S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

Calavente · Aug 27, 2014

Here are my thought of it :

Introduction:
One wants Diplomatic victory to factor those aspects:
-WT has an important weight.
-anti-WT (amadicia / white-Cloaks / Seanchan ... even Shadow) can gain Diplomatic victory.
-Diplo victory also factor civ5 diplovictory mechanisme: CS friendship ..Etc

Propositions
Main Mechanism:
Periodic "World Leader Elections" (or "who will lead the Last Battle" elections) during the Age of the Dragon.

in the books : Rand could not win it in WoT 12 as tuon refused it, and WT did not agree (Egwene and Elaida want to be in control of Rand .. even if different ways of controlling)

Seanchan tried it but failed as WT did not subdue and they did not own the Dragon and the offended most "free" countries

Pax Draconis can be represented as a mechanics during the LB for chosing sides... but does not define a World Leader.

For the Elections :
Contenders are only Nations.
-the 3 biggest in score (or: 3-4 contenders for victory: the one with biggest lands, the one with more culture, the one with most influence, the one with most science)
-the one proposed by WT (or by strongest Ajah)
-the civ with the Dragon Reborn

Votes are seperated as follow
-1 part for nations
-1 part for CS (not WT)
-1 part for WT
-1 part for Dragon

Need 66% voice to be elected leader (absolute majority)

Roughly: if you own 3 parts out of the 4, you are sure to win.

Nations and CS:
fixed effect for being a nation
effect of score: can increase the fixed effect if bigger/more advanced ...Etc.
example : being a nation gives 2 points
score gives from 0 point (CS-like Nation, with few achievements) to 4 points if biggest score (or biggest pop / armies / score &#8230

CS get 2 point each

(or however that is managed in civ5)

WT:
WT part of the total depends on influence points gained by
-per Aes Sedai in game (or size of the WT / number of "aes sedai": units+pop+ whatever)
-number of Civs / CS that have cordial relations with WT/ajahs
-Dragon–civ is cordial to WT

WT votes is unanimous.
However : its decision needs the Greater Concensus.
60% are given, with prorata depending on the individual str of Ajahs, to those favored by each Ajah (sitters)
10% is given to who is favored by the strongest Ajah
5% is given to who is favored by the second strongest Ajah
25% is given by the Amyrlin (which often votes as it's Ajah or for the Civ that brought more to the WT or the civ with the Dragon Reborn)
If Black Ajah controls an Ajah sitters, all its points goes to the contender supported by Black Ajah.
If Black Ajah controls the Heads of half of the Ajahs (roughly: control half of all sisters) it controls the Amyrlins' vote.

WT total influence should fluctuate between:
-5% of total if everybody is AntiWT (WhiteCloaks / Seanchan / Tear), very few Free AE, and WT is razed.
(but still 5% as there will always be a WT-in-Exile)
to
-60% if there is no anti-WT faction, and many AesSedai units are presents in each countries, and WT controls the Dragon (15%).

So being best buddy with the WT can give an automatic win if the WT is very very strong (but you still need to get 6% so: 15% of the civ-CS parts.).
But in normal games, unless damane-country work for it, the WT should have 20-30% of votes: important, but not the only way to win, not even a blocking majority.

Dragon:
Whoever Controls the Dragon Reborn get an automatic 15% of voices.

Civs needs to have ways to Control the Dragon Reborn. (GE mix of Male Channeler / Great Capitain / Scientist)

Civs needs to have ways to "Capture the Dragon Reborn": difficult but easier than gaining control of the Dragon Reborn.
-highly dangerous as most Dragonswore hates you
-the dragon reborn can "resist"
so either : you give him to the WT..
or you need some way to "subdue the Dragon"
-shadow can get male Adam
-Damane countries can have shields or whatever
-AE / Wise Ones countries need some way other than giving to WT... but not easy to get...

So to win by dilpo:
multiple ways:
-suck up to the WT and be proposed by WT

-be friendly to all CS
-Decrease WT influence so as to be free of it's influence
+
easier access by :
Secure the Dragon (either to you, or to your friend the WT)

well, anyway,.. those are all ideas.
you may refuse them, use some parts, transform some parts...etc

S3rgeus · Aug 27, 2014

Woah, a ton of new text since I posted on Monday. I think I'm going to hit the character limit on my second post too!

counterpoint said:
OK. Totally get what you're saying now. Was way over my head, apparently. LB start times sound good. Fixing it to a date does perhaps sound like a bad idea - though, maybe, there's a "latest possible point" that we'd do? Similar to the 2050 date?

Yep, that sounds like a good plan, if all of the civs are being really slow (keep beating each other down and reducing overall tech speed) then springing the Last Battle on them is a good way to force an end to the game, which we'll need to do eventually.

counterpoint said:
Maybe a gameplay design aspect of our Mod is that arch digs are useful for anybody - not just cultural civs. I don't know about you, but I mostly ignore them (outside of immediate territory) when not playing culture (then again, i'm only just learning that tourism has some late-game benefits). Maybe digging can result in:

- "regular" artifacts (i.e. Great Works)
- Seals
- Ter'angreal, etc. (free promotions for channelers or something)
- The horn (or hints as to its whereabouts)
- other things?

...Of course this would then make the cultural victory harder - nobody will any longer neglect such things.

I think making the cultural victory harder is an important side effect to consider here. I've yet to have a game where more than 2 civs focus on culture in the end-game, and most of the time it's just me because the AI is bad at it. I do run out of dig sites (even by myself) by the end of the game, and very early if I don't go for Exploration to unlock the hidden antiquity sites.

We could evaluate the effect of this using base CiV, I think. If we find some example games (say from the CivFanatics Hall of Fame - though that will be slanted towards more skilled players), probably multiplayer so that players actually compete for artifacts, then we can see how multiple people going for the dig sites affects their game and how easy/difficult the culture victory becomes. If it becomes too difficult, then I think we could layer on a different kind of resource and improvement (the antiquity sites are technically improvements built on "artifacts" resources that are immediately destroyed after being constructed) for the Seals. (Assuming we go for a new find mechanic at all.)

counterpoint said:
Of course, some of these things also make intuitive sense as being in Ruins - but ruins are of course only an early game thing. In any case, the point is to reward anybody using the digs.

I agree, a lot of the stuff we're discussing here is end-game victory stuff, so having a Seal early, while it does make sense from the ruins perspective, wouldn't help anyone gameplay-wise.

counterpoint said:
Yeah, some of these always bewilder me. Why would I choose +2 faith from quarries? Still, I assume they are are situationally good - and likely meticulously balanced by Firaxis - so I figure keeping most intact is good.

When you have lots of stone!

Might be like +6 faith per turn, which can matter early on.

counterpoint said:
Bah! Me and my typos. What I *should* have said was "How much should we be taking the CiV [pantheon] bonuses and just rebranding them?" Meaning, nothing to do with the Civs themselves (UAs, etc.), but "God of the Sea" "Fertility Rites," and all the other Pantheon bonuses - should we just use the lot of them and re-brand them in a WoT friendly way? Or come up with new ones ("+2 faith on every prime-numbered year")?

Oh, right! I'd say we can rebrand some (I like Tithe, since it's good, but that's a Founder belief) and make up new stuff for others. Honestly none of the pantheons stand out to me as instantly recognizable, but they tend to be targeted towards types of starting positions.

Also, I love the prime-numbered year thing! Would need to be a higher amount of faith, but yeah, that is pretty awesome.

counterpoint said:
Hmmm... I must admit I kinda thought you'd like option #2! Should I maybe prepare a treatment of some (not all) of the options from each of these categories? For now, I'll just use CiV's bonuses. Then we can decide which we like best before we do the whole thing. I for one don't know which I like best (part of me likes #2).

Interesting, but I thought you were RP guy?

Something like this that's largely cosmetic (we'll probably be using a similar set of bonuses just distributed differently in each configuration? since we're catering for the same wants for faith, gold, etc.) I really like it if we can be as in-universe as possible. I can see that #2 would be much easier to associate given "peoples" with specific bonuses that we 'want' to have to fulfill a specific role.

counterpoint said:
OK, I think you're misunderstanding me here. Yes, the "Ten Nations era" lasts for 800 years, but it is a part of the After the Breaking era, which only lasts around 1000 years *total). In other words, there isn't really a TNE - unless I'm making a mistake, the Ten Nations exist for 80% of the AB period. Thus, I don't think they really make sense as two viable categories.

