevent him from pursuing his research. (Minor +Science, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Throw out his research and exile him. (+Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: Protect him from this outrageous slander. (+Science, +Shadow)

A Chosen Portrait
Flavor: An artist has caused quite a stir auctioning off her take on portraits of the Forsaken from the War of Power. She has offered to donate a piece to your collection.
Choice A: Thank her profusely (Receive <craft GW>, +Shadow)
Choice B: Accept, but store the piece out of sight (+Prestige, Minor +Light)
Choice C: Politely Refuse (+Light)
Choice D: Accept, but sell the piece on (+Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Restriction: must have a free craft GW slot somewhere

Honored General
Flavor: A local lord has used his military expertise as a former soldier to protect his village from a Barbarian assault.
Choice A: Recognize his feat and give him greater authority (Free <martial Governor type>, +Light)
Choice B: He claims to have retired, but you can never truly leave my army. Conscript him. (Gain 1 Military unit or Great Captain?, +Shadow)

Endangering the Dragon
Flavor: The Dragon is due to visit your capital on the morrow. One of the Forsaken have approached you and offered you significant compensation to dictate the route his retinue will take through the city.
Choice A: Warn the Dragon (+Prestige, Major +Light)
Choice B: Do Nothing (+Shadow)
Choice C: Redirect the Dragon's retinue to the prescribed path (Major +Gold, Major +Shadow)
Restriction: the Dragon must have been born

We could drop choice B if we liked, and just have A and C.

Charitable Donations
Flavor: Your people have donated an unusually large amount of money to causes of the crown in the last few months.
Choice A: Our coffers overfloweth, let us give back (+Happiness, +Light)
Choice B: Use the extra funds to spur on new research (+Science)
Choice C: Siphon off some to your personal coffers (Minor +Gold, +Shadow)

counterpoint · Apr 17, 2015

S3rgeus said:
No worries, feel better soon!

done!

S3rgeus said:
The way I've made sure the Tower ends up in the game is relatively direct - "Tower" is a CS trait type (like Maritime or Cultured) and there's only one CS that has that trait - Tar Valon. When the game starts and player slots have been allocated, it runs through the CSes and if it doesn't find a Tower type CS in the game, it swaps out one of the other CSes for a Tower CS (always Tar Valon in our main game case) before anything loads.

ok, sounds good!

S3rgeus said:
So, back to our friends the Barbarians. Given the quite separate roles of False Dragons and their entourage from the normal Barbarians, I think separating them could be good for us mechanically that way. As you've brought up, combat bonuses relating to one or the other seem like they could be quite appropriate as well.

OK, I'm fine doing it that way. I will say that I think most of the bonuses against one type should probably work on both, though. The Honor tree would, for instance, be way lamer if those first few policies only affected half the barbarians (less, actually, considering the shadowspawn)

S3rgeus said:
Separating them also means that False Dragons and Dragonsworn would fight Barbarians they encounter. This seems quite reasonable to me. (And may make early game False Dragons more manageable, at a time when they could otherwise be civ-threatening.)

Sure!

S3rgeus said:
A name then! I quite like Brigands, Lawless, Bandits, and Outlaws. I think Brigands sounds the most WoT-ish (and a cursory Google shows that it crops up a few times in official canon).

I think I too like Brigands for in-universe reasons. However, it's also somewhat problematic (as is Bandits) for being less universal - it has the weird flavor disconnect when describing a Rebel House, whereas something like the Lawless would transfer well to that kind of thing.

Also, there's something very eye catching and satisfactory about "Barbarian Red". Who gets this color, and what color will the other one be? And.. the shadowspawn? Note: no need to solve this now.

S3rgeus said:
Totally agree, every use of a female channeler generating FD points would be too much. A lump sum of points when you train the unit makes sense. This means that small, highly experienced armies will generate fewer FD points.

Alternatively we could make it probabilistic, so attacking has a 10% chance of generating an FD point for female channelers, 75% for male?

interesting, the % chance thing.... I'm not sure. This makes it more randomized, which might be fine, but also is very dependent on which specific actions the player is taking. That might be fine, though.

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, this ranking seems very sensible to me. Pending our discussion below, Happiness might move up one, but they're definitely the right kind of area. At first I figured we might want to shift Population down a few - maybe swap it with Social Policies. But having the base driving force common to all civs ensure that at least some False Dragons appear everywhere makes sense.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think we need Population as a base, otherwise some would have none (which should only be possible in extreme scenarios).

Do we want one of the rewards for killing/gentling an FD to be a reduction in FD points?

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, this is a very good point. I'd be happy to switch to flat point generations at these intervals, or to reduce the multipliers. Leave the Happiness ones the same and make unhappiness +50% and doubled? (Instead of doubled and quadrupled)

I think that adjustment to the modifiers might work fine. But I could also see both positive and negative mods be brought down to 150%/200%.

S3rgeus said:
We can make it true. Let's do the proportion of power thing then as well, right? (So Asha'man units only bring the unit back at X% its max strength.) Given that we don't have Stilled female channelers to balance that out, it seems the female ability would be mechanically superior in all cases.

eh... I'm not sure that bit of flavor is exciting enough to include. I think if we allow it from A'M at all... it might be best to just let everybody be full strength.

S3rgeus said:
Having lump sum gold still available as a reward sounds good to me.

Flat science subtractions do work though - we just reduce the player's progress toward their current technology (that's measured in beakers). The same way we could do for Culture or Faith. I think lump sum removals are more impactful in these cases (Culture, Faith). But they do introduce the possibility for negative totals, for players who have just faith purchased something or adopted a policy.

I'm assuming any GPT or Science/turn bonuses/penalties only last for X turns?

OK, I'll go however you want on this!

But yeah, the bonuses/penalties should be for X turns.

S3rgeus said:
Woops, I broke this quote block two posts ago. I said Darkfriend Escape but this was actually about Famine Near <city>. I've edited famine near city. But now I'm totally confused about Darkfriend Escape. Our suggested edits seem to lead to this:

Darkfriend Escape
Flavor: A man has been accused of being a darkfriend and brought to your court for judgement.
Choice A: Arrange his disappearance to safety abroad (Minor -Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Torture him to learn of his masters (+Faith, Minor +Shadow)
Choice C: Silence the accusers (-1 pop in <city you own>, +Shadow)
Choice D: Hang him (Minor +Shadow)

Or something similar (possibly Light for option B). That doesn't seem very balanced.

Darkfriend Escape
yeah, this option B is the one I thought I was talking about, with regards to its "greater good by obviously evil" nature.

This is interesting in that there is no Light option. Can we make it so that, perhaps, there is a neutral option, at least? Maybe change option D to "put him in prison" and make it (No Changes)?

As far as Famine Near City, looks fine.

S3rgeus said:
Cool, ok, this all sounds good. But because the player can see what Alignment they're going to get from each choice, I think it means we'll need to think about the morality of the choices slightly differently. The Alignment feedback from the choices shouldn't be based on any actual outcome but instead, as you've mentioned elsewhere, that the player was willing to do whatever that choice entailed, regardless of how everything turned out afterwards.

Right. Our allotment of alignment points should be based on the moral rightness of the action itself, and/or its intent, not its result.

If you get drunk, drive on the wrong side of the road, without wearing your safety belt, then get in an accident, are flipped from your car... but land safely right next to a winning lottery ticket, that was still a stupid thing to do, right?

S3rgeus said:
It will make a value comparison of the actual results. I've gleaned only a passing understanding of how the AI's flavor system works (this makes different leaders/situations/strategies prioritize different things), mostly from reading whoward69's posts about it. I'll be able to say with more authority exactly how we could flavor (CiV flavoring, which is separate from "flavor" as in-universe canonical themes, as we've been using it) the choices, or even if we'll use the flavor system at all for it, after delving into more AI logic.

k. sounds good.

S3rgeus said:
Some rewriting is definitely in order! How about this?

A Tower Divided
Flavor: A Sister from the White Tower has been residing in your capital for some time. She is working with a known Darkfriend scholar, apparently expecting you to stay your hand rather than risk retribution from Tar Valon if you move against her.
Choice A: Blackmail the Sister in exchange for her secrets (+Science, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Alert the Tower (+Tower Influence, Minor +Light)
Choice C: "Silence" your men who have knowledge of these events (-Gold, Minor +Science, +Shadow)
Choice D: Have her arrested (-Tower Influence, +Light)
Restriction: must have met the Tower

good, but suggest amended "working with a suspected darkfriend scholar" instead of "known."

I'm still torn on D, but I think I can live with it.

S3rgeus said:
Totally up for reflavoring to make it clearer. Something like this?

Ter'Angreal Cache
Flavor: Your scholars have discovered an ancient hoard of Power Wrought Weapons, potentially more powerful than any ever since the Age of Legends. However, those who wield them seem to suffer from withdrawal whenever they put them down.
Choice A: Send them to the Tower (+Tower influence, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Take them into your possession (+Culture, +Prestige)
Choice C: Sell them (+Gold, +Shadow)
Choice D: Have them destroyed (Major +Light)

Does B still make sense? I do quite like that bonus.

The bonus for B no longer makes sense, but thatnks you your "curse" flavor, I think it's fine - let's change it from Power-Wrought Weapons to something non-weaponish (that might yield culture). I dunno, could be generic, miscellaneous ter'angreal. Something like:

"Your scholars have discovered an ancient hoard of Items of Power, potentially more powerful than any found since the Age of Legends. However, those who wield them appear to exhibit increased aggression."

S3rgeus said:
Cool, edited in the stuff you've said here.

In terms of integrating the incorporation of the Kin into the Tower. I'm not sure if that should be a part of Threads, possibly part of the Tower quests instead. That would be if we want a player to have a hand in "making it happen." Otherwise it could be an edict.

As a quest:

Integrate the Kin
The Ajah that proposed this quest will reward you for gifting Wilder or Kin units to the Tower in the next 30 turns.

As an edict:

Kin Brought into the Fold
One Kin unit per player is replaced with a <majority Ajah color> Ajah Sister. (Or Ajah of the player's choice.)

Alternate form:

Kin Brought into the Fold
Civilizations receive influence (+10) with the Tower for each Kin unit they control.

Right. Good idea. I think the Quest is probably the simplest one. Not a strong opinion though.

S3rgeus said:
Right, I'm convinced! I've made the changes (I think, this one got quite confusing as to what we've decided on).

Four Kings in Shadow
The only issue I have with this one as it stands is that it generates missionaries, which is apparently not a thing other Threads generate. we ok with that?

S3rgeus said:
How about:

Trapped in Time
Flavor: A village of formerly ordinary folk have been trapped in a Bubble of Evil, murdering one another in the night and reawakening in their beds the next morning.
Choice A: Fortify the border of the town and allow no one in or out (Minor -Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Unleash them on the Shadowspawn (+Light)
Choice C: Order your troops into the village to be killed, creating an immortal legion (Gain 4 military units, Major +Shadow, -Happiness)
Choice D: Put your scholars to work, there must be a way to free them from the curse. (-Science, Major +Light)
Restriction: World era has reached Era of the Dragon

I can't think of a better cost for C than happiness?

Cool! Cost for C - gold? Option A could have a unit sacrifice be its cost.

S3rgeus said:
Right, I've changed C. I was asking about adding Faith to option B here though. +Shadow and -Diplo seems like a poor combo compared to the others?

oh, right. that's fine.

S3rgeus said:
Awesome, yes! Requiring a civ to be eliminated and then having that person be a "monarch from [extinct civ]" sounds great!

So something like this?

Retainer is a Monarch
Flavor: You have discovered that one of your servants is actually the former Monarch of <extinct civ>, serving you out of fear for their life.
Choice A: let them continue their deception (+Culture, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Come clean, and make them one of your advisers (Free Governor, +Light)
Choice C: send them home in exchange for a bounty, to be executed by their conquerors (+Gold, +Shadow)

Great!

S3rgeus said:
Ok, sounds good re happiness penalty.

I think Prestige is the only way to model that. I think it's a really good one though. Especially since it may actually lead to a happiness penalty in the foreign civ, if they follow a different Philosophy and the lump sum from the choice pushes you past an influence threshold.

ok. can follow your lead here.

S3rgeus said:
It's worth noting that our Paths are different from Religion here, and actually make C more plausible with your explanation. Something like this?

Tax on Belief
Shrines to the Creator are flush with donations from your people. One of your advisers has implied you could siphon gold off to fund your government.
A . Do it (Minor -Faith, Minor +Gold, +Shadow)
B . Fire your adviser (+Faith, +Light)
C . We have no need for these places, shutter them and let the people direct their wealth elsewhere (-Faith, +Gold, Minor +Shadow)

yep!

S3rgeus said:
Mechanically I think the link between culture and prestige makes the rewards even more fitting this way. A culture player wants Prestige the most (since that's how they win and they'll have enough culture incidentally) so they'll go for C if they can afford it, or B if they want to be moral about it. (This is obviously a Culture-targeted Thread.) But then a Culture Shadow player doesn't necessarily need money for their choice to be helpful to them, because they can choose A.

I can understand the flavor going both ways, but I think the above means we should go the foreign transparency route, since it jibes with the above mechanical advantages.

Sure. that's fine.

