S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

Could the Dragon's pre-LB antics simply cause an increase in good/bad faith choices, but they reference him in their flavour text. So this really pushes to make decisions about who they want to support? Similarly there could be some shadowspawn attacks so people strengthen their military?

brightness: allegiance to the light, integrity, holiness (terrible, but have to throw it in there), piety. I do think corruption is good name though. Because about people giving in to the darkness for personal gains. The name also is clear for people to understand what is good (low).
 
Quick notification before I launch into my post, I'm away for the weekend again. It's a longer one this time, so I might be back on Monday evening, but Tuesday's much more likely!

I had said "Some Darkside units and/or features may be able to be purchased with Faith for appropriate civs."


I see what you mean there. Certainly I do like the faith modifier based on your brightness - still need a term for this that isn't facetious! With that in mind, I don't think making things more expensive is necessary (assuming that modifier is significant)

It's hard to say how this would all work in balance until we actually knew what units/buildings we're speaking of - is this how they build shadowspawn? darkfriend spies? I can't think of much else we'd really be talking about, and if it is those things, I don't think Faith makes much sense. whatever system we use to dole those out (Boons,e tc.), it is probably simplest if Faith isn't involved in it.

One interesting note after I've thought about it: say you have a super Light civ that decides to join Shadow. Obviously you'd be getting happiness penalties, but would you still maintain your high Faith output? Or would that diminish because you have gone shadow? Maybe this is fine, since most of the units you'll be able to build are faith-spreading (missionaries, etc.), shadow killing (whitecloaks, which would perhaps be less useful to you), and GPs (which get expensive quick). Maybe this alone is a reason not to have "dark" faith units (to prevent this kind of weird loophole). tldr: maybe Faith units should be, by design, more useful to light players.

Sounds good to me that faith units are more useful to Light side civs, on average. I think we want to tie Shadowspawn the amount of Shadowspawn a civ controls (if any) to their Alignment toward the Shadow?

I think a high Light civ that chooses Shadow shouldn't have any immediate faith penalty from that. However, I'd imagine there's a steadily increasing movement toward Shadow Alignment when you're on the Shadow side. This will mean they'll stack up faith penalties over time, so it will regress. (As we said above, the faith also won't be that useful to them.) This also means that Shadow civs, if we tie Shadowspawn control to Shadow Alignment, will gain control of steadily more Shadowspawn the longer the Last Battle runs on, which I think is really cool.


I had said: Their people's degree of unhappiness


This one I'm a bit torn on. One the one hand, what you are saying makes sense, especially if you have a "good civ" and you go bad. But, the thing is, remember, I've been considering that there aren't "bad civs." Your civ's government gets corrupted, taken over, whatever. I have trouble with the idea that "your people are unhappy that you aren't trying to destroy the world!"

The problem is, by the same token, a dark civ is more likely to be "tolerated" by people who are "used to" their shenanigans. So this makes sense. But I still come away feeling like a "super evil" civ wouldn't be more happy than a "morally conflicted" civ.

I don't know, how should we resolve this"?

I think this isn't really an issue. Your people aren't unhappy that you're not destroying the world - your civilization has been infiltrated at all levels of government by Darkfriends. When you come out in support of the Light, they respond by inciting rebellion and using their influence to divide your civilization against you (for whatever reason is convenient to each group being divided). This is the source of unhappiness for Shadow Alignment civs that choose the Light.



I will clarify this. What I mean is that such situations wouldn't count towards the shadow victory. If I take your capital and you take mine 500 years ago, and we are both on the same team, neither of us has their original capital (which would help somebody else win Dom victory). This should not count towards the SHADOW-part of a shadow victory, as the capitals are still "light controlled" (that said, they would theoretically count towards somebody's dom victory still).

This is the same as the Domination victory - to win a Domination victory you must control all original capitals (even of civs that don't control their own or have even been wiped out).



I think, yes, they wouldn't win until all conditions were met. I'm not sure how else to do this. And yes, his "allies" would try to kill him - isn't this what you were hoping would happen? I don't think we'd notify the world though (not any more than we notify the world of their incremental progress).

Yes, definitely what we were hoping! Just wanted to make sure we both agreed on that because we hadn't discussed the series of events where a Shadow player "wins" before finishing the Last Battle.


I had said: "Spies placed in cities that hold a Seal have a chance to capture the seal for the spy's home civ. It is still undetermined whether the spy must have previously known the location of the seal, or whether the spy needs to be specifically ordered to go on a Seal-stealing mission (as opposed to doing so automatically like discovering intrigue or stealing a tech). The Dragon can also perform this function while stationed in a city, doing so at a faster rate."


All excellent thoughts. I think, sure, the Seal's location would be discovered by a spy more or less automatically, or some nominal amount of time later (next turn, two turns, etc.). Also, yes, I think in order to keep spies from being one-man-wrecking crew, they should probably do either tech or Seal (though both would still yield "intelligence"). I would say give the civ the choice.

The point about moving seals around is great, That said, I think it's pretty easily solvable - the spy knows where it is sent. If we have the Seal-transit time be no faster than spy transit time, and make the spy's progress towards its theft not slow down (meaning if you move it when they had one turn left, they'd still have one turn left), the Seal dance wouldn't be a viable strategy. If you don't like that idea, what we could do instead is make the "transit" time very vulnerable for the seal - maybe the spy doesn't know the destination, but there's a much higher probability that the spy will catch the seal before it even arrives. Thus, moving cities is not something to do haphazardly.

I've thought a bit more about "keeping progress" over multiple cities and I think it might be very confusing. If Elayne's (Light) Spy (A) is in the Aiel's (Shadow) Rhuidean - two turns left until she steals the Seal. The Aiel move the Seal to the Stone Dogs Sept. Elayne moves a different Spy (B) to the Stone Dogs Sept (or spy B is already there!) Does she keep her progress? If she does, at what point do you "stop" keeping progress? X turns after the Seal moves and you don't chase it? Or does it degrade slowly as long as Elayne isn't "actively stealing" it (possible, but very difficult to keep track of)?

The reverse of avoiding Seal-hopping, we also don't want to make it so that the player that currently controls the Seal has no way to protect it. Moving the Seal at strategic times seems like it should be a valid strategy, which we would diminish if spies kept progress over multiple cities. The full research/breaking (from start to finish) of a single Seal, should take, on average, longer than the time it takes for a Spy to steal one (otherwise they're un-stealable for the Light - the Shadow will always break any Seal they find first). If the player trying to steal the Seal knows where the Seal will go and doesn't lose progress between cities, then the whole process has reduced down to pure randomness (as long as the stealer doesn't do something deliberately stupid like not chase) and no strategy - the only variable is finding the Seal in the first place. This is also particularly punishing for the Light side players, who need to keep a hold of the real Seals for the duration of the Last Battle.

I don't think it's necessary to have anti-steal-seal buildings - I'd say the "constabulary replacement" would do this as well. But yes, it shouldn't be guaranteed, IMO. I think your spies should fail. During the LB, there's good and evil, no more "oh sorry I was spying on you" BS. spies hunting seals, spies hunting those spies. spies hunting the dragon, etc.

The reason I suggest this is that by limiting anti-Steal-Seal buildings we can make only a few cities sensible long-term homes for Seals (where they're being researched/broken, for example) and the rest only useful for transport since it isn't safe to leave the Seal there. This will go a ways to preventing Seal-hopping.

Also, spies hunting the Dragon - interesting! Can the Shadow "wound" the Dragon while he's in Light territory through one of their spy missions? Might be a bit sudden and game-wrenching for the Light players (since they have no indication the Spy is there until it's too late).

I had said: "Beginning in the late-game (either in the AotD or the Last Battle), special researchable techs appear for all players that identify whether a particular Seal is authentic or a fake. It is still undetermined if only the owner of the seal can perform this research (or if their allies can as well)."


Definitely prefer your "secondary tree" idea to the capital-only limit.

And yes, I think keeping your seal in one place seems to have synergy well with my proposal above regarding seal-hopping as an undesirable thing, and limiting the research to one civ definitely reinforces the idea of civs donating their science to that civ to pull it off sooner.

Sounds like we agree on this component of the Seal researching then! @Settled Last Battle!

I had said: "A legitimate Seal can be destroyed via Global Project (contained within the team)."


Oooh, now I'm actually not so sure whether this should be "global" or single-city production. I'll defer toyour judgement - make a decision and we'll go with that for now.

I like the single city project approach, so let's go with that. (And if it's a global project, where do spies steal it from?)


I had said: "After the final Seal is destroyed, the Dragon reborn will appear in the game as a unit. It is undetermined where he will spawn." and "The Dragon unit will be a powerful channeler. His purpose is to take Thakan'dar, which he can attack and capture (triggering a Light Victory). It is still undetermined if the Dragon is allowed "free reign" to do other things during this period, or if he is limited in movement or number of turns."


Both of these are interrelated, IMO. Personally, I'm starting to think he needs a turn limit or something - if not technically, at least practically. The thing is, Rand's whole deal in the last book or two was the element of surprise. Demandred literally had no idea he was in Thakan'dar, instead thinking Mat was him and wasting his resources on this.
Maybe the Dragon can only be around for 10-20 turns or something, and if so, either "goes into hiding", disappearing for a few turns, and then respawning again, or (less cheap), he is "pinpointed" by the DO, and a huge amount of forsaken spawn next to him, essentially killing him. This practically prevents the light civs from going on a kill-all-the-shadow-capital rampage when he spawns - unless they're willing to get him killed in the process, or they can be *fast* about it.

Also, he probably needs to spawn in a somewhat unpredictable location, so shadow civs don't just camp out in front of the appropriate city.

Very true on the Dragon spawncamping. We can do something like random out of the top 5 Prestige-producing cities? What about the geography situation? Some of those cities will be much farther from Thakan'dar than others. We could go with random out of the Light cities a certain distance from Thakan'dar?

Pinpointed by the Dark One, even if a bit more complicated, seems more in-universe and more fun. I can see some people triggering it deliberately as well to have some extra challenge fighting the Forsaken too (that's a good thing - the mod is flexible then).

Following the books, Darkhounds, like gholam, are too powerful to be regular shadowspawn forces. They essentially can't be killed. Balefire, and other special things kill them, but it's more or less your death if you face them. Remember in the Thakan'dar battle, all the wolves were fighting them, and dying, because they had no way of possibly hurting them - but they fought anyways because they hated shadowbrothers so much. I think they were used in the trolloc wars though. they're pretty rare - I say we have them show up and raid a city or something, then wander off. Or, at least make them very powerfull.

Sounds good!

on that note - do the wolves join the party in the LB? The ogier? Wolves, I know, were mentioned as a mechanic for Wolfborther GPs, which I still like. But the only sissue with this is it might be hard to believe if a dark-side wolfbrother existed - would his wolves still fight for him? Probably fine.

The Ogier will probably come up when we're discussing CSes in more detail, but I can see a mechanic where relationships with specific Stedding can give you Ogier combat units during the Last Battle. If we go for Wolfbrother GPs then summoning wolves seems like a sensible ability. Do we have any names for Wolfbrother GPs aside from Perrin and Elyas?

I had said: "Shadow civs do not (currently) receive any team benefits, and are free to make war with one another."


hmmm... do you think i would matter? I suppose it would make working together so amazingly tense. Like, you're on a joint raid and you just aren't sure if they'll attack you. An actual declaration of war would telegraph that move too might, right? By being at war, even when you're hoping for peace, it's epicly tense. Sold.

I do wonder, though, doesn't being at war cause some other consequences? Like penalties to diplo and such? Is that fair? Should some of those other things be mitigated here in some other way? Maybe it doesn't matter, since they're all already at war with the Light civs anyways. Interesting how everybody's peace-time bonuses (way of the leaf customs, etc.) disappear during the LB (assuming there actually are civs who have adopted the opposite side) - should be balanced to accommodate that.

Is it possible to make a temporary peace treaty - or is it war all the time? Probably it is (as it is between light and shadow civs).

We can mitigate the diplo consequences, I don't think it makes sense to have the AI hate you because the Last Battle dragged you into war with them. But like you've referenced elsewhere, diplo penalties don't matter that much anymore. Someone will win the game before the old trading, denouncements, normal war declarations etc (stuff that the diplo AI decides) ever come back.

Also, I do think they should have to formally declcare war on neutral civs.

Makes sense to me!

I had said: "The Blight, as it does at various points in the game, can recede and advance. It will destroy improvements, and will perhaps shrink a bordering player's territory (new concept). It is undetermined if this is true for all civs, regardless of affiliation"


OK, so you feel it should be prestige, and not culture? Culture might make more sense, as this is generated throughout the game, is billed as "cultural defense," and already has to do with teritory.

Woopsie, my bad. Yes, culture is the better of the two to use!

Yeah, i think either shado-civ boons that help offset this, OR just have it be simply that shadowspawn units move quickly or heal in the blight, and then you might have an automatic offset. The truth is, it really does blow to have your people live by the blight - we shouldn't mitigate this. There's a reason the borderlanders are all super pro-light.

I don't think your brightness should affect how it spreads - its more your civs ability to claim the ground and maintain its influence/control.

My main issue is if Shadow Boons give you bonuses on Blight and your culture has been repelling the Blight for the whole game - that's a bit annoying. That's why I suggested the bit about the Alignment affecting Blight spread. I don't suggest that it affect how fast the spread happens, only the direction - Shadow spreads into your land, Light pushes it out.

Here's something I've been thinking on for a while: Will most players just restart (or be frustrated) if they start near the Blight? Like you've said, the Blight (rightly) comes with a lot of downsides.

I know we shouldnt flag each post, but I do think once something is @settled, we might benefit from putting a second flag to indicate what it is. So we wouldn't have to flip through all the @settled LB stuff just to find the one @settled @greatpeople post. Right?

Sure, we can @settled with keywords after!

Seals: Could the location of a seal be intrigue that a spy could find? It can randomly determine where a seal is from any city of the civ that the spy is currently in a city of?

This is a good idea, but I think if we go with making this a Shadow Boon, then we shouldn't do both.

Blight: I think prestige is a weird way of pushing back the blight. "Hey look at all these nice paintings I have, pushing back the blight." Maybe if it is an improvement you need to send a worker to fix it (like chopping down a jungle), but it just takes a long time, and being near the blight you need to defend the worker from shadowspawn units spawning. On that note I think it would be good if shadowspawn can appear on any blight tile, even if it is being observed (unlike the barb camps in in base civ). This means that the blight is always dangerous, and you cant just plant some increased sight scouts about to prevent shadowspawn appearing.

I goofed - I should've said culture in my post. I agree with counterpoint that given the way CiV uses culture for territory that this makes sense.

Also, very good point with Shadowspawn appearances in the Blight. Yes, making them spawnable even when in sight prevents players gaming the system.

Last Battle: Will shadow AIs handle the war between them well? Can they prioritise the light civs? Or will they potentially just get stuck fighting each a lot of the time and just get mopped up by the united Light Civs. Especially if only shadow civs are present on the one continent.

I figure if one continent is all Shadow civs then they'd realistically end up fighting anyway and dealing with their overseas enemies when they've consolidated into a larger civ. If the teams are divided evenly by continents that could be a problem (all Light on one, all Shadow on the other).

Do we want Thakan'dar to exist for the whole game or "spawn" during the Last Battle? If it spawns, we can put it near our assessment of the most powerful Shadow civ that borders the Blight.

I'd say it will take some AI tweaking to get them to prioritize correctly with the Light civs. They'll need some new logic to deal with the whole Last Battle, so this will be a part of that.

Once the LB breaks out, the war declarations will break any trade routes between Light and Shadown civs. One benefit could then be that trade routes between two light civs give +2 gold for each side (like the Freedom tenant). This would then mean that rading with each other was more beneficial (perhap there are ways of getting more trade routes to become a trade empire? Wonders, or social policies?)

I think we were also discussing one-sided trade routes being available to the Light civs, where they can effectively "give away" yields to other Light civs - ideally for specific objectives. There are a variety of benefits we could give intra-Light trade routes, which sounds good.

Calendar: Change what is shown based on world era?

We've discussed this one before as well, but it has its drawbacks too. I think we're close on the calendar/eras discussion with counterpoint's stuff below.
 
OK, then we just have to make sure this remains balanced, considering that certain alignments will likely

Likely what? :crazyeye: Is this the stuff you discussed above?

I am in agreement here, but I do wish there was a way for the Dragon to have some kind of presence before the LB starts and he becomes player-controllable. What if it's just as simple as he visits cities randomly, and effects happen: ta'veren effects as previously described, DFs are exposed, diplomatic stuff. We could flesh this out a bit, but it might add to the immersion, since it's very likely all the world leaders were pretty much thinking "wtf is this kid *doing*?! while he was going in and out of the waste, etc. I don't think he should conquer nations, but maybe somehow pulling some civs lightside somehow would be cool. Ideas?

Sharing effects with the Last Battle incarnation of the Dragon is good - I think the Dragon-before-the-Last-Battle will only be around for a relatively short period of time right? Too many unique behaviors might be disappointing for the player since they can't be used long term - and we'd have to implement them just for that small slice of the game. Is pulling Light side a bit risky for players that are 'trying' to be Shadow?

OK. This maybe messes up some of my previous suggestions then. Curious how you want to handle all this.

Which ones does this mess up? Rebasing doesn't have to be instant and can have a "move time" like moving spies does, if we want it to. It can also have a "cooldown" where it's disabled after use. They're quite mechanically similar, the main difference is how they're presented to the player.



Sure. I understand your point, though I find the month issue to be rather minor. I don't have much interest in pursuing this avenue further, though, as it seems like neither of us like it anyway.

Cool, dropping the single-calendar approach completely then!

AH! Now I get it. So what do we do for techs, then? Unfortunately, the AoL tech's we know about - Jo-wings, shock-lances, etc. - are likely two eras ahead of what we'd call the fourth age.... It'd kind of be like upgrading from a knight to a modern armor. So... just make stuff up?

Basically, yes. I think we can make some fair assumptions about where technology was going in the WoT universe (especially over a short time frame) given the information we have about what they know in the books. Most of our techs will be "made up" to fit into concepts that exist in the books anyway - I doubt we'll have many WoT concepts that map directly to being technologies, and most that do will be One Power related.

Worry not, the calendars are no longer unified with the eras in my mind. That said, I do think in the hypothetical "perfect game," FY 1 would coincide with the Era of Freedom. In any case, I think ideally the TW's would end around the time that the tech causes the Age of Freedom to start for most civs - to me, this lining up is actually somewhat more important, aesthetically, than FY 1, since the era change is a big window that pops up, with a pretty picture, and some new game mechanics pop up - the calendar is so subtle many people won't even notice when it happens.