Restating it again, it looks like we have three 1000-year clumps (roughly), plus the present.

After the breaking (about 1000, plus a few hundred of the Trolloc Wars)
The Free Years (like 1100, don't remember if that includes the 120 years of the War of a Hundred Years))
The New Era (just under 1000)
The Age of the Dragon (like 25 or something, maybe more).

The issue is that we really don't see the deceleration present in Civ, at least as eras go. One issue is that a whole lot of nothing appears to happen during the Free Years.

Ah, I see. That's a difficult one. We can stretch out the eras, but it's a bit strange that we do a one-time decelaration at the end. I understand your suggestion about the War of Hundred Years more now too. That could work - have the Trolloc Wars and The War of Hundred Years be eras with fewer techs, like The Fourth Age, but in the middle of the tech tree. We can use the 'world era' to trigger those events like we do the Last Battle then?

counterpoint said:
OK, you're totally right about Illian, and about the AoL nations. Still, I'd prefer to flavor the game that the civs are gradually being corrupted and are Turned by the end. Rather than, for instance, saying you ARE Demandred and the Sharans are evil for 5000 years. Not very PC.... a little too similar to Tolkien's "everybody who isn't us works for Sauron", lol.

You might not be Demandred/evil the whole time, it can be a gradual process, that's still only one 'characterization' of choosing the Shadow at the end.

counterpoint said:
I guess the trouble with the Shadow Cultural victory for me is that we previously (tentatively) said that Winning with prestige got you elected world leader or leader of the last battle or something. Those things would obviously never happen to an openly shadow player.

Crud, did we say that? I would think that's a massive overlap with the diplo victory? I thought that winning with Prestige was something akin to the base CiV cultural victory - that you've become a dominant force in defining the way the world goes about policy/society. That's clearly possible for a Shadow civ, and necessarily affects the 'flavor' of that victory (your culture might not itself be evil, but then again this might effectively be winning by converting everyone). I'll read back on this one once I've replied here.

counterpoint said:
One thing about this Diplo victory is that, in CiV diplo is sort of the "gold" victory. Here, it'd be more of the "producing lots of channelers" victory. Which is kind of odd. What should this victory reflect/reward?

Maybe, like CSs in CiV, the Ajahs have quests that Civs can fulfill? It might be interesting if those ajah quests (and other ways they interact with the game) relected, at least somewhat, on what the ajah does.

Exactly, I figured the Ajahs would do something very like this. I only thought the 'sending channelers to the Tower' mechanic would make up a small portion of each Ajah's overall influence. We could link the Ajah quests to relationships with other city-states (rather than the super annoying 'bully this city-state' quest, have a 'form a relationship with this city-state' quest).

I've found that city-state relationships can also be surprisingly easy to maintain when going full on army for a Domination victory in my latest game. An army allows you to do a lot of the city-state quests (particularly barb encampments, which give you a lot of influence) and you usually have more diversity of resources (and are often acquiring new ones which fulfill quests) because of the way luxuries are clustered around starting locations (and you're presumably capturing capitals).

counterpoint said:
I think as far as the Hall of the Tower making rules, and the problems that presents... maybe we can rethink this and tweak it slightly. The truth is that the Hall only makes rules (as far as i know) that affect the Tower specifically. It's hard to imagine them passing some of the CiV resolutions.

In any case, maybe it's sort of "lobbying" of eat Sitter. Like, something gets put to a vote, and if you have the most influence with the Red sitters, they vote your way. Kind of complicated, but actually a bit more strategically nuanced than it is in CiV - also probably harder to get things passed. Uninfluenced Ajahs would vote along AI-determined paths specific to the ajah (and maybe the current world situation). Of course, this suggests that Ajah sitters would follow the advice of world leaders, which may not happen....

I thought the same thing about the Tower's decrees normally being internal, but I think it's a fair extension given the Tower's influence in global WoT politics. Their internal edicts eventually come to affect other governments, just not quite as 'directly' as we're applying them here. I like the tweak, where Sitters will vote your way if you have the most influence with them. It turns the way influence is collected/displayed around (which is already in), but at this stage we probably shouldn't be reluctant to change that.

counterpoint said:
I'm not totally comfortable with the possibility of, say, the Seanchan being locked out of Diplo victory. And, as far as shadow players, they could still be influential if such Influence remained private - if it's public, then that'd obviously mean an ajah was openly taking orders from a Dark nation.

I wouldn't suggest that the Seanchan be locked out the Diplo victory - but instead that players who adopt the "capture all channelers" ideology would be. The ideologies in base CiV already preclude you from one of the 4 'active' victory conditions, so I think it makes sense for ours to do the same.

counterpoint said:
I do think, though, we should probably mostly table this issue until we solve the LB, unless you think it will definitely affect the way we deal with the LB.

Now that I've replied to all of the above (and will probably put more in response to yours and Calavente's subsequent posts), I'll say that I do agree here! Let's nail down the Last Battle.

counterpoint said:
As far as the Alignment side of things, I think my preference is for the first (determined by actions), with some final "cap" of the second, which my previous posts have probably illuminated.

What do you mean by a "cap"? I'm clearly in favor of the second for this set, but it will be the weekend before I can draw up a full list of pros/cons for these sets.

One thing I'll note quickly is that either option here requires us to quantify and track each civ's alignment over the course of the game - and the mechanisms to affect that alignment will likely be the same either way. And that's the big, difficult to implement part of this whole set-up. So we can try both without much overhead, if we can't decide in theory which one we like most.

counterpoint said:
The other choice is less clear to me.

I think I like the LB being one of many victories (2) in terms of fundamental design and aesthetics. It, however, has issues regarding the "conflict of interest" I've described, which is somewhat immersion-breaking. Also, it has some problems coexisting with the victory conditions.
I think, thematically and narrative-wise, I prefer the LB to be "the" victory (1). This has the aforementioned problems with being somewhat un-Civlike.
The last option sounds good to me, in theory, but ultimately I find it really difficult to see it coexisting peacefully with the "real" victories.

I'll elaborate on that last bit, as requested.

I think if the LB was constructed very simply - merely an epic Trolloc Wars or False Dragon attack - it could be fine as a no-victory thing. Basically, everybody tries to do their victory types while being assaulted by Trollocs and such. This coexists best with the way Civ currently plays (if we imagine the late-game of CiV turning into a barbfest), but has some problems, namely the fact that it doesn't have the "creation will end" pressure, and that it seems to unfairly punish the civs close to the blight or bad guy spawning points (in this simpler version, i'd imagine things wouldn't be set up to reward them as much).

What doesn't Play Nice with this conception of the LB is the idea of Light and Shadow-sided Civs. To me, that throws the whole thing into question. If we have Light and Shadow civs, then, as we've observed, then what's the point of it all? There's no impetus to fight each other if it doesn't tie into a victory condition.

One thing that could be done, is we could preserve the darkfriend mechanic but decide to scrap the fight-for-the-shadow thing. So all civs ended up on the side of Light, but how far light or dark they were effects how they play (more a target of the shadowspawn, etc.). Of course, this ignores the huge aspect of the WoT LB - the Sharans.

So I don't know that I like that. BUT, it is simpler. I can't think of how to preserve that kind of a situation while still keeping the choose-a-side thing intact.

...

This obviously ties into my discussion above, but, I can't help but feel like all the LB does, in this configuration, is get rid of a few civs, perhaps prematurely. Obviously, an early exit is possible, but a non-victory LB almost seems like it is, in and of itself, a kind of "spinning of the wheels." OK, I'm working on a cultural victory. Oh, crap, its the LB. Let's try to stay alive. Five hours of game time later, ok, back to Prestige. Maybe that's awesome. Maybe not.

I agree with pretty much all of the issues you've outlined about the Last Battle as an event rather than a victory condition. It does throw a lot of other things into flux and I think the main gain, as you've said, is simplicity. And that's primarily up-front simplicity for us now, rather than gameplay-wise for the player. While I don't think we should bite off more than we should chew, we should go for a better end product even if it's more work now.