S3rgeus said:
Cool, I'm fine with Shadow points if we describe the research as removing him from where he's living now! I've changed the choice text to:

Send scholars to retrieve the creature for study

good!

counterpoint · Apr 18, 2015

S3rgeus said:
I've also tried to create a few that are "all upside" - so none of the choices have costs. I think these ones are potentially really rewarding for the player (in a player experience kind of way, rather than just that they get stuff). It's just clearly quite difficult to come up with a situation that has multiple, balanced results that could feasibly not require some investment/have negative consequences. In fact, they've even made me consider whether we should do away with costs across the board? Or maybe reserve costs for the most extreme cases, accompanied by huge payoffs, rather than being a frequent thing?

I'm willing to consider rescheming all of this to exclude costs, but the fact is, the costs/penalties have felt pretty essential to making these yields. I'm not sure we'd really be able to deal with all of these situations appropriately without them.

Personally, I don't it's important for these to be all-good. I do think we can balance the numbers such that each thread is a "Net Positive," though, so the costs don't outweigh the earnings.

That said, if we have some that are Very Good... is there room for ones that are All Bad?

S3rgeus said:
Spoilage
Flavor: The Dark One's influence is spoiling your people's food and your farmers need aid to produce enough for everyone.
Choice A: We cannot help (-Food, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Send soldiers to help till the fields (Sacrifice X power of units, +Food, +Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: Subsidize farming efforts to increase production (-Gold, +Food, +Light)
Choice D: Appeal to the Dark One's forces for aid. (+Food, Major +Shadow, Shadowspawn appear near your border)
Restriction: World era has reached Era of the Dragon

Coolness in D ensues because Shadow players are at peace with the Shadowspawn civ after the LB starts.

D is a little silly, but that's alright.

I could also see B being something besides soldiers - Artisans or something, and make it -Culture. Or Science or something.

I wonder if this would benefit from a more neutral choice....

S3rgeus said:
Inquisition
Flavor: One of your advisers suggests putting suspected Darkfriends to the Question, in an attempt to root out the Dark One's followers.
Choice A: Questions for everyone (-Culture, +Shadow)
Choice B: Only Question those you are certain are Darkfriends (+Culture, Minor +Light)
Choice C: Putting our people to the Question will only engender hatred in them. (+Happiness, +Light)

OK, why culture for B?

Also, I could see B being a neutral choice, which might be a good thing in something like this.

S3rgeus said:
Pledged to the Shadow
Flavor: One of your spies believes the leader-elect of <city state> has pledged himself to the service of the Shadow, but he has no hard evidence. The new leader is to be crowned tomorrow, what should your agent do?
Choice A: Expose the potential corruption before he is crowned, potentially sullying your reputation (-Influence with <city state>, +Light)
Choice B: Assassinate him (+Shadow)
Choice C: Send cordial greeting to <city state>, welcoming their new leader (+Influence with <city state>, Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: Continue surveillance and prepare to act against the crowned monarch if he is truly in service to the Dark One. (Minor +Light)

Spies - - > Eyes and Ears

I like these yeilds. They are appropriately minor.

S3rgeus said:
Volunteer Construction
Flavor: A group of volunteer citizens have begun to construct a <early faith building> to the Creator in <city without that building>.
Choice A: It is wonderful to see these people working together. (Minor +Light, <early faith building> is constructed in <city>)
Choice B: Send workers to help with construction (-Production in <city>, <early faith building> is constructed in <city>, +Faith, +Light)
Choice C: Disband these commoners, we have no need of a shrine (-Faith, +Shadow)

Alternates of the above could exist for any building type, just swap out all instances of the word "faith" for the appropriate yield for the building in question. We'd probably want to choose only a subset of buildings to allow this to spawn for.

I'm not sure the Creator reference is necessary, since these Faith buildings may not be Religious in nature (as Paths aren't religious, necessarily)... like, Ji'e'toh, etc.

good! Yeah, alternatives could be nice.

S3rgeus said:
Organized Cult
Flavor: Many of your citizens have been taken in by a cult that worships the Shadow, calling the Dark One a savior.
Choice A: They must be brought to see the error of their ways. Re-educate them. (-Gold, +Light)
Choice B: They are beyond help. Kill them. (-1 Pop in <city> and <other city>)
Choice C: Encourage this cult. (+Faith, +Shadow)

Hmmm, I feel like we're hitting the "murder your own people" thing pretty hard.

Can we change B to "Exile Them" instead? I think that option's lack of alignment yields is better supported by this anyways.

S3rgeus said:
Source of Food
Flavor: Some of your forces ranging in the Blight have found that Trolloc meat can sustain a man as well as normal food, but your scholars caution longer term side effects of consuming Shadowspawn.
Choice A: Consume away, our men need their strength in the Blight! (Minor +Food, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Caution your soldiers to only consume Trolloc meat in the direst of circumstances (Gain 1 Military unit, Minor +Light)
Choice C: That sounds like a good source of food for the winter. (+Food, +Shadow)
Choice D: Outlaw consumption of Trolloc meat. (Minor -Food, Major +Light)
Restriction: Must border on the Blight

gross.

I say B should be alignment neutral.
D should be +Light, not Major+Light, I think.

S3rgeus said:
Immoral Scholar
Flavor: A scholar has been denounced by his fellows for immoral conduct, but his research appears to be bearing fruit.
Choice A: Take what results he has so far, but prevent him from pursuing his research. (Minor +Science, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Throw out his research and exile him. (+Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: Protect him from this outrageous slander. (+Science, +Shadow)

Interesting. What type of conduct are you thinking here? Like truly vile?

S3rgeus said:
A Chosen Portrait
Flavor: An artist has caused quite a stir auctioning off her take on portraits of the Forsaken from the War of Power. She has offered to donate a piece to your collection.
Choice A: Thank her profusely (Receive <craft GW>, +Shadow)
Choice B: Accept, but store the piece out of sight (+Prestige, Minor +Light)
Choice C: Politely Refuse (+Light)
Choice D: Accept, but sell the piece on (+Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Restriction: must have a free craft GW slot somewhere

I don't love B. I don't get why it'd be +Prestige, since it'd be hidden from the world. Also, I don't see why it would be +Light. Neutral, I say.

S3rgeus said:
Honored General
Flavor: A local lord has used his military expertise as a former soldier to protect his village from a Barbarian assault.
Choice A: Recognize his feat and give him greater authority (Free <martial Governor type>, +Light)
Choice B: He claims to have retired, but you can never truly leave my army. Conscript him. (Gain 1 Military unit or Great Captain?, +Shadow)

cool. I say Great Captain.

S3rgeus said:
Endangering the Dragon
Flavor: The Dragon is due to visit your capital on the morrow. One of the Forsaken have approached you and offered you significant compensation to dictate the route his retinue will take through the city.
Choice A: Warn the Dragon (+Prestige, Major +Light)
Choice B: Do Nothing (+Shadow)
Choice C: Redirect the Dragon's retinue to the prescribed path (Major +Gold, Major +Shadow)
Restriction: the Dragon must have been born

We could drop choice B if we liked, and just have A and C.

Hmm... not sure about B. I can see both ways, it staying or going.

I wonder, though, this one stands out as one of those that might have players going "And then what happened?" Like, if you are basically telling Lee Harvey Oswald where JFK's limo is going to be, you're setting up an assassin, aren't you?

Should we maybe make it more vague, like they just want to know his whereabouts? Implying that it could simply be because Lanfear wants to blah blah blah with him, or something? I just worry that shadow players will be annoyed there isn't some actual Affect on the Dragon because they chose C.

S3rgeus said:
Charitable Donations
Flavor: Your people have donated an unusually large amount of money to causes of the crown in the last few months.
Choice A: Our coffers overfloweth, let us give back (+Happiness, +Light)
Choice B: Use the extra funds to spur on new research (+Science)
Choice C: Siphon off some to your personal coffers (Minor +Gold, +Shadow)

I know you don't want negatives for this one, but A really should have a -Gold. It seems to be the very definition of -Gold.

counterpoint · Apr 18, 2015

OK, I have a bit of time before bed. Going to try to add some of my own.

Today I'm trying to formulate some that are based on specific esoteric characters. This was inspired by the Alliandre one, and how much that clarified things once I made the reference clear. I'll mention who I'm thinking of in each case, but obviously that won't go in the actual game.

A Curse or Gift? (Hurin)
Flavor:It has been discovered that a Lieutenant in the City Watch has the ability to sense violence, and track it, miraculously. He asserts that this ability has nothing to do with the Power.
Choice A: This is a creature of the Dark One! He must hang. (sacrifice 1 military unit, + minor shadow, + minor happiness)
Choice B: This Sniffer could be useful (+Light, minor - happiness)
Choice C: Let this man live, but he must leave your lands (no change)
Restriction: Fear only

happiness due to public opinion, which hates the Power

Note: this only really works if we end up not using Sniffer as a WoT GP, which seems relatively likely (that we won't)

Guild of Thief-Takers (Juilin Sandar)
Flavor: Your City Watch has failed to keep crime in check. A band of Thief-Takers has arrived from [neighboring civ] and have offered to help.
Choice A: Pay them what they ask ( - Gold, +happiness)
Choice B: They will do what I say, if they want to keep their heads (+shadow, + minor happiness)
Choice C: We aren't interested (no change)
Restriction: must be unhappy

Training the Heirs (Elayne and Gawyn)
Flavor: The White Tower has requested that you send the songs and daughters of the royal family to train with their Aes Sedai and Warders.
Choice A: No, we must retain our independence (-Tower influence)
Choice B: Very well (+Tower Influence, -Gold)
Choice C: Certainly, but instruct the youth to actively spy on the Tower (+Tower Influence, +Shadow)
Restriction: must be Tolerance (Authority?)

A Part of No Nation (Perrin and the Two Rivers)
Flavor: A remote region of your empire has begun running their own government and neglecting their duties to the Crown. They are clear to state that they are not in open rebellion.
Choice A: They are doing little harm. Let them feel important (-Gold, + minor Light, + minor Happiness)
Choice B: They can't do this! Send the troops (sacrifice one military unit, + Shadow, - happiness, +Prestige)
Choice C: Send a new governor and a fleet of tax collectors to put things in order (lose one governor, + Gold)
Restriction: Must have a city at least X tiles away from the capital

Luck of the Dark One (Mat)
Flavor: One of your generals is winning battles due to preposterous luck. Your other leaders have become suspicious and worry about involvement from the Witches.
Choice A: Nonsense. This man is simply a genius. (+Prestige)
Choice B: He must be exiled - he could be a traitor! (sacrifice 1 Great General, + Faith, +minor shadow)
Restriction: must have a Great Captain, must be Fear

Wilder's Block (Nyneave)
Flavor: Several of your channelers are performing under expectations because they suffer from unfortunately Blocks.
Choice A: These women need to train in the Tower (sacrifice 1 Wilder/Kin, + Tower Influence, + minor Light)
Choice B: They will be fine - perhaps they need some rest? (no changes)
Choice C: Perhaps your scholars can help (-Science, + EXP to X number of Wilders/Kin)
Choice D: These women are simply getting week. They must fight through their difficulties. (+ minor shadow, + minor EXP to X number of Wilders/Kin)
Restriction: Must have met the Tower. Must have at least one Wilder/Kin unit

Stilled Aes Sedai (Suian)
Flavor: You have learned that a trusted adviser is in fact a former Aes Sedai that was Stilled for misconduct. She has asked to have her Ability restored, and be allowed to leave your service.
Choice A: She is too valuable. She must stay (+Prestige, +Shadow)
Choice B: Of course, have one of your channelers Heal her (sacrifice one Governor, + Light, minor +happiness)
Restriction: Must have discovered "Cure for Gentling"

Legendary Sister (Cadsuane)
Flavor: A sister of advanced age and mythic status has emerged in your capital city. She may offer your aid, but your advisers caution you that she answers to no one, not even the Tower.
Choice A: This woman will foster instability. Her meddling must be kept far away from your affairs (+minor Shadow, - Tower Influence, +happiness)
Choice B: Whatever the risk, this Sister represents a source of power. We must learn what we can from her (+Culture, minor +science)
Restriction: Must be Authority

Dai'shan (Lan)
Flavor: One of your soldiers claims to be a descendent of the royal line of [extinct civ]. He has been gathering troops to one day restore his homeland to its former glory.
Choice A: This is a noble errand. Allow him to take some soldiers as an honor guard (sacrifice X military units, + minor culture, +Faith + Light)
Choice B: This sounds a lot like rebellion. He must be imprisoned before something bad happens (+minor shadow)
Choice C: Bring him into your council, and declare your kingdom to be the heir apparent to his fallen land (+Prestige)
Restriction: A civ must have gone extinct, not because of the player

A Viewing (Min)
A young woman in your capital apparently has the ability to View people's fates and know their futures. Your advisers recommend you use her to help find those destined for greatness.
Choice A: Send her to the Academies (+ X Great Scientist [equivalent] Points)
Choice B: Send her to the Artisans (+ X Great Artist [equivalent] Points)
Choice C: Send her to the battlefields (+ X Great Captain Points)
Choice D: Do nothing. These people must be discovered by themselves (+Faith, +minor Light)
Restriction: Not Fear