That will inevitably vary by player (within a single game). If the Trolloc Wars triggers when the 'world era' reaches the Era of Nations then either it's a close pack and half of the civs are in the Era of Nations (this is the better one) or one civ has reached the Era of Freedom (which advances the world era, regardless of the other civs being slow). In an ideal game, the Trolloc Wars will happen part of the way through the Era of Nations - some civs are likely to be toward the end of it at that time, but the laggards will actually still be in After Breaking.

Dang, I think we have a miscommunication again, here. I intended Era of Nations to be the 2nd era (after the After Breaking era), to symbolize the Ten Nations - it sounds here like you mean it to be during the new era in this last post (though your previous posts don't imply that). Truthfully, the name makes sense in both places.

Not at all, Era of Nations as the second era to represent the Ten Nations is what I'd intended too. I meant "fudge the numbers" to stretch the lengths of the actual time in each era (straying from the actual numbers in the WoT calendars). But I think this is a moot point, because I'm on board with what you say next!

You've hit on it. That is exactly the way to do it, IMO. Well done. Thank god, I was beginning to get frustrated with this problem! The time compression probably shouldn't start until the NE. I'm definitely thinking that if there are 8 eras, we should have 2 fit into the AB calendar (roughly), 2 in the FY, and 3 in the NE, with 1 being for the 4th age.

OK, here's what I'm thinking then. Remember that I am well aware that the calendars don't have to lineup with the eras, but in an ideally paced game, maybe they would.

AB CALENDAR (ca. 1000 years)
1 - After the Breaking (500 years) - maybe this needs a name with "Era" or "Age" in it (this is the Ancient Era Replacement)
2 - Era/Age of Nations (500 years) - probably no change in compression here (this is the classical Era replacement)
Ideally, the Trolloc wars happen towards the end of this era.

FY Calendar (ca. 1000 years)
3 - Era/Age of Freedom (500 years) - probably still no change in compression (this is the medieval era replacement)
4 - Era/Age of Consolidation (500) - this name is still up in the air - still no compression! (this is the renaissance era replacement)
Ideally, some big hawkwing related diplo event/war of 100 years happens towards the end of this era.
NE Calendar (ca. 1000 years)
5 - Era/Age of the New (500 years) - *still* no time compression. Name is nice and generic, and is a nod to the NE callandor..er, calendar. This could also be the Era/Age of the New Nations, and then we could name the 2nd era Era of the Compact, if you want. (this is the industrial age replacement)
6 - Era/Age of Encroaching Blight (500 years) - ha! still no time compression!!... Still hoping for a better name here, though... This is the replacement for the Modern Era
The issue with this era in terms of time compression is that in order to call it "encroaching blight", it has to take us up to Malkier's destruction which... unfortunately, isn't until around 950 NE... Having this thing be 450 years long seems silly.
Here, then, the 3rd age would be like 3020 years long, with the AotD being "Tacked on" at the end, instead of subtracted from a 3000 year total. To me, the time compression doesn't make much sense, since there's basically nothing going on (that we know of until around 50 years ago.
I do think we need a new name for this one though - True, there's malkier, but the stedding swallowed by the blight was happening more in the FY and early NE, not so much around this time.
7 - Era/Age of the Dragon (20 years) - *there's * our compression! Now, I could also understand this one being 50 years long and the dragon being born a set number of turns after it starts. whatever. This is a stand-in for the Atomic Age.
The LB happens after a bit of time here.
8 - Fourth Age (20 years) - time compression as in AotD. This one is stand in for the Information era....

wait, ok, now I'm confused, your previous post had 8 different eras, but it looks to me that we actually need 9.

Ancient - Classical - med - renass - industrial - modern - atomic - info - future

that's nine. I don't want to go back and rewrite what I did, because I realize I may be confusing something. If we do need the extra era, this may make things simpler, and compression begin earlier. Consider this:

NE Calendar (ca. 1000 years)
5 - Era/Age of the New (500 years) - still no compression (industrial)
6 - Era/Age of ??? (300 years) - some compression (modern)
7 - Era/Age of Encroaching Blight (150 years) - more compression - now this name makes sense again, at least moreso (atomic)
8 - Era/Age of the Dragon (30 years) - more compression (info)
9 - Fourth Age (20 years) - slightly more (future)

so where we at?

We don't need to have the same number of eras as base CiV if it doesn't work for us. Having said that, I like the time compression in your second suggestion a lot more. How about "Era of New Beginnings" for #5? Era of the New sounds a bit weird.

So I'm completely on board with this system. I think the only remaining big question is what to call era #6. Nothing jumps out at me right away, but I'm short on time. I'll think on it!

Another key thing I've had to realize and really understand is that the world era is essentially invisible to the players, except for a few notifications like the world congress popping up. Essentially it is only a mechanic for us to play with. Worry not, I've got it now. I

:D

k. I forgot about this one in my summary. Should this be added in?

Sure, let's add it!

Alright! Well let's say Alignment is the tentative name... but we can do better, IMO. I don't like something like "Morality," and "Corruption" sounds all negative. ....

Corruption is inherently different. Do we want two "sliding scales" that represent the two opposite sides of having "0 Alignment"? It can be "Corruption" if you're leaning Shadow and "something else" if you're leaning Light - changing between the two as you move over the 0 boundary.

Could the Dragon's pre-LB antics simply cause an increase in good/bad faith choices, but they reference him in their flavour text. So this really pushes to make decisions about who they want to support? Similarly there could be some shadowspawn attacks so people strengthen their military?

Could be. I'm not as invested in the Dragon doing something before the Last Battle - I think that period of time in-game will be quite short, so unique behaviors there aren't necessarily the best use of development time. However, it is skipping over a huge component of the books, in a way, which isn't awesome. I think counterpoint will have more to say on this.

And I'd say yeah, we want to ramp up Shadowspawn presence heading toward the Last Battle, rather than it just be a switch "on/off" kind of thing.

brightness: allegiance to the light, integrity, holiness (terrible, but have to throw it in there), piety. I do think corruption is good name though. Because about people giving in to the darkness for personal gains. The name also is clear for people to understand what is good (low).

Good if you want to be Light, of course. I'm hoping we can keep the name to one word, but it's been surprisingly difficult to come up with one. I'll keep thinking on this!
 
Could "alignment" be the word we are looking for? It would show up under the "your religion" menu, and initially start grey, and darken or brighten depending on your Civs choices. This way people could also check their alignment, but not have an exact way of determine their alignment value (just a guess based on the brightness of the word? My other idea is to have a rotating hemisphere with light on one side, and shadow on the other and it rotates according to your choices. The words would be written on so,people could easily tell what it was for.

Or have the two sliding scales with "corruption" and "piety"?
 
this is a quick reply...relatively speaking.

Could the Dragon's pre-LB antics simply cause an increase in good/bad faith choices, but they reference him in their flavour text. So this really pushes to make decisions about who they want to support? Similarly there could be some shadowspawn attacks so people strengthen their military?

OK, I do like this idea. The Ethical Conundrums become a bit more frequent over the few turns before the LB starts, and all concern the Dragon (flavor-wise, at least).

brightness: allegiance to the light, integrity, holiness (terrible, but have to throw it in there), piety. I do think corruption is good name though. Because about people giving in to the darkness for personal gains. The name also is clear for people to understand what is good (low).
and
Could "alignment" be the word we are looking for? It would show up under the "your religion" menu, and initially start grey, and darken or brighten depending on your Civs choices. This way people could also check their alignment, but not have an exact way of determine their alignment value (just a guess based on the brightness of the word? My other idea is to have a rotating hemisphere with light on one side, and shadow on the other and it rotates according to your choices. The words would be written on so,people could easily tell what it was for.

Or have the two sliding scales with "corruption" and "piety"?

alignment has been the word we've used for the past few pages as a place holder. ... As stated before, I don't love it, long term. I'm fine with there being a different textual association with each side of the scale, but the scale itself needs a name. Sort of how in Civ5, you have "Happiness" as a scale, but there is also an "unhappiness" factor that is tracked. Will keep thinking on it.

Could "alignment" be the word we are looking for? It would show up under the "your religion" menu, and initially start grey, and darken or brighten depending on your Civs choices. This way people could also check their alignment, but not have an exact way of determine their alignment value (just a guess based on the brightness of the word? My other idea is to have a rotating hemisphere with light on one side, and shadow on the other and it rotates according to your choices. The words would be written on so,people could easily tell what it was for.

Or have the two sliding scales with "corruption" and "piety"?

Sounds good to me that faith units are more useful to Light side civs, on average. I think we want to tie Shadowspawn the amount of Shadowspawn a civ controls (if any) to their Alignment toward the Shadow?

Aye. Should there be some other element to it, beyond this, though? I mean, is there anything about the civ itself (production, culture, etc.) that leads to spawn?

I think a high Light civ that chooses Shadow shouldn't have any immediate faith penalty from that. However, I'd imagine there's a steadily increasing movement toward Shadow Alignment when you're on the Shadow side. This will mean they'll stack up faith penalties over time, so it will regress. (As we said above, the faith also won't be that useful to them.) This also means that Shadow civs, if we tie Shadowspawn control to Shadow Alignment, will gain control of steadily more Shadowspawn the longer the Last Battle runs on, which I think is really cool.

I can see this, but I wonder if the faith penalty increasing might be overly complicated (same with the change in shadowspawn). I mean, ideally, your actual contributions to the war effort would be what effects this, not just the passage of time. This is easier with the Light, since we reward actions with faith already. What about for the shadow?

I think this isn't really an issue. Your people aren't unhappy that you're not destroying the world - your civilization has been infiltrated at all levels of government by Darkfriends. When you come out in support of the Light, they respond by inciting rebellion and using their influence to divide your civilization against you (for whatever reason is convenient to each group being divided). This is the source of unhappiness for Shadow Alignment civs that choose the Light.

Right, I guess that can work.

This is the same as the Domination victory - to win a Domination victory you must control all original capitals (even of civs that don't control their own or have even been wiped out).

OK, a few things here. 1) I was confusing the victory conditions for dom with the FORMER ones from CiV vanilla - be the last person in your original capital - not the new BNW ones. That explains the nonsense about the light-allies blah blah blah
and
2) I actually don't think it's the same as domination. Imagine Shara and Seanchan are with the shadow, and Andor and Tear are with Light. The Sea Folk are neutral.

If Shara captures Caemlyn and Seanchan captures Tear (city), but Tremalking is totally fine, this would register as a Shadow Victory condition, but obviously wouldn't net any one civ a domination victory condition - even if one of them had Tremalking, since the shadow civs are splitting the light civs, they have unlocked the Shadow win but haven't unlocked the personal (win) that that shadow "win" unlocks.... See what I mean?

I've thought a bit more about "keeping progress" over multiple cities and I think it might be very confusing. If Elayne's (Light) Spy (A) is in the Aiel's (Shadow) Rhuidean - two turns left until she steals the Seal. The Aiel move the Seal to the Stone Dogs Sept. Elayne moves a different Spy (B) to the Stone Dogs Sept (or spy B is already there!) Does she keep her progress? If she does, at what point do you "stop" keeping progress? X turns after the Seal moves and you don't chase it? Or does it degrade slowly as long as Elayne isn't "actively stealing" it (possible, but very difficult to keep track of)?

The reverse of avoiding Seal-hopping, we also don't want to make it so that the player that currently controls the Seal has no way to protect it. Moving the Seal at strategic times seems like it should be a valid strategy, which we would diminish if spies kept progress over multiple cities. The full research/breaking (from start to finish) of a single Seal, should take, on average, longer than the time it takes for a Spy to steal one (otherwise they're un-stealable for the Light - the Shadow will always break any Seal they find first). If the player trying to steal the Seal knows where the Seal will go and doesn't lose progress between cities, then the whole process has reduced down to pure randomness (as long as the stealer doesn't do something deliberately stupid like not chase) and no strategy - the only variable is finding the Seal in the first place. This is also particularly punishing for the Light side players, who need to keep a hold of the real Seals for the duration of the Last Battle.

Darn it. I'm having a bit of a crisis here. I'm no longer a fan of our seal system. I don't think it works in terms of realistic player motivation.

What we're imagining is a system wherein the forces of light jockey for position with the forces of shadow, trying to capture cities, steal their seals, all to be able to... destroy the seals.
At the same time, the forces of shadow jockey for position with the forces of light, trying to capture cities, steal their seals, all to be able to... destroy the seals.

you see the problem? We've established the Seal-cracking as a shared-goal for BOTH sides - one that, admittedly, helps the shadow civs in the short term longer. Why the heck wouldn't they just all crack their own seals and move on with their lives? Why all the war and stealing?

Am I missing something? Don't *both* sides want to shatter the seals? The Shadow so they can release the DO (most logical one), and the Light so they can reforge them (not as logical, but according to the books, the "correct" ending, so one we should have). This is part of the victory conditions as described, I believe.

So, these cool ideas we have, stealing, war, etc.... they won't happen, right? Shadow civs will crack their seals immediately. Light civs will do the same. The light civs might, theoretically, try to put it off til the last minute - to avoid the increase in the touch of the DO, but they still want it as well.. The neutral civs are the only ones who have a vested interest in actually keeping the seals intact.

So, what the heck do we do now, then? IMO, this needs rethinking.

Below I will address your points, ignoring the points I just made above.

You're right, the availability of multiple spies (and the dragon) makes the "shared progress" thing a problem. Moving the seals should be viable, as you say...

I think you might have a better handle on how this should "actually" work - do you mind laying out a "proposal" for the seal-home and theft mechanic (assuming my points above didn't destroy the whole thing)?

The reason I suggest this is that by limiting anti-Steal-Seal buildings we can make only a few cities sensible long-term homes for Seals (where they're being researched/broken, for example) and the rest only useful for transport since it isn't safe to leave the Seal there. This will go a ways to preventing Seal-hopping.

Also, spies hunting the Dragon - interesting! Can the Shadow "wound" the Dragon while he's in Light territory through one of their spy missions? Might be a bit sudden and game-wrenching for the Light players (since they have no indication the Spy is there until it's too late).

OK, sure, re: the buildings.

Regarding the Dragon.... I'd say, yes, he should be able to be "defeated" by a spy. Right? Maybe it's hard to do, but shouldn't it be possible? I think the way to make it more gut wrenching is to make it hard to find him in the first place - the light player, maybe, has to get somewhat "greedy" in order to be discovered, perhaps?

I like the single city project approach, so let's go with that. (And if it's a global project, where do spies steal it from?)

I'd imagine if it was a global project, the seal itself would still be housed in one city - the global project just facilitates co-contributions.

Very true on the Dragon spawncamping. We can do something like random out of the top 5 Prestige-producing cities? What about the geography situation? Some of those cities will be much farther from Thakan'dar than others. We could go with random out of the Light cities a certain distance from Thakan'dar?

I think the random light-territory close to thakan'dar is the best option, right? Prestige makes sense, but not if we have a turn counter (and he ends up super far away).

What if there are no light cities on the same continent, though, for example?

Pinpointed by the Dark One, even if a bit more complicated, seems more in-universe and more fun. I can see some people triggering it deliberately as well to have some extra challenge fighting the Forsaken too (that's a good thing - the mod is flexible then).

I like it!

The Ogier will probably come up when we're discussing CSes in more detail, but I can see a mechanic where relationships with specific Stedding can give you Ogier combat units during the Last Battle. If we go for Wolfbrother GPs then summoning wolves seems like a sensible ability. Do we have any names for Wolfbrother GPs aside from Perrin and Elyas?

There's that one wolf brother who goes crazy, Noam. Don't think there are more. We'd be making them up, I guess.

We can mitigate the diplo consequences, I don't think it makes sense to have the AI hate you because the Last Battle dragged you into war with them. But like you've referenced elsewhere, diplo penalties don't matter that much anymore. Someone will win the game before the old trading, denouncements, normal war declarations etc (stuff that the diplo AI decides) ever come back.

good! This makes sense to me.

My main issue is if Shadow Boons give you bonuses on Blight and your culture has been repelling the Blight for the whole game - that's a bit annoying. That's why I suggested the bit about the Alignment affecting Blight spread. I don't suggest that it affect how fast the spread happens, only the direction - Shadow spreads into your land, Light pushes it out.

Well, I still think the blight is a net-negative to have in your land, regardless of your alignment. Blight is BAD. people die in the blight. you can't farm or mine or anything. No civ - dark or light - wants blight. Thus, even the shadow civs want to stop the blight's encroachment. Any "bonuses" they get during the LB for having blight - convenience and easy access to shadowspawn, e.g. - would still not be worth letting it overtake your lands. Especially since I'm imagining it actually shrinking your actual territory.

Here's something I've been thinking on for a while: Will most players just restart (or be frustrated) if they start near the Blight? Like you've said, the Blight (rightly) comes with a lot of downsides.

Great point. I think the truth is found in the books. Yes, you do have to deal with more crap as a borderlander, but you likely also get more Faith - you know, the shienarans and such aren't afraid to die, etc. I would imagine that shadowspawn kills should give a free faith bonus (culture? which would help slow the blight's growth) or something. Pattern it after some of the barb-related things in the honor-tree, maybe - except for shadowspawn. And, we've already discussed having "top contributors" rewards during the TW and such.
Also, incidentally, I'd imagine a borderland civ would have way fewer barbarians/bandits/dragonsworn, as such couldn't spawn in the light (though they have Worms lol...)
Yes, do NOT want people to restart if they are close to the blight. We shouldn't let them spawn IN or immediately next to the blight, but close to the blight should be viable, and fun - let's make it worth it.

Do we want Thakan'dar to exist for the whole game or "spawn" during the Last Battle? If it spawns, we can put it near our assessment of the most powerful Shadow civ that borders the Blight.

I dont know. Do you think it would create a terrible meta game if Thakan'dar exists in the begining? I mean, it SHOULD exist from AB 1, but we don't want situations where people are placing cities for the sole purpose of a strike during the LB 2500 years later and/or to block potential shadow civs. Yeah, your proposal makes sense I guess.... but it's wholly realistic that the shadow civs wont be close to it at all (e.g., Shara in WoT). I think this likely shouldn't matter.

Probably my vote is for it to always exist. It should lie in the "blasted lands," though. This may not *really* mean anything in our game, except for perhaps that its a really thick part of the blight with lots of spawning points.



Likely what? :crazyeye: Is this the stuff you discussed above?

lol, drifted away there. Something like : "OK, then we just have to make sure this remains balanced, considering that certain alignments will likely yield varying Faith levels"

Is pulling Light side a bit risky for players that are 'trying' to be Shadow?