I'm strongly in favor of option 2 for this one (Last Battle as a parallel victory condition). It's the most difficult to balance and has some issues we've discussed with 'strangeness' from winning. But I think that strangeness is inherent to CiV and a trade-off it willingly makes against favoring a single type of victory like most games. The balancing thing is more work then, really!

counterpoint said:
OK, I see the point. I guess for me I'm fundamentally nervous by "meta gaming," and people gaming the system. I'd like to think we should reward people for roleplaying their Civ. When I say it doesn't make sense for them to be selfish, don't misunderstand. I'd like their choices to be selfish in the best interest of their Civ,r ealistically, not just for "winning the game." Like, helping the DO end the world because those pesky Tairens chose the other side... Hey, nobody's chosen shadow, that increases my odds! That doesn't seem all that realistic. "Damn counterpoint and his RPG background!", says s3rgeus.

You and your RPGs!

I think this is a big point here though, I'd actually say that civ doesn't traditionally reward RPing in its truest sense. It tends to give thematic characteristics gameplay effects that reward a certain approach to the game (which may be what you mean), but I don't think it actively encourages RP. Not saying RP is bad, I often pick religions based on the civ I'm playing and will tend towards 'realistic-ish' strategies for given leaders. But there's also nuclear Gandhi - a bug originally, but now a staple of the series. I think a lot of civ (the whole series) rewards messing with history and trying different things.

Reality (and the WoT narrative) will always be more complex than the actual rules of a game of CiV, so I think some unexpected and unflavorful strategies will always be viable - because we can't model everything that induces a civilization to make a decision in reality or the books. And I think that people who go for RP games will tend to play them anyway - even if their strategy isn't optimal, they can still compete against the AI playing their way.

People who want to do wacky stuff may be frustrated by being cordoned into the roles from the books. And - if we do ever manage a multiplayer match - when multiple people are involved, I'd say 'gaming' the system is definitely part of the game. It shouldn't be exploitable in a way that gives you an unfair advantage or forces you down a specific path, but I think screwing over your friend by choosing the Shadow when you agreed on the Light should totally be a thing you can do. (Then bury him under a sea of Shadowspawn)

counterpoint said:
Maybe the Victory of the Last Battle is a particularly challenging (and thus rewarding) conflagration of several events. Maybe, in order to do it, you must 1) do something something with regards to the Seals, 2) if not kill all the shadowspawn and the Shadow civs, at least fight your way to Thakandar (maybe one civ fights the sharans, another holds off the southern shadowspawn, and a third heads into the blight), 3) bring the Dragon unit (or seals, or something) to Thakandar, 4) break the seals, and 5) reforge the seals and close the Bore.

Maybe its a kind of really difficult victory that can only be achieved successfully every few games. Maybe the key to it happening is the Dragons Peace. Because of the tremendous cooperation it requires (a "science" civ, a few military civs, something something for the cultural and diplo guys), you need everybody to commit to suspend their quest for individual victory. By signing onto the dragons peace, you're signing onto a permanent alliance, and locking yourself out of any other victory types.

Incidentally, this would probably require some sort of safeguard (not sure what) to prevent somebody from signing the DP and then just griefing the whole thing (maybe you can be kicked out?).

Interesting and does sound pretty cool. It's quite complex from a player's point of view, and could be very frustrating in single player though. We can improve the AI, but only so much and a good player will basically always be better. We don't want to saddle them with a bunch of AIs that can't hold up their part of the bargain and then they lose because of it - they were good enough to win, but they were sabotaged by their 'allies.'

counterpoint said:
In any case, people could refuse the DP - maybe nobody enters into it. They go about their normal victories. And yes, you can still acheive a regular victory (it is Civ, after all!), but, in the WoT universe, these victories are hollow - without the cooperation in the LB, the DO will eventually win (which either results in the end of existence, or just a crappy world. we'll never know). Yeah, that kinda blows, but thats the truth in the WoT universe. So, yes, a "true" victory, but not *the* victory.

Shadow Civs would need something specific for victory, too, so they aren't *just* griefers. Maybe they win by killing the Dragon and breaking the seals (but not reforging the Bore). This would have to be balanced, because obviously, with the dragon in the Blight, and the seals all broken for that one turn, its obviously a chance for the Shadow civs to go in a "steal" the victory... but maybe that's fine. I don't know about the whole Naebliss thing - maybe that's also a part of it.

Good point about giving the Shadow players another target. I think that having only one Shadow winner be possible is quite essential to the balance of the Last Battle though. Otherwise why would you ever pick Light? If you pick the Shadow you don't have to fight the Shadowspawn, so there needs to be some balancing risk aversion for the Light side, otherwise choosing the Shadow is all upside. Choosing the Light may help a federation of smaller civilizations band together against a larger one because they don't have to guard against each other any more.

I don't think we've discussed yet between our False Dragons about having the real Dragon. That sounds like quite a cool idea. The first thing I wonder about is how we decide who controls him and how transporting the Seals to Thakan'dar actually works. (Are the Seals units? Held by units? Maybe only specific units? Or can you move them likes Spies?)

counterpoint said:
If a Civ were to remain neutral, they could, and go ahead with their victory plan. This is kinda lame, though, in that its sort of the meta gaming I spoke about above. It's kind of a declaration of war against the entire world, though - the DP nations have every reason to stop their victory immediately (they're about to doom all of creation!).

Agreed, I'm not a big fan of choosing neutral for the Last Battle either.

counterpoint said:
I don't know. Seems like that might be getting close to something cool.

Definitely, it will be awesome!

counterpoint said:
Wow. That's ridiculous. Is it me or does that seem kind of silly by Civ standards? Kind of awesome, but also silly. I'll have to try it. Anything else I'm totally clueless about? Oh, air combat. Oh well, doesn't matter in this mod.

You mean that it does damage or that you can chain up to a city? The damage makes sense, I'd say, it's a well fortified castle with built in defenders that fire on enemies nearby. The chaining thing is a byproduct of you being able to plop it down up to one space outside your territory, so you can reach border cities quite quickly that way. If they changed it to only work inside your borders, I think it would be a lot less effective overall, and the Great General is already one of the weaker GPs.

Calavente said:
I followed since beginning, but chimed in not too much.
I'm currently reading all that's new since july...
I'll make some comments along the game.
(some comments became irrelevant as your discussion advanced, especially counterpoint's arguments but I still let them here)

Welcome back! All opinions are welcome, of course!

Calavente said:
some people say "Andor is OP as Elayne was queen of andor, caihrien, had dragon, women guards, is a much OP Aes Sedai, has the black tower".
I disagree Andor is OP... the book describes a situation where end game Andor is OP because she teched more, and because Rand AND Mat gave her techs and units (dragons/ashamen)..Etc.

Completely agree! The specifics of how things played out the books could be viewed as a single 'game' where Elayne got a big lead over a lot of the other Westlands nations (and then the Seanchan proceeded to destroy everybody.)

Calavente said:
I think "playing the world" is more interesting than playing the scenario…

Awesome! Glad that other people feel the same!

Calavente said:
For me, Andor should be Ruled by Morgase Trakand and not Elayne and shouldn't have the black tower, nor dragons, nor the Sun throne. those can be attained by techs/wonder/conquest...Etc.

Interesting that Morgase comes up as a leader for Andor from a lot of people. I'm still a big fan of Elayne. Agree on the other points - and I'm the same as counterpoint in that out of those I can only see the Dragons as a potential UU, but then that does introduce issues with what the end-game siege units actually are elsewhere.

Calavente said:
Regarding Channelers

It seems that you are focusing on Autonomous Aes Sedai (AoL/Shara/former Seanchan), Present Aes Sedai and Damane
But we forget windmistresses, wise ones, the Kin,...etc
windmistresses and wises ones are considered wilders by the Tower, but they do not do "as they pleased."

I was thinking of these as potential UUs, but the fine details of the channeling system are definitely still rough. Even in (Westlands) civs that have their own channelers like this, the Aes Sedai from the White Tower play a big part in defining their nation's politics.

Calavente said:
for me, that could be tied to mechanism.
underlying those different trends is "the Break of the World" : fear of the One power, Hate of the Male part.
The "fear of the One Power" could define the way it is managed
-Glorify them (Shara) Women Chaneler have power, and kill males offsprings.

-forbid them : Tear / (Amadacia) / WhiteCloaks / Far Madding
-Three Oaths (disarming one-self) to gain trust/acceptance (Autonomous but Self-controlled… but gain much influence)
-"Give them a position but not free-rampage": two main ways :
Aiel wise-ones, Wisdoms (even if wilder), Entry in a leadership structure, but they are not alone there.
sea folk-like Windmistress position … but here they are not in control (subordonned to Mistress of Ships/Master of swords)
Kin hides… but manages to get nice position for themselves/ red-belts…Etc
-Control them: Seanchan way : slavery / used for limited number of actions: war / starflower / prophecy : fewer potential channeller as few damane vs Sul'dam (no teaching of reaching the source).