Esteemed Bard (Thom)
Flavor: A Bard of legendary reputation has journeyed to your court. He apparently has a troubled history with one of your nobles.
Choice A: Appoint him your Bard, despite your Noble's emotional protestations (gain a Great Musician [equivalent], -gold, + minor shadow)
Choice B: Your first duty is to your own people - the Bard must go (-happiness, + minor Light, minor +gold)
Choice C: Hire him for one elaborate celebration and send him on his way (+Culture, - minor gold)

Where the Shadow Waits (Padan Fain)
Flavor: A Peddler has come into your capital with impressive wares at a good price. However, he has a disturbing, sinister aura that one of your advisers believes is like the curse of Mashadar.
Choice A: Let this man sell his wares, and leave (+minor Culture, +minor Gold)
Choice B: A creature such as this cannot be allowed to roam free. He must be investigated and tried if found guilty of misdeeds (-gold, + Light, + Faith)
Choice C: This man obviously has valuable connections. Bring him into your service, cursed or not! (gain a Great Merchant [equivalent], +minor unhappiness, +Shadow)
Restriction: Shadar Logoth must have been created

Cursed Item (Mat)
Flavor: One of your soldiers got lost in Shadar Logoth and has returned in one piece... but is eerily and fatally attached to an object he found there.
Choice A: This man must be sent to the Tower for Healing (sacrifice 1 military unit, +Light, +Tower Influence)
Choice B: your scholars have much to learn from a curse such as this (+Science, + Shadow)
Choice C: Take the dagger from him - he needs to move on (+minor Shadow)
Restriction: Shadar Logoth must have been created

Captain without a King
Flavor: A Great Captain, disgraced by his former Liege, has offered to swear his sword to you.
Choice A: His help is needed. Accept. (-gold, gain one Great Captain)
Choice B: No - he will probably betray you. To prison with him. (+ Shadow)
Choice C: No thanks (no change)

Foreign Soldiers (Gaul)
Flavor: An adept band of exotic foreign warriors has become enamored with your cause, and offer to join you.
Choice A: No, we prefer to use our own citizens (+Faith)
Choice B: They will make an excellent addition to our forces [Gain X Unique Units of a different Civ, -gold)
Choice C: Turn these men over to their King as traitors (+Prestige, + minor Shadow)
Restriction: Some other civilization must have a Unique Unit that is currently producible.

Nightmare Walker (Slayer)
Flavor: You have heard of a strange and powerful man that wanders the World of Dreams, apparently working to bring ill fortune upon your people.
Choice A: Seek the Tower's help - maybe they can catch him (+Tower Influence, minor + Light)
Choice B: Dedicate a few of your own channelers to protect your lands in the Dream (-1 Spark, +Culture)
Choice C: Only a man who can control the dream with his own thoughts could defeat this menace - find one and force him to fight for you (gain a Wolfbrother unit, +Shadow, -1 Spark)
Restriction: Not Oppression

Legendary Traveler (Jain Farstrider)
Flavor: You have learned that one of your soldiers is, in fact, an esteemed world traveller.
Choice A: He has chosen this simple life, and should be allowed to live it. (+minor Light, +Faith)
Choice B: Pay this man handsomely to share his tales with the world (-Gold, gain a Great Writer [equivalent])
Choice C: Demand that this man enters your service directly (+Prestige, +Shadow)

Mysterious Door
Flavor: Your scholars have come into possession of a doorframe Ter'angreal with surprising powers. Apparently, entering it will yield amazing knowledge - but at what cost?
Choice A: Enter it yourself (+ minor shadow, +Prestige)
Choice B: Require your scholars to enter it (+Science, +Shadow)
Choice C: Hide this abomination in your deepest holds (+Light)
Choice D: give it to the Tower (+Tower influence, + minor Light)
Restriction: must have discovered the Tower

Shrewd Leader (Berelain)
Flavor: The leader of a nearby City-State has demonstrated her political prowess, often gaining a surprising upper hand in relations with other civs.
Choice A: Pledge your support to her and her sovereignty (+Influence with nearby CS, minor +Light)
Choice B: She would serve you well as an adviser - make it so (+Governor, +Shadow, - Influence with CS)
Choice C: Offer military support in exchange for her wisdom (+Prestige, + minor Influence with nearby CS, sacrifice X military units)
Restriction: must have a CS near your civ's borders

S3rgeus · Apr 18, 2015

counterpoint said:
OK, I'm fine doing it that way. I will say that I think most of the bonuses against one type should probably work on both, though. The Honor tree would, for instance, be way lamer if those first few policies only affected half the barbarians (less, actually, considering the shadowspawn)

Cool, edited the misc summary to reflect the Dragonsworn being their own civ now.

counterpoint said:
I think I too like Brigands for in-universe reasons. However, it's also somewhat problematic (as is Bandits) for being less universal - it has the weird flavor disconnect when describing a Rebel House, whereas something like the Lawless would transfer well to that kind of thing.

Lawless would translate better to a rebel house kind of situation. The "Brigand Civilization" also doesn't have quite the same ring to it as Barbarian. Lawless seems like a step closer to that direction. Lawless, then?

counterpoint said:
Also, there's something very eye catching and satisfactory about "Barbarian Red". Who gets this color, and what color will the other one be? And.. the shadowspawn? Note: no need to solve this now.

Another color that people associate with danger, really. The Shadowspawn one can probably be much darker than the Barbarian Red one. Like, not have red at all, just be two visible shades of black.

counterpoint said:
interesting, the % chance thing.... I'm not sure. This makes it more randomized, which might be fine, but also is very dependent on which specific actions the player is taking. That might be fine, though.

How about both? Some when a female channeler is trained, and a low % chance when she attacks? (Higher lump sum when a male channeler is born, higher chance whenever they attack.)

counterpoint said:
Yeah, I agree with that. I think we need Population as a base, otherwise some would have none (which should only be possible in extreme scenarios).

Do we want one of the rewards for killing/gentling an FD to be a reduction in FD points?

Hmm, I'm not sure. It would make ranging far to kill foreign-spawned False Dragons an effective way of preventing them from spawning at home. Do we like that approach?

counterpoint said:
I think that adjustment to the modifiers might work fine. But I could also see both positive and negative mods be brought down to 150%/200%.

The positive mods were already less extreme than the negative ones, at 75% and 50%. It currently stands at:

-20 or lower Unhappiness: 200% False Dragon rate
Less than 0 Happiness: 150% False Dragon rate
+10 or more Happiness: 75% False Dragon rate
+20 or more Happiness: 50% False Dragon rate

Sound good?

counterpoint said:
eh... I'm not sure that bit of flavor is exciting enough to include. I think if we allow it from A'M at all... it might be best to just let everybody be full strength.

Ok, then I think rather than fight the flavor, we should leave the Asha'men out of it. Just an Aes Sedai ability.

counterpoint said:
OK, I'll go however you want on this!

But yeah, the bonuses/penalties should be for X turns.

Right, for now let's remember -Gold and -GPT are the same thing. I would change them, but I think they might all change again in a moment after one of our discussions below.

counterpoint said:
Darkfriend Escape
yeah, this option B is the one I thought I was talking about, with regards to its "greater good by obviously evil" nature.

This is interesting in that there is no Light option. Can we make it so that, perhaps, there is a neutral option, at least? Maybe change option D to "put him in prison" and make it (No Changes)?

As far as Famine Near City, looks fine.

Done

counterpoint said:
Right. Our allotment of alignment points should be based on the moral rightness of the action itself, and/or its intent, not its result.

If you get drunk, drive on the wrong side of the road, without wearing your safety belt, then get in an accident, are flipped from your car... but land safely right next to a winning lottery ticket, that was still a stupid thing to do, right?

Totally agree

counterpoint said:
good, but suggest amended "working with a suspected darkfriend scholar" instead of "known."

I'm still torn on D, but I think I can live with it.

Done

counterpoint said:
The bonus for B no longer makes sense, but thatnks you your "curse" flavor, I think it's fine - let's change it from Power-Wrought Weapons to something non-weaponish (that might yield culture). I dunno, could be generic, miscellaneous ter'angreal. Something like:

"Your scholars have discovered an ancient hoard of Items of Power, potentially more powerful than any found since the Age of Legends. However, those who wield them appear to exhibit increased aggression."

Done

counterpoint said:
Right. Good idea. I think the Quest is probably the simplest one. Not a strong opinion though.

Especially since the quest is just an added bonus for doing something the player could already do. Agreed that's much simpler. Edited into the master quest list.

counterpoint said:
Four Kings in Shadow
The only issue I have with this one as it stands is that it generates missionaries, which is apparently not a thing other Threads generate. we ok with that?

Yeah, that should be fine, it's just a variant on other Threads that give out units.

counterpoint said:
Cool! Cost for C - gold? Option A could have a unit sacrifice be its cost.

Gold doesn't seem like it captures the kind of cost the player is paying in option C. Maybe unhappiness is fine in this case, it's a big reward for the player. (There's a whole Ideology Tenet that gives just 2 more units than this.)

counterpoint said:
oh, right. that's fine.

Faith added to option B.

counterpoint said:
Great!

Edited in

counterpoint said:
ok. can follow your lead here.

Done

counterpoint said:
yep!

Edited in

counterpoint said:
I'm willing to consider rescheming all of this to exclude costs, but the fact is, the costs/penalties have felt pretty essential to making these yields. I'm not sure we'd really be able to deal with all of these situations appropriately without them.

Personally, I don't it's important for these to be all-good. I do think we can balance the numbers such that each thread is a "Net Positive," though, so the costs don't outweigh the earnings.

That said, if we have some that are Very Good... is there room for ones that are All Bad?

Right, the big one! The more I've been thinking about this, the more I think we should remove costs for all but the most powerful choices, and have those only in a few Threads.

One of the main things is player experience, but another component is the usefulness of certain bonuses vs the effectiveness of certain penalties for different types of players, different short term objectives, and different overall strategies.

So, the player experience component. Threads are random, at least from the player's perspective. Even if not "truly random" underneath, the player can't influence what Thread they will receive or when they will receive it. CiV is complicated (obviously) and the possible combinations of any of these costs compared against the player's array of potential "current situations" is boundless - there might as well be infinite combinations. I don't think we would ever be able to come up with choices that are appropriately costed in such a way that players wouldn't feel cheated at least some of the time. (Largely because appropriately costing given choices for several of those combinations is likely mutually exclusive.) That they're unable to pick the choice that makes moral/character sense or that gives them the payoff that contributes to their general strategy because of some immediate consequence of their current position.

This isn't necessarily the traditional "can't afford to do the right thing, which is expensive" situation (though I think that's non-ideal from a player experience point of view anyway). I'm thinking more along the lines of "This choice I should definitely take requires me to sacrifice X power of units, but I only have X-1 because Y foreign civ killed a unit of mine last turn and I'm going to finish another unit that would've let me do it next turn." I think most costs will have situations like that where the player is in general able to pay them, but unable to do so right now, when the Thread happens to have cropped up. Combine that with the fact that any other Thread (or almost any) would've let the player make a characteristic decision instead of being stuck on some edge case, it will be very frustrating.

Related to bonus usefulness for strategic considerations, some yields/bonuses will inevitably be less valuable to certain players than others. The guy who's got his own island and the world's greatest navy doesn't need military units. The guy who's rolling in gold doesn't care about the gold cost of choice X. Anyone who's not going for the culture victory doesn't care about -Prestige (probably why we've avoided this one, which is good). Some Dragonsworn appearing near your borders is infinitely easier to deal with if you've got the biggest army in the world and they're all sitting at home. The list goes on of situations where a cost is dramatically less of a cost for some players than others. (And the opposite exists, where costs are dramatically higher for players in certain situations.)

This will mean that, mechanically, some players will be pushed considerably toward one choice or another in a lot of Threads. But the one they're pushed towards might not mesh with what they're working towards, either morality wise (pushes them away from their desired Alignment) or strategy wise (doesn't help them achieve anything toward their intended victory strategy, possibly even working against it). Given that the player knows there were so many other Threads that didn't put them in that situation, that this is a combination of the Thread that was selected and their current situation, will be very frustrating.

I think both of those problems go away if we don't have too many costs across the board. Every option is an upside, but not every choice that helps their Alignment will help their strategy, and vice versa. So the idea with this system would be to tempt the player into choosing "against type" (either against Alignment or against strategy) instead of forcing them into it.

Compared to the examples above, all upside choices give us situations like: "I've been playing Light but the Light option here doesn't help my economy and I'm going to start losing Science from negative gold if I don't do something about it. That Shadow choice would give me some breathing room..." I don't think that's nearly as frustrating for the player, because they're using the Thread (a random element of the game) to mitigate a negative situation they've already gotten themselves into, rather than the Thread initiating that negative situation. It actually makes it easier for choices to be "agonizing," which is something I think we want, because none are "automatically eliminated" by their cost being a bad idea for the player. I also think it makes a lot of flavor sense (people being drawn to the Shadow because they offer immediate benefits that help them, or making more Neutral decisions in a very Light civ because that decision benefits them more realistically, or a Shadow civ being tempted by a Light option because of some co-operative objective it helps them achieve).

Now, creating these all-upside situations is complicated! I found that when making my last post, there were a few approaches to the Threads I proposed that I had to scrap and reflavor to make them make sense. I should note that there was only one "scenario" that I scrapped entirely, I was able to rewrite all of the other "initial situation" ideas into an all-upside version of the same situation once I'd started trying to do upside-only (about half way through).