I'm not sure he can force to to be light. But a perhaps-out-of-your-control slam of a bunch of Light points might make sense, based on what happens.

Basically, yes. I think we can make some fair assumptions about where technology was going in the WoT universe (especially over a short time frame) given the information we have about what they know in the books. Most of our techs will be "made up" to fit into concepts that exist in the books anyway - I doubt we'll have many WoT concepts that map directly to being technologies, and most that do will be One Power related.

OK! tackle this one later then!

That will inevitably vary by player (within a single game). If the Trolloc Wars triggers when the 'world era' reaches the Era of Nations then either it's a close pack and half of the civs are in the Era of Nations (this is the better one) or one civ has reached the Era of Freedom (which advances the world era, regardless of the other civs being slow). In an ideal game, the Trolloc Wars will happen part of the way through the Era of Nations - some civs are likely to be toward the end of it at that time, but the laggards will actually still be in After Breaking.

OK, so you feel secure that the "word era = Era of Nations" is the place to start the TW? It's probably fine, but it does feel a bit odd to have it happen really early in the game - how many turns in is this?

We don't need to have the same number of eras as base CiV if it doesn't work for us. Having said that, I like the time compression in your second suggestion a lot more. How about "Era of New Beginnings" for #5? Era of the New sounds a bit weird.

So I'm completely on board with this system. I think the only remaining big question is what to call era #6. Nothing jumps out at me right away, but I'm short on time. I'll think on it!

Sweet! I'm find with Era of New Beginnings for now. Will think on #6 a bit more...

Corruption is inherently different. Do we want two "sliding scales" that represent the two opposite sides of having "0 Alignment"? It can be "Corruption" if you're leaning Shadow and "something else" if you're leaning Light - changing between the two as you move over the 0 boundary.

I think i'm fine with it having a different word based on your side, but i'd prefer one scale mechanically.

Could be. I'm not as invested in the Dragon doing something before the Last Battle - I think that period of time in-game will be quite short, so unique behaviors there aren't necessarily the best use of development time. However, it is skipping over a huge component of the books, in a way, which isn't awesome. I think counterpoint will have more to say on this.

I think I tackled this above.
 
The Ogier will probably come up when we're discussing CSes in more detail, but I can see a mechanic where relationships with specific Stedding can give you Ogier combat units during the Last Battle. If we go for Wolfbrother GPs then summoning wolves seems like a sensible ability. Do we have any names for Wolfbrother GPs aside from Perrin and Elyas?
--> as counterpoint said there is Noam/boundless.

However please note something that comes "in-between-the-lines" when reading the books:
-wolf-brother is an "old talent", like "dreamer", or "understanding angreal"
--> old talents comes from the "old blood".
-there are few "old talents" in Rand-time, (save dreamer for the aiels) but more and more are appearing.
-it can be understood from the books that during the FY (or maybe only the encroaching blight era) there have been no (or almost none) old-blood talents known to the Aes-Sedai.
-it can also be understood that "old talent / old blood" refers to... the time of Manetheren or a bit before.. but not "old as in age-of-legend".
so one can understand from the books that "old-talents" where more frequent after the breaking... and even up to 1500 years after the breaking (or maybe 200 years) than in Rand-time.
(for this I'm just pointing a fact/deduction... I have no idea how to implement that in-game... it is as difficult to put in play in a civ-game as the Aes-Sedai / chanelers of the after breaking knowing more, and being more powerful than the Aes-Sedai of Hawking's time, themselves more knowledgeable / powerful than the one in Rand-time).

So, in order to assess the low numbers :
what about, instead of having "wolfbrother GP" (which are always of the light if they keep acquaintance with wolves... other-wise they become like "Slayer", but this should be very rare... ideally a wolf-brogther GP will leave you if you chose shadow), you could only have "old-blood" GP, Old blood allowing to upgrade (by decision or randomness) to one of the old talents: Dreamer (Egwene, Aiels) / Wolfbrother / Power-smith (Neal) / Angreal-user (Aviendha) / Prophet (forgot the names) / Visionnary (Min)... etc
Maybe Maker of Angreal (Elayne) is only a tech.

Maybe those "old-blood"-GP transform your GP in another class: Dreamer : Chaneler or Leader / Angreal-user: Chaneler / Wolfbrother : warrior or capitain or leader / Powersmith : chaneler / Visionnary : Scientist or chaneler or bard
...Etc

Maybe, alternatively, Old-blood is a promotion that can appear randomly, on your GP, depending on the type of GP and the light-ness of your side, or the culture, or the faith (as it is currently linked to lineage)...or whatever.
Maybe that promotion can be allowed by specific techs / policies ?

create a serie of new "tech-tree/policies/whatever"
eg: those old-blood GP enable to research some specifics techs in an "old-blood tech tree" that can't be researched by science/culture but only by using these guys ? : 100 -tech-point ; uses 100 faith : can be used only once per level of caster. (or any other mean to do that : unique policy tree ??)

this tree: contains (for example)
Spoiler :
-wolfbrother --> wolf-speak --> wolf senses --> Control the Wolf -----> Wolf Leader
. ..........................\............. /->True Dreams-->Prophetic Dreams......../
..............................\-> Wolf Dream --> wolf-hunt --> Dream Master /
. .......................................... \--> Nightmare Training /
.Dreamer --> Control the Dream ---/..........................\ Dream Expert
. .............. --> Enter the dreams -->. Dream-speak ---- /
. .............. --> Dream Travel
. .............. --> True Dreams
.............................\
Prophet --> Prophetic Dreams --> Prophecies --> Knowledge of the Futur
..............--> Releasing Control /
Visionary --> Interpretations --> True Knowledge - - - - -> Interpreting Prophecies
. . ............................\--> knowing one's future . . . . . /
. .. ............................ --> Visions of Death - - -------/
. . . . . ........................--> Visions of Greatness -----/

..Etc:
I'm sure an interesting tree could be made, each tech/policy enabling promotions or effects, either only to the units/GP having the specific old-blood promotion, or sometimes, boost for the whole civ : prophecies allow "create prophecy" which enable more "faith" or more chances of "identifying the true Dragon".

Basically, yes. I think we can make some fair assumptions about where technology was going in the WoT universe (especially over a short time frame) given the information we have about what they know in the books. Most of our techs will be "made up" to fit into concepts that exist in the books anyway - I doubt we'll have many WoT concepts that map directly to being technologies, and most that do will be One Power related.
--> think of the "visions" of Aviendha when she went to Ruidean (last 3rd of book 13) : 2-3-4 generations after the LB, the seanchans, which overcame Andor and its guns, still fought against aiels with raken and spears/swords... the use of fire arms was not really wide-spread even at that time. Further, firearms and motorised vehicle became wide-spread only 2-5 generations later (1st and second dreams of Aviendha). However the great-daughter of Aviendha felt that they were not really adapting to "trains and cannons".. roughly.
so 4th age tech should be a bit of steam-punkish... or a mix of renaissance (guns AND sword/pikes) and early industrial era : trains , + a bit of one power

So, these cool ideas we have, stealing, war, etc.... they won't happen, right? Shadow civs will crack their seals immediately. Light civs will do the same. The light civs might, theoretically, try to put it off til the last minute - to avoid the increase in the touch of the DO, but they still want it as well.. The neutral civs are the only ones who have a vested interest in actually keeping the seals intact.
--> make it that breaking seals is really bad for light civs...
and / or that the light civ can only break seals after the dragon peace, and after something else: remember most of the light civs (even Egwen Elayne and the Aiels, which should all be friend of Rand) were opposed to this until he forced them to accept.
--> maybe only the dragon reborn can do it ?
--> maybe breaking the seals is a geometric function of badness ? (1seal : 10 trollocs, 2nd seals : 20 new trollocs +2 Myrdhal, 3rd seal : 30 new trollocs 3 myrdhal, 1 forsaken....Etc)
--> maybe you can break seals before the actual battle of the LB itself (books 1-13 of the WoT) ... but breaking the second-to last seal starts the actual battle of the LB (like if the battle of book 14 happend in book 3... when noboby was prepared).
and breaking the last seal: shadow civs get super mydrhal, breaker of last seal (if shadow civ) get a "champion/hero": Avatar of the DO itself : (or trak'handar opens-up to a super powerful unit that starts strong-ish, and is held and gets stronger and stronger over 10 turns: you have 10 turns to kill it with One power / Dragon reborn ...Etc

about Dragon and False Dragons
One of the crucial points of the whole WoT series is the following:
- realising the prophecies (Aiels / taking Tear / Sea-folks / Seanchans / Action of the Borderlanders / Action of Shadow).

This enables 1) to differentiate the True Dragon from False Dragons
. 2) to know what Rand has to do (Min uses it for determining that the seals has to be broken, and Rand makes use of the prophecies at all times)

Further, False Dragons only have an interest if they "blur" the presence of the true Dragon: ie the appearance of the true Dragon is not known until prophecies are validated, and since the FY, every False Dragon is potentially the True Dragon: people have no mean to know.. that's why there are so often Dragon-sworn armies.

IMO, making prophecies, and checking the validity of prophecies should thus have a crucial impact on the game.


For example : after the FY era : every now and then "Dragons" rise…. You can't know if those are false Dragons or true dragons…
Their apparition is more and more frequent as game advances. ("no-city" faction that appears/disappear when the Dragon is killed/subdued: War-to-all, propose "vassalization" to civs / make random actions)
Only Red Ajahs (and maybe damane?) can deal with it.
You can "join the Dragon" faction. The Dragon leaves you alone, but you give him production and some of your units become dragon sworn… but after a time you get "dragon bonus"… and more so if you "joined the Dragon" earlier than other civs.. and earlier than his officialisation as "the true dragon".
However, if the Dragon is found to be a "false Dragon", and you had allied : you lose some culture / faith, you get some temporary unhappiness. If you opposed him : you gain happiness / culture.
If you have prophecies: you can differentiate more easily the true dragon from the false: either enabling to hunt him earlier, or allowing to join his side earlier, or …
Knowing "the true dragon" earlier than other civs might allow you to play with the true dragon even before the LB…

Further, having prophecies could allow more control on the dragon: either more control-time… (as you know where he is); or more actions, that he can only make when you control him.
Maybe prophecies can also influence interactions with other taver'n / GP. (like the prophecy of shadow allowed them to know where Perrin would be and the importance of Perrin/Mat to the final battle when the light side only focused on Rand.)
 
Culture pushing back the blight also seems weird, but since it is claiming territory in much the same way as Civ this makes sense.

Blight: as much as it is a BAD thing, to make their be some incentive, could killing shadowspawn, or clearing out their camps grant faith? So although you lands will be worse and you will need more military units, you can strengthen your faith by it?

Thrakan'dar: if this is in from the beginning perhaps it can have strong shadowspawn units that patrol the area around it and make it hard to hem in? Channellers, dark hounds etc. or can peridically send out raids of trollocs etc to push cities within a certain radius back? Or be harder to push the blight aroun it back and so make any nearby cities unproductive?

False Dragons: I have no input for this, other than having to determine if the dragon is real or not is in-universe and very cool
 
as an add-on:
the "anthology on channeling" promised by counterpoint could do well to come here.
especially as we don't know what we want to do with faith.
1)faith is linked to light/shadow
2)however belief is linked to lineage
3)being near blight/killing shadowspawn could help gain faith... but what is the point to gain faith ? (especially if you go toward shadow?)

1) and 2) do not mingle well together.

channeling could give /use faith... but not with the premise 1) and 2)
so how do channeling / chanelers work ?

IMO there could be a re-working on the 4 effects of WoT world:
-tavern / pattern / destiny / prophecies
-old blood / lineages
-channeling
-light vs shadow.

especially as faith/religions mechanics could be used easily for any of those effects. (but not in the "24 founder belief - 24 follower belief" structure).

especially as faith does not exist in WoT...

(the one that looks more as a faith is "prophecy" that exist about the Rand:
-will he lead as the Dragon / be first chief among the chiefs as Carac'an / make a banter with Sea-Folk / submit to the empress / join the shadow / be the messia leading the armies against the shadow (Shara) / die before liberating the DO / will the Dragon re-kill the world ? / is he to be feared ? to be controled ? to be joined ? to be followed ? / will he liberate and destroy the people (aiels) /
 
-->
However please note something that comes "in-between-the-lines" when reading the books:
-wolf-brother is an "old talent", like "dreamer", or "understanding angreal"
--> old talents comes from the "old blood".
-there are few "old talents" in Rand-time, (save dreamer for the aiels) but more and more are appearing.
-it can be understood from the books that during the FY (or maybe only the encroaching blight era) there have been no (or almost none) old-blood talents known to the Aes-Sedai.
-it can also be understood that "old talent / old blood" refers to... the time of Manetheren or a bit before.. but not "old as in age-of-legend".
so one can understand from the books that "old-talents" where more frequent after the breaking... and even up to 1500 years after the breaking (or maybe 200 years) than in Rand-time.
(for this I'm just pointing a fact/deduction... I have no idea how to implement that in-game... it is as difficult to put in play in a civ-game as the Aes-Sedai / chanelers of the after breaking knowing more, and being more powerful than the Aes-Sedai of Hawking's time, themselves more knowledgeable / powerful than the one in Rand-time).

I should note that we don't necessarily know whether wolfbrothers and dreamers and other Talents were common during the AoL. They certainly might have been. But yes, they were apparently more common in the first parts of the third age than in the later parts of the NE (you said FY but I think you mean NE).

And yes, I have mentioned before how in fact it may be fair to deduce that the Aes Sedai in the AB period were actually *stronger* than those in the "modern" times - this is definitely a difficult thing to put into the game, though.

So, in order to assess the low numbers :
what about, instead of having "wolfbrother GP" (which are always of the light if they keep acquaintance with wolves... other-wise they become like "Slayer", but this should be very rare... ideally a wolf-brogther GP will leave you if you chose shadow), you could only have "old-blood" GP, Old blood allowing to upgrade (by decision or randomness) to one of the old talents: Dreamer (Egwene, Aiels) / Wolfbrother / Power-smith (Neal) / Angreal-user (Aviendha) / Prophet (forgot the names) / Visionnary (Min)... etc
Maybe Maker of Angreal (Elayne) is only a tech.

OK, I *think* I understand you correctly. You're saying, instead of having all of these as separate GP - each with their own "charging up meter" or whatever its called - we simply have one (Great Talent or something) that would pump out any one of these somewhat weirder, more esoteric GP-types.

I think I could get behind that, but I'd want to limit it to the more "weird" GPs - Viewers, Sniffers, Wolfbrothers, etc. Not "Great Scholars" and "Great Gleemen" and whatnot. It would give us an excuse to throw in some really weird ones (whatever slayer is, for example).

I'm not sure how we'd go about determining which type you'd get - could definitely be random, but could also be subtly effected by other factors (your Alignment, social policies, etc.).

Curious what S3rg things on this one!

Maybe those "old-blood"-GP transform your GP in another class: Dreamer : Chaneler or Leader / Angreal-user: Chaneler / Wolfbrother : warrior or capitain or leader / Powersmith : chaneler / Visionnary : Scientist or chaneler or bard
...Etc

Maybe, alternatively, Old-blood is a promotion that can appear randomly, on your GP, depending on the type of GP and the light-ness of your side, or the culture, or the faith (as it is currently linked to lineage)...or whatever.
Maybe that promotion can be allowed by specific techs / policies ?

This is definitely interesting - a sort of "promotion" for existing GP. Might be a bit too complex, though? Might be best to let most of the GPs just be "regular" GPs.

create a serie of new "tech-tree/policies/whatever"
eg: those old-blood GP enable to research some specifics techs in an "old-blood tech tree" that can't be researched by science/culture but only by using these guys ? : 100 -tech-point ; uses 100 faith : can be used only once per level of caster. (or any other mean to do that : unique policy tree ??)

this tree: contains (for example)
Spoiler :
-wolfbrother --> wolf-speak --> wolf senses --> Control the Wolf -----> Wolf Leader
. ..........................\............. /->True Dreams-->Prophetic Dreams......../
..............................\-> Wolf Dream --> wolf-hunt --> Dream Master /
. .......................................... \--> Nightmare Training /
.Dreamer --> Control the Dream ---/..........................\ Dream Expert
. .............. --> Enter the dreams -->. Dream-speak ---- /
. .............. --> Dream Travel
. .............. --> True Dreams
.............................\
Prophet --> Prophetic Dreams --> Prophecies --> Knowledge of the Futur
..............--> Releasing Control /
Visionary --> Interpretations --> True Knowledge - - - - -> Interpreting Prophecies
. . ............................\--> knowing one's future . . . . . /
. .. ............................ --> Visions of Death - - -------/
. . . . . ........................--> Visions of Greatness -----/

..Etc:
I'm sure an interesting tree could be made, each tech/policy enabling promotions or effects, either only to the units/GP having the specific old-blood promotion, or sometimes, boost for the whole civ : prophecies allow "create prophecy" which enable more "faith" or more chances of "identifying the true Dragon".

Lots of cool flavorful stuff in there! - the wolf speak, interpreting prophcy, etc. That said... I do think it's a bit "too much" - a lot going on just to support a cool GP type. I'm curious what Fearless Leader thinks, but I think we might simply be better off bringing those things in as flavor elsewhere.

--> think of the "visions" of Aviendha when she went to Ruidean (last 3rd of book 13) : 2-3-4 generations after the LB, the seanchans, which overcame Andor and its guns, still fought against aiels with raken and spears/swords... the use of fire arms was not really wide-spread even at that time. Further, firearms and motorised vehicle became wide-spread only 2-5 generations later (1st and second dreams of Aviendha). However the great-daughter of Aviendha felt that they were not really adapting to "trains and cannons".. roughly.
so 4th age tech should be a bit of steam-punkish... or a mix of renaissance (guns AND sword/pikes) and early industrial era : trains , + a bit of one power

Yeah, you're probably right. Musketman and stuff like that might be ok. Maybe not full-on railroad, but something like that. These units would be the "Giant Death Robots" of our game - which, incidentally, I've never actually built.