Each of those are "cultural mechanics" that control the "fear of the one power"... and in the books, the "white-tower" option is not the only one that is deemed "good" (especially the sea-folk one is ok, the kin is ok but low training, the wisdom is ok, but high risk of death + minimal training, the aiel's is the best way of all IMO)

after that it is up to you to decide if you want these "options" to be a choice for the player or set up in stone for each civ.

... and a stupid idea of mine would be that those "options"... are in fact the "religion"..
wouldn't it be nice?
it is spreadable, as you want to convert nearby people with your way of doing (convince seanchan to not use adam, convince the tear people to allow aes-sedai...etc).
(however my vision is more a cIV vision of religion than the vision of civ5..
(you were searching for what to do about religions)...
but then it won't be "something that doesn't really matter".. as it would define the type of chanellers you get.
but think of it :
Aes-Sedai are dismissive of all wilders (non-aes-sedai)
Seanchan think that "all marath-daman should be collared".
Wise-Ones think the "power level gives authority" is stupid
...Etc

I think there a couple of ideas at play here, with opinions on channeling, how channelers are obtained, and how they mesh with 'religion' from base CiV. I think there's a lot of overlap here with what we've planned for ideologies. Like counterpoint said, we've got difficulty with variety for using 'channeling attitude' as a religion. The Paths that we've been discussing since also tie into the Last Battle victory well, which channeling opinions wouldn't mesh with as well.

Calavente said:
thus AesSedai could be GP and units that you can get by relation with the white tower (CS), if you follow the "white tower creed". (+ a way to represent Elayne)

I think this is something counterpoint touched on briefly before and I quite like this as a way of getting Aes Sedai - it promotes them above a unit you can just pump out with impunity, which they never were in the books.

Calavente said:
+ by relation with the white tower, you can have your own "wilder" trained in the white tower.

I've considered this idea before as well and I quite like it. Some relationship between female channelers you send to the White Tower and the Aes Sedai you get back makes sense and may be an effective, in-universe way of 'upgrading' those channeler units.

Calavente said:
but you have to accept control from the White tower (less possibility for wars, control over your politics...Etc)

Restricting the player this way is difficult without it feeling very arbitrary for the player. The AI is bad at understanding 'ramifications' of actions that it sees as unrelated, but that are very clearly related to a human observer. The White Tower AI would need to be very impressive to be able to restrict a civ's wars/decision in a non-frustrating way.

S3rgeus · Aug 27, 2014

Calavente said:
conversly, Damane can be built depending on a strategic ressource or something, more expensive than Aes-Sedai Unit (2 of the ressource instead of 1?), but less powerful than GP Aes-Sedai.

Thirdly, Wise One system makes it that some units/civ can transform into channeler, and become GP / governors..etc...

Fourth, Sea-folk system, doesn't allow any Chaneller until a later tech/relation with white tower ...etc, but they get bonus for civilian actions : quicker boats/ maybe better wares...Etc

I think some of these are very good mechanics to locate elsewhere. I hadn't considered the Wise Ones' non-strength-based hierarchy as an incentive to allow non-GP-units to become governors - or even for that to be possible in any circumstance. I don't know if we could attribute it as a UA to the Aiel, because, while important, the Wise Ones don't really define their culture entirely, but it's a really cool mechanic.

Calavente said:
Regarding the Male part:
I can imagine this:
2 options: depending on political choice :
-detect them and kill them: aiel, seanchan, sea-folk, Shara
-cannot detect them : random appearance of channeler (reduced by link with white tower) /high chance of getting mad (risk of miscasting, damaging nearby units/terrain) then crazed : turning barbarian with high damage to nearby units / improvements: need damane/aessedai help

I think these are the kinds of drawbacks to Saidin and male channelers that we're going for before it's cleansed.

Calavente said:
-Need Black tower wonder/state-wonder to allow recruiting male channeler.

While flavorful, I think this would skew the game balance a lot - only one player would ever be able to build male channeling units, which are presumably quite powerful.

Calavente said:
False dragons (that you can name "The False Dragon" so it doesn't start by "false") can raise from channelers (mad or "non-mad") or randomly if you don't kill them.

Good one with the name, hopefully we'll be able to fix the bool thing at it's source, but otherwise that works!

Calavente said:
Regarding Diplomacy/whatever
What about controlling the Dragon Reborn ? Couldn't "the White Tower gets ownership of the Dragon" be a condition on such Diplomacy ?

Anyway, I'm not really keen on your vision that diplomacy victory is linked to the white tower.

The WT is already linked with channelling
For me, sustaining the gray Ahja can be a point helping toward winning Diplomacy.
But Seanchan (anti-Aes-Sedai) or Wise Ones should be able to win Diplomacy Victory.

The diplo victory isn't as fleshed out as the Last Battle one at this stage, but I think the link to the White Tower makes a lot of sense. The base CiV diplo victory is based on a theoretical 'world leader' elected through the United Nations. The White Tower is the closest thing to an 'impartial' diplomatic body that exists in WoT beyond the influence of a single civilization.

Calavente said:
For me a diplomacy victory could roughly be "Elect me to lead the LB", then win the LB (either by being shadow or by being light)).
the "Dragon pact" could be an action for forcing the alliance of light when no leader is declared.

I think this crosses over with the points counterpoint and I have been debating about the Last Battle. I think this kind of approach sacrifices a lot of the variety that makes CiV fun to replay time and again because it prescribes the diplo player have a military focus (as well?), which makes 'diplo games' much more similar to 'domination games'.

Calavente said:
Maybe Winning the LB could be done by
1) being on winning side
2) earning "victory" points during the LB.
-destroying seals
-sealing the bore (but you need the actual tech... so only a former tech-centered civ can do it)
-destroying camps
-killing myrdhals
-killing /converting forsaken units
-recovering blight (spending culture?)
-arming units (spending gold?)
-healing friendly units (using aes-sedai or sending food to combattants)
I don't know what.

the one with most point wins.

shadow side :
-killing the dragon
-opening seals
-killing units
-converting chanelers
-open waygates for trolloc raids
culture / presence / science should also have an impact
...etc

I'm strongly in favor of avoiding having a flat-out 'points' score determine a victor. There are a couple of problems with that kind of system. Counterpoint mentioned one, which is that it's not a very flavorful victory. The other is a sense of 'fairness' for the player. Why are certain things worth a certain number of points? What makes this thing that I've done worth less than what that other civ has done? Depending on the arrangement of the game, some things that are worth more points may be drastically easier for certain civs. (Example, if killing Shadowspawn is a primary source of points, a military-focused Shienar near the Blight will clean up the game by himself.) That all could, in theory, be 'fixed' with careful balancing, but I think that there will always be circumstances where it will seem unfair to a human player and quite 'game-y,' which CiV in general avoids - there are valid in-universe characterizations for how most things work.

I do like the (partial) splitting off of focus from military for things like opening Waygates during the Last Battle. I've been thinking that Waygates could provide some significant bonus during the game, but open up new fronts for Shadowspawn during the Last Battle.

counterpoint said:
As far as the other channeler-types (from Aeil, SF, Wisdoms, etc.), one key component is of course whether we decide they should be UUs. If not, I'd figured these kinds of units would be the "regular" female channelers - you can produce them, more-or-less at normal. They'r "wilders," after all. The AE are the ones that are obtained by special means. Then again, I'm still developing the idea.

Like I said above, I'd been thinking along these lines as well. There is a basic "wilder" unit, that's the first female channeling unit, which is in the mod already, but that can always be moved/changed.

Calavente said:
For Dragons... I'm not yet there in the books,

Hopefully we're not spoiling tons of stuff for you on here then! I forget when it is that Dragons show up in the books - how far are you through? You seem to know a bit about how it ends already!

Calavente said:
but IMO, it should be available to everyciv.. but expensive (in tech) and better as a produce of having the right tech A and either tech B OR a GP and the illuminator guild.

This does make a lot of sense, because I'm not sure what else could be the end-game siege units. And you're right that it was (spoilers?) Aludra's idea and execution that brought about the Dragons - Elayne (and Andor) just financed it - which could easily be seen as a 'tech' that Andor just got to first.