I did mention above that I think costs can be appropriate for large payoff situations. I think there's definitely room for some "world-shaking" Threads (ones that capture particularly dramatic or far-reaching flavor) to present choices where a particular powerful or well positioned player could use the advantage they already have to make a "real difference" with a certain action. These would be big ticket items that give the player a massive bonus (multiple powerful military units, a free technology, massive Alignment changes, additional city population, free Governor(s), or multiples of several complementary smaller bonuses).

But I think any such choices should be tempered by a more "moderate" upside-only option that moves in the same kind of flavorful and mechanical direction (gives fewer yields, but ones that help the same strategy, contributes to the same Alignment, but to a lesser extent). That way players who are going for the direction covered by the "big ticket" choice aren't cheated out of being able to help themselves in a relevant situation. It also means that players who are able to pay the cost will see it more as an opportunity that's rewarding their particularly relevant strength in that field, rather than a "random penalty."

So, what do you think? I think we'd need to take a similar approach to Retainer is a Monarch with the existing Threads if we want to adopt this across the board. So we'd want to capture the essence of what flavor that Thread was trying to capture and reframe the situation to allow all choices to be advantageous. For some that might only require a tiny bit of tweaking.

I think we should decide on this before coming up with more Threads (since any with costs are creating more work for us if we decide not to have them in most cases). I'll still respond to all of the ones we're already working on in the "old context" of costs though, so we move toward collating them in a "good state" in the master list, where we can work on removing costs from a common location, rather than tracking all of the posts separately, if we decide to change over.

counterpoint said:
D is a little silly, but that's alright.

I could also see B being something besides soldiers - Artisans or something, and make it -Culture. Or Science or something.

I wonder if this would benefit from a more neutral choice....

-Culture sounds good, we've got a lot of sacrifice units costs in other places. I think the current costs are ok - I've been thinking that Minor Alignment changes would be fine choices for Neutral civs, they'd just need to mix and match to make sure they don't go too far one direction. I'd say they could pick a few in one direction for the majority of the game without being moved out of the Neutral tier.

counterpoint said:
OK, why culture for B?

Also, I could see B being a neutral choice, which might be a good thing in something like this.

Culture because it's the inverse of A. In A, artists' expression is repressed because anything they say/make can be used as evidence against them to have them killed as Darkfriends. Case B lets the arts flourish instead, since only the clearly evil (the ones stabbing folk) are Questioned.

I think minor +Light makes some sense for B, because you're still rooting out Darkfriends, making the land safer for everyone else. Minor because you still have to do bad things to do so, but in this case the "bad to do good" is included in the whole scenario, rather than a projected consequence.

counterpoint said:
Spies - - > Eyes and Ears

I like these yeilds. They are appropriately minor.

Done!

counterpoint said:
I'm not sure the Creator reference is necessary, since these Faith buildings may not be Religious in nature (as Paths aren't religious, necessarily)... like, Ji'e'toh, etc.

good! Yeah, alternatives could be nice.

Very true! Creator reference removed.

counterpoint said:
Hmmm, I feel like we're hitting the "murder your own people" thing pretty hard.

Can we change B to "Exile Them" instead? I think that option's lack of alignment yields is better supported by this anyways.

Yeah, I agree that flavor has come up too often. I think this thread is particularly relevant to the cost situation above, because for most players, this would just be a terrible thing to see. -Pop in multiple cities is crippling, so if you're a poor Light player, this Thread completely destroys you. Neutral players also don't like it because they must take a high Alignment yield choice, or suffer pop loss.

I'll add it for now, but I think we should reconsider -Pop. (I know I suggested it, I disagree with Thursday S3rgeus's assessment of the situation.)

counterpoint said:
gross.

I know, right! I particularly liked this one for how the flavor could make the player care about the decision.

counterpoint said:
I say B should be alignment neutral.
D should be +Light, not Major+Light, I think.

Done

counterpoint said:
Interesting. What type of conduct are you thinking here? Like truly vile?

Testing on hapless beggars, secretly introducing untested chemicals into people's food to observe the effects, things like that.

counterpoint said:
I don't love B. I don't get why it'd be +Prestige, since it'd be hidden from the world. Also, I don't see why it would be +Light. Neutral, I say.

Agree we can drop the Light from B. It's Prestige because people still know you received this rare painting that few artists would ever have made.

counterpoint said:
cool. I say Great Captain.

done

counterpoint said:
Hmm... not sure about B. I can see both ways, it staying or going.

Thinking more on this, I think B is a nod to Neutral civs. There isn't much room to be non-committal about Alignment in this situation, so that's the best they can do to not swing massively one way or the other.

counterpoint said:
I wonder, though, this one stands out as one of those that might have players going "And then what happened?" Like, if you are basically telling Lee Harvey Oswald where JFK's limo is going to be, you're setting up an assassin, aren't you?

Should we maybe make it more vague, like they just want to know his whereabouts? Implying that it could simply be because Lanfear wants to blah blah blah with him, or something? I just worry that shadow players will be annoyed there isn't some actual Affect on the Dragon because they chose C.

Very good point. How about this new text:

The Dragon is due to visit your capital on the morrow. One of the Forsaken have approached you and offered you significant compensation meet with him in secret during his visit.
...
Choice C: Arrange the meeting

counterpoint said:
I know you don't want negatives for this one, but A really should have a -Gold. It seems to be the very definition of -Gold.

Not necessarily. I did think of how we could avoid gold cost here, but it can be made more clear. The idea is that you've had a "projected income" from these donations but when the gold was finally counted, you've found you have more than expected. So none of the "excess" was ever included in a budget for anything - you've just got a sudden windfall that hasn't been factored into anything yet.

Reflavored text to make that more clear:

Your clerks have recently counted your people's donations to causes of the crown. They have found the sum to be greater than previously expected.

An alternative to make it even more clear would be to characterize it as a recount, where someone made a clerical error last time and you actually thought you had less gold than you actually do.

S3rgeus · Apr 18, 2015

counterpoint said:
A Curse or Gift? (Hurin)
Flavor:It has been discovered that a Lieutenant in the City Watch has the ability to sense violence, and track it, miraculously. He asserts that this ability has nothing to do with the Power.
Choice A: This is a creature of the Dark One! He must hang. (sacrifice 1 military unit, + minor shadow, + minor happiness)
Choice B: This Sniffer could be useful (+Light, minor - happiness)
Choice C: Let this man live, but he must leave your lands (no change)
Restriction: Fear only

happiness due to public opinion, which hates the Power

Note: this only really works if we end up not using Sniffer as a WoT GP, which seems relatively likely (that we won't)

I thought Sniffer a WoT GP was seeming quite likely. Just a quick list of WoT GP types I've been thinking made sense:

Slayer
Wolfbrother (Perrin, Elyas)
Probability Man (Mat)
Viewer (Min)
Sniffer
what's left?

This Thread could possibly co-exist with the Sniffer GP type though - its restriction could be that you have a Sniffer?

I think sacrificing units should always use X power, rather than a number of units. Otherwise players who happen to have a warrior hanging around somewhere are a lot better off than those who keep their army upgraded, which seems quite weird.

counterpoint said:
Guild of Thief-Takers (Juilin Sandar)
Flavor: Your City Watch has failed to keep crime in check. A band of Thief-Takers has arrived from [neighboring civ] and have offered to help.
Choice A: Pay them what they ask ( - Gold, +happiness)
Choice B: They will do what I say, if they want to keep their heads (+shadow, + minor happiness)
Choice C: We aren't interested (no change)
Restriction: must be unhappy

I love the "must be unhappy" restriction and the combination with the flavor is great.

In "old context" this looks good.

If we wanted to make it positive only, I think it only needs slight tweaking:

Choice A: Allow them to aid your city guard (+Happiness, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Force them into your service and do not allow them to leave the city walls (Minor +Happiness, +Shadow)
Choice C: Send them away (Nothing)

counterpoint said:
Training the Heirs (Elayne and Gawyn)
Flavor: The White Tower has requested that you send the songs and daughters of the royal family to train with their Aes Sedai and Warders.
Choice A: No, we must retain our independence (-Tower influence)
Choice B: Very well (+Tower Influence, -Gold)
Choice C: Certainly, but instruct the youth to actively spy on the Tower (+Tower Influence, +Shadow)
Restriction: must be Tolerance (Authority?)

Authority sounds good for the restriction.

All upside version, in case we want to do that:

Choice A: Their place is here, with our people (+Culture (or Prestige), Minor +Light)
Choice B: Very well (+Tower Influence)
Choice C: Certainly, but instruct the youth to actively spy on the Tower (+Tower Influence, +Shadow)

counterpoint said:
A Part of No Nation (Perrin and the Two Rivers)
Flavor: A remote region of your empire has begun running their own government and neglecting their duties to the Crown. They are clear to state that they are not in open rebellion.
Choice A: They are doing little harm. Let them feel important (-Gold, + minor Light, + minor Happiness)
Choice B: They can't do this! Send the troops (sacrifice one military unit, + Shadow, - happiness, +Prestige)
Choice C: Send a new governor and a fleet of tax collectors to put things in order (lose one governor, + Gold)
Restriction: Must have a city at least X tiles away from the capital

I feel like B has a lot of downsides for comparably small upside. Happiness is more valuable to culture players than incidental prestige (because of happiness' effect on culture). It's definitely more valuable for everybody else.

What about:

Choice B: They must learn to be closer to the crown, have our soldiers settle nearby. (Sacrifice X strength of units, -Happiness, Gain settler at <city>, +Shadow)

Same for C, losing a Governor is a lot more costly than getting Gold. Major +Gold at least, but I'd be tempted to add even more bonuses for that as well.

counterpoint said:
Luck of the Dark One (Mat)
Flavor: One of your generals is winning battles due to preposterous luck. Your other leaders have become suspicious and worry about involvement from the Witches.
Choice A: Nonsense. This man is simply a genius. (+Prestige)
Choice B: He must be exiled - he could be a traitor! (sacrifice 1 Great General, + Faith, +minor shadow)
Restriction: must have a Great Captain, must be Fear

I think there should be more choices on this one, since A is only useful for culture players and B is Shadow (and sacrifices a Great Captain).

Choice C: It sounds like he would make a sound financial adviser (+Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: Reassign him so that he can co-ordinate attacks against the Shadowspawn, well away from the public eye (+Happiness, +Light)

counterpoint said:
Wilder's Block (Nyneave)
Flavor: Several of your channelers are performing under expectations because they suffer from unfortunately Blocks.
Choice A: These women need to train in the Tower (sacrifice 1 Wilder/Kin, + Tower Influence, + minor Light)
Choice B: They will be fine - perhaps they need some rest? (no changes)
Choice C: Perhaps your scholars can help (-Science, + EXP to X number of Wilders/Kin)
Choice D: These women are simply getting week. They must fight through their difficulties. (+ minor shadow, + minor EXP to X number of Wilders/Kin)
Restriction: Must have met the Tower. Must have at least one Wilder/Kin unit

Sounds good

counterpoint said:
Stilled Aes Sedai (Suian)
Flavor: You have learned that a trusted adviser is in fact a former Aes Sedai that was Stilled for misconduct. She has asked to have her Ability restored, and be allowed to leave your service.
Choice A: She is too valuable. She must stay (+Prestige, +Shadow)
Choice B: Of course, have one of your channelers Heal her (sacrifice one Governor, + Light, minor +happiness)
Restriction: Must have discovered "Cure for Gentling"

Governor seems like a big sacrifice for B for a small payoff. Gain an Aes Sedai as well?

Another potential choice:

Choice C: Have one of your channelers Heal her, but request she remain your adviser. (Minor +Light, +Culture)

counterpoint said:
Legendary Sister (Cadsuane)
Flavor: A sister of advanced age and mythic status has emerged in your capital city. She may offer your aid, but your advisers caution you that she answers to no one, not even the Tower.
Choice A: This woman will foster instability. Her meddling must be kept far away from your affairs (+minor Shadow, - Tower Influence, +happiness)
Choice B: Whatever the risk, this Sister represents a source of power. We must learn what we can from her (+Culture, minor +science)
Restriction: Must be Authority

Seems like B could have Minor +Light?

counterpoint said:
Dai'shan (Lan)
Flavor: One of your soldiers claims to be a descendent of the royal line of [extinct civ]. He has been gathering troops to one day restore his homeland to its former glory.
Choice A: This is a noble errand. Allow him to take some soldiers as an honor guard (sacrifice X military units, + minor culture, +Faith + Light)
Choice B: This sounds a lot like rebellion. He must be imprisoned before something bad happens (+minor shadow)
Choice C: Bring him into your council, and declare your kingdom to be the heir apparent to his fallen land (+Prestige)
Restriction: A civ must have gone extinct, not because of the player

X strength of military again for A, rather than number of units. C could have a Governor as well?

counterpoint said:
A Viewing (Min)
A young woman in your capital apparently has the ability to View people's fates and know their futures. Your advisers recommend you use her to help find those destined for greatness.
Choice A: Send her to the Academies (+ X Great Scientist [equivalent] Points)
Choice B: Send her to the Artisans (+ X Great Artist [equivalent] Points)
Choice C: Send her to the battlefields (+ X Great Captain Points)
Choice D: Do nothing. These people must be discovered by themselves (+Faith, +minor Light)
Restriction: Not Fear

Awesome!

counterpoint said:
Esteemed Bard (Thom)
Flavor: A Bard of legendary reputation has journeyed to your court. He apparently has a troubled history with one of your nobles.
Choice A: Appoint him your Bard, despite your Noble's emotional protestations (gain a Great Musician [equivalent], -gold, + minor shadow)
Choice B: Your first duty is to your own people - the Bard must go (-happiness, + minor Light, minor +gold)
Choice C: Hire him for one elaborate celebration and send him on his way (+Culture, - minor gold)

Cool

counterpoint said:
Where the Shadow Waits (Padan Fain)
Flavor: A Peddler has come into your capital with impressive wares at a good price. However, he has a disturbing, sinister aura that one of your advisers believes is like the curse of Mashadar.
Choice A: Let this man sell his wares, and leave (+minor Culture, +minor Gold)
Choice B: A creature such as this cannot be allowed to roam free. He must be investigated and tried if found guilty of misdeeds (-gold, + Light, + Faith)
Choice C: This man obviously has valuable connections. Bring him into your service, cursed or not! (gain a Great Merchant [equivalent], +minor unhappiness, +Shadow)
Restriction: Shadar Logoth must have been created

Does Shadar Logoth get created or does it just exist as a CS? I can't remember what we decided on that.

counterpoint said:
Cursed Item (Mat)
Flavor: One of your soldiers got lost in Shadar Logoth and has returned in one piece... but is eerily and fatally attached to an object he found there.
Choice A: This man must be sent to the Tower for Healing (sacrifice 1 military unit, +Light, +Tower Influence)
Choice B: your scholars have much to learn from a curse such as this (+Science, + Shadow)
Choice C: Take the dagger from him - he needs to move on (+minor Shadow)
Restriction: Shadar Logoth must have been created

C could be take the dagger and put it on display, allowing us to give some Culture as well?