--> make it that breaking seals is really bad for light civs...
and / or that the light civ can only break seals after the dragon peace, and after something else: remember most of the light civs (even Egwen Elayne and the Aiels, which should all be friend of Rand) were opposed to this until he forced them to accept.
--> maybe only the dragon reborn can do it ?
--> maybe breaking the seals is a geometric function of badness ? (1seal : 10 trollocs, 2nd seals : 20 new trollocs +2 Myrdhal, 3rd seal : 30 new trollocs 3 myrdhal, 1 forsaken....Etc)
--> maybe you can break seals before the actual battle of the LB itself (books 1-13 of the WoT) ... but breaking the second-to last seal starts the actual battle of the LB (like if the battle of book 14 happend in book 3... when noboby was prepared).
and breaking the last seal: shadow civs get super mydrhal, breaker of last seal (if shadow civ) get a "champion/hero": Avatar of the DO itself : (or trak'handar opens-up to a super powerful unit that starts strong-ish, and is held and gets stronger and stronger over 10 turns: you have 10 turns to kill it with One power / Dragon reborn ...Etc

Well, I suppose a few things might be worth clarifying here:
- according to "plan", the breaking of light seals IS pretty bad (short term) for the Light (more shadowspawn). But, still, they do ultimately want to break them in order to secure victory, so I don't see the Shadow really deeming it worth spending resources on stealing the seals and such - you know eventually the light will break them.
- I think, technically, the Dragon Peace will start when the LB starts, so this is somewhat unrelated to that.

If I'm not quite addressing your point, I'm afraid I may not totally understand it.

Definitely curious what S3rgeus wants to do here.

about Dragon and False Dragons
One of the crucial points of the whole WoT series is the following:
- realising the prophecies (Aiels / taking Tear / Sea-folks / Seanchans / Action of the Borderlanders / Action of Shadow).

This enables 1) to differentiate the True Dragon from False Dragons
. 2) to know what Rand has to do (Min uses it for determining that the seals has to be broken, and Rand makes use of the prophecies at all times)

You're certainly right that the WoT narrative (in the books) is somewhat consumed by the fulfilling of prophesies - this certainly gives us an idea of what kinds of things Rand could be doing pre-LB. There's a lot to be said on this, which I'll say below.


Further, False Dragons only have an interest if they "blur" the presence of the true Dragon: ie the appearance of the true Dragon is not known until prophecies are validated, and since the FY, every False Dragon is potentially the True Dragon: people have no mean to know.. that's why there are so often Dragon-sworn armies.

OK, I will take issue that False Dragons, IMO, would be cool even if you know they're False Dragons. Basically they're cool powerful Male Channelers to fight, which you wouldn't get to do most of the game.

Also, recall that in-universe, people usually assume ALL dragons are False Dragons (even Rand, for the first books) - so I'm not sure they really "blur" the True Dragon that much.

IMO, making prophecies, and checking the validity of prophecies should thus have a crucial impact on the game.


For example : after the FY era : every now and then "Dragons" rise…. You can't know if those are false Dragons or true dragons…
Their apparition is more and more frequent as game advances. ("no-city" faction that appears/disappear when the Dragon is killed/subdued: War-to-all, propose "vassalization" to civs / make random actions)
Only Red Ajahs (and maybe damane?) can deal with it.
You can "join the Dragon" faction. The Dragon leaves you alone, but you give him production and some of your units become dragon sworn… but after a time you get "dragon bonus"… and more so if you "joined the Dragon" earlier than other civs.. and earlier than his officialisation as "the true dragon".
However, if the Dragon is found to be a "false Dragon", and you had allied : you lose some culture / faith, you get some temporary unhappiness. If you opposed him : you gain happiness / culture.
If you have prophecies: you can differentiate more easily the true dragon from the false: either enabling to hunt him earlier, or allowing to join his side earlier, or …
Knowing "the true dragon" earlier than other civs might allow you to play with the true dragon even before the LB…

OK. I should say first that I think I mostly follow you, but some things I may not have understood 100%.

I think the idea of the False Dragons maybe being "real" - and the uncertainty of when "Rand" will pop up - is a really compelling and cool thing. Definitely would feel very in-universe. And tying this in to specific prophesies would be cool too - especially since we'd be using Prophesies as GW (we could simply flavorfully name them according to the kinds of things that have happened/will happen in the game).

The diplo aspects - declaring for a dragon and them turning out to be false, etc. - is also quite cool (though I'm not sure any nations really ever got behind the "Dragons" before Rand...

That said, I can really imagine this being a big problem in terms of the game flow, balance, AI, pace, etc.... Consider the fact that an unpredictable Dragon Birth means an unpredictable start date/era for the Last Battle, which, as we've learned, is already a bit of a balancing Monster.

So, honestly, I'm highly doubtful that we could (or even should) implement something like this. That said, maybe there are elements of it that we could salvage and merge with what we do have in a way that isn't too complex:
1) Make the False Dragons have some extra (diplo?) element.
2) Rand's pre-LB actions being related to prophesies (even prophesies creates by players as GWs

I just can't see the possibility that any of the Dragons could be True or False being anything but super complicated and a bit of a balancing nightmare, despite its coolness... Neat idea, but it would maybe "Take over the game" a bit too much. More thoughts?

Further, having prophecies could allow more control on the dragon: either more control-time… (as you know where he is); or more actions, that he can only make when you control him.
Maybe prophecies can also influence interactions with other taver'n / GP. (like the prophecy of shadow allowed them to know where Perrin would be and the importance of Perrin/Mat to the final battle when the light side only focused on Rand.)

As stated in a previous post (I think a response to Illianor), I really like the *idea* of the prophesies "mattering" But, I think that having GWs have actual in-game use is a bit of a can of worms that creates a lot of questions and issues. Might be biting off more than we can chew.

Blight: as much as it is a BAD thing, to make their be some incentive, could killing shadowspawn, or clearing out their camps grant faith? So although you lands will be worse and you will need more military units, you can strengthen your faith by it?

Yes. I proposed this exact thing in my post the other day. Waiting to see what S3rgeus thinks of it.

Thrakan'dar: if this is in from the beginning perhaps it can have strong shadowspawn units that patrol the area around it and make it hard to hem in? Channellers, dark hounds etc. or can peridically send out raids of trollocs etc to push cities within a certain radius back? Or be harder to push the blight aroun it back and so make any nearby cities unproductive?

I think Thakan'dar probably shouldn't "do" much in the early parts of the game, but should be essentially impenetrable. Sure, stuff might spawn around it, but those things could also just be spawning on random Blight tiles.

Obviously, players WILL try to go find it. Should we make going to say "hi" to Shayol Ghul be essentially a death sentence for a unit pre-LB, or is there some viable reason to do so?[/QUOTE]

as an add-on:
the "anthology on channeling" promised by counterpoint could do well to come here.
especially as we don't know what we want to do with faith.

Yeah, yeah! Please be patient guys. I'm about half done with it - word count just showed me 3000 words, lol. Hopefully will finish it soon. Hard with a full time job - S3rgeus, you don't pay us enough!

Faith *may* play a role in Channeling. I've outlined (in my Treatise) how this might work, but it's only going to play a role in Channeling if we decide to adopt that particular set of concept.s

1)faith is linked to light/shadow
2)however belief is linked to lineage
3)being near blight/killing shadowspawn could help gain faith... but what is the point to gain faith ? (especially if you go toward shadow?)

I think you might be a little mixed up here. Do you mean Customs when you say Belief (we renamed Beliefs Customs)?

1)Faith is only "linked" to light/shadow in that Light/shadow affects your civ's ability to generate faith.
2) I'm not sure Customs (beliefs) are particularly linked to Lineage. Lineage is just our version of Pantheon. Is Tithe (civ5) "linked" to Messenger of the Gods (a pantheon)? I don't know. Not really. They both concern themselves with my religion, but that's abut it.
3) Well, what's the point of Faith in base CiV? The point for us would be exactly the same. In addition though, we may elect to have some units that can be purchased or something.
Also, recall that religion and faith in CiV seem to have diminished importance int he final parts of the game - they're really just a tool to aid in other goals - and since a civ will only really "join shadow" at the very end, we're talking about only a minor piece of the overall game.

1) and 2) do not mingle well together.

channeling could give /use faith... but not with the premise 1) and 2)
so how do channeling / chanelers work ?

I don't quite get you logically, here. Why don't 1 and 2 work well together? Lineage doesn't really have any bearing on any of this. Your Lineage is just something you choose that sits around and gives you bonuses throughout the game.

IMO there could be a re-working on the 4 effects of WoT world:
-tavern / pattern / destiny / prophecies
-old blood / lineages
-channeling
-light vs shadow.

especially as faith/religions mechanics could be used easily for any of those effects. (but not in the "24 founder belief - 24 follower belief" structure).

OK, I think I mostly get you here. Truthfully, we kind of picked the whole Lineage=Pantheon thing to death, so I'd just as soon keep that the way it is.
Channeling is still in the works, of course, and I dont think Faith needs to be an integral system - a high-faith civ automatically becoming high-military (because of all the channelers they can build) might be problematic. as far as light vs shadow, I think we've already done due diligence in trying to figure out ways to incorporate it.

As for the Pattern, etc., honestly, this has been something I've thought on a lot with no obvious ideas. Is there a way to incorporate the Pattern into this game? So far, the only ways it has come up so far:

1) The brief idea that Balefire, in hurting the pattern, could create some weird issues (similar to radiation)
2) Also briefly mentioned, the notion that one game of WoTCiV could serve as the "2nd Age" for a later game of WoTCiV - with the new map being a reinterpretation of that same map. A cool but very impractical idea.
3) Ta'veren bonuses from Rand
4) A Great Ta'veren GP detailed in one of my first posts.

Other than that, I'm not sure.

Also, side comment that bugged me in my recent re-read of the WoT. Guys, how do they know about the Pattern? It appears to be something they've *always* known. But, seriously, how would they ever figure out that "this age will return again?" Is it just "religious" belief or do they have some kind of proof that Time is a Wheel and there is an Age Lace that guides the world? They seem to actually trust this to be *true*, as if they've done some empirical analysis and figured out that people are reborn and that many Ages have come and gone and will come again.

Just seems weird to me.

especially as faith does not exist in WoT...

I don't quite understand what you mean. I'm sure people in WoT have Faith. Galad has faith in the Way of the Light. Aviendha has Faith in Ji'e'toh. Tam al'Thor appears to have Faith in his son. Nyneave has Faith in pulling her braid.

(the one that looks more as a faith is "prophecy" that exist about the Rand:
-will he lead as the Dragon / be first chief among the chiefs as Carac'an / make a banter with Sea-Folk / submit to the empress / join the shadow / be the messia leading the armies against the shadow (Shara) / die before liberating the DO / will the Dragon re-kill the world ? / is he to be feared ? to be controled ? to be joined ? to be followed ? / will he liberate and destroy the people (aiels) /

I think we already liked the idea of Prophesies being one of the GWs.

Question, though: what's wrong with the Path of the Light system we've already proposed on previous pages(with a Lineage (pantheon), a Path (Religion), each with a set of Customs (beliefs))? It seems good to me, so I don't see the need to scrap it.
 
There is one problem with the false dragons, when Rand proclaimed himself as a Dragon, the false ones were overthrown. Someone in WoT (Moiraine?) said that the Pattern itself made them loose, because there can be only one Dragon (as we all know :p).

Nonetheless the idea is cool, before Era of the Dragon, false Dragons as a nation without cities (unless they conquer some) could be used by some civs to fight indirectly with others (like Zulu in base CiV - you always want to bribe them to war with someone else :) )

The diplo aspects - declaring for a dragon and them turning out to be false, etc. - is also quite cool (though I'm not sure any nations really ever got behind the "Dragons" before Rand...

Guaire Amalasan (according to wiki) conquered half of the westlands, before he lost against young Artur Hawkwing and the White Tower. This leads to another thing - fighting with false Dragon could give prestige, or some influence in White Tower.

The hardest thing to implement (if we ignore the problem at the very beginning of my post) would be the ways to figure out who is the true Dragon. In WoT Prophecies give us set of (unclear) signs - fall of the Stone of Tear, markings on body - herons and dragons, being born on Dragonmount, Callandor, and many others, most of which in-game would be either punishing to the player ( What? My city has fallen because of some Prophecy? Curse you Dragon, i'm going to the Great Lord service!), or obvious (wut, wild true Dragon appeared on the Dragonmount!), or... slightly weird way to get information(ha, I zoomed in to the Dragon unit model and i know he is the true Dragon! He has heron markings on both hands!).

I hope i made my thoughts clear :crazyeye:
 
Guaire Amalasan (according to wiki) conquered half of the westlands, before he lost against young Artur Hawkwing and the White Tower. This leads to another thing - maybe fighting with false dragons will give some prestige?

Ah, I'm very wrong, then. Still, he *conquered* the westlands - not quite the same as Civ's recognizing his Dragon-ness and swearing for him, right?

The hardest thing to implement (if we ignore the problem at the very beginning of my post) would be the ways to figure out who is the true Dragon. In WoT Prophecies give us set of (unclear) signs - fall of the Stone of Tear, markings on body - herons and dragons, being born on Dragonmount, Callandor, and many others, most of which in-game would be either punishing to the player ( What? My city has fallen because of some Prophecy? Curse you Dragon, i'm going to the Great Lord service!), or obvious (wut, wild true Dragon appeared on the Dragonmount!), or... slightly weird way to get information(ha, I zoomed in to the Dragon unit model and i know he is the true Dragon! He has heron markings on both hands!).

Yes, all those things were central to the narrative of the WoT series.... but that series is *about* Rand, and his friends. Also, since we're not trying to exactly duplicate the plot and history of the westlands, the prophesies would take different shapes in each game, which would be endlessly complicated. For example: the Aiel coming over the Dragonwall and swearing to Car'a'carn is a big deal prophesy in the books (for them, at least), but what if the Aiel live on an island, and declare for the shadow? There would have to be a different prophesy in this case. Might end up a huge headache. And again, those books are "about" Rand, while we're trying to make the story about the history of the different civs.
 
You're right, there was no king/queen aiding him in his conquest, but people from various nations went under his banner, thinking that only true Dragon would achieve so much (I think so). That actually can be a mechanic in-game, if your prestige and happiness is very low, your city looses one population point (people fled under banner of the Dragon) and he gets a dragonsworn unit. So many possibilities! :)

So in this case we can make the competitors for the name of the Dragon reborn to try achieve something, what will inevitably show who deserves this name. Of course this achievement would be stated in our Prophecies as true Dragon's work. Three things that come to my mind now are cleansing of Saidin, gathering all of the seals and quest to find the Horn of Valere. These achievments could be accomplished as a project shared by civs who support one of the dragons - first to accomplish this becomes the Dragon reborn and civs that supported him gain bonuses, depending on which project was taken:
-some male channelers in case of the Cleansing
-seals (most to the civ who gave the most hammers)
-Hornblower unit for the civ who contributed the most to the Hunt, other bonuses for the rest of the supporters

Actually this mechanic has two big flaws - if you support dragon who looses this "race" you get nothing, and it makes the whole civs to support the false dragons.

Or we can just make false Dragons barbarians :)
 
So in this case we can make the competitors for the name of the Dragon reborn to try achieve something, what will inevitably show who deserves this name. Of course this achievement would be stated in our Prophecies as true Dragon's work. Three things that come to my mind now are cleansing of Saidin, gathering all of the seals and quest to find the Horn of Valere. These achievments could be accomplished as a project shared by civs who support one of the dragons - first to accomplish this becomes the Dragon reborn and civs that supported him gain bonuses, depending on which project was taken:
-some male channelers in case of the Cleansing
-seals (most to the civ who gave the most hammers)
-Hornblower unit for the civ who contributed the most to the Hunt, other bonuses for the rest of the supporters

Actually this mechanic has two big flaws - if you support dragon who looses this "race" you get nothing, and it makes the whole civs to support the false dragons.

Or we can just make false Dragons barbarians :)

Currently the Dragonsworn *are* the barbarians (at least until the last battle starts, probably). The False Dragons are currently essentially the "leaders" of the barbarians, who are of course saidin channelers. I do think the idea that False Dragons could siphon population away from your unhappy cities and turn them into his soldiers (barbarians) is neat.

Most of the mechanics you've described have found their way into our late game, either in regards to the Last Battle itself (seals), or otherwise towards the end. The hornblower mechanic is currently independent. In all cases, though, these things are ideally driven by the civs themselves - not simply things they assist the Dragon in doing.

The notion of the civs themselves gambling on which one they think will be the real Dragon (and trying to get that one to complete the prophesies and thus become the actual Dragon) seems like it might kind of take over the game. And, again, it doesn't seem to fit in -universe to me. You're right that people flocked to the dragons (that's who the dragonsworn are), but the *nations* didn't - it seems to me that the nations only accepted the real Dragon once he'd personally fulfilled so many prophesies that it could no longer be denied.

Seems a bit "too much" for me - I don't think the False dragons need to take "center stage". At this point, though, it seems best to wait for S3rgeus and others' feedback on the matter.
 
OK, I *think* I understand you correctly. You're saying, instead of having all of these as separate GP - each with their own "charging up meter" or whatever its called - we simply have one (Great Talent or something) that would pump out any one of these somewhat weirder, more esoteric GP-types.

I think I could get behind that, but I'd want to limit it to the more "weird" GPs - Viewers, Sniffers, Wolfbrothers, etc. Not "Great Scholars" and "Great Gleemen" and whatnot. It would give us an excuse to throw in some really weird ones (whatever slayer is, for example).
 that’s exactly what I meant.
So that in game you can have GGleeman / GScientist / G engineer / GChanneler ? / and.. Old Talent (all the weird ones).

One thing that can unbalance the game, but which might be manageable..
Maybe you can start early with one of the Old talent guy (but few options are open for him) or few actions… and you can spend him early, or use it as a unit…etc… However, for getting new ones, the gpp are only openened later, much later: 2000years or so: techs from just before the age of the dragon.
This is definitely interesting - a sort of "promotion" for existing GP. Might be a bit too complex, though? Might be best to let most of the GPs just be "regular" GPs.
you are right, the issue is complexity. However it is complexity in "programmation"… IMO it can be really intuitive in game

Lots of cool flavorful stuff in there! - the wolf speak, interpreting prophcy, etc. That said... I do think it's a bit "too much" - a lot going on just to support a cool GP type. I'm curious what Fearless Leader thinks, but I think we might simply be better off bringing those things in as flavor elsewhere.
again, I agree. But you have to remember that it's all that "cool-stuff-for-few-cool-gp" that makes the book and the world so interesting.
Maybe not have 6+ tech/type, maybe have less… or have those only be a special chain of promotions for those kind of "GP-like units".
But don't be limited to think of those as "GP", we may think of those as "GP-induced-units". IE: units that are gained through the use of gpp points, but that thereafter function as units.
OR, you might want to have them be "normal-gpp" but instead of… GWonder…etc, they use (let's say FAITH as beliefs are currently linked to lineage) to do either "actions" and/or "buy" promotions (when they have the level) : "call wolves": 50faith ..Etc.