Calavente said:
Well, I know that you haven't forgotten about them. but I'm expressing 2 points:
1)you were discussing AoL / Aes Sedai / Damane as the main foci. I think Aiel/SeaFolk are also strong contenders... they are also an adaptation of AoL Aes Sedai. Aiel, for once, are not "wilders" (save that aes sedai consider everyone as wilder)... they know A LOT. Often more than Aes Sedai.
IMO, their system should at least be a 4th path for Channelers.

Like I mentioned above, I think this conflicts a lot with Ideologies and may fall under the 'let them be free' classification (both Wise Ones and Wavemistresses - each has just used that freedom in a different way). Three ideologies is already well balanced in base CiV for us, and I'm not sure if there's enough of a distinction to warrant separating them out from that 'freedom' third category. (Aes Sedai are in a different 'central authority' category already.)

Calavente said:
2) you consider that Aes Sedai are the "best" ones....
I disagree: I find that Aiel Wise ones are pretty much more interesting: they do everything in a much better way than AesSedai... without needing the 3 Oaths.
In the Aiel lands they are negociator / judge / un-touchable for the Aiel Clans (each one in fact a small country) ... as Aes Sedai are within the Nations of the Western lands. They know much about Channeling. They transmit and preserve knowledge : Ruidean, Dreamers...Etc They miss few female that can become a channeler (whereas Aes Sedai miss most of them), They provide a strong training to ensure a loyalty to the people (all Aiels, independently of tribe) whereas Aes Sedai training only ensure loyalty to Aes Sedai, the "acceptance from the people" being due the the 3 Oaths and not due to a recognized loyalty.
...etc
In the End, they are "Aes Sedai of the Aiel Lands" ... in all but name.. and without counting that at beginning they were in awe of Aes-Sedai;
Indeed, in the books, Aiels are not 1 Nation... even if westerners thinks of it but multiple nations that have a same "religion" : ji'eh'toh : gaishin/Wise Ones/toh/Borhterhoods.. but wage wars between clans - brotherhoods, and have complicated interactions.. and nations that have allied quickly when the Caracan appeared

As a sub-point of this: I'm not impressed, in the book, by the utility of Aes Sedai in General....why would they be special ? True, there are many Great AesSedai... that are special. But of those, 4 are main characters : Elayne, Egwen, Nynaeve, Moiraine.
there are a few others. Calusdane (or whatever her name)...etc

I definitely agree that the Wise Ones have a lot of positives vs the Aes Sedai, but I think that as an institution, the Aes Sedai have had much more far-reaching consequences for the way the world of WoT works. (Possible spoilers for close to the end of the series about the origins of the Aiel) The relationship to the Tower defined the entire Aiel set of cultures along with how they split of from the Tuatha'an. The nations in the Westlands' politics are heavily influenced by the Aes Sedai. Even the Seanchan, when they return to the Westlands, the Tower becomes a focal point of their objective to tame the marath'damane. I think the only civ that's truly escaped influence by the Aes Sedai is Shara.

With that in mind, I think 'elevating' the Aes Sedai above being produce-able units makes a lot of sense and ties well into the way they functioned in the books - as independent agents of the Tower - while also potentially tying in well to the diplo victory.

Calavente said:
but there are also Great "wilders" : Aviendha; for once ; multiple Wise Ones (but the story goes quickly over them as they are "bound" easily to the Dragon), Some WaveMistresses, that former Damane girl that is supposed to kill Rand, and in some ways (as she is a potential chaneler) Tuon (due to her position in the seanchan hierarchy, and her ability to "tame" damane quickly and ensure increased performances).

I'll have to go back and consult our list of GPs (in case we already excluded this and I'm not remembering) but I think the idea of actual GPs that are Great Channelers, or something to that effect, can be really effective for covering characters like Aviendha, Cadsuane, Egwene, Siuan, etc.

Calavente said:
I knew it ! yeah !yup.... I think WT and getting hand on the Dragon should be high bonus for getting the Diplomacy victory.. but shouldn't be the only means.If SeanChan convert much people to their "control-the-marath'daman" way of thinking, plus get much territory / have many puppet states... they should be able to win by diplomacy ("all western territories plead Oaths and accept the Emperess as their Overlord...You have won a diplomatic victory"

I think this will depend a lot on how we use the Dragon for the Last Battle victory. It's definitely very flavorful!

Calavente said:
Further : Making the WT fall in the hands of the Black Ajah could also be a diplomatic victory of sort... but for shadow-inclined civs: really difficult to get, but ennemy have difficulty to see you run for it

I like this idea and we'll probably discuss it more as well nail down more details for the diplo victory. Secretly helping increase influence for the Black Ajah seems like a good way to still allow Shadow-aligned civs still participate in the diplo victory (which I don't think they should be locked out of).

Calavente said:
well, IMO the LB victory needs to be a "score" victory. Otherwise people, especially light side, won't contribute as much as possible to the LB.

I mention some of the issues I find with a score-based victory above, but I think it's also important that we balance via gameplay mechanics, rather than forcing the balance directly onto the player in the form of a score. The latter can feel very arbitrary for the player, whereas the former just guides their decisions in a sensible way.

Calavente said:
if you want the LB to be a Victory Condition : as the LB is imposed to all ... how do you separate the different contributors to the LB to see who of the winning side has really won the game ?

I'm of the opinion that the Light side wins as a group but a Shadow civ can only win alone, though I think we're still hammering out the specifics of this one. There is a bit of an issue where civs can 'ride coattails' to victory on the Light side. I'm not sure if that's entirely a problem though, because the Last Battle Light side victory is a 'we've saved Creation' victory that could take in everyone.

Calavente said:
Otherwise, the LB is only an "event" that, as you said, only spins the wheel... killing units/cities here and there (like Armaggeddon in FFH.... ) but remember : armaggeddon in FFH is a fun mechanism... even if it is not a victory condition.

This is very interesting! I've never actually finished a game of FfH, so I wasn't aware Kale did a similar end-game cataclysm kind of thing. I should boot up CIV again and try it out.

Calavente said:
Or maybe the LB is a team VC : all of the winning side Win, with no way of departaging the winners ... and if the LB drags for too long... everybody loses.

I'm all for a team for the Light, and for everybody losing if it runs on too long. However, I mentioned this in more detail above when replying to part of counterpoint's post, if the Shadow civs win as a team, I don't see why you'd ever pick Light, because having the Shadowspawn as an ally tips it way in the Shadow's favor.

Calavente said:
However what I would propose would be a bit different:
IMO, for the LB there could be 3 sides:
-Light : gain bonus for LB: Channelers / Moral / weapons to seal the DO / dragonlegion units, Ogier Warriors (unless Seanchan which already have some in the DeathGuard)...Etc, but you are ponctionned a lot : roughly you have to abandon/reduce your chance of personnal victory to give your contribution to the LB : sciencefocused contribute by giving/discovering new weapons/way to seal...Etc (new option opened, but hard to do) Food heavy contribute by improved logisitics of everybody.... etc.

-Shadow : gain bonus for LB : trolloc/Myrddhal/Channelers/ True Power / Non-Mad Channelers / ShadowFriend contribution to help disparage other countries (even before LB) /

-Neutral : don't contribute/don't win the LB : free to pursue their own victory type (really limited: domination / cultural / science), but no bonus against LB, risk of being submerged by LB... and risk of not being in the victorious team once the LB is won by one side: you think the other will protect the world (defeat the shadow's armies), but not get the full LB victory (all forsaken killed / but bore not sealed...etc)... and you will win before/after the LB. (limitation you can't declare war during LB but light/shadow can declare war on you)
but chosing that option doesn't mean that you are close to a personnal victory... it might be that you are too small/weak and contributing to the LB will kill your civ... and you might lose even if sided with light/shadow.
so you take the risk of no help for LB: dealing with trollocs the hard way...etc for the chance of surviving the LB.

I think neutrality may work slightly differently than that in practice, unless players aligned to either side are also prevented from declaring war on them. Choosing neutral is largely an announcement of an intent to win the game a different way (you don't want to be teamed for the Light and don't want to fight everyone from the Shadow). I imagine someone on one of the sides would see that and attack the neutral civs - weakened and distracted by Shadowspawn, they're easier to capture.