I'm not sure what to do about the military cost in A, because 1 unit is a problem as mentioned above, but this flavor is specifically one guy.

counterpoint said:
Captain without a King
Flavor: A Great Captain, disgraced by his former Liege, has offered to swear his sword to you.
Choice A: His help is needed. Accept. (-gold, gain one Great Captain)
Choice B: No - he will probably betray you. To prison with him. (+ Shadow)
Choice C: No thanks (no change)

Cool

counterpoint said:
Foreign Soldiers (Gaul)
Flavor: An adept band of exotic foreign warriors has become enamored with your cause, and offer to join you.
Choice A: No, we prefer to use our own citizens (+Faith)
Choice B: They will make an excellent addition to our forces [Gain X Unique Units of a different Civ, -gold)
Choice C: Turn these men over to their King as traitors (+Prestige, + minor Shadow)
Restriction: Some other civilization must have a Unique Unit that is currently producible.

I don't think we need the gold cost in B - the units will cost you maintenance anyway. B could also be Minor +Light?

counterpoint said:
Nightmare Walker (Slayer)
Flavor: You have heard of a strange and powerful man that wanders the World of Dreams, apparently working to bring ill fortune upon your people.
Choice A: Seek the Tower's help - maybe they can catch him (+Tower Influence, minor + Light)
Choice B: Dedicate a few of your own channelers to protect your lands in the Dream (-1 Spark, +Culture)
Choice C: Only a man who can control the dream with his own thoughts could defeat this menace - find one and force him to fight for you (gain a Wolfbrother unit, +Shadow, -1 Spark)
Restriction: Not Oppression

Why -1 Spark for C?

counterpoint said:
Legendary Traveler (Jain Farstrider)
Flavor: You have learned that one of your soldiers is, in fact, an esteemed world traveller.
Choice A: He has chosen this simple life, and should be allowed to live it. (+minor Light, +Faith)
Choice B: Pay this man handsomely to share his tales with the world (-Gold, gain a Great Writer [equivalent])
Choice C: Demand that this man enters your service directly (+Prestige, +Shadow)

Great!

Tweaked all-upside alternative for B:

Choice B: Spread the tale of his adventures far and wide, until his fame draws him to tell it himself (Gain a Great Writer)

counterpoint said:
Mysterious Door
Flavor: Your scholars have come into possession of a doorframe Ter'angreal with surprising powers. Apparently, entering it will yield amazing knowledge - but at what cost?
Choice A: Enter it yourself (+ minor shadow, +Prestige)
Choice B: Require your scholars to enter it (+Science, +Shadow)
Choice C: Hide this abomination in your deepest holds (+Light)
Choice D: give it to the Tower (+Tower influence, + minor Light)
Restriction: must have discovered the Tower

Awesome!

counterpoint said:
Shrewd Leader (Berelain)
Flavor: The leader of a nearby City-State has demonstrated her political prowess, often gaining a surprising upper hand in relations with other civs.
Choice A: Pledge your support to her and her sovereignty (+Influence with nearby CS, minor +Light)
Choice B: She would serve you well as an adviser - make it so (+Governor, +Shadow, - Influence with CS)
Choice C: Offer military support in exchange for her wisdom (+Prestige, + minor Influence with nearby CS, sacrifice X military units)
Restriction: must have a CS near your civ's borders

How about instead of sacrificing military for C, you automatically pledge to protect them? Culture also seems like it would be a more generally useful yield for C.

Should we make the restriction adjacent rather than near? (So your borders must touch somewhere.) It's much easier to work out when that's possible, both for the player and for the game.

Hilariously, the master Thread list is too long for a single post now (33,000+ characters) so I've split it in two and linked to the second one from the first list and the summary.

S3rgeus · Apr 18, 2015

Where the Shadow Waits
Flavor: A Peddler has come into your capital with impressive wares at a good price. However, he has a disturbing, sinister aura that one of your advisers believes is like the curse of Mashadar.
Choice A: Let this man sell his wares, and leave (Minor +Culture, Minor +Gold)
Choice B: A creature such as this cannot be allowed to roam free. He must be investigated and tried if found guilty of misdeeds (-Gold, +Light, +Faith)
Choice C: This man obviously has valuable connections. Bring him into your service, cursed or not! (Minor -Happiness, Gain a Great Merchant [equivalent], +Shadow)
Restriction: Shadar Logoth must exist

Cursed Item
Flavor: One of your soldiers got lost in Shadar Logoth and has returned in one piece... but is eerily and fatally attached to an object he found there.
Choice A: This man must be sent to the Tower for Healing (+Light, +Tower Influence)
Choice B: Your scholars have much to learn from a curse such as this (+Science, +Shadow)
Choice C: Take the dagger from him and display it in your palace (+Culture, Minor +Shadow)
Restriction: Shadar Logoth must exist

Captain without a King
Flavor: A Great Captain, disgraced by his former Liege, has offered to swear his sword to you.
Choice A: His help is needed. Accept. (-Gold, Gain one Great Captain)
Choice B: No - he will probably betray you. To prison with him. (+Shadow)
Choice C: No thanks (Nothing)

Foreign Soldiers
Flavor: An adept band of exotic foreign warriors has become enamored with your cause, and offer to join you.
Choice A: No, we prefer to use our own citizens (+Faith)
Choice B: They will make an excellent addition to our forces (Gain 1 Unique Unit of a different Civ)
Choice C: Turn these men over to their King as traitors (+Prestige, Minor +Shadow)
Restriction: Some other civilization must have a Unique Unit that is currently producible.

Nightmare Walker
Flavor: You have heard of a strange and powerful man that wanders the World of Dreams, haunting some of your people in the night.
Choice A: Seek the Tower's help - maybe they can catch him (+Tower Influence, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Dedicate a few of your own channelers to protect your lands in the Dream (+Culture)
Choice C: Some scholars are investigating ways of inducing sleep without dreams, people have no need for such distractions. Send those affected as test subjects. (Minor +Science, Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: An outcast warrior claims he can manipulate the World of the Dream with his mind and has offered to fight this man if you lend aid. (Sacrifice X power of units, gain Wolfbrother unit, Minor +Light)
Restriction: Not Oppression

Legendary Traveler
Flavor: You have learned that one of your soldiers is, in fact, an esteemed world traveller.
Choice A: He has chosen this simple life, and should be allowed to live it. (Minor +Light, +Faith)
Choice B: Encourage your bards to tell tales of his travels (Minor +Culture)
Choice C: Claim the stories of his travels as your own (+Prestige, +Shadow)
Choice D: Imprison him until he writes a compendium of his adventures (-Happiness, Gain Great Writer, +Shadow)

Mysterious Door
Flavor: Your scholars have come into possession of a doorframe Ter'angreal with surprising powers. Apparently, entering it will yield amazing knowledge - but at what cost?
Choice A: Enter it yourself (Minor +shadow, +Prestige)
Choice B: Require your scholars to enter it (+Science, +Shadow)
Choice C: Hide this abomination in your deepest holds (+Light)
Choice D: give it to the Tower (+Tower influence, Minor +Light)
Restriction: must have discovered the Tower

Shrewd Leader
Flavor: The leader of <nearby CS> has demonstrated her political prowess, often gaining a surprising upper hand in relations with other civs.
Choice A: Pledge your support to her and her sovereignty (+Influence with <nearby CS>, Minor +Light)
Choice B: She would serve you well as an adviser - make it so (+Governor, +Shadow, -Influence with <nearby CS>)
Choice C: Offer military support in exchange for her wisdom (+Culture, Minor +Influence with <nearby CS>, pledge to protect them)
Restriction: must have a CS adjacent your civ's borders

counterpoint · Apr 19, 2015

S3rgeus said:
Lawless would translate better to a rebel house kind of situation. The "Brigand Civilization" also doesn't have quite the same ring to it as Barbarian. Lawless seems like a step closer to that direction. Lawless, then?

I think it works, but we should keep an eye out for anything that might seem more flavorful.

S3rgeus said:
Another color that people associate with danger, really. The Shadowspawn one can probably be much darker than the Barbarian Red one. Like, not have red at all, just be two visible shades of black.

Right, but we actually need THREE colors, right? 1) Lawless (red, I presume), 2) Dragonsworn, and 3) Shadowspawn

S3rgeus said:
How about both? Some when a female channeler is trained, and a low % chance when she attacks? (Higher lump sum when a male channeler is born, higher chance whenever they attack.)

I don't think it works to generate a lump sum when males are born. They are involuntary. Many civs will gentle them immediately - they should not still suffer a huge penalty. Our options are:

Females - 1) per action, 2) per turn/group of turns, 3) on production
Males 1) per action 2) per turn/group of turns
The question is whether it should be uniform across the board - if we do it on Production for females, it cannot, by definition, be uniform since doing it on production for men is a pretty bad idea.

S3rgeus said:
Hmm, I'm not sure. It would make ranging far to kill foreign-spawned False Dragons an effective way of preventing them from spawning at home. Do we like that approach?

No, we don't like that approach...

S3rgeus said:
The positive mods were already less extreme than the negative ones, at 75% and 50%. It currently stands at:

-20 or lower Unhappiness: 200% False Dragon rate

Less than 0 Happiness: 150% False Dragon rate

+10 or more Happiness: 75% False Dragon rate

+20 or more Happiness: 50% False Dragon rate

Sound good?

yes, that sounds good.

S3rgeus said:
Ok, then I think rather than fight the flavor, we should leave the Asha'men out of it. Just an Aes Sedai ability.

agreed, fixed in summary.

S3rgeus said:
Right, for now let's remember -Gold and -GPT are the same thing. I would change them, but I think they might all change again in a moment after one of our discussions below.

yes, of course.

S3rgeus said:
Gold doesn't seem like it captures the kind of cost the player is paying in option C. Maybe unhappiness is fine in this case, it's a big reward for the player. (There's a whole Ideology Tenet that gives just 2 more units than this.)

Trapped in Time
Sure, however you'd like to handle this one. But yeah, that comparison to the Foreign Legion tenet does make this one stick out as really powerful.

S3rgeus said:
Right, the big one! The more I've been thinking about this, the more I think we should remove costs for all but the most powerful choices, and have those only in a few Threads.

TEXT

I think we should decide on this before coming up with more Threads (since any with costs are creating more work for us if we decide not to have them in most cases). I'll still respond to all of the ones we're already working on in the "old context" of costs though, so we move toward collating them in a "good state" in the master list, where we can work on removing costs from a common location, rather than tracking all of the posts separately, if we decide to change over.

OK, I'll say first that I'm definitely willing to make a go at making them [almost] exclusively bonus-based. I think this can work.

But I will say that I also am not sure it matters as much as you seem to think. I know that a minor bonus FEELS somewhat different from a moderate bonus and a minor penalty, but in truth they aren't different. If you are worried people will become stressed out and frustrated because they are having to incur certain penalties, I think people could just as easily feel stressed because they are missing out on certain bonuses. Sort of like missing a wonder, getting a bad Ruin, or failing to found a religion. That siad, I cannot discount that, in fact, it does feel somewhat lamer to get a bonus, but I think that feeling is somewhat here no matter what we do.

The other aspect I'll point out is that having multiple aspects to these - bonuses and penalties - allows us to make the choices more complicated and as a consequence perhaps more thought-provoking for the player. As a rather abstract example, imagine a player who is playing Light, but not obsessively so (not necessarily aiming for Tier 8 or anything). To me this type of player (or the exact opposite working for Shadow) seems likely to be the most common. This player sees a Thread with the following options:

A - +Light + Bonus A
B - + minor Light + Bonus B
C - + Bonus C
D - + Shadow + Bonus D

I think this player - who is by no means unusual, it seems - will make most of their chiefly based on which bonus they want. Sure, they'll probably avoid the blatant shadow choices, but they'll also likely mostly ignore the varying degrees of Light (or even neutrality), instead going for which bonus they want now.