One of the main issues of the WoT Tal'endriol (dream world) (and of channelers) is that the coolest tricks of the dream world/wolfbrother are in facts tools for… getting knowledge/fore-knowledge/spying/or communicating.
And those are difficult to use in a civ-like game.
(same for another of the biggest aspect of the book: convincing others / alliances… that explains the 3oaths, and many of the dragon's actions…etc)

Well, I suppose a few things might be worth clarifying here:
- according to "plan", the breaking of light seals IS pretty bad (short term) for the Light (more shadowspawn). But, still, they do ultimately want to break them in order to secure victory, so I don't see the Shadow really deeming it worth spending resources on stealing the seals and such - you know eventually the light will break them.
- I think, technically, the Dragon Peace will start when the LB starts, so this is somewhat unrelated to that.

If I'm not quite addressing your point, I'm afraid I may not totally understand it.
that's my point: the breaking of the seals now vs keeping it for later is not enough of a challenge:
I see two solutions (even if more can exist):
-make it more interesting for shadow to break them now instead of later:
Not only short-term gains: short-term boon AND long term advantage, AND strategic Advantage: if all seals are broken, the warring-part of the Last Battle can start before the light civs are ready.
So shadow civs that want to win the LB NEED to have most of the seals broken before the LB itself… : to weaken the light and/or to have time to boost their str.

-Make it difficult /dangerous for Light to break them before a latest part is done: random ideas following:
Each "un-broken seal" gives moral? ("The DO is not free … we have a control on that")
The civs cannot break seals without one of 3 conditions: a "break the seals-tech", a "2/3rd of the seals are already broken" and/or a "use spell of a lvl X channelers"?
Each broken seals increase chances of insurrection / of random events that decrease food/gold yields … etc?
Breaking a seal (before that last tech) gives a huge malus to the civ that broke it ? (unhappiness…Etc)

Also, recall that in-universe, people usually assume ALL dragons are False Dragons (even Rand, for the first books) - so I'm not sure they really "blur" the True Dragon that much.
they blur Rand. because many people think either of: he is only a further "false dragon": ie someone to kill now. OR: he is like all the false dragons before: he will go mad, so we have to secure him (in the WT/give him to the AesSedai) so he can be shielded and controlled.

I just can't see the possibility that any of the Dragons could be True or False being anything but super complicated and a bit of a balancing nightmare, despite its coolness... Neat idea, but it would maybe "Take over the game" a bit too much. More thoughts?
I agree, somehow. However, if you know which dragon is false or true from the get-go, it becomes too "easy" to meta-game.
One way to "not-complicate-it-too-much" would be to have the dragon be chosen "at-random" between the false-dragons alive when we reach the age of the dragon world era (or from any of those that appeared since 1 civ was in the Dragon era), and-or be born . (there were 3 : Taim / Logain and Rand (which faction led by Masama was really akin to a barbarian "false-dragon", Taim and Logain both raising as "Dragon" during the Age of Dragon)
Having a bit of randomness added to "we reached the age of dragon: the next dragon is the true one…" might make it more interesting and re-playable and less meta-gameable.
(especially if the latest "False dragons" did not really die when captured/killed but are "under-cover")

I think you might be a little mixed up here. Do you mean Customs when you say Belief (we renamed Beliefs Customs)?

1)Faith is only "linked" to light/shadow in that Light/shadow affects your civ's ability to generate faith.
2) I'm not sure Customs (beliefs) are particularly linked to Lineage. Lineage is just our version of Pantheon. Is Tithe (civ5) "linked" to Messenger of the Gods (a pantheon)? I don't know. Not really. They both concern themselves with my religion, but that's abut it.
3) Well, what's the point of Faith in base CiV? The point for us would be exactly the same. In addition though, we may elect to have some units that can be purchased or something.
Also, recall that religion and faith in CiV seem to have diminished importance int he final parts of the game - they're really just a tool to aid in other goals - and since a civ will only really "join shadow" at the very end, we're talking about only a minor piece of the overall game.
1)well, for the sake of coherence it is important.
So if faith is not "brightness", what is faith ?
2)I'm not really mixing things up. Lineage or custom is the same: it is not linked to any "faith". While "tithe" (or civ5 pantheons) are linked to religions and the effects linked to the management of religion: at least the name. While "custom" (or lineage) have no credible link with "how do I manage my brightness".
 "customs" and "brightness" have almost no coherency together. I don't mean the effects in-game, but I mean the "structure", the in-world-structure.
However, if faith was "how to I manage my talents" : old blood / channelling …Etc.. then lineages would be logical. Customs would be less logical.
If faith is "Identity of my people".. then "customs" are logical. But IIRC, "identity of my people".. is a function already taken by "Culture".

3) I don't see why we have to be limited to the vision of civ5 where faith loose interest late game. Or have faith-effect be limited and "interchangeable". There are already mods that give some punch to faith… either for normal civ-game, or other total conversion. "Ea" mod has 3 religions … 2 being a main religion and a reformation of the main religion, and the last religion having a dozen or so cults.
The religions have effects that have an influence for the game, an important one.
In civ4 some mod mods removed blandness from religions, in particular, Fall From Heaven created 6 (and some 3-4 small-cults) that were tools for growth/science/culture military power, depending on your choices.

Two of the big advantages of religions/faith (as opposed to policies) are the following:
-there is an additional currency to do things …
-one can change FAITH during the game: if you founded X, you can still change and be follower of Y later … you lost some investment, and you don't get as much "total bonus" as if you had founded Y, but it might be still interesting: (it would be like if you said: I quit this policy tree and I get 75% refund !)
This is a mechanic that can "easily" be used in game to create more interesting gameplay.
Further, it is one way to derail from the "science is power" of basic Civ.
Here we are in a game where the tech tree will be shorter than in vanilla civ:
either larger and shorter (see FFH or Ea)
or
shorted (but more expensive) …
then you'll have a secondary set of trees : policies (and the 3 exclusive things that are in fact policies)
and… faith.


I think we already liked the idea of Prophesies being one of the GWs.

Question, though: what's wrong with the Path of the Light system we've already proposed on previous pages(with a Lineage (pantheon), a Path (Religion), each with a set of Customs (beliefs))? It seems good to me, so I don't see the need to scrap it.
there is nothing really wrong per se.
It is only that doing this, it seems we try to fit the world of WoT into the mechanics of the game as they are in vanilla civ5 instead of tweaking the mechanics of the game to fit the lore (I'm not speaking of creating new mechanics but changing balance/etc using what is easily tweakable).
It is normal to fit the lore to what is useable given the civ5 engine.
However one might want to change more than just "names-of-things".
In the same way that we will change the tech tree (not only names, but layout and rewards …Etc) and change the diplo Victory into a "that-particular-CS (WT)" is essential, and add a "last battle victory", and change the repartition of units, add channelers… maybe even change the meaning of the "last-game-policies" so as to represent channelling "schools". Those are close to a total conversion.
However renaming pantheon into "customs" and trying to keep the exact same function for faith than in vanilla civ is kind of "bland", and sad.
Especially as :
1) there is not any lore-thing in WoT that ressembles religions (with the variety we have in game) … you only have to look at the difficulty to decide what would replace pantheons and how to names those.
2) There are many effects/important points of the WoT that are not currently addressed
So, for me, trying to adapt and tweak and rebalance mechanics to fit the existing lore has more worth than inventing a new system to try to fit the exisiting mechanics/balance.


The notion of the civs themselves gambling on which one they think will be the real Dragon (and trying to get that one to complete the prophesies and thus become the actual Dragon) seems like it might kind of take over the game. And, again, it doesn't seem to fit in -universe to me. You're right that people flocked to the dragons (that's who the dragonsworn are), but the *nations* didn't - it seems to me that the nations only accepted the real Dragon once he'd personally fulfilled so many prophesies that it could no longer be denied.

Seems a bit "too much" for me - I don't think the False dragons need to take "center stage". At this point, though, it seems best to wait for S3rgeus and others' feedback on the matter.
I think you are right. But if we take this really to the end you risk to transform the Dragon into a non-event, when in fact the main character of the WoT (or at least the role they have) are also what renders the world attractive.
Having a world of merchant and peasant with no-science for 3000 years is kind of a boring world.
 
Well, I admit i've taken it a bit too far :p

Now that i read Calavente's post, i wonder, do we have an "anti-brightness religon"/Dark One followers? I think it hasn't been discussed before, apart from some faith penalties for corrupted civs.

The only way to have it's followers in cities would be to perform some 'dark side' actions, each follower would give e.g. -0,25 faith per turn, when it is majority religion in city it lets you build darkfriend unit (or maybe even shadowspawn).

An example from early game:
"A group of hungry Way of the leaf followers begs you for food in exchange for books carried out from ruins of pre-Breaking world. What is your decision?
-Help these poor people (your city looses accumulated food, you get culture and faith boost)
-Ignore them (nothing)
-Chase away these filthy thiefs (you get some gold from their belongings, culture and a Dark One follower in our city)"

that's my point: the breaking of the seals now vs keeping it for later is not enough of a challenge:
I see two solutions (even if more can exist):
-make it more interesting for shadow to break them now instead of later:
Not only short-term gains: short-term boon AND long term advantage, AND strategic Advantage: if all seals are broken, the warring-part of the Last Battle can start before the light civs are ready.
So shadow civs that want to win the LB NEED to have most of the seals broken before the LB itself… : to weaken the light and/or to have time to boost their str.

-Make it difficult /dangerous for Light to break them before a latest part is done: random ideas following:
Each "un-broken seal" gives moral? ("The DO is not free … we have a control on that")
The civs cannot break seals without one of 3 conditions: a "break the seals-tech", a "2/3rd of the seals are already broken" and/or a "use spell of a lvl X channelers"?
Each broken seals increase chances of insurrection / of random events that decrease food/gold yields … etc?
Breaking a seal (before that last tech) gives a huge malus to the civ that broke it ? (unhappiness…Etc)

Morale would be a nice benefit for a light civ which seal was examined, and proved that it is not a fake. Apart from that I think it was mentioned somewhere before that each broken seal should incerase spawn rate for shadowspawn and increase chances for bubbels of evil (random title pillaged with some kind of CiV radiation equivalent on it)

I like the ideas for "old blood" units :)
It propably won't be a big problem to balance them overall, bigger one wold be to balance them so each old blood unit would be as viable as another, for example that Wolfbrother isn't just a Dreamer with additional skills connected to wolves (what actually is the case in WoT, when it comes to non-channeling Dreamer :p ).
 
I like the ideas for "old blood" units :)
It propably won't be a big problem to balance them overall, bigger one wold be to balance them so each old blood unit would be as viable as another, for example that Wolfbrother isn't just a Dreamer with additional skills connected to wolves (what actually is the case in WoT, when it comes to non-channeling Dreamer :p ).
exactly, that would be the issue: make it that each Old Talent is unique and worth it.
that said dreamers are not under-skilled Wolfbrothers.
indeed : Dreamers can enter the "stellar field of dreams", which Wolfbrother do not.
further, if we take "slayer" as a Dreamer (really powerful one) he can enter Talendriol just by wishing it.
Further, it seems that Dreamers have much more True-Dreams (or interpret them easier) than Wolf-brothers.(Egwen has those almost every night, or at least every so often, but each time we get a narration of this, she has 5-6 true dreams. on the other hand, I remember only of 4 times for Perrin. And I'm sure Noam or Elias did not mention this (which doesn't mean they don't have them).


last, it seems to me that Wolfbrothers not necessarily realise that it's an other "world", or not as quickly: it is the "wolf dream"... so, maybe their expertise in the wolf-dream could be harder to get.
 
I knew there'd be a lot to reply to when I came back. I've read everything a couple of times now, so hopefully I'm able to put together relevant parts of peoples' different posts. Here we go!

OK, I do like this idea. The Ethical Conundrums become a bit more frequent over the few turns before the LB starts, and all concern the Dragon (flavor-wise, at least).

Sounds like Illianor's suggestions is the way to go here - that way we "lead into" the Last Battle instead of it just starting "out of the blue" (since the player can't see the world era).

alignment has been the word we've used for the past few pages as a place holder. ... As stated before, I don't love it, long term. I'm fine with there being a different textual association with each side of the scale, but the scale itself needs a name. Sort of how in Civ5, you have "Happiness" as a scale, but there is also an "unhappiness" factor that is tracked. Will keep thinking on it.

I'm in agreement that the whole scale/system should have a name other than Alignment. Unfortunately, no bright (;)) ideas yet.

Aye. Should there be some other element to it, beyond this, though? I mean, is there anything about the civ itself (production, culture, etc.) that leads to spawn?

and (look at me connecting these posts together!)

Now that i read Calavente's post, i wonder, do we have an "anti-brightness religon"/Dark One followers? I think it hasn't been discussed before, apart from some faith penalties for corrupted civs.

The only way to have it's followers in cities would be to perform some 'dark side' actions, each follower would give e.g. -0,25 faith per turn, when it is majority religion in city it lets you build darkfriend unit (or maybe even shadowspawn).

An example from early game:
"A group of hungry Way of the leaf followers begs you for food in exchange for books carried out from ruins of pre-Breaking world. What is your decision?
-Help these poor people (your city looses accumulated food, you get culture and faith boost)
-Ignore them (nothing)
-Chase away these filthy thiefs (you get some gold from their belongings, culture and a Dark One follower in our city)"

I think both of these require us to firm up what form "Boons" take (bonuses for Shadow civs, provided by the Dark One). I don't think we've said much on this aside from that Boons are intended to be a corresponding bonus to Shadow players as Paths are to Light players.

I really like swieczq's specific example in terms of "followers of the Dark One". Now, I'm aware we discussed something like this before - but I think we can make this different. Don't make "followers of the Dark One" (or whatever we call it) a religion. It's more like a citizen/specialist. They can have yields that way (yields toward generating Shadowspawn during the Last Battle - much like Specialists yields GP points, Shadowspawn would presumably just be cheaper). They can also have ongoing yields that offset the loss of faith rewards (though you're likely to get Follower boosts from someone else's Path if you're Shadow, so something along the lines of Founder bonuses?)

The flipside of this - we're trying not to be "this civ is evil" for the majority of the game. Does that preclude us from having "Darkfriend" specialists? Does "working" a Darkfriend specialist produce "Shadow Points" that move your Alignment towards Shadow? (This seems to make sense.) Lots of questions to be answered if we want to do something like that. Even if we don't, Boons need some formalizing (who delivers them, when, what kinds of benefits they are).

I can see this, but I wonder if the faith penalty increasing might be overly complicated (same with the change in shadowspawn). I mean, ideally, your actual contributions to the war effort would be what effects this, not just the passage of time. This is easier with the Light, since we reward actions with faith already. What about for the shadow?

I was thinking contributions would also play a big role in affecting a civ's bonuses related to their chosen alignment as well, but that civs tended towards either side of the spectrum over time as well. This gives the civs more resources (related to their alignment) toward the end of the Last Battle, which promotes big, swing-y battles, which is something I think we want. In terms of complexity, if we want to track contributions and move player's alignment based on those, a static "movement" toward the alignment the player has chosen is very simple. The other changes (faith yield, Shadowspawn change) are all just consequences of that - not part of the gradual movement. (The same things will happen if the player moves toward their alignment using explicit actions.)

OK, a few things here. 1) I was confusing the victory conditions for dom with the FORMER ones from CiV vanilla - be the last person in your original capital - not the new BNW ones. That explains the nonsense about the light-allies blah blah blah
and
2) I actually don't think it's the same as domination. Imagine Shara and Seanchan are with the shadow, and Andor and Tear are with Light. The Sea Folk are neutral.

If Shara captures Caemlyn and Seanchan captures Tear (city), but Tremalking is totally fine, this would register as a Shadow Victory condition, but obviously wouldn't net any one civ a domination victory condition - even if one of them had Tremalking, since the shadow civs are splitting the light civs, they have unlocked the Shadow win but haven't unlocked the personal (win) that that shadow "win" unlocks.... See what I mean?

Sorry, yes, I was talking mostly about part #1! I see how this is different from the Domination victory as you explained in #2. :D

Darn it. I'm having a bit of a crisis here. I'm no longer a fan of our seal system. I don't think it works in terms of realistic player motivation.

What we're imagining is a system wherein the forces of light jockey for position with the forces of shadow, trying to capture cities, steal their seals, all to be able to... destroy the seals.
At the same time, the forces of shadow jockey for position with the forces of light, trying to capture cities, steal their seals, all to be able to... destroy the seals.

you see the problem? We've established the Seal-cracking as a shared-goal for BOTH sides - one that, admittedly, helps the shadow civs in the short term longer. Why the heck wouldn't they just all crack their own seals and move on with their lives? Why all the war and stealing?

Am I missing something? Don't *both* sides want to shatter the seals? The Shadow so they can release the DO (most logical one), and the Light so they can reforge them (not as logical, but according to the books, the "correct" ending, so one we should have). This is part of the victory conditions as described, I believe.

So, these cool ideas we have, stealing, war, etc.... they won't happen, right? Shadow civs will crack their seals immediately. Light civs will do the same. The light civs might, theoretically, try to put it off til the last minute - to avoid the increase in the touch of the DO, but they still want it as well.. The neutral civs are the only ones who have a vested interest in actually keeping the seals intact.

So, what the heck do we do now, then? IMO, this needs rethinking.

Below I will address your points, ignoring the points I just made above.

You're right, the availability of multiple spies (and the dragon) makes the "shared progress" thing a problem. Moving the seals should be viable, as you say...

I think you might have a better handle on how this should "actually" work - do you mind laying out a "proposal" for the seal-home and theft mechanic (assuming my points above didn't destroy the whole thing)?

Right, convincing time. Overall, I can see where you’re coming from, but hopefully once I’ve outlined how I think the Seals system works, you’ll agree that it’s a better fit than you’ve summarized above! This is all very serious, I’ve actually written this part of this post in Word. Serious business. I encourage people to read to the end and in detail, because a lot of these components are only balanced when taken as part of the whole process rather than alone.

The Seals of the Dark One and CiV

The Last Battle pits two opposing alignments against each other (Light and Shadow) with a third (Neutral) standing aside, but potentially being dragged into the conflict. At the core of the Light/Shadow conflict are the Seals of the Dark One.

Last Battle Victory Conditions
  • For the Shadow
    • All of the real Seals of the Dark One must be broken
    • Then one player who controls all Light side capitals will win the game
  • For the Light
    • The Dragon must capture Thakan’dar
    • Then all of the real Seals of the Dark One must be broken and the whole Light team will win the game

Note the order of the hollow bullets, which will become important in a moment.