Calavente said:
win LB by fullfiling multiple steps :

Spoiler :

Light side:
2) survive trolloc rushes,
3) Achievements ("international-space-station" like victory): clean trolloc camps, kill forsakens, close the bore (The Breaking kind of victory: no proper sealing of the bore) greater contributor is the "main winner" but all team wins: logisitics is one achievement, improving weapons for all team (dragons) is another, closing /sealing the bore another, cleaning camps another, killing forsaken another / killing evil chanelers black ajah or male chanelers another ...Etc.
Victory is due to the best contributor to the achievements... "prestige like victory" (needs to be balanced):
closing the bore : 1000pts, sealing it : 2000pts,
killing trolloc 1pt
killing myrdhal 10pt
killing Evil Channeler : 10pt
Killing/subduing/capturing Forsaken:50pt
Clearing Camp : 50pt
Improving weapons : +1/1 to all units of light team ; 2pt by unit owned by the light team at time of improvement + 2pt for each further unit built
Disclosing Dragons tech : +10pt per dragon build anywher in light team (dragon give points to the discloser... but even if not discloser you want them as they improve you r ods of killing myrddhal/trollocs... so more points for you.
Contributing to Logistics : 1pt/yield given to other civs...etc
Imposing Dragon Peace : 200pt

..etc
(no need to subdue shadow civs... Shara was not conquered in the books, only defeated it's army)

Shadow:
1) chose side
2) defeat all light civs
3) You win if you are the closest to the DO : more units / pop / achievements / kills / conquered cities at the end of LB.
Science civs have better access to waygates to move their units toward cities
Cultural civs can gain more trollocs
Faith civs get more channelers / True Power /
Diplomacy civs get more access to Shadow friends (assassins / turning ennemy units / easier capture of cities / CS )
another type get more Forsaken units to control
...etc
the shadow civs need thus to : conserve their forces, contribute to last battle, be sure to backstab each other to reduce the surviving forces of other shadow civs.

Neutral : you don't win the LB... but hope that the light defeat enough shadow without winning the LB.

I've discussed above about the disadvantages of score-based rankings for the Last Battle. I do think we're moving towards mid-war objectives for actually 'winning' the Last Battle though, which you've outlined quite a few parts of here.

Calavente said:
Then a final point:
Maybe Sealing the Bore (alone) could be the Science victory.
and Closing the Bore being a condition for LB victory. (+ increase chances of winning : forsaken, Evil Male Channelers and myrrdhal have reduce power, no more "True Power", moral reduction to all shadow civ units)

Sealing the Bore while being in the Light team during the light Battle... is an Optional "closing the Bore" condition.... does not grant "Science Victory" but only "increased contribution to the LB victory"... but is easier (and is a possible contribution of a science civ to the LB) (decreased cost for breaking seals/ sealing ritual / easier access to the bore...Etc)... and not sufficient to win the last battle.
but increased effect : forsaken, Evil Male Channelers and myrrdhal are immobile, cannot cast, have weaker power (easier to kill them), no more trolloc generation, blight reduces quickly, no more bonus for shadow civs (trollocs all go feral), moral reduction to all shadow civ units.

I think having Sealing the Bore as a separate science victory or making it a part of the Last Battle are mutually exclusive. If it 'is' the science victory, then centralizing it into the Last Battle runs into the replayability issues counterpoint and I have been discussing about parallelization-or-not of the Last Battle as a victory condition.

Interesting thought though - if Sealing the Bore is the separate science victory, does that mean a Shadow civ can use it to win? I know I'm generally leaning toward gameplay-over-flavor in terms of victory 'weirdness,' but that seems a bit nonsensical. Maybe integrating it fully into the Last Battle and have 'another' science victory is the way to go (something to do with Rand's legacy of 'schools' across the continent?). It solves some of our Last Battle winning issues and some of our 'how does science victory work' issues too.

Calavente said:
Here are my thought of it :

Introduction:
One wants Diplomatic victory to factor those aspects:
-WT has an important weight.
-anti-WT (amadicia / white-Cloaks / Seanchan ... even Shadow) can gain Diplomatic victory.
-Diplo victory also factor civ5 diplovictory mechanisme: CS friendship ..Etc

Only thing here, crossing over with ideologies that I mentioned above, is that I think we can afford to lock Seanchan-like civs (intentionally not the actual Seanchan civ, unless they choose the 'capture' ideology) out of the diplomatic victory, given that base CiV ideologies lock you out of one victory type each.

Calavente said:
Propositions
Main Mechanism:
Periodic "World Leader Elections" (or "who will lead the Last Battle" elections) during the Age of the Dragon.

in the books : Rand could not win it in WoT 12 as tuon refused it, and WT did not agree (Egwene and Elaida want to be in control of Rand .. even if different ways of controlling)

Seanchan tried it but failed as WT did not subdue and they did not own the Dragon and the offended most "free" countries

Pax Draconis can be represented as a mechanics during the LB for chosing sides... but does not define a World Leader.

For the Elections :
Contenders are only Nations.
-the 3 biggest in score (or: 3-4 contenders for victory: the one with biggest lands, the one with more culture, the one with most influence, the one with most science)
-the one proposed by WT (or by strongest Ajah)
-the civ with the Dragon Reborn

Votes are seperated as follow
-1 part for nations
-1 part for CS (not WT)
-1 part for WT
-1 part for Dragon

Need 66% voice to be elected leader (absolute majority)

Roughly: if you own 3 parts out of the 4, you are sure to win.

Nations and CS:
fixed effect for being a nation
effect of score: can increase the fixed effect if bigger/more advanced ...Etc.
example : being a nation gives 2 points
score gives from 0 point (CS-like Nation, with few achievements) to 4 points if biggest score (or biggest pop / armies / score )

CS get 2 point each

(or however that is managed in civ5)

WT:
WT part of the total depends on influence points gained by
-per Aes Sedai in game (or size of the WT / number of "aes sedai": units+pop+ whatever)
-number of Civs / CS that have cordial relations with WT/ajahs
-Dragonciv is cordial to WT

WT votes is unanimous.
However : its decision needs the Greater Concensus.
60% are given, with prorata depending on the individual str of Ajahs, to those favored by each Ajah (sitters)
10% is given to who is favored by the strongest Ajah
5% is given to who is favored by the second strongest Ajah
25% is given by the Amyrlin (which often votes as it's Ajah or for the Civ that brought more to the WT or the civ with the Dragon Reborn)
If Black Ajah controls an Ajah sitters, all its points goes to the contender supported by Black Ajah.
If Black Ajah controls the Heads of half of the Ajahs (roughly: control half of all sisters) it controls the Amyrlins' vote.

WT total influence should fluctuate between:
-5% of total if everybody is AntiWT (WhiteCloaks / Seanchan / Tear), very few Free AE, and WT is razed.
(but still 5% as there will always be a WT-in-Exile)
to
-60% if there is no anti-WT faction, and many AesSedai units are presents in each countries, and WT controls the Dragon (15%).

So being best buddy with the WT can give an automatic win if the WT is very very strong (but you still need to get 6% so: 15% of the civ-CS parts.).
But in normal games, unless damane-country work for it, the WT should have 20-30% of votes: important, but not the only way to win, not even a blocking majority.

Dragon:
Whoever Controls the Dragon Reborn get an automatic 15% of voices.

Civs needs to have ways to Control the Dragon Reborn. (GE mix of Male Channeler / Great Capitain / Scientist)

Civs needs to have ways to "Capture the Dragon Reborn": difficult but easier than gaining control of the Dragon Reborn.
-highly dangerous as most Dragonswore hates you
-the dragon reborn can "resist"
so either : you give him to the WT..
or you need some way to "subdue the Dragon"
-shadow can get male Adam
-Damane countries can have shields or whatever
-AE / Wise Ones countries need some way other than giving to WT... but not easy to get...

So to win by dilpo:
multiple ways:
-suck up to the WT and be proposed by WT

-be friendly to all CS
-Decrease WT influence so as to be free of it's influence
+
easier access by :
Secure the Dragon (either to you, or to your friend the WT)

well, anyway,.. those are all ideas.
you may refuse them, use some parts, transform some parts...etc

I think a lot of this hinges on how we're going to use the Dragon. If he's the lynchpin of the Last Battle victory, then it's difficult to integrate him into the diplomatic victory this way. But it definitely does make a lot of sense - the Dragon has a big effect on diplomacy - he effectively unites about 8 previously warring nations under one banner.

It's interesting to see the focus still on the White Tower, but not completely dependent on it. I think this is a very viable approach and as we flesh out the diplo victory we should compare this against a more centralized approach that I'd been focusing on.