I know that is part of what you're saying, how players then have to do less-good things to get the yields they want, but in truth I think it will lead to people essentially ignoring the flavor and just looking for the one that says Science or whatever they want, as long as it doesn't have a blatantly awful Alignment outcome.

Compare to this:

A - +Light + Bonus A + Penalty Z
B - + minor Light + Bonus B + Penalty Y
C - + Bonus C + Penalty X
D - + Shadow + Bonus D

That's obviously way more complex, and provokes much more consideration from the player. In this case, I think that might also cause them to take more notice of what the thread is actually about, and choose because of that - they'll need something to help guide them. And with more variables, I think Alignment is going to more often be a factor - as a "tie breaker" of sorts.

Also, I'm not sure I am with you on the whole "I can't afford this right now, but I could last turn, but I spent all my money on something else" problem. Haven't you said before that this kind of thing is just a part of civ, and the way it works? Bad timing, I mean. And this problem is still present even without penalties: "Dammit, I just disbanded FOUR units, and now I see I'm getting +8 GPT!" or "I just blew 3000 gold on buying zoos, and now I get a free +4 happiness?!"

I can't deny most of the Player Experience argument you made, in terms of the Bad Feeling you get when getting a penalty. Because of that, I'm willing to go with All-Bonuses. But I also think it in some ways distracts from the real point of these - to get the player to think in-universe, and to steer them towards committing to an alignment. I worry that we lose some of that by tossing out the penalties. If you're convinced that it's worth it, and worth the more difficult process of coming up with good balanced options without the use of penalties, I'm with you.

S3rgeus said:
-Culture sounds good, we've got a lot of sacrifice units costs in other places. I think the current costs are ok - I've been thinking that Minor Alignment changes would be fine choices for Neutral civs, they'd just need to mix and match to make sure they don't go too far one direction. I'd say they could pick a few in one direction for the majority of the game without being moved out of the Neutral tier.

good. that works.

S3rgeus said:
Culture because it's the inverse of A. In A, artists' expression is repressed because anything they say/make can be used as evidence against them to have them killed as Darkfriends. Case B lets the arts flourish instead, since only the clearly evil (the ones stabbing folk) are Questioned.

Inquisition
So, what you said above makes sense... if it's stated that these are artists/artisans who are being Questioned (which wasn't in there). Otherwise, I say Culture has nothing to do with either choice.

So... let's say it's artists who are being questioned!

S3rgeus said:
I think minor +Light makes some sense for B, because you're still rooting out Darkfriends, making the land safer for everyone else. Minor because you still have to do bad things to do so, but in this case the "bad to do good" is included in the whole scenario, rather than a projected consequence.

alright.

S3rgeus said:
Yeah, I agree that flavor has come up too often. I think this thread is particularly relevant to the cost situation above, because for most players, this would just be a terrible thing to see. -Pop in multiple cities is crippling, so if you're a poor Light player, this Thread completely destroys you. Neutral players also don't like it because they must take a high Alignment yield choice, or suffer pop loss.

I'll add it for now, but I think we should reconsider -Pop. (I know I suggested it, I disagree with Thursday S3rgeus's assessment of the situation.)

Organized Cult
OK, definitely don't think it needs to be -pop. Flavor it as exile, but maybe something else as a penalty. -Culture?

S3rgeus said:
Testing on hapless beggars, secretly introducing untested chemicals into people's food to observe the effects, things like that.

Immoral Scholar
OK. I'd say that stuff is best described as "Unethical" rather than "Immoral." Obviously it's both, but "Immoral" connotes other things as well ("he does drugs," "he sleeps around on his wife," etc.) that I think players might assume we mean... and then say "what's the big deal?"

I propose we thus state it is unethical behavior, not immoral.

S3rgeus said:
Agree we can drop the Light from B. It's Prestige because people still know you received this rare painting that few artists would ever have made.

Chosen Portrait
Alright.

S3rgeus said:
Thinking more on this, I think B is a nod to Neutral civs. There isn't much room to be non-committal about Alignment in this situation, so that's the best they can do to not swing massively one way or the other.

Endangering the Dragon
Got it, so it's like saying "You think you're being neutral, but you're actually being evil." Sure. good.

S3rgeus said:
Very good point. How about this new text:

The Dragon is due to visit your capital on the morrow. One of the Forsaken have approached you and offered you significant compensation meet with him in secret during his visit.
...
Choice C: Arrange the meeting

Endangering the Dragon again
Yeah. good idea.

S3rgeus said:
Not necessarily. I did think of how we could avoid gold cost here, but it can be made more clear. The idea is that you've had a "projected income" from these donations but when the gold was finally counted, you've found you have more than expected. So none of the "excess" was ever included in a budget for anything - you've just got a sudden windfall that hasn't been factored into anything yet.

Reflavored text to make that more clear:

Your clerks have recently counted your people's donations to causes of the crown. They have found the sum to be greater than previously expected.

An alternative to make it even more clear would be to characterize it as a recount, where someone made a clerical error last time and you actually thought you had less gold than you actually do.

Charitable Donations
OK, a couple things on this.

One, I don't love the "donations" thing. People don't usually give donations to their government. They call those taxes. True, Government-issued bonds are a thing, but.... are you really talking about savings bonds? I'd say just taxes or something like that makes more sense.

I like the reflavoring as a miscount, btw (though not as donations)

Following your point this doesn't count as money you ever really had, and so doesn't count against you... then shouldn't there be an option to "Keep all the gold in the treasury" that gives you a bunch of gold? It just seems weird that there's an evil +Gold option that has you embezzling some of it, but no option that involves just using all of it (which wouldn't be as evil!) The truth is, your embezzling of it would be putting money into some account the player doesn't even see (the funds that determine the life-style of your leader!), while the money the player does see is simply the civ's money, as a whole.

So to me the embezzlement doesn't make sense. If you want to flavor it as a clerical error, and everybody was taxed too much, and the government is deciding to keep it all anyways, that makes much more sense, and is probably still shadow (though maybe minor), but that doesn't have anything to do with personal coffers.

In any case, if A and B don't take away Gold, then there needs to be an option that provides gold because... the whole thread is about finding a bunch of gold.

counterpoint · Apr 19, 2015

S3rgeus said:
I thought Sniffer a WoT GP was seeming quite likely. Just a quick list of WoT GP types I've been thinking made sense:

Slayer

Wolfbrother (Perrin, Elyas)

Probability Man (Mat)

Viewer (Min)

Sniffer

what's left?

This Thread could possibly co-exist with the Sniffer GP type though - its restriction could be that you have a Sniffer?

I think sacrificing units should always use X power, rather than a number of units. Otherwise players who happen to have a warrior hanging around somewhere are a lot better off than those who keep their army upgraded, which seems quite weird.

A Curse or Gift
OK, understood re: X power of units.

I do think the thread could probably coexist with the existence of a Sniffer GP. I'm not sure about it being a Restriction, though... we're not sure what a Sniffer would do, but most GPs only sit around for a turn or two before being expended, and if that's the case, this would be an impossible Thread to ever see.

As far as Sniffers as GPs... I should say I'm unsure about this. It's cool, but it's also not very Civ. Somebody that catches criminals and tracks former battles...? Not sure how that would really work or be useful.

Of the others, I definitely like Wolfbrother and Viewer/Doomseer. I don't think Slayer is a great fit, because he's sort of one guy (perhaps some kind of wolfbrother) who's just an unusually messed up DF (like Fain). And probability man... I'm thinking that might just best be put into the Great Captain.

Also, there's Dreamer/Dreamwalker or just Ta'ver'en in general (maybe a better way of doing probability man)

But we don't yet know if any of these will be coopted by any "regular" GPs. The WoT GP remains up in the air, for now, until we dive in head first.

S3rgeus said:
I love the "must be unhappy" restriction and the combination with the flavor is great.

In "old context" this looks good.

If we wanted to make it positive only, I think it only needs slight tweaking:

Choice A: Allow them to aid your city guard (+Happiness, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Force them into your service and do not allow them to leave the city walls (Minor +Happiness, +Shadow)
Choice C: Send them away (Nothing)

Guild of Thief-Takers
I think actually your positive-only suggestion is close, but opens up a big reason why these are going to be hard and kinda wonky sometimes. It has to do with Option B. That choice/yield doesn't seem to make sense. You're doing the evil thing, and why? To get *less* happiness? The truth is, you do this one so you don't have to spend gold (which option A would require). Otherwise, the only reason to do so is because you are fiercely dedicated to doing evil, which is sort ironically not-evil, since evil is selfish (and would want more happiness!) In order to approximate this, you'd then need to add a minor +Gold to option B, synthesizing the "savings," but then that feels rather odd, earning income off of it.
Also, you'd have to really really want to be neutral to choose C.

S3rgeus said:
Authority sounds good for the restriction.

All upside version, in case we want to do that:

Choice A: Their place is here, with our people (+Culture (or Prestige), Minor +Light)
Choice B: Very well (+Tower Influence)
Choice C: Certainly, but instruct the youth to actively spy on the Tower (+Tower Influence, +Shadow)

Training the Heirs
I don't see problems with these upside options, though I do find myself choosing between A and B 100% because of which yield I want more.

Even if we stay with costs, we should reflavor A the way you did in your Choice A, and add the +culture and minor light (or maybe just the light).

S3rgeus said:
I feel like B has a lot of downsides for comparably small upside. Happiness is more valuable to culture players than incidental prestige (because of happiness' effect on culture). It's definitely more valuable for everybody else.

What about:

Choice B: They must learn to be closer to the crown, have our soldiers settle nearby. (Sacrifice X strength of units, -Happiness, Gain settler at <city>, +Shadow)

Same for C, losing a Governor is a lot more costly than getting Gold. Major +Gold at least, but I'd be tempted to add even more bonuses for that as well.

A Part of No Nation
OK, good points. Let's go with your new Choice B. Settler is weird, but sure!
On C, maybe it's something like lose gov, gain Great Merchant?

Also, this is neither here nor there, but I'm thinking of it now. You've made mention of how population is always good, and how people always want to increase population, accumulate food, etc.

Isn't this not necessarily true? Don't wide civs often cap their population in cities, to prevent rampant unhappiness (thus the "Prevent Growth" option in the city management menu)? I don't do this, but that's because I don't like micromanaging.... and I often have happiness problems, don't I?

In any case, unless I'm wrong, I want to mention that gaining population isn't always good for everybody.

S3rgeus said:
I think there should be more choices on this one, since A is only useful for culture players and B is Shadow (and sacrifices a Great Captain).

Choice C: It sounds like he would make a sound financial adviser (+Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: Reassign him so that he can co-ordinate attacks against the Shadowspawn, well away from the public eye (+Happiness, +Light)

Luck of the Dark One
OK! Those are kind of weird, but sure.

S3rgeus said:
Governor seems like a big sacrifice for B for a small payoff. Gain an Aes Sedai as well?

Another potential choice:

Choice C: Have one of your channelers Heal her, but request she remain your adviser. (Minor +Light, +Culture)

Stilled Aes Sedai
OK, sure on both suggestions.

S3rgeus said:
Seems like B could have Minor +Light?

Legendary Sister
if you think it should, fine. I feel like it's mostly neutral, but it's not a strong feeling. We aren't talking about showing her respect or anything - we're talking about using her.

S3rgeus said:
X strength of military again for A, rather than number of units. C could have a Governor as well?

Dai'shan
yes on X strength.

Um, I'd say no to the governor. All these choices have ended up very small-benefit. A governor seems way net benefit than the rest, right?

S3rgeus said:
Does Shadar Logoth get created or does it just exist as a CS? I can't remember what we decided on that.

we decided that, since SL was Aridhol - a 10 nations nation - that a CS could "Become" SL at some mid point of the game (and it wouldn't need to be Aridhol).

This doesn't have to be how it is, but it's what we decided.

Also, Shadar Logoth needs to be discussed at some point (make a place for it in the misc summary?)

S3rgeus said:
C could be take the dagger and put it on display, allowing us to give some Culture as well?

I'm not sure what to do about the military cost in A, because 1 unit is a problem as mentioned above, but this flavor is specifically one guy.

Cursed Item
Sure. I like that for C.

For A, maybe military units are the wrong way to go then. gold? Unless we do it that you need to send along a military escort with him or something.

S3rgeus said:
I don't think we need the gold cost in B - the units will cost you maintenance anyway. B could also be Minor +Light?

Foreign Soldiers
Eh, B *could* be minor light, but so could A. They both kind of feel neutral to me.

I think B is too awesome by comparison if we eliminate the bonus. Can there be another penalty? -minor faith?

S3rgeus said:
Why -1 Spark for C?

Nightmare Walker
Because.... I have no idea. I think it might be a mistake. That needs a penalty though, as it's a free GP and consequently quite good.

S3rgeus said:
Great!