Finding the Seals
  • The Seals are scattered across the map at the beginning of each game and become discoverable once an appropriate technology is researched
  • Extracting a Seal from its hex involves a one-time-use unit (much like the Archeologist for Great Works) that digs up the Seal
  • Some of the scattered Seals are fakes, placed by the Dark One or his minions to mislead the Light
  • An end-game technology reveals the locations of all not-yet-unearthed Seals to prevent end-game deadlock if one hasn’t been found
  • When a player finds a Seal, they receive a “Seal of the Dark One” unit at one of their cities (closest?) which moves much like a plane does – through rebasing into other cities
Seal Units
  • Seal units can only be moved via cities, much like aircraft
  • Seal units’ rebase command has a duration (rather than instantaneous) so they cannot be moved every turn – for the “duration” of the rebase, they are considered still stationed in the city of origin (think of this as preparing for the journey or simulating the risk of the journey itself)
  • Seal units can be rebased into foreign cities, which grants control of that Seal to the player that owns the city
  • I think we have to say that Seals can’t stack – only one can be in a given city at a time

Sorting Fake from Real Seals

  • Each Seal that a player controls creates a “technology” in their “Seals tree” (accessible through the tech tree window) which corresponds to that Seal
  • If the player completes a research project for a given Seal, its status (whether it is real or fake) is revealed to the world
  • Players who discover fake Seals are given yield (and possibly other) bonuses to offset their lost science.
  • If a Seal is moved then progress toward researching it is reset
  • Controlling confirmed real Seals grants a global static bonus to happiness and unit starting XP to the civ that controls it

Breaking Seals

  • The city that a known real Seal is stationed in can put its production towards a “Break this Seal” project
  • When the project completes, that Seal is broken
    • If a Light civ has broken the Seal, they are immediately afflicted by a variety of penalties, including bubbles of evil, increased Shadowspawn activity, possible unhappiness
    • The fewer real Seals that remain unbroken in a given game, the more Shadowspawn spawn to fight alongside the Shadow
    • The fewer real Seals that remain unbroken in a given game, the more bubbles of evil occur globally across the world
  • If a Seal is moved while the city is working on the “Break this Seal” project, then the expended hammers are converted into Gold and progress is reset

Stealing Seals

  • Seals can be stolen from the city they are stationed in by spies or the Dragon
  • Seals stationed in a city when it is captured have their control transferred to the city’s new owner
  • When a spy is stationed in a city, the presence of a Seal is revealed immediately upon the spy “setting up surveillance”

Alignment Restrictions and Motivations

This is where I think people are taking issue. But I think we’re good here; remember the order I mentioned the victory conditions in at the very beginning:
Light:
  • Light civs want to capture Thakan’dar, but can only do so using the Dragon Unit
  • The Dragon Unit only spawns when the Light civs collectively control all remaining unbroken Seals of the Dark One
    • Once the Dragon Unit is spawned, his victory at Thakan’dar is not guaranteed, and breaking the Seals before he captures it makes his task more difficult (more Shadowspawn, less support etc)
    • The Dragon Unit’s defeat on the field of battle means he is injured and cannot respawn for a number of turns – during which time the Shadow can steal/capture Seals back and the Light don’t want to break them

Shadow:

  • Shadow civs are defending Thakan’dar – the Light cannot win until it is taken
  • Shadow civs want to break the Seals, since that makes their Shadowspawn allies stronger
    • Caveat: They don’t necessarily want to break the last Seal they have – that will spawn the Dragon Unit (unless they feel they can deal with him)
    • Leaving only one Seal controlled by their side is risky – the Light steals that one and the Dragon Unit spawns
    • If Thakan’dar is well defended and the Shadow control most/all of the Seals, breaking is advantageous
  • If the Dragon Unit spawns, the Shadow’s prime objective is to defeat him and recapture/steal at least one Seal to prevent him from respawning

Neutral:

  • If a neutral civ has an unresearched Seal, it is generally in their interest to research it
  • Discovering a fake will give them some bonuses
  • Discovering a real one means they should keep it safe – neither side can win the Last Battle (circumventing the neutral civ’s plan for a different victory) without breaking this Seal

Hopefully people can see from the way the above systems combine that immediately destroying all Seals or indefinitely defending them are not always useful strategies and that the mechanics for stealing/capturing the Seals will be put to use by both sides at different times, depending on the current state of the game.

Cracking all of the Seals right away as the Light civs is definitely not a good idea. Their enemies (who they need the remaining Seals from) get stronger and their ability to capture Thakan’dar when the Dragon Unit spawns is diminished.

Likewise, if the Shadow civs crack all of their Seals straight off, they’ll spawn the Dragon Unit for the Light, who may be able to use him to win the game right now.
The general strategy for the two sides, as I see it, is this:

Shadow:
  1. Encircle Thakan’dar with well defended Shadow cities/fortifications
  2. Gain control of as many Seals as possible – breaking at least some, but keeping at least one back to prevent the Dragon from spawning before Thakan’dar is well defended
  3. Offensive against the Light capitals (remember there will be infighting as one Shadow player pulls ahead)

Light:

  1. Gain control of as many Seals as possible and keep them safe until you can be more confident of capturing Thakan’dar
  2. Clear the way to Thakan’dar with Light cities/armies
  3. Cause the Dragon Unit to be spawned (by grabbing all of the Seals)
  4. Capture Thakan’dar with the Dragon
  5. Break the Seals

The Light is likely to start the “Break the Seal” projects while the Dragon is moving across the map – capturing Thakan’dar and breaking all of the Seals in a single turn is the optimal result for the Light. But some might be broken early – a surprise Dragon defeat by the Shadow might mean the Light inadvertently contributed to their own demise. (Which I think is good strategy on the Shadow’s part – poor on the Light’s, their ideal run should break the Seals after)
So, the above are general strategies. What about ideal ones for each side, where everything goes exactly according to their plan? They tend to be led by a runaway civ:

Shadow:
  1. A single domineering Shadow civ is the only world superpower – capable of defending Thakan’dar and defeating the forces of the Light and Shadow unassisted
  2. They break Seals as soon as they find them – increasing the Shadowspawn to distract their enemies
  3. They kill the Dragon Unit wherever he spawns
  4. They streamroll the Light civs and capture their capitals – winning the game (possibly having to mop up finding/capturing the last few Seals)

Light:

  1. The Light civs have a clear military advantage against the Shadow – easily able to fight any single Shadow civ and deal with the Shadowspawn attacking them
  2. They capture all of the real Seals and keep them well back from the frontline, exposed only to failed attempts at spy-stealing
  3. The Dragon Unit spawns and they begin breaking the Seals across their highest production cities
  4. The Dragon captures Thakan’dar and the Seals are broken – winning the game for the Light

Any more questions and I’d be happy expand on specific points, but I think this system works quite well. There’s an argument to be had about using plane-like movement vs spy-like movement for the Seals (just how we present to the player really) but I don’t mind terribly either way with that.


Regarding the Dragon.... I'd say, yes, he should be able to be "defeated" by a spy. Right? Maybe it's hard to do, but shouldn't it be possible? I think the way to make it more gut wrenching is to make it hard to find him in the first place - the light player, maybe, has to get somewhat "greedy" in order to be discovered, perhaps?

My only worry is that this will feel very random from the defending player's perspective (the person controlling the Dragon). You have no direct way of finding enemy spies (you only find them as a consequence of their actions - at which point they've either already failed or it's too late). We could present this information (spy trying to attack the Dragon) to the defending player in some way, but I don't see how we could do that without a human player being able to always avoid this. If it were linked more to "greediness" on the part of the player controlling the Dragon, then that's a lot better. Given the available moves we've outlined that the Dragon can take though, what constitutes being greedy?

I'd imagine if it was a global project, the seal itself would still be housed in one city - the global project just facilitates co-contributions.

I see what you mean, but then can we move the Seal? I think that hits similar issues to keeping progress of stealing Seals over multiple cities. If we fix the Seal while it's being "broken" in place, we need a way to uproot the other players' contributions if the controlling player realizes the other alignment's players are coming to get it. It's easier to manage and slots into CiV's existing systems better as an individual city project, I think.

This also keeps up the "distribution" we have from researching one Seal (to see if it's real) - you give the Seal to the civ who has a city that can break it, which dictates where it must go on the map (which might create risk - in a good way!). Example: You're a Shadow player and have a Seal. Elayne's (Shadow) Caemlyn is on the border with a very large Illian (Light's) civilization. But Caemlyn has very high production. Do you give her the Seal because she can break it quickly - risking Illian attacking and taking it? Or do you keep it somewhere farther back and break it more slowly?

I think the random light-territory close to thakan'dar is the best option, right? Prestige makes sense, but not if we have a turn counter (and he ends up super far away).

Sounds good to me! @settled @LastBattle (my keywords are always different, which is supremely unhelpful, sorry!)

What if there are no light cities on the same continent, though, for example?

CiV has these kinds of problems all over the place and I think we just need to go with "closest we can get." Simple examples of this problem are "spawn this unit on an available tile close to X,Y". There are configurations of units already placed on the map that may spawn the unit many tiles away from its intended target - but they don't occur that often. Hopefully any issues we have here will manifest as more in game flavor ("It's gonna be hard this time - the Dragon has to cross through Shadow-aligned Seanchan!") rather than be annoying. The logic for where to spawn him should be relatively tweakable when things are playable.

Well, I still think the blight is a net-negative to have in your land, regardless of your alignment. Blight is BAD. people die in the blight. you can't farm or mine or anything. No civ - dark or light - wants blight. Thus, even the shadow civs want to stop the blight's encroachment. Any "bonuses" they get during the LB for having blight - convenience and easy access to shadowspawn, e.g. - would still not be worth letting it overtake your lands. Especially since I'm imagining it actually shrinking your actual territory.

Interesting, I hadn't thought of it repelling your borders. Does that mean that pushing back the Blight with culture is capturing those tiles? They just have added culture cost? Then at what rate do we degrade players' territory? They should be notified so they can redirect culture (which they can do?) to combat it?

Sounds good that no civs want Blight in their territory, regardless of alignment.

Great point. I think the truth is found in the books. Yes, you do have to deal with more crap as a borderlander, but you likely also get more Faith - you know, the shienarans and such aren't afraid to die, etc. I would imagine that shadowspawn kills should give a free faith bonus (culture? which would help slow the blight's growth) or something. Pattern it after some of the barb-related things in the honor-tree, maybe - except for shadowspawn. And, we've already discussed having "top contributors" rewards during the TW and such.
Also, incidentally, I'd imagine a borderland civ would have way fewer barbarians/bandits/dragonsworn, as such couldn't spawn in the light (though they have Worms lol...)
Yes, do NOT want people to restart if they are close to the blight. We shouldn't let them spawn IN or immediately next to the blight, but close to the blight should be viable, and fun - let's make it worth it.

and

Blight: as much as it is a BAD thing, to make their be some incentive, could killing shadowspawn, or clearing out their camps grant faith? So although you lands will be worse and you will need more military units, you can strengthen your faith by it?

Yes, I like this. There's a good mesh between flavor and gameplay here. Being near the Blight doesn't force you to be Light, but it makes doing so more effective, which fits in, as counterpoint said.

I dont know. Do you think it would create a terrible meta game if Thakan'dar exists in the begining? I mean, it SHOULD exist from AB 1, but we don't want situations where people are placing cities for the sole purpose of a strike during the LB 2500 years later and/or to block potential shadow civs. Yeah, your proposal makes sense I guess.... but it's wholly realistic that the shadow civs wont be close to it at all (e.g., Shara in WoT). I think this likely shouldn't matter.

Probably my vote is for it to always exist. It should lie in the "blasted lands," though. This may not *really* mean anything in our game, except for perhaps that its a really thick part of the blight with lots of spawning points.

and

Thrakan'dar: if this is in from the beginning perhaps it can have strong shadowspawn units that patrol the area around it and make it hard to hem in? Channellers, dark hounds etc. or can peridically send out raids of trollocs etc to push cities within a certain radius back? Or be harder to push the blight aroun it back and so make any nearby cities unproductive?

I think there might be a third post that refers to this topic, but it's escaping me.

Interesting that you've both gone for always existing here. I'd say I'm in favor of Thakan'dar spawning at the beginning of the Last Battle, for a variety of reasons. I've bolded a section of counterpoint's response that I think it quite important. There will definitely be a metagame around Thakan'dar if it's always on the map - Light civs (particularly forward-thinking human strategists) will definitely hem them in to minimize the Shadow's effectiveness and give themselves better staging grounds.

Illianor's suggestion goes a way to mitigating this, but there will be games where it doesn't work as planned and some player manages to take Thakan'dar in FY4. (People can be crazy good at CiV) On top of that, we'd need to implement specific AI logic to make the units around Thakan'dar act differently from all others in the game - defending this location, but not using their superior power to range farther (to prevent them from unbalancing the rest of the game). That's no small amount of effort with, from most players' perspective (if they leave it well alone, which we want them to), 0 payoff.

Pushing out the Blight (especially if we take counterpoint's suggestion above that Blight consumes territory) can be helpful, but it's just another thing that a good player will be able to circumvent. Crazy-culture-Shaka-you-to-death-guy will find some way to culture bomb his way deep into the Blight and capture Thakan'dar. Now, maybe that's a cool thing - a super challenge that most players wouldn't even try and can be an "endgame" for madmen looking for amazing challenges. But it throws a whole bunch of our later systems into a lurch - what does the Last Battle even do in this case? They've less completed an impossible challenge than broken the game.

The reason I suggested spawning Thakan'dar near a Shadow civ (if there is one near the Blight) is so that it would have "backup" of some form. No Shadow civ is going to just let the Light civs take it - since he will lose as a consequence. If Thakan'dar spawns on a Light-civ-only continent, then it might have some difficulties.

I'm not sure he can force to to be light. But a perhaps-out-of-your-control slam of a bunch of Light points might make sense, based on what happens.

That will force borderline players onto the Light side though, right? That might not be an issue - the penalties the player will incur by picking Shadow "against" their slight Light alignment probably won't be too severe. They clearly weren't that committed to it if the Dragon's effect swung them onto the other side entirely anyway.

OK, so you feel secure that the "word era = Era of Nations" is the place to start the TW? It's probably fine, but it does feel a bit odd to have it happen really early in the game - how many turns in is this?

Ugh, I'm not so sure. This could be very early. If we look at the base CiV tech tree, this would be when half or more of the civs are in the Classical era or one civ reaches the Medieval era. Turn 50 maybe? Is that too fast? We could wait for *all* civilizations to reach the Era of Nations, but then it's open to a bit of abuse where a player keeps a weak AI alive to delay the clock. That isn't so bad at the early game though - even with one city, most players will reach the classical era early enough. Perhaps we can tweak this when it's playable? We can go with world era unless it proves to be too fast.
 
So, in order to assess the low numbers :
what about, instead of having "wolfbrother GP" (which are always of the light if they keep acquaintance with wolves... other-wise they become like "Slayer", but this should be very rare... ideally a wolf-brogther GP will leave you if you chose shadow), you could only have "old-blood" GP, Old blood allowing to upgrade (by decision or randomness) to one of the old talents: Dreamer (Egwene, Aiels) / Wolfbrother / Power-smith (Neal) / Angreal-user (Aviendha) / Prophet (forgot the names) / Visionnary (Min)... etc
Maybe Maker of Angreal (Elayne) is only a tech.

And

OK, I *think* I understand you correctly. You're saying, instead of having all of these as separate GP - each with their own "charging up meter" or whatever its called - we simply have one (Great Talent or something) that would pump out any one of these somewhat weirder, more esoteric GP-types.

I think I could get behind that, but I'd want to limit it to the more "weird" GPs - Viewers, Sniffers, Wolfbrothers, etc. Not "Great Scholars" and "Great Gleemen" and whatnot. It would give us an excuse to throw in some really weird ones (whatever slayer is, for example).

I'm not sure how we'd go about determining which type you'd get - could definitely be random, but could also be subtly effected by other factors (your Alignment, social policies, etc.).

Curious what S3rg things on this one!

I do like that this allows us to include a lot more of the flavorful, "one-shot" GP-like roles that come up in the WoT books (like Slayer and Min). However, I think we have a big strategy problem here. These GPs will presumably do quite different things and I can't see a player ever wanting to take the gamble of trying to get one they want when GPs are otherwise predictable in their specific usefulness. I don't think we can randomize our Great Scientist/Engineer/Merchant equivalents to make up for that - these are one of the primary ways tall empires compete with wide ones and they need to be able to reliably generate specific GP types.

Another concern I have, regarding complexity, is that I think the GP system is already one of the most complex parts of base CiV. I'm fairly sure most players don't properly understand exactly what goes into making GPs and what affects their costs (I've still got some grey areas) - it's more of a general *making GP points makes more GPs*. (Which is loosely true, but you can be more optimal than that.) Now, you could say that players will tend to produce these GPs "incidentally" instead of purposefully, like Great Admirals. (Aside question, what do we do with free GP-selection and this randomness? Putting in a "random WoT-like GP" option there is definitely bad - the other GPs are reliable and do what you want. Can the player choose from al our new GP types then? Might be too powerful if they're balanced for rarity? They can of course just not be available for "free GP" selection.)

However:

Maybe those "old-blood"-GP transform your GP in another class: Dreamer : Chaneler or Leader / Angreal-user: Chaneler / Wolfbrother : warrior or capitain or leader / Powersmith : chaneler / Visionnary : Scientist or chaneler or bard
...Etc

Maybe, alternatively, Old-blood is a promotion that can appear randomly, on your GP, depending on the type of GP and the light-ness of your side, or the culture, or the faith (as it is currently linked to lineage)...or whatever.
Maybe that promotion can be allowed by specific techs / policies ?

I think promotions applied on existing GP types is more strategically viable and potentially really cool. You're not forgoing a Great Scientist to make a 'random' other GP type - you've got a sudden windfall of your Great Scientist also being a Dreamer. I'd say we'd need the promotions to crop up immediately upon the GP spawning, rather than the GP earning it later like a normal unit (since GPs are typically instantly consumed).

The only drawback to this is that the promotions would need to grant the GP explosive and powerful abilities to offset the fact that it effectively consumes a GP (that you might have made specifically) without giving you it's usual bonus. Example: you get a free GP and really need a Great Engineer to rush a wonder because Elayne's also building it and she's beaten you to the last three! Your Great Engineer spawns, but wait, he's also a Dreamer! Now you're evaluating the value of the Dreamer ability against the ability provided by that wonder.