We'd shelved delving into the centralized approach until after the Last Battle, so hopefully with some more details there (weekend job for me, that's a lot of writing!) we'll be able to compare the two like we've been doing with the different Last Battle approaches.

Illianor123 · Aug 28, 2014

I just read this thread today (yes, i have too much time on my hands) and I am very excited by it, but bear with me if I confuse some stuff from the 6 pages.

-The Last Battle-

I feel like this is a necessary component of any WoT game, and that winning it is part of every victory condition (and obviously losing it means you’re dead and so can’t win). This also means that by winning any of the standard victory conditions early, you still have to fight the last battle, but you get some major advantages from doing so. Similarly being on the way to winning one of them with give some bonuses.

- Domination: Beating all the civs beforehand means that you have the choice of choosing the Light and fighting the last battle yourself (with all the land under your control0, or choosing the shadow and winning then and there.
- Diplo: At the outbreak of the LB, Tar Valon calls for a vote on who should lead the war, the winner getting some bonuses. I think tar Valon should give every light side Aes Sedai and the winner twice as many.
- Cultural: Any Civs that you are influential over must choose the same side as you, in case of being influenced by multiple civs, the one with the highest prestige ‘wins’
- Science: Science Victory doesn’t really happen in stages, but being high on science should mean advanced units, and being prepared for the outbreak of war. –A suggestion could be the capacity to reproduce ter’angreal and sa’angreal

Do the 4th age start for the battle (when a civ enters the 4th age etc), and have a set start date (2050 or w/e) to force it to happen if people specifically slow tech to give themselves time to build up forces (Dom victory?)
Additionally if the Light win, the player in the possession of the most capitals wins to prevent inter light alliance battles. The light alliance preventing wars between them could e the Dragon’s Peace.

Winning would involve breaking Thakandar (a large pop city that spawns with many defensive buildings, and shadowspawn camps around it).

During the LB Civs also gain points for each shadowspawn they kill and the winner of this gets some bonus as well. This is to make sure everyone contributes. Additional paying a war subsidies thing could also get points (and give units or bonuses to the Civ receiving subsidies)

-Light and Shadow Choice
Your actions and alignment influence what you choose. Going against your alignment will cause rebellions and unhappiness (darkfriend led revolts, or light worshipping rebels).
Or all must choose the light but those who gave in more to the DO will have more revolts.

-Religion-

Pantheons are just like basic beliefs or traditions of the people, port the CiV ones across and save the flavour (and power) for the Founder and Follower. And/or rename them as necessary.

-Channelers-
High powered as you have already said. I think that each city (or the first 3-4 founded) should have an Aes Sedai point generator (like great people), and you have a random chance of spawning a male or female. Perhaps Aiel get Wise Ones instead.

-Misc-
I think you should change the starting conditions. These civ are rising from the ashes of civilizations gone. First founded city is 2 pop, start with 2 warriors and worker.

Calavente · Aug 28, 2014

Thanks for having read all .
please be aware that I have not GK nor GoN...
so I'm not familiar with either civ5 religion nor civ5 ideologies ...

and personnally, I thought of another point.
IMO, it would be flavorful that in the age of the dragon, or maybe even earlier, one may chose to "go toward shadow" even if not public (and being secret).

it is one of the main trends of the books.... the forsaken had their hand in every one of the main nations... (even the Shaido got influenced by the forsaken) to pass it is IMO not a good idea.

maybe you can make secret deal with a virtual "DarkOne CS" or something.
this deal pushes you on the "Dark One Victory"

or maybe, if you played DO for a few "DO vs Light quests", you get this choice way before the LB.

-you can control trollocs (or only summon/decide were barbarian trollocs will appear)
-access to shadowfriends
-easier access Aes Sedai of ajah with large black ajah influence
..Etc : many thing that can help you but that cannot be traced to you.... and that makes you leaning on joining

you could have some penalties : heavier cost for certain units, lighter costs for other things, risk of getting some angry ppl in your cities...etc

I don't really know how, but IMO there could be something to be done there.

On Aes Sedai
Really I disagree with you.
Aes Sedai being predominant in the books is only incidental.... and a remnant of the AesSedai of the AoL.
As soon as the Wise-Ones discover that AesSedai are not as in the AoL... they treat them like apprenctices... and the Windmistresses are even worse.

the SeanChan are not impressed much by AesSedai... they are just a bunch of marath'daman. they want to subdue them as much as they would want to subdue the other powers of the land.
but in the WoT books, the WT was a big power... so it needed to be targetted by Seanchans.

And remember that for the SeanChan "AesSedai" is synonymous with "Tyrant Channelers" due to their history (remember when we first learned about how the adam were created) of AesSedai that didn't have the 3 Oaths.

That the WT is so predominant in WoT is because Egwene, Nyneave, even Rand are born in the westlands... If they were born in the wastelands, or in Shara, or in SeanChan, they would not have liked AesSedai so Much…. And Rand accepted much the Aes Sedai, mostly because Elayne is, Egwene is and Nyneave is one.

Further the WT is also very predominant due to their vision of the Dragon : someone to control or at least to "handle". Thus it leads to much story plots in the books.
Contrarily, the Wise Ones went two ways: follow the Cara'can, follow Sevana. Not much to say here. The Wise Ones are a big force of Channelers that follow Rand, even if they try to influence him so as to save more of the Aiels.
IMO, much is biased through the fact that much of the Aiels, wise ones included, followed Rand without bickering (due to the prophecies). So the Aiels (and thus wise ones) are considered as a single group, and wise ones, having influence only in a single group are considered less important than AesSedai.

The story could have gone the other way : the WT wants to subdue Rand ? plus they are in fact all bickering over-proud es ? Elayne and Egwen become Wise Ones / translate the wise-One system to western channelers / wisdoms and create a parallel structure… Rand get AesSedai by converting them to WiseOne creed, or by having Ashamen bonding them…

Anyway, it is your Mod.. but for me, the predominance of the WT is due to the scenario of the WoT book and not due to the world. (or maybe it is of the "world" .. if the world starts in the Dragon Era). Indeed, the managed to maintain / improve influence in many countries, they got the three oaths to keep respectability… and they are important for the story due to Egwene, Elayne and Nyneave.

Considering Tear, Amadicia, the widespread presence of WhiteCloaks, FarMadding, other countries where AE were not forbidden, but not welcome, and the "fear"/"suspicion" of Aes Sedai in most countries, it is possible to imagine a game where the WT has little influence.
The WhiteCloaks could have been as important (or more) than the WT for managing the diplomacy between the westland countries and dealing with Darkfriends. But in the books they failed, and were corrupted by the shadow (Nial being a darkfriend).

For Me, their importance is of the World (and even so, only in the westlands), but not their predominance.

Further, the AesSedai had no power of decision.
The AesSedai had no influence on the East (Aiels/Shara/rest of the eastern part) ; the Aiels, for once are at least as important (in term of soldier force/chaneler force for fighting the LB, or at least conquering the west) as half of the west lands, or maybe the whole waste lands taken together, WT comprised (not counting the "main character AesSedai"). but we forget that because most of them follow Rand Early in the Story.
The AesSedai had no influence on Seanchan (which is an Empire as big as the westlands, originally comprised of many countries).
The AesSedai had no influence on the SeaFolk…
…Etc

(Btw, I'm currently reading book 12 out of the total 14… but I'm not really bothered by spoilers.. I have a good intuition and my pleasure in reading is not really damaged by knowing the end).

Calavente · Aug 28, 2014

another of mine perky remarks

I just looked at L5R mod... and they have good Ideas for UU / UB / UA that are original.
Most won't translate to WoT, but might be good inspirations.

further, I thought about his idea of clan/civ.
translate this into People / Nation
here I'm only brainstorming.. so don't take it too seriously:

Maybe you could have some global "people" groups :
aiels (different clans or brotherhoods)
seachan (we can even find 2-3 civs for them by looking at the books: Imperials(Hawkingians / mountainers (they have a name) / wildsedai (or whatever are those tyrants) / another civ ?)
Andor-Cairhen-Manetheren
Borderlanders (5 nations: Malkier / Saldea / Arafel / Kandor / Shienar)
westerners: Amadicia/tarabon/domani/Ghealdan
Easterners (only Shara)
South-easters: Tear / Mayenne/illian/altara / FarMadding / Murandy
Aathanmiere : SeaFolks / Aratham (or whatever is that other group)

Each "people" share an UA or belief or UB or UU or whatever
each Nation gets its own perks.
maybe Aiels get an UA "if a non-Aiel party declare wars, gain +5%str per friendly Aiel civ"...
..; but then it will be difficult to give different UU / UA / UB to each Aiel Clan or Brotherhood

Borderlanders: +10%vs shadowspawn +10% vs shadow influence.