Tweaked all-upside alternative for B:

Choice B: Spread the tale of his adventures far and wide, until his fame draws him to tell it himself (Gain a Great Writer)

Legendary Traveler
same issue as above. If it's just a free GP, that choice suddenly because way, way better than the others (think how much Faith a GW costs to buy, when comparing to choice A).

S3rgeus said:
How about instead of sacrificing military for C, you automatically pledge to protect them? Culture also seems like it would be a more generally useful yield for C.

Should we make the restriction adjacent rather than near? (So your borders must touch somewhere.) It's much easier to work out when that's possible, both for the player and for the game.

Shrewd Leader
I thought of the pledge for C, but... is that really enough? That seems super minor and easy to deal with (CSs being invaded rather rarely).

Culture for C is fine.

Adjacency is fine.

S3rgeus · Apr 19, 2015

counterpoint said:
Right, but we actually need THREE colors, right? 1) Lawless (red, I presume), 2) Dragonsworn, and 3) Shadowspawn

Yeah, let's let Lawless keep the Barbarian colors. Shadowspawn can be darker, but of a similar color. We could go with something like gold and black for the Dragonsworn?

I've edited the new name (Lawless) into the misc summary.

counterpoint said:
I don't think it works to generate a lump sum when males are born. They are involuntary. Many civs will gentle them immediately - they should not still suffer a huge penalty. Our options are:

Females - 1) per action, 2) per turn/group of turns, 3) on production
Males 1) per action 2) per turn/group of turns
The question is whether it should be uniform across the board - if we do it on Production for females, it cannot, by definition, be uniform since doing it on production for men is a pretty bad idea.

I think per turn/group of turns makes sense for both. So males make +1 per turn, females +1 every 5 turns? Every 10?

I'd also be fine with per action (well, per attack), with a probability chance, so males could trigger it more often.

Let's drop the lump sum on production so it can be uniform across both, and since having lump sums when male channelers are born is bad, as you've said.

counterpoint said:
Trapped in Time
Sure, however you'd like to handle this one. But yeah, that comparison to the Foreign Legion tenet does make this one stick out as really powerful.

counterpoint said:
OK, I'll say first that I'm definitely willing to make a go at making them [almost] exclusively bonus-based. I think this can work.

Cool, I think almost exclusively bonus-based is the way to go. In some of my suggestions for "all upside" versions for Threads we're currently working on, I think I went too far (the Great Writer one comes to mind, but I'll address that specifically later) in making some choices "obviously better" because they gave big payouts where the other choices didn't.

However, I really think almost bonus-only is the way to go. A more quantifiable standpoint might be to say that I think a Thread should have at most one choice with a cost, and that cost should be accompanied by significant payoff as well as another choice which accomplishes a similar but less lucrative goal. I'm not sure if that works in all cases yet, but it's my current favorite on how to summarize a general Thread-approach strategy. More specifics on your comments below.

counterpoint said:
But I will say that I also am not sure it matters as much as you seem to think. I know that a minor bonus FEELS somewhat different from a moderate bonus and a minor penalty, but in truth they aren't different.

I totally agree on the game balance point here, that a moderate bonus and a minor penalty are equivalent to a minor bonus, despite any human differences in experience. In objective pursuit of victory, they're the same. (Evaluating plays in Magic: The Gathering is rife with this perceptual issue, and it's something players have to be conscious of to play objectively well.)

My mechanical concerns here aren't with the theory of moderate - minor = minor, but that the costs we want to use will not be uniformly valued for all players. We're unable to create the theory situation where the minor penalty always makes the moderate bonus the same net worth as the minor bonus by itself, because sometimes that minor penalty will be negligible (because the player has a surplus of whatever it costs them) and other times it will be moderate (because they have a shortage of the resource it's costing them). The inverse exists for both bonuses as well (sometimes worthless, sometimes lifesaving) but that's much easier to balance because we only need to consider the context of when the bonus is useful, rather than any combination of times when each a bonus and its corresponding cost could be mismatched.

In terms of importance, I think this could be hugely important to players. CiV is a game of careful consideration and strategy and we're introducing a significant random element to that. If Threads are seen as intrusive to the player or obstructive of their ability to play the game well, I genuinely think many people would stop playing the mod for that reason.

counterpoint said:
If you are worried people will become stressed out and frustrated because they are having to incur certain penalties, I think people could just as easily feel stressed because they are missing out on certain bonuses. Sort of like missing a wonder, getting a bad Ruin, or failing to found a religion. That siad, I cannot discount that, in fact, it does feel somewhat lamer to get a bonus, but I think that feeling is somewhat here no matter what we do.

I don't think players will be nearly as stressed out about the opportunity cost of the other choices as they would be about losing some resources they have already obtained. They are making a conscious decision to choose a different path from the other choices. If it turns out later that one of the choices they didn't take would have been more useful, that's something for them to consider for future strategic situations. They evaluated a series of bonuses and didn't pick the correct one for their situation. (Sometimes it's impossible for them to know which is going to be correct, because it would require being able to predict the game, and recognizing those differences would also be key to playing well, which would be the case for either approach.) Penalties, on the other hand, is taking something they've already put in the effort to do well and taking it away from them.

I'm not sure what you mean in your last sentence here. When is it lame to get a bonus?

counterpoint said:
The other aspect I'll point out is that having multiple aspects to these - bonuses and penalties - allows us to make the choices more complicated and as a consequence perhaps more thought-provoking for the player. As a rather abstract example, imagine a player who is playing Light, but not obsessively so (not necessarily aiming for Tier 8 or anything). To me this type of player (or the exact opposite working for Shadow) seems likely to be the most common. This player sees a Thread with the following options:

A - +Light + Bonus A
B - + minor Light + Bonus B
C - + Bonus C
D - + Shadow + Bonus D

I think this player - who is by no means unusual, it seems - will make most of their chiefly based on which bonus they want. Sure, they'll probably avoid the blatant shadow choices, but they'll also likely mostly ignore the varying degrees of Light (or even neutrality), instead going for which bonus they want now.

I know that is part of what you're saying, how players then have to do less-good things to get the yields they want, but in truth I think it will lead to people essentially ignoring the flavor and just looking for the one that says Science or whatever they want, as long as it doesn't have a blatantly awful Alignment outcome.

Compare to this:

A - +Light + Bonus A + Penalty Z
B - + minor Light + Bonus B + Penalty Y
C - + Bonus C + Penalty X
D - + Shadow + Bonus D

That's obviously way more complex, and provokes much more consideration from the player. In this case, I think that might also cause them to take more notice of what the thread is actually about, and choose because of that - they'll need something to help guide them. And with more variables, I think Alignment is going to more often be a factor - as a "tie breaker" of sorts.

This is a very good point, and I agree that situation 2 would cause some players to consider the situation more deeply. But I also think that swings both ways - that some costs will be prohibitive in enough situations that the player doesn't really need to think at all, because the costs make some choices complete non-competitors.

In terms of players ignoring the flavor and choosing purely based on bonuses, I think players who do that were going to do that anyway. They'll just be considering different variables if we have costs across the board, because some people genuinely aren't interested in the flavor. (Which is a shame, the flavor's awesome.) I do definitely think it's a valid approach to playing the game or mod though, that the player is going to make a pure value judgement to optimize their path to victory, regardless of what the text boxes say. Given the role Alignment plays in the Last Battle, Alignment does have to be part of that player's consideration though.

counterpoint said:
Also, I'm not sure I am with you on the whole "I can't afford this right now, but I could last turn, but I spent all my money on something else" problem. Haven't you said before that this kind of thing is just a part of civ, and the way it works? Bad timing, I mean. And this problem is still present even without penalties: "Dammit, I just disbanded FOUR units, and now I see I'm getting +8 GPT!" or "I just blew 3000 gold on buying zoos, and now I get a free +4 happiness?!"

I think these situations are hugely different from the cost ones, from a player experience point of view. The player didn't need to do that thing a few turns ago that helped them out of a bind, but was detrimental long term, if they had known this Thread was coming. But they couldn't have known this Thread was coming, and the negative consequences because they disbanded those units or bought those zoos stem from a willing player choice, not from a random element of the game. I think that difference is huge. Mechanically, they've ended up in the same place between these two situations, but player experience wise, being caught out by losing something due to a difficult/mitigatory/even seemingly unrelated decision you made when you didn't have all the information is much harder on them than realizing you didn't need to do something difficult/mitigatory, had you known what other windfalls might exist in the near future.

In terms of bad luck playing a role in CiV, as I've brought up before for things like the Tower quest that asks you to progress an era, even though you might have progressed an era last turn. I think that situation is more like the almost-bonuses-only approach. The player is missing out on the bonus they could have gotten from the Tower quest because of all of these decisions they made earlier (most immediately obvious is their last decision on which tech to research, but it extrapolates back into their choice of buildings contributing to a specific science per turn output, other choices making pop which makes science, etc. until the beginning of the game). But it doesn't make what they already have worse, which costs can do.

counterpoint said:
I can't deny most of the Player Experience argument you made, in terms of the Bad Feeling you get when getting a penalty. Because of that, I'm willing to go with All-Bonuses. But I also think it in some ways distracts from the real point of these - to get the player to think in-universe, and to steer them towards committing to an alignment. I worry that we lose some of that by tossing out the penalties. If you're convinced that it's worth it, and worth the more difficult process of coming up with good balanced options without the use of penalties, I'm with you.

You make a great point about flavor here, that one of the objectives of the Threads system is to get players to consider things from an in-universe perspective. I think I'm thinking of it slightly differently - that the Threads should allow players who want to participate in the game in a "flavorful" way find a lot to like about Threads and can use them to make a more narrative adventure of how their empire evolves. But I also think that players should be able to play from a purely statistical approach as well, making decisions solely based on what benefits they want to receive. I think both players bring a requirement for consistency across the Threads in particular, where a player who makes decisions either purely flavor-driven or purely numbers-driven should receive a consistent experience. (As touched on above, a purely numbers-driven approach would be unlikely to completely ignore Alignment due it its mechanical implications in the Last Battle.)

In practice, most players will fall somewhere between the two extremes, given that we're a fantasy mod total conversion, most likely tilting towards the flavorful end of the scale. If anything, that means more players will consider the flavor of what we do than usual (compared to all CiV players), regardless of what we choose here.

Something that you've touched on and I've not really discussed explicitly above is that a lot of these situations we're considering between the two approaches (not being able to afford stuff because money spent elsewhere, having spent money to boost happiness when free happiness was on the way anyway) end up as a mechanical wash. I totally agree on this, that from an objective evaluation of sequences of events of either approach, you could construct a corresponding situation in the other system that led to the same gain or loss of player resources. This makes me think the player experience component is more important, that while it front-loads more effort onto us here in the design phase, it makes the players' interactions more enjoyable to achieve the same mechanical outcome.

So, as demonstrated by my walls of text, I think I'm convinced that going for an almost-all-bonuses approach makes sense for us, but I'd like you to be convinced too, rather than mainly go along with my decision. Is there any more convincing I should do? Do you think there are more situations where costs on more choices help us? (I'm of course open to be convinced back to having costs if there's a compelling reason to do so.)

Pending this decision, I'll keep going through our current discussions so we've consolidated into the master list!

counterpoint said:
Inquisition
So, what you said above makes sense... if it's stated that these are artists/artisans who are being Questioned (which wasn't in there). Otherwise, I say Culture has nothing to do with either choice.

So... let's say it's artists who are being questioned!

Done. I rewrote the main body like this:

Flavor: One of your advisers has suggested that groups of artisans are potentially harboring Darkfriends and should be put to the Question.

counterpoint said:
Organized Cult
OK, definitely don't think it needs to be -pop. Flavor it as exile, but maybe something else as a penalty. -Culture?

We could swap out the flavor of this choice for another one:

Choice B: Redirect their idolatry to see if they can find a way to emulate his powers (Minor +Science, Minor +Shadow)

counterpoint said:
Immoral Scholar
OK. I'd say that stuff is best described as "Unethical" rather than "Immoral." Obviously it's both, but "Immoral" connotes other things as well ("he does drugs," "he sleeps around on his wife," etc.) that I think players might assume we mean... and then say "what's the big deal?"

I propose we thus state it is unethical behavior, not immoral.

Good point, I hadn't considered the difference here! Changed.

counterpoint said:
Endangering the Dragon
Got it, so it's like saying "You think you're being neutral, but you're actually being evil." Sure. good.

Done

counterpoint said:
Endangering the Dragon again
Yeah. good idea.

Done

counterpoint said:
Charitable Donations
OK, a couple things on this.

One, I don't love the "donations" thing. People don't usually give donations to their government. They call those taxes. True, Government-issued bonds are a thing, but.... are you really talking about savings bonds? I'd say just taxes or something like that makes more sense.

I like the reflavoring as a miscount, btw (though not as donations)

Following your point this doesn't count as money you ever really had, and so doesn't count against you... then shouldn't there be an option to "Keep all the gold in the treasury" that gives you a bunch of gold? It just seems weird that there's an evil +Gold option that has you embezzling some of it, but no option that involves just using all of it (which wouldn't be as evil!) The truth is, your embezzling of it would be putting money into some account the player doesn't even see (the funds that determine the life-style of your leader!), while the money the player does see is simply the civ's money, as a whole.

So to me the embezzlement doesn't make sense. If you want to flavor it as a clerical error, and everybody was taxed too much, and the government is deciding to keep it all anyways, that makes much more sense, and is probably still shadow (though maybe minor), but that doesn't have anything to do with personal coffers.