There are a lot of permutations here that lead to the player having to "grit their teeth" and ignore their new "bonus" and use the traditional GP ability. However, I think you're saying we also associate specific GP-promotions with specific GP-types? So that the promotion's ability will usually be in line with the objectives you're trying to achieve with a given GP type. There will still be situations like the above unless the "promoted" GPs are just "better" at the same things than the default ones - but that approach is a bit boring.

The other side of this is "Haha! My Great Merchant that I didn't even need is a Wolfbrother! Now he's useful!"

It's probably worth us going through and making sure we have enough combinations to make this work as well. Counterpoint's previously suggested selection of GPs had a lot, but we may need quite a few more to be able to layer a whole promotion thing on top of already re-flavored (and brand new) GP types. I'm also still a bit concerned over complexity. GPs also cross over with the governor system - there's a lot going on.

create a serie of new "tech-tree/policies/whatever"
eg: those old-blood GP enable to research some specifics techs in an "old-blood tech tree" that can't be researched by science/culture but only by using these guys ? : 100 -tech-point ; uses 100 faith : can be used only once per level of caster. (or any other mean to do that : unique policy tree ??)

this tree: contains (for example)
Spoiler :
-wolfbrother --> wolf-speak --> wolf senses --> Control the Wolf -----> Wolf Leader
. ..........................\............. /->True Dreams-->Prophetic Dreams......../
..............................\-> Wolf Dream --> wolf-hunt --> Dream Master /
. .......................................... \--> Nightmare Training /
.Dreamer --> Control the Dream ---/..........................\ Dream Expert
. .............. --> Enter the dreams -->. Dream-speak ---- /
. .............. --> Dream Travel
. .............. --> True Dreams
.............................\
Prophet --> Prophetic Dreams --> Prophecies --> Knowledge of the Futur
..............--> Releasing Control /
Visionary --> Interpretations --> True Knowledge - - - - -> Interpreting Prophecies
. . ............................\--> knowing one's future . . . . . /
. .. ............................ --> Visions of Death - - -------/
. . . . . ........................--> Visions of Greatness -----/

..Etc:
I'm sure an interesting tree could be made, each tech/policy enabling promotions or effects, either only to the units/GP having the specific old-blood promotion, or sometimes, boost for the whole civ : prophecies allow "create prophecy" which enable more "faith" or more chances of "identifying the true Dragon".

I think I'm with counterpoint here in that this is very complex. A new tech tree for the Last Battle (which isn't really a new tree - it's just a way to redirect beakers) is already a stretch. Unless you're suggesting these as the kinds of techs we could add to our overall revamped tech tree? I think elements of "X% boost to Dreamer GP rate" make sense as policy/tech bonuses on the main tree if we do one of the above systems.

--> think of the "visions" of Aviendha when she went to Ruidean (last 3rd of book 13) : 2-3-4 generations after the LB, the seanchans, which overcame Andor and its guns, still fought against aiels with raken and spears/swords... the use of fire arms was not really wide-spread even at that time. Further, firearms and motorised vehicle became wide-spread only 2-5 generations later (1st and second dreams of Aviendha). However the great-daughter of Aviendha felt that they were not really adapting to "trains and cannons".. roughly.
so 4th age tech should be a bit of steam-punkish... or a mix of renaissance (guns AND sword/pikes) and early industrial era : trains , + a bit of one power

And

Yeah, you're probably right. Musketman and stuff like that might be ok. Maybe not full-on railroad, but something like that. These units would be the "Giant Death Robots" of our game - which, incidentally, I've never actually built.

Did the flash-forwards show us Muskets and such in that sort of time frame? It's just jumping out at me that musketmen with magic seems a lot more steampunky than I associate with WoT. That aside, the prophecies from Rhuidean (which were horrifying, btw) are a good source, as calavente said.


--> make it that breaking seals is really bad for light civs...
and / or that the light civ can only break seals after the dragon peace, and after something else: remember most of the light civs (even Egwen Elayne and the Aiels, which should all be friend of Rand) were opposed to this until he forced them to accept.
...
--> maybe breaking the seals is a geometric function of badness ? (1seal : 10 trollocs, 2nd seals : 20 new trollocs +2 Myrdhal, 3rd seal : 30 new trollocs 3 myrdhal, 1 forsaken....Etc)

I think making breaking the Seals *really bad* for the Light players in the short term is the way to go. I'm writing my posts out of order and haven't actually written the proposal for Sealbreaking that will appear "above" this yet. Something you mention here that's also really cool is penalties specific to the civ that breaks the Seal on the Light side. (This leads to, "No, you break it" which creates openings for the Shadow to get involved.)

About Light civs only being able to break Seals after the Dragon's Peace, remember that we don't know who the Light/Shadow civs are until the Last Battle starts and alignments are chosen.

--> maybe only the dragon reborn can do it ?

We discussed this one before, and I think we decided that this detracts too much from the Dragon. For the breaking the Seal to take a reasonable amount of time, the Dragon would end up doing little else aside from breaking Seals during the Last Battle.

--> maybe you can break seals before the actual battle of the LB itself (books 1-13 of the WoT) ... but breaking the second-to last seal starts the actual battle of the LB (like if the battle of book 14 happend in book 3... when noboby was prepared).
and breaking the last seal: shadow civs get super mydrhal, breaker of last seal (if shadow civ) get a "champion/hero": Avatar of the DO itself : (or trak'handar opens-up to a super powerful unit that starts strong-ish, and is held and gets stronger and stronger over 10 turns: you have 10 turns to kill it with One power / Dragon reborn ...Etc

I think waiting until the penultimate Seal is broken before triggering the Last Battle will make it occur much too late.

I'll include part of this (breaking the last Seal) in my Sealbreaking missive above.

about Dragon and False Dragons
One of the crucial points of the whole WoT series is the following:
- realising the prophecies (Aiels / taking Tear / Sea-folks / Seanchans / Action of the Borderlanders / Action of Shadow).

This enables 1) to differentiate the True Dragon from False Dragons
. 2) to know what Rand has to do (Min uses it for determining that the seals has to be broken, and Rand makes use of the prophecies at all times)

Further, False Dragons only have an interest if they "blur" the presence of the true Dragon: ie the appearance of the true Dragon is not known until prophecies are validated, and since the FY, every False Dragon is potentially the True Dragon: people have no mean to know.. that's why there are so often Dragon-sworn armies.

IMO, making prophecies, and checking the validity of prophecies should thus have a crucial impact on the game.


For example : after the FY era : every now and then "Dragons" rise…. You can't know if those are false Dragons or true dragons…
Their apparition is more and more frequent as game advances. ("no-city" faction that appears/disappear when the Dragon is killed/subdued: War-to-all, propose "vassalization" to civs / make random actions)
Only Red Ajahs (and maybe damane?) can deal with it.
You can "join the Dragon" faction. The Dragon leaves you alone, but you give him production and some of your units become dragon sworn… but after a time you get "dragon bonus"… and more so if you "joined the Dragon" earlier than other civs.. and earlier than his officialisation as "the true dragon".
However, if the Dragon is found to be a "false Dragon", and you had allied : you lose some culture / faith, you get some temporary unhappiness. If you opposed him : you gain happiness / culture.
If you have prophecies: you can differentiate more easily the true dragon from the false: either enabling to hunt him earlier, or allowing to join his side earlier, or …
Knowing "the true dragon" earlier than other civs might allow you to play with the true dragon even before the LB…

There are a whole bunch more quotes about this suggestion, so I won't collate them all here, but I am responding to the idea as a whole, as well as subsequent discussion.

I think having to differentiate the False Dragons from the real Dragon is inherently problematic. I see three possible ways of approaching this kind of system (feel free to suggest more if I've missed an approach):

  1. Make the Last Battle a moveable feast, starting based on when the real Dragon is discovered
  2. Make this how we decide where the Dragon is "born" - the civ that "proves" he's the real Dragon gets some bonuses
  3. Make one of the False Dragons that appears at the right time (world era AotD) be the true Dragon

#1 is enormously problematic. The Last Battle's difficulty needs to scale based on the current state of world technology (otherwise it will be impossible if triggered too early) and that's extremely complicated. We're also cutting the players off from the end-game - they'll never get to the Fourth Age techs because someone will win now that the Dragon's been found and the Last Battle has started, which is a "player experience" issue. (Some guy on some other continent did some prophecy stuff and now all my work over here is irrelevant.) This also undoes all of our decisions on how the Last Battle is triggered and its relationship to calendars/technology/player progression.

#2 is the best of the three, I think. It leaves our existing triggering mechanics intact and leaves the Last Battle placement in "time" the same. The main limitation I see with "fulfilling prophecies" is that since we're toward the end of the game, we have no way of knowing how the world is laid out. Like counterpoint pointed out, a lot of the existing WoT prophecies only work with the world laid out like it was in the books, which we won't have. Prophecies seem like they lend themselves towards things like a "Red Ajah channeler capturing the Dragon" - which is a remarkably specific series of events (rather like the Indiana Jones achievement in base CiV - fine as an achievement, but as a mechanic it would be crazy complicated). I'd also anticipate us running into problems like: "Prophecy states the Bowl of Winds will be brought to land by a great commander of ships" and "There are no oceans on this map." We can avoid that case specifically, but there are a lot like it and avoiding each one requires bespoke logic which filters that prophecy based on the state of the game.

#3 would be very metagame-y. You know approximately when the Dragon will crop up, so this False Dragon back in NE50 can't possibly be him - trying to fulfill prophecies for him is a waste of resources. We could make the AI ignore those obviously incorrect cases (like the human player will, once they understand the system) but then we've created a system that, to play well, should be ignored for a significant portion of its existence.


Overall, I think we can include the prophecy elements in the events that lead up to the Last Battle, like Illianor suggested with the Dragon-flavor. "The Dragon has fulfilled the prophecy of Callandor and taken the sword from the Stone" and then prompt them for a response that affects their alignment. I agree that this isn't as splashy, but CiV doesn't really lend itself to these short-term bursts of very complex activity, which prophecies will usually be.

Who knows though, while writing out #2 I warmed a bit to the idea of fulfilling prophecy. Am I skipping over something and missing the core of the idea?

Further, having prophecies could allow more control on the dragon: either more control-time… (as you know where he is); or more actions, that he can only make when you control him.
Maybe prophecies can also influence interactions with other taver'n / GP. (like the prophecy of shadow allowed them to know where Perrin would be and the importance of Perrin/Mat to the final battle when the light side only focused on Rand.)

Having Prophecy-type GWs affect the turn order for controlling the Dragon seems really cool. Counterpoint has said elsewhere about the complexity of making specific GWs do specific things in game - it is a very complex one. The GW system is also very complicated and I'm fairly sure the AI is quite bad at it already - this adds an extra component to that. Giving specific bonuses like intelligence on where key Light "elements" (analogues to Mat and Perrin in a given game) is extremely difficult to do symmetrically with the player and the AI. Even working out "what" to tell them in a given game is a big problem (what information is useful?). Then telling the player is just throwing a notification at them, but telling the AI involves making the AI understand the ramifications of that information and prioritize their actions accordingly.

So, honestly, I'm highly doubtful that we could (or even should) implement something like this. That said, maybe there are elements of it that we could salvage and merge with what we do have in a way that isn't too complex:
1) Make the False Dragons have some extra (diplo?) element.
2) Rand's pre-LB actions being related to prophesies (even prophesies creates by players as GWs

and

Guaire Amalasan (according to wiki) conquered half of the westlands, before he lost against young Artur Hawkwing and the White Tower. This leads to another thing - fighting with false Dragon could give prestige, or some influence in White Tower.

I think we could expand on False Dragons some more, because initially we kind of decided that False Dragons would crop up as Barbarian "uprisings" and defeating them would involve some kinds of bonuses, but then left it at that (I think?). Including a diplo bonus (Little green text that says "You killed a False Dragon that threatened their territory" - with associated AI leanings) seems appropriate. Also makes sense that the Tower likes players who kill/capture False Dragons.

I think counterpoint's #2 is quite close to the #2 I mentioned above. Probably worth expanding, but I've got to go back to my Sealbreaking missive!
 
Also, side comment that bugged me in my recent re-read of the WoT. Guys, how do they know about the Pattern? It appears to be something they've *always* known. But, seriously, how would they ever figure out that "this age will return again?" Is it just "religious" belief or do they have some kind of proof that Time is a Wheel and there is an Age Lace that guides the world? They seem to actually trust this to be *true*, as if they've done some empirical analysis and figured out that people are reborn and that many Ages have come and gone and will come again.

Just seems weird to me.

Do the characters know about the Wheel or is that always narrator-level information? They know about the Pattern, but do they know the repeating cycle? Isn't that always part of the "A wind whipped across...as it was, is now, and will be again..." intro?

Balefire and ta'veren might be a way that they know about the Pattern - they have observable effects on the world that are explained by a Pattern-based theory. (Then again, most people think ta'veren are myths in AotD.) I'm not sure, maybe it is just a "religious" belief.

The hardest thing to implement (if we ignore the problem at the very beginning of my post) would be the ways to figure out who is the true Dragon. In WoT Prophecies give us set of (unclear) signs - fall of the Stone of Tear, markings on body - herons and dragons, being born on Dragonmount, Callandor, and many others, most of which in-game would be either punishing to the player ( What? My city has fallen because of some Prophecy? Curse you Dragon, i'm going to the Great Lord service!), or obvious (wut, wild true Dragon appeared on the Dragonmount!), or... slightly weird way to get information(ha, I zoomed in to the Dragon unit model and i know he is the true Dragon! He has heron markings on both hands!).

I hope i made my thoughts clear :crazyeye:

Exactly, these are the kinds of problems I foresee being major obstacles to "fulfilling prophecies" (in a WoT-like way) in game. Like counterpoint says, the specific "Callandor and the Stone" is WoT-book-timeline specific rather than WoT-world-specific.

But as an exercise, the kinds of problems we have with the above prophecies:

Fall of a city due the Dragon's actions - massively frustrating if it happens to human players - potentially derails their entire game (at least partially based on randomness), which has been going on for 12+ hours at this point.

"True Dragon appears near Dragonmount" is kind of what we have - it happens and is clear to all players. I think this works.

"Heron marks on the unit model" is impossible for the AI to interpret.

So in this case we can make the competitors for the name of the Dragon reborn to try achieve something, what will inevitably show who deserves this name. Of course this achievement would be stated in our Prophecies as true Dragon's work. Three things that come to my mind now are cleansing of Saidin, gathering all of the seals and quest to find the Horn of Valere. These achievments could be accomplished as a project shared by civs who support one of the dragons - first to accomplish this becomes the Dragon reborn and civs that supported him gain bonuses, depending on which project was taken:
-some male channelers in case of the Cleansing
-seals (most to the civ who gave the most hammers)
-Hornblower unit for the civ who contributed the most to the Hunt, other bonuses for the rest of the supporters

Actually this mechanic has two big flaws - if you support dragon who looses this "race" you get nothing, and it makes the whole civs to support the false dragons.

Or we can just make false Dragons barbarians :)

and

Currently the Dragonsworn *are* the barbarians (at least until the last battle starts, probably). The False Dragons are currently essentially the "leaders" of the barbarians, who are of course saidin channelers. I do think the idea that False Dragons could siphon population away from your unhappy cities and turn them into his soldiers (barbarians) is neat.

Most of the mechanics you've described have found their way into our late game, either in regards to the Last Battle itself (seals), or otherwise towards the end. The hornblower mechanic is currently independent. In all cases, though, these things are ideally driven by the civs themselves - not simply things they assist the Dragon in doing.

The notion of the civs themselves gambling on which one they think will be the real Dragon (and trying to get that one to complete the prophesies and thus become the actual Dragon) seems like it might kind of take over the game. And, again, it doesn't seem to fit in -universe to me. You're right that people flocked to the dragons (that's who the dragonsworn are), but the *nations* didn't - it seems to me that the nations only accepted the real Dragon once he'd personally fulfilled so many prophesies that it could no longer be denied.

Seems a bit "too much" for me - I don't think the False dragons need to take "center stage". At this point, though, it seems best to wait for S3rgeus and others' feedback on the matter.

I think the issues I mentioned previously about "proving" who's the real Dragon apply here too. We also need to be careful of tying all of our systems together like this. What happens to the Horn if we disable the Last Battle? Cleansing Saidin is still a thing that should happen and we'll need some sources for "normal" buildings/projects, which this kind of system eats up very quickly.

I also think Dragonsworn as Barbarians and False Dragons as infrequent leaders of 'uprisings' slots in very well with existing CiV mechanics.

One thing that can unbalance the game, but which might be manageable..
Maybe you can start early with one of the Old talent guy (but few options are open for him) or few actions… and you can spend him early, or use it as a unit…etc… However, for getting new ones, the gpp are only openened later, much later: 2000years or so: techs from just before the age of the dragon.
you are right, the issue is complexity. However it is complexity in "programmation"… IMO it can be really intuitive in game

I think something to remember here is that most GPs (except the combat ones) are expended immediately or shortly after they are spawned, unless the player is specifically saving them for a "burst" in a specific part of the tech tree. (I've seen this suggested for Deity strategies, I believe - hoarding Great Scientists to make a strategic beeline up the tree) The specifics of promotions vs. random from our "WoT-GPs" I think I've addressed above.

again, I agree. But you have to remember that it's all that "cool-stuff-for-few-cool-gp" that makes the book and the world so interesting.

I think that's more of what makes the characters interesting - I think the world is interesting for different historical/magic system/political reasons.

1)well, for the sake of coherence it is important.
So if faith is not "brightness", what is faith ?

I think this is the core of the issue you're seeing with the Path system. We've changed from the initial usage of Faith as alignment. Alignment is now tracked separately for each player, Faith is just a normal yield like it is in base CiV (we use it for different things than base CiV, but it no longer represents "brightness" as well as being a "spendable currency"). Faith is one of the primary rewards for a player having a Light-leaning alignment. Players with Shadow-leaning alignment suffer faith penalties (which prevents them from pursuing their own Path to the Light, which makes sense). I think this should clear up the conflicts you're seeing with faith/alignment/lineage?

3) I don't see why we have to be limited to the vision of civ5 where faith loose interest late game. Or have faith-effect be limited and "interchangeable". There are already mods that give some punch to faith… either for normal civ-game, or other total conversion. "Ea" mod has 3 religions … 2 being a main religion and a reformation of the main religion, and the last religion having a dozen or so cults.
The religions have effects that have an influence for the game, an important one.
In civ4 some mod mods removed blandness from religions, in particular, Fall From Heaven created 6 (and some 3-4 small-cults) that were tools for growth/science/culture military power, depending on your choices.

Two of the big advantages of religions/faith (as opposed to policies) are the following:
-there is an additional currency to do things …
-one can change FAITH during the game: if you founded X, you can still change and be follower of Y later … you lost some investment, and you don't get as much "total bonus" as if you had founded Y, but it might be still interesting: (it would be like if you said: I quit this policy tree and I get 75% refund !)
This is a mechanic that can "easily" be used in game to create more interesting gameplay.
Further, it is one way to derail from the "science is power" of basic Civ.
Here we are in a game where the tech tree will be shorter than in vanilla civ:
either larger and shorter (see FFH or Ea)
or
shorted (but more expensive) …
then you'll have a secondary set of trees : policies (and the 3 exclusive things that are in fact policies)
and… faith.


there is nothing really wrong per se.
It is only that doing this, it seems we try to fit the world of WoT into the mechanics of the game as they are in vanilla civ5 instead of tweaking the mechanics of the game to fit the lore (I'm not speaking of creating new mechanics but changing balance/etc using what is easily tweakable).
It is normal to fit the lore to what is useable given the civ5 engine.
However one might want to change more than just "names-of-things".
In the same way that we will change the tech tree (not only names, but layout and rewards …Etc) and change the diplo Victory into a "that-particular-CS (WT)" is essential, and add a "last battle victory", and change the repartition of units, add channelers… maybe even change the meaning of the "last-game-policies" so as to represent channelling "schools". Those are close to a total conversion.
However renaming pantheon into "customs" and trying to keep the exact same function for faith than in vanilla civ is kind of "bland", and sad.

I see what you're getting at here and I agree that Paths are our most base CiV-like mechanic that we've discussed so far. (We have some new external influence factors on Paths vs religions in base CiV and our plan to make them more powerful will incidentally make them more relevant in the late game.) This is basically a design decision that doesn't have a "right" answer.

We could make faith generation and its consequences more WoT-like and divergent from base CiV, but that's a lot of work. I'm not saying we should always shy away from new mechanics that are difficult to do, but we should also pick our battles for entirely new mechanics. We already have a lot of those (like you've outlined), and when we flesh out other systems, we'll inevitably have even more. Given that Paths, as we've fleshed them out, mesh quite well with the new mechanics and the existing framework CiV provides - that's a good incentive to use them like this. Otherwise we incur not only the cost of spinning up a whole new system to replace the "religion" one, but also the cost of removing the existing faith and religion systems/interfaces, which is also tremendously difficult.

I think you are right. But if we take this really to the end you risk to transform the Dragon into a non-event, when in fact the main character of the WoT (or at least the role they have) are also what renders the world attractive.
Having a world of merchant and peasant with no-science for 3000 years is kind of a boring world.

I think given the kinds of effects we've been discussing for the Dragon and his coinciding and usefulness in the Last Battle (one of our biggest new mechanics) that he'll definitely still have a big impact.

Morale would be a nice benefit for a light civ which seal was examined, and proved that it is not a fake. Apart from that I think it was mentioned somewhere before that each broken seal should incerase spawn rate for shadowspawn and increase chances for bubbels of evil (random title pillaged with some kind of CiV radiation equivalent on it)

Definitely, I think bonuses for holding proven "real" Seals make sense.

I like the ideas for "old blood" units :)
It propably won't be a big problem to balance them overall, bigger one wold be to balance them so each old blood unit would be as viable as another, for example that Wolfbrother isn't just a Dreamer with additional skills connected to wolves (what actually is the case in WoT, when it comes to non-channeling Dreamer :p ).

I think the overall balance is actually a bigger problem than balancing the new GP types against each other. We need to consider the utility of these new GP types against the existing ones - Great Scientists and Engineers are already very powerful and are a core part of a number of strategies. I think I've outlined most of the specifics for the issues here in my posts above.

exactly, that would be the issue: make it that each Old Talent is unique and worth it.
that said dreamers are not under-skilled Wolfbrothers.
indeed : Dreamers can enter the "stellar field of dreams", which Wolfbrother do not.
further, if we take "slayer" as a Dreamer (really powerful one) he can enter Talendriol just by wishing it.
Further, it seems that Dreamers have much more True-Dreams (or interpret them easier) than Wolf-brothers.(Egwen has those almost every night, or at least every so often, but each time we get a narration of this, she has 5-6 true dreams. on the other hand, I remember only of 4 times for Perrin. And I'm sure Noam or Elias did not mention this (which doesn't mean they don't have them).


last, it seems to me that Wolfbrothers not necessarily realise that it's an other "world", or not as quickly: it is the "wolf dream"... so, maybe their expertise in the wolf-dream could be harder to get.

I think the specifics of this can only really be decided once we've addressed the issues from above. Like you've said elsewhere, it's difficult to represent the primary utility for Tel'aran'rhiod (intelligence gathering and such) in CiV. I can see a mechanic where we can move units into an "alternate map" that they can move through without interacting with units from the "main map". That's flavorful, but I can't even imagine the knots we'd have to tie the graphics engine in to make it display something like that.
 
Right, convincing time. Overall, I can see where you’re coming from, but hopefully once I’ve outlined how I think the Seals system works, you’ll agree that it’s a better fit than you’ve summarized above! This is all very serious, I’ve actually written this part of this post in Word. Serious business. I encourage people to read to the end and in detail, because a lot of these components are only balanced when taken as part of the whole process rather than alone.

OK, so I have a little bit of time after reading your posts and I thought I should respond to this section of it first, and come back to the rest later.

Incidentally, your "serious" word-created post is rocking a nice 1,519 words. I don't mean to scare you by my in-progress Channeling posts currently rests at 11,000 something words. Yeah, it's getting nice a fat..... will try to finish it soon. Don't worry, it's not just a rant - I'm trying to be systematic, as you know I try to be.

Incidentally, did you enter in all the bb code and/or have to use the civfanatics interface to do all this formatting? I am *not* liking the idea of having to find each and every word I want bold when I paste in the post - is there a way to copy the format from a .doc file or something?

The Seals of the Dark One and CiV

The Last Battle pits two opposing alignments against each other (Light and Shadow) with a third (Neutral) standing aside, but potentially being dragged into the conflict. At the core of the Light/Shadow conflict are the Seals of the Dark One.

Last Battle Victory Conditions
  • For the Shadow
    • All of the real Seals of the Dark One must be broken
    • Then one player who controls all Light side capitals will win the game
  • For the Light
    • The Dragon must capture Thakan’dar
    • Then all of the real Seals of the Dark One must be broken and the whole Light team will win the game

Damn, this makes me sad, but I already see an issue here - your Shadow victory conditions aren't what [I think] we agreed upon previously. I don't know if this was a deliberate change or your part, or an omission - either way, it seems important enough that we shouldn't just ignore it. From the "Last Battle Summary" document (only 2431 words) which was created based on our prior conversation history:

  • For Shadow-allied civs:
    1. There is only one winner from the Shadow forces. This leader is named Nae'blis
    2. All Seals must be destroyed (by Light or Dark forces)
    3. The Dragon Reborn must be destroyed (only possible once all seals have been destroyed, see below)
    4. All Light-side capitals must be controlled by the Shadow (Neutral capitals are irrelevant). It is still unknown if Neutral civs controlling the Light capitals can trigger this. If one Light team members controlling each other's capitals (from previous wars), this will not count towards the Shadow victory.
    5. The winning civ must also win a normal victory (domination, cultural, science, or diplomatic)


  • It wasn't, by my understanding, necessary that one shadow civ control all of the light capitals - all they need is to control them "as a team."

    Obviously this also includes the "must destroy the dragon" condition, which I could do without as it is rather minor - seemed like good flavor though - any sort of "injury" to the dragon kills him once the other conditions have been met. One issue with this is that the once the shadow has one 99% of the game, and then they break the seals, it does force them to hunt down the dragon, allowing one last "hail mary" pass from the Light. Oh crap, you guys are all European. That's an American Football term. You know, that really fun sport you guys all hate. It means a last chance, high-risk attempt.

    The last one is the major discrepancy here - the "other" victory condition needing to be reached after (or before) the Light civs have been "defeated". This is somebody becoming Nae'blis. The important reasons this was added, by my estimation, are A) To foster competition between the dark players, and B) to provide a path to victory for cultural or scientific or diplomatic darkside players.

    Maybe the "normal" condition makes it *too hard* for a shadow civ - if not this, than what can we do to support the notion of a science shadow civ, for example?

    The path to victory outlined in your post rewards only domination type players. I think this may undermine a lot of the balancing we've done in the past weeks trying to figure out ways for different civ playstyles to thrive in the Lightside - taking this away negates the main way that can happen on the Shadow.

    Of course, requiring a "normal" victory as well also means there might be a good chunk of game where the Light has been eliminated but things aren't over, while shadow (and neutral?) civs vie for final victory. Is this worth the benefits we get from the agreed-upon system (as opposed to the one you suggest here)? If we scrap the previous system, what can we do to make the shadow victory not just a domination-fest?

    Anyways, I'm open to changing it, of course, but I don't quite get why it's been summarily dismissed.... Your method is quite simpler, though I think there's a chance it'll be too easy for the shadow, and has all the issues I stated above. Convince me!

    Importantly, I'm not sure it changes much of your post - just moves the timing of things a bit differently for the shadow dudes, is all

    Finding the Seals
    • The Seals are scattered across the map at the beginning of each game and become discoverable once an appropriate technology is researched
    • Extracting a Seal from its hex involves a one-time-use unit (much like the Archeologist for Great Works) that digs up the Seal
    • Some of the scattered Seals are fakes, placed by the Dark One or his minions to mislead the Light
    • An end-game technology reveals the locations of all not-yet-unearthed Seals to prevent end-game deadlock if one hasn’t been found
    • When a player finds a Seal, they receive a “Seal of the Dark One” unit at one of their cities (closest?) which moves much like a plane does – through rebasing into other cities

    OK. I agree with all of this. Question, though - what is the seal-finder unit? Just an archaeologist?

    Seal Units
    • Seal units can only be moved via cities, much like aircraft
    • Seal units’ rebase command has a duration (rather than instantaneous) so they cannot be moved every turn – for the “duration” of the rebase, they are considered still stationed in the city of origin (think of this as preparing for the journey or simulating the risk of the journey itself)
    • Seal units can be rebased into foreign cities, which grants control of that Seal to the player that owns the city
    • I think we have to say that Seals can’t stack – only one can be in a given city at a time

    Great. The only concern I have hear is with the AI. How will they know when it is appropriate to send the seal to somebody else? Would a human player trust an AI to handle this stuff?

    OK, second concern. Does the civ have to accept the Seal voluntarily? It's obviously a bit of a burden to have them, and it does certainly make the destination city a target. I wouldn't want a shadow civ sending it to another shadow civ's vulnerable city in order to draw the ire of the Light forces. Or, a more unintentional example - a light civ gives a seal to his science/production-focus friend, unknowing that that guy's city is about to be sacked - two turns later, science guy is saddled with unwelcome bubbles of evil, etc.

    Sorting Fake from Real Seals

    • Each Seal that a player controls creates a “technology” in their “Seals tree” (accessible through the tech tree window) which corresponds to that Seal
    • If the player completes a research project for a given Seal, its status (whether it is real or fake) is revealed to the world
    • Players who discover fake Seals are given yield (and possibly other) bonuses to offset their lost science.
    • If a Seal is moved then progress toward researching it is reset
    • Controlling confirmed real Seals grants a global static bonus to happiness and unit starting XP to the civ that controls it

    OK, the only thing I "question" here is the final point - extra XP for units? Howcome? I guess this is cool, but I can imagine other things being the benefit instead. Is this just sort of random (not necessarily a bad thing) or is there a specific justification here? I don't this has come up before.

    I'm probably ok with it, but I worry about what would happen if a single civ tries to horde seals. I wouldn't want (Lightside) civs doing things against the best interest of the team just so they can get an extra 5 EXP on unit creation.

    Breaking Seals

    • The city that a known real Seal is stationed in can put its production towards a “Break this Seal” project
    • When the project completes, that Seal is broken
      • If a Light civ has broken the Seal, they are immediately afflicted by a variety of penalties, including bubbles of evil, increased Shadowspawn activity, possible unhappiness
      • The fewer real Seals that remain unbroken in a given game, the more Shadowspawn spawn to fight alongside the Shadow
      • The fewer real Seals that remain unbroken in a given game, the more bubbles of evil occur globally across the world
    • If a Seal is moved while the city is working on the “Break this Seal” project, then the expended hammers are converted into Gold and progress is reset

    Don't forget diminished food (etc.?) yields

    Just to be clear, there are no longer any "group project" things concerning seals?

    Stealing Seals

    • Seals can be stolen from the city they are stationed in by spies or the Dragon
    • Seals stationed in a city when it is captured have their control transferred to the city’s new owner
    • When a spy is stationed in a city, the presence of a Seal is revealed immediately upon the spy “setting up surveillance”

    OK, this will take some (probably rather tedious) balancing, but yeah.

    Alignment Restrictions and Motivations

    This is where I think people are taking issue. But I think we’re good here; remember the order I mentioned the victory conditions in at the very beginning:
    Light:
    • Light civs want to capture Thakan’dar, but can only do so using the Dragon Unit
    • The Dragon Unit only spawns when the Light civs collectively control all remaining unbroken Seals of the Dark One
      • Once the Dragon Unit is spawned, his victory at Thakan’dar is not guaranteed, and breaking the Seals before he captures it makes his task more difficult (more Shadowspawn, less support etc)
      • The Dragon Unit’s defeat on the field of battle means he is injured and cannot respawn for a number of turns – during which time the Shadow can steal/capture Seals back and the Light don’t want to break them

    OK, I think you imply this elsewhere, but I want to confirms as it is confusing here. The Dragon spawns only when the "Light civs collectively control all remaining unbroken Seals of the Dark One"? Shouldn't this have a "OR all Seals have been Broken"? Right? Like if the shadow breaks them all, Randy spawns, right?

    I like this, though.

    Shadow:

    • Shadow civs are defending Thakan’dar – the Light cannot win until it is taken
    • Shadow civs want to break the Seals, since that makes their Shadowspawn allies stronger
      • Caveat: They don’t necessarily want to break the last Seal they have – that will spawn the Dragon Unit (unless they feel they can deal with him)
      • Leaving only one Seal controlled by their side is risky – the Light steals that one and the Dragon Unit spawns
      • If Thakan’dar is well defended and the Shadow control most/all of the Seals, breaking is advantageous
    • If the Dragon Unit spawns, the Shadow’s prime objective is to defeat him and recapture/steal at least one Seal to prevent him from respawning

    OK, I like this, though I am again concerned about the AI, or in general, the communication required for something like "They don't necessarily want to break the last Seal they have." How would this be agreed upon? These guys are enemies.

    Neutral:

    • If a neutral civ has an unresearched Seal, it is generally in their interest to research it
    • Discovering a fake will give them some bonuses
    • Discovering a real one means they should keep it safe – neither side can win the Last Battle (circumventing the neutral civ’s plan for a different victory) without breaking this Seal

    Sure, though I can actually understand a neutral civ who is reasonably close to victory giving away their Seal in order to divert an upcoming invasion. They'd need to be reasonably sure the Light and/or Shadow wasn't going to win quickly as a consequence.

    Hopefully people can see from the way the above systems combine that immediately destroying all Seals or indefinitely defending them are not always useful strategies and that the mechanics for stealing/capturing the Seals will be put to use by both sides at different times, depending on the current state of the game.

    Cracking all of the Seals right away as the Light civs is definitely not a good idea. Their enemies (who they need the remaining Seals from) get stronger and their ability to capture Thakan’dar when the Dragon Unit spawns is diminished.

    Likewise, if the Shadow civs crack all of their Seals straight off, they’ll spawn the Dragon Unit for the Light, who may be able to use him to win the game right now.

    Yeah, I'm with you, the issues expressed above notwithstanding.

    The general strategy for the two sides, as I see it, is this:

    Shadow:
    1. Encircle Thakan’dar with well defended Shadow cities/fortifications
    2. Gain control of as many Seals as possible – breaking at least some, but keeping at least one back to prevent the Dragon from spawning before Thakan’dar is well defended
    3. Offensive against the Light capitals (remember there will be infighting as one Shadow player pulls ahead)

    Light:

    1. Gain control of as many Seals as possible and keep them safe until you can be more confident of capturing Thakan’dar
    2. Clear the way to Thakan’dar with Light cities/armies
    3. Cause the Dragon Unit to be spawned (by grabbing all of the Seals)
    4. Capture Thakan’dar with the Dragon
    5. Break the Seals

    The Light is likely to start the “Break the Seal” projects while the Dragon is moving across the map – capturing Thakan’dar and breaking all of the Seals in a single turn is the optimal result for the Light. But some might be broken early – a surprise Dragon defeat by the Shadow might mean the Light inadvertently contributed to their own demise. (Which I think is good strategy on the Shadow’s part – poor on the Light’s, their ideal run should break the Seals after)

    I like it. However, *again*, I'm highly suspicious of the AI's ability to do well with the timing of all of this - blame yourself for making me suspicious of the AI. Even human players in MP, it seems, would have to jump through hoops to properly communicate about this stuff and reach an agreement.

    So, the above are general strategies. What about ideal ones for each side, where everything goes exactly according to their plan? They tend to be led by a runaway civ:

    Shadow:
    1. A single domineering Shadow civ is the only world superpower – capable of defending Thakan’dar and defeating the forces of the Light and Shadow unassisted
    2. They break Seals as soon as they find them – increasing the Shadowspawn to distract their enemies
    3. They kill the Dragon Unit wherever he spawns
    4. They streamroll the Light civs and capture their capitals – winning the game (possibly having to mop up finding/capturing the last few Seals)

    Light:

    1. The Light civs have a clear military advantage against the Shadow – easily able to fight any single Shadow civ and deal with the Shadowspawn attacking them
    2. They capture all of the real Seals and keep them well back from the frontline, exposed only to failed attempts at spy-stealing
    3. The Dragon Unit spawns and they begin breaking the Seals across their highest production cities
    4. The Dragon captures Thakan’dar and the Seals are broken – winning the game for the Light

    Any more questions and I’d be happy expand on specific points, but I think this system works quite well. There’s an argument to be had about using plane-like movement vs spy-like movement for the Seals (just how we present to the player really) but I don’t mind terribly either way with that.

    I think that'll do it for me. I'll take a look at the rest of this and respond, hopefully soon. Should have Book 15 of the Wheel of Time done by the weekend, I hope.
 
Top Bottom