S3rgeus · Aug 28, 2014

Illianor123 said:
I just read this thread today (yes, i have too much time on my hands) and I am very excited by it, but bear with me if I confuse some stuff from the 6 pages.

That's a lot of reading! Welcome to the discussion and glad you like the ideas for the mod!

Illianor123 said:
-The Last Battle-

I feel like this is a necessary component of any WoT game, and that winning it is part of every victory condition (and obviously losing it means youre dead and so cant win). This also means that by winning any of the standard victory conditions early, you still have to fight the last battle, but you get some major advantages from doing so. Similarly being on the way to winning one of them with give some bonuses.

- Domination: Beating all the civs beforehand means that you have the choice of choosing the Light and fighting the last battle yourself (with all the land under your control0, or choosing the shadow and winning then and there.
- Diplo: At the outbreak of the LB, Tar Valon calls for a vote on who should lead the war, the winner getting some bonuses. I think tar Valon should give every light side Aes Sedai and the winner twice as many.
- Cultural: Any Civs that you are influential over must choose the same side as you, in case of being influenced by multiple civs, the one with the highest prestige wins
- Science: Science Victory doesnt really happen in stages, but being high on science should mean advanced units, and being prepared for the outbreak of war. A suggestion could be the capacity to reproduce terangreal and saangreal

I understand the reasoning behind wanting to structure the victories this way, but counterpoint and I have been discussing this configuration for a while now. I really believe that this sacrifices a huge part of the replayability that makes CiV fun over time. While it will be awesome the first few times, having every game end the same way inevitably makes the mod tiresome over multiple games. It wouldn't be as much of a problem for games with a shorter iteration time, but CiV games are all very long; always building to the same end-game isn't good for multiple playthroughs.

The influential culture/Prestige 'dragging' other civs to your side with you is very interesting though. I hadn't considered this and it seems quite flavorful. I'll think some more on what gameplay ramifications this could have, but nothing jumps out at me immediately as unbalanced.

Illianor123 said:
Do the 4th age start for the battle (when a civ enters the 4th age etc), and have a set start date (2050 or w/e) to force it to happen if people specifically slow tech to give themselves time to build up forces (Dom victory?)
Additionally if the Light win, the player in the possession of the most capitals wins to prevent inter light alliance battles. The light alliance preventing wars between them could e the Dragons Peace.

If the Light player with the most capitals wins (if the Light wins the Last Battle) and the Light side civs can't go to war with each other, then that massively discourages teamwork from the Light civs. The 'smaller' Light civs are now completely unable to win the game - only those tied for the highest capitals would realistically contribute, and if we were picking one winner we'd still need a way to break ties. This drives everyone not going for the Domination to the Shadow (which is an interesting reversal of the issues we've been having with alignments favoring certain victories). It could also be frustrating for the player. "Elayne killed Mattin Stepaneos and Laman Damodred before the Last Battle, so I lose because I've only killed Darlin Sisnera? They're all right next to each other and I've been stuck over here!"

I like the era triggering the Last Battle and counterpoint brought up using the date to trigger the Last Battle as well if it hasn't happened yet. I wouldn't be too worried about domination players stalling tech to prevent the Last Battle - if they can prevent every other player on the map from reaching the Fourth Age at the same time then I think they've payed sufficiently well to win that way. (Half of civs reaching the Age of the Dragon can also trigger it, which is even harder to prevent, especially if you're wiping civs out - you might inadvertently trigger it by wiping out a weaker civ and shifting the world era.)

Illianor123 said:
Winning would involve breaking Thakandar (a large pop city that spawns with many defensive buildings, and shadowspawn camps around it).

Having Thakan'dar as an assault-able, garrison-able location in the Blight is an cool one. It favors the player a bit - since we're better than the AI at managing assaults and are drastically better at sabotaging them.

Illianor123 said:
During the LB Civs also gain points for each shadowspawn they kill and the winner of this gets some bonus as well. This is to make sure everyone contributes. Additional paying a war subsidies thing could also get points (and give units or bonuses to the Civ receiving subsidies)

I'm reluctant to give out blanket 'points' for actions and would prefer tangible in-game rewards rather than a separate ranking system. We can make sure everyone contributes by making it mechanically in their best interest to do so (in most cases).

Illianor123 said:
-Light and Shadow Choice
Your actions and alignment influence what you choose. Going against your alignment will cause rebellions and unhappiness (darkfriend led revolts, or light worshipping rebels).

I think we're moving toward this kind of system, but it's not decided yet and we may try out both methods (manual choice and forced based on decisions) in practice.

Illianor123 said:
Or all must choose the light but those who gave in more to the DO will have more revolts.

This is an interesting idea, but I think that having two playable sides adds a lot of variety.

Illianor123 said:
-Religion-

Pantheons are just like basic beliefs or traditions of the people, port the CiV ones across and save the flavour (and power) for the Founder and Follower. And/or rename them as necessary.

I think counterpoint's preparing a pantheon belief treatment to look at the different approaches we can take here based on our last couple of posts. From his four options in this post I'm a big fan of option 3 because those are really flavorful parts of the WoT mythos but don't fit very well in most other parts of the game.

Fully agree on powering up the Founder and Follower beliefs.

Illianor123 said:
-Channelers-
High powered as you have already said. I think that each city (or the first 3-4 founded) should have an Aes Sedai point generator (like great people), and you have a random chance of spawning a male or female. Perhaps Aiel get Wise Ones instead.

Channelers are still much more up in the air than the Last Battle at the moment, but this kind of approach is definitely one we're considering!

Illianor123 said:
-Misc-
I think you should change the starting conditions. These civ are rising from the ashes of civilizations gone. First founded city is 2 pop, start with 2 warriors and worker.

Interesting that you point this one out. This is quite easy to change within the framework CiV provides us already (no code changes needed, just some XML entries - except maybe for the pop bonus). The in-game effect of this would be to accelerate the early game, so civs would progress through the early tech tree/expand much faster. Ancient ruins would certainly be consumed much faster. This would probably make the biggest difference for the player - the AI already receives these kinds of bonuses (including extra settlers) at higher difficulties.

We can certainly explore these kinds of changes when there are playable-ish builds of the mod.

Calavente said:
Thanks for having read all .
please be aware that I have not GK nor GoN...
so I'm not familiar with either civ5 religion nor civ5 ideologies ...

Oh man, they were all 75% off just a few days ago! It makes a huge difference to the game, I'd highly recommend the expansions (just for general fun - it doesn't invalidate your suggestions not having played them). This mod will be built off BNW though, so you'll need it to play when we start releasing!

Calavente said:
and personnally, I thought of another point.
IMO, it would be flavorful that in the age of the dragon, or maybe even earlier, one may chose to "go toward shadow" even if not public (and being secret).

it is one of the main trends of the books.... the forsaken had their hand in every one of the main nations... (even the Shaido got influenced by the forsaken) to pass it is IMO not a good idea.

maybe you can make secret deal with a virtual "DarkOne CS" or something.
this deal pushes you on the "Dark One Victory"

or maybe, if you played DO for a few "DO vs Light quests", you get this choice way before the LB.

-you can control trollocs (or only summon/decide were barbarian trollocs will appear)
-access to shadowfriends
-easier access Aes Sedai of ajah with large black ajah influence
..Etc : many thing that can help you but that cannot be traced to you.... and that makes you leaning on joining

you could have some penalties : heavier cost for certain units, lighter costs for other things, risk of getting some angry ppl in your cities...etc

I don't really know how, but IMO there could be something to be done there.

I think we're moving toward this kind of system, where players can take secret actions throughout the whole game that eventually affect their alignment toward the Light/Shadow. I think we're agreed on having the Paths (religions) be the balancing point for the bonuses obtained by doing secret missions for the Shadow. So the Shadow offers some bonuses but you sacrifice the effectiveness of your Path (increased faith cost for units/buildings, attain new beliefs more slowly, possibly even lose beliefs?)

Calavente said:
On Aes Sedai
Really I disagree with you.
Aes Sedai being predominant in the books is only incidental.... and a remnant of the AesSedai of the AoL.
As soon as the Wise-Ones discover that AesSedai are not as in the AoL