In any case, if A and B don't take away Gold, then there needs to be an option that provides gold because... the whole thread is about finding a bunch of gold.

Purely factually, the donations considered here and taxes are quite different - taxes are enforced. Different types of societies, like say religious ones that are run by a church that receives donations from citizens, provide avenues for people to make donations that end up in government coffers.

But anyway, I like a lot of your suggestions here, and this is exactly the kind of Thread changes that help for the all-upside approach, where we go back and say that actually the flavor of the situation we're working on can be changed to make the bonuses make more sense. I'm thinking it leads to something like:

Miscounted Revenue
Flavor: Your clerks have been recounting taxes and found a clerical error, you have collected more gold from your citizens than originally intended.
Choice A: Our coffers overfloweth, we must give it back (+Happiness, +Light)
Choice B: Donate the excess to scholarly endeavors (+Science)
Choice C: That's very fortunate, adjust our ledgers accordingly (+Gold, +Shadow)

S3rgeus · Apr 19, 2015

counterpoint said:
A Curse or Gift
OK, understood re: X power of units.

I do think the thread could probably coexist with the existence of a Sniffer GP. I'm not sure about it being a Restriction, though... we're not sure what a Sniffer would do, but most GPs only sit around for a turn or two before being expended, and if that's the case, this would be an impossible Thread to ever see.

As far as Sniffers as GPs... I should say I'm unsure about this. It's cool, but it's also not very Civ. Somebody that catches criminals and tracks former battles...? Not sure how that would really work or be useful.

Of the others, I definitely like Wolfbrother and Viewer/Doomseer. I don't think Slayer is a great fit, because he's sort of one guy (perhaps some kind of wolfbrother) who's just an unusually messed up DF (like Fain). And probability man... I'm thinking that might just best be put into the Great Captain.

Also, there's Dreamer/Dreamwalker or just Ta'ver'en in general (maybe a better way of doing probability man)

But we don't yet know if any of these will be coopted by any "regular" GPs. The WoT GP remains up in the air, for now, until we dive in head first.

Cool, I'm happy to come back to the breakdown of GP types when we're doing GPs in more detail then. Just to clarify about your last sentence, we are definitely having WoT GP types, right? It's just the breakdown of what makes them up that we need to decide on. I think a few systems we've already decided on depend on there being WoT GP types.

Very true about the Sniffer restriction, it would make the Thread almost impossible to ever see, unless Sniffers were more like Great Generals/Admirals, which tend to spend more time on the map. Even then, it's a small window of time it would be available.

counterpoint said:
Guild of Thief-Takers
I think actually your positive-only suggestion is close, but opens up a big reason why these are going to be hard and kinda wonky sometimes. It has to do with Option B. That choice/yield doesn't seem to make sense. You're doing the evil thing, and why? To get *less* happiness? The truth is, you do this one so you don't have to spend gold (which option A would require). Otherwise, the only reason to do so is because you are fiercely dedicated to doing evil, which is sort ironically not-evil, since evil is selfish (and would want more happiness!) In order to approximate this, you'd then need to add a minor +Gold to option B, synthesizing the "savings," but then that feels rather odd, earning income off of it.
Also, you'd have to really really want to be neutral to choose C.

Yeah, definitely, these ended up a bit wonky. This makes me think we should change the flavor of what the choices represent. How about:

Guild of Thief-Takers
Flavor: Your City Watch has failed to keep crime in check. A band of Thief-Takers has offered to help.
Choice A: Allow them to aid your city guard (+Happiness, +Light)
Choice B: They could aid in constructing a distraction instead (Receive <Happiness building> in <city that doesn't have one>, +Shadow)
Choice C: Instruct them to seize coin from lucrative thieves only (Minor +Gold, Minor +Happiness)
Restriction: must be unhappy

Or possibly +Gold for C, not Minor.

counterpoint said:
Training the Heirs
I don't see problems with these upside options, though I do find myself choosing between A and B 100% because of which yield I want more.

Even if we stay with costs, we should reflavor A the way you did in your Choice A, and add the +culture and minor light (or maybe just the light).

I've just realized that this setup means C is just B + Shadow, which I think we generally want to avoid. (As you've mentioned before, players shouldn't just "default" to a choice, which direct comparisons like this would make them do.) There's obviously room within +Tower Influence to have one choice give less than the other, even if they're in the same ballpark, but it would be good if there was always some element of "alternative" in each direction. How about this:

Training the Heirs
Flavor: The White Tower has requested that you send the sons and daughters of the royal family to train with their Aes Sedai and Warders.
Choice A: Their place is here, with our people (+Culture, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Very well (+Tower Influence)
Choice C: Certainly, but instruct the youths to bring back "souvenirs" when they visit home (Minor +Culture, Minor +Tower Influence, +Shadow)
Restriction: must be Authority

Alternative flavor for C would be to tell them to "steal secrets" and have that give Minor +Science.

counterpoint said:
A Part of No Nation
OK, good points. Let's go with your new Choice B. Settler is weird, but sure!
On C, maybe it's something like lose gov, gain Great Merchant?

Done

counterpoint said:
Also, this is neither here nor there, but I'm thinking of it now. You've made mention of how population is always good, and how people always want to increase population, accumulate food, etc.

Isn't this not necessarily true? Don't wide civs often cap their population in cities, to prevent rampant unhappiness (thus the "Prevent Growth" option in the city management menu)? I don't do this, but that's because I don't like micromanaging.... and I often have happiness problems, don't I?

In any case, unless I'm wrong, I want to mention that gaining population isn't always good for everybody.

Very good point. Like you, I never do this, but having done some quick reading about its value on the CiV reddit, it seems like there's definitely a lot of value here. By default 1 citizen creates 1 Unhappiness, so yeah, more population isn't always good. I think a few incidental population points from Threads should be manageable in almost all cases - civs hovering around 0 Happiness should be working on raising it already.

counterpoint said:
Luck of the Dark One
OK! Those are kind of weird, but sure.

Done

counterpoint said:
Stilled Aes Sedai
OK, sure on both suggestions.

Done

counterpoint said:
Legendary Sister
if you think it should, fine. I feel like it's mostly neutral, but it's not a strong feeling. We aren't talking about showing her respect or anything - we're talking about using her.

Good point, it's not really Light then. Done

counterpoint said:
Dai'shan
yes on X strength.

Um, I'd say no to the governor. All these choices have ended up very small-benefit. A governor seems way net benefit than the rest, right?

Yep, completely, a Governor would be far and away the best choice here.

counterpoint said:
we decided that, since SL was Aridhol - a 10 nations nation - that a CS could "Become" SL at some mid point of the game (and it wouldn't need to be Aridhol).

This doesn't have to be how it is, but it's what we decided.

Also, Shadar Logoth needs to be discussed at some point (make a place for it in the misc summary?)

Right, yes, I remember this now! I've added a heading to the misc summary.

counterpoint said:
Cursed Item
Sure. I like that for C.

For A, maybe military units are the wrong way to go then. gold? Unless we do it that you need to send along a military escort with him or something.

We could just drop the cost for A? It still looks quite balanced after we do that.

counterpoint said:
Foreign Soldiers
Eh, B *could* be minor light, but so could A. They both kind of feel neutral to me.

I think B is too awesome by comparison if we eliminate the bonus. Can there be another penalty? -minor faith?

We could make choice B give only 1 unit, then it wouldn't be the clear best choice?

counterpoint said:
Nightmare Walker
Because.... I have no idea. I think it might be a mistake. That needs a penalty though, as it's a free GP and consequently quite good.

Yeah, free GPs are definitely at the top of the pyramid of bonuses. How about this change:

Nightmare Walker
Flavor: You have heard of a strange and powerful man that wanders the World of Dreams, haunting some of your people in the night.
Choice A: Seek the Tower's help - maybe they can catch him (+Tower Influence, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Dedicate a few of your own channelers to protect your lands in the Dream (+Culture)
Choice C: Some scholars are investigating ways of inducing sleep without dreams, people have no need for such distractions. Send those affected as test subjects. (Minor +Science, Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: An outcast warrior claims he can manipulate the World of the Dream with his mind and has offered to fight this man if you lend aid. (Sacrifice X power of units, gain Wolfbrother unit, Minor +Light)
Restriction: Not Oppression

counterpoint said:
Legendary Traveler
same issue as above. If it's just a free GP, that choice suddenly because way, way better than the others (think how much Faith a GW costs to buy, when comparing to choice A).

Definitely, how about this:

Legendary Traveler
Flavor: You have learned that one of your soldiers is, in fact, an esteemed world traveller.
Choice A: He has chosen this simple life, and should be allowed to live it. (Minor +Light, +Faith)
Choice B: Encourage your bards to tell tales of his travels (Minor +Culture)
Choice C: Claim the stories of his travels as your own (+Prestige, +Shadow)
Choice D: Imprison him until he writes a compendium of his adventures (-Happiness, Gain Great Writer, +Shadow)

This is the kind of scale I was thinking way about when I mentioned choices that go in the same direction as the costs with big payoffs. C and D clearly work toward the same objective, choosing between the two, if that particular yield (in this case Prestige) helps you, is a matter of deciding if you wish to pay the cost of getting the greater reward.

I almost chose Gold as the cost for D, but given that Happiness is very important to Culture victory players (you produce less culture when unhappy), it seemed an appropriate cost.

counterpoint said:
Shrewd Leader
I thought of the pledge for C, but... is that really enough? That seems super minor and easy to deal with (CSs being invaded rather rarely).

Culture for C is fine.

Adjacency is fine.

Pledges also apply to when anyone bullies that CS - you can either "hold them accountable" which creates a diplo penalty with the bullying civ or "withdraw protection" which costs you influence with the CS.

Lord Yanaek · Apr 19, 2015

Hello there. I almost feel like i have to apologize for interrupting your conversation :blush:

I have roughly followed this thread for some time (didn't read everything but tried to get an idea of your goals and progress) and while i'm not very familiar with the WoT story, all the stuff you put together seems great from a game-play point of view. I will try to be short (compared to your own posts at least

).

Spark. In the summary, you say that channelers "consume" spark. Does this mean spark is a strategic resource used by channelers or some yield like faith that will be permanently used to create channelers. Later can be hard to balance because if spark is very rare, those units will have so much value to players that there is a risk they end up not using them much (if you played FFH mod for Civ4, how often did you attack with your hero when odds of winning were lower than 99.9%) If spark is not rare however, those units won't be so special. Strategic resource that can be re-used if the unit dies can make those units rare and special without having the player refrain from using them in fear of loosing them (Ea heroes will die one day or another and once they die, a new is more likely to appear so i will attack with my warrior hero)
Science Victory. Not sure where you are going with Envoys. It's a nice idea to have SV more interactive but how can i stop an opponent from winning science apart from DoW to kill his envoys? If there is no peaceful way to deal with those it might be much work from you to implement something that will ultimately merely add slightly more micro management to get the victory. With science being that important to every victory anyway i wouldn't see any issue to have SV simply removed, especially for a fantasy mod.
Bloodknives. Spies promoted to bloodkinives that die (in mission or from timer) will re-spawn like normal spies (sorry, eyes and ears ) won't they? I can't imagine permanently sacrificing a spy.
The tower. I like the idea of being able, for a cost, to refuse edicts It's silly how the WC can ban my luxuries and i can't say them "go to hell" even while i'm warring everyone. Hopefully you can do something similar with Compact of Nations.
Domination. Not sure how governors will play in the base game or how you get them but you have some interesting ideas for their role in wars. I'm sure you could even design something so that they will make domination harder and easier depending on how the player manages his governors. No need to be "either".
Threads. I don't think, as a player, that there is anything wrong with some of those "events" having a cost. There would be something wrong (and frustrating) to purely bad events. Comunitas mod (not the community patch, the old Comunitas mod) had some interesting event where you could choose between minor bonus at no cost, or big bonus with some cost. That was perfect. OTOH, an event where you just have to choose between the least of 2 evils is a pain in a strategy game and can lead to frustration, especially if you later miss some important wonder and feel like the fault is up to that event (much like missing 5th religion due to random prophet spawn while you were sitting on 200+ faith for 10 turns). OTOH, simple gold cost often means player will stockpile some gold to always choose the best bonus so costs must be varied and balanced.
"Barbarian" colors. The most important part is to tell them apart from civs colors quickly. Looking at your preview icons there is not much black, and probably only as secondary color so i guess black is a good base for primary. Having black as primary for every barbarian, and only for barbarians would probably allow player to quickly see them. For secondary i would stay away from "cold" colors because they don't "stand up" as much (artists often use "cold" colors to give a feeling of depth while "hot" colors seem to "jump" at you) so Black/Red, Black/Yellow, maybe Black/Brown if it's a reddish brown. Black/Gray would probably look washed out and not stand out much, but maybe you want your shadow-spawns to feel insidious. You probably still want to avoid pure gray and slightly tint it.

Well, sorry for disturbing you. I hope this mod will eventually come to life, it could be the "Fall from Heaven" of Civ5 when you finish it :goodjob:

S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

Emperor

King

King

Emperor

Emperor

King

King

Emperor

Emperor

King

King

King

Emperor

Emperor

Emperor

King

King

Emperor

Emperor

Emperor

Similar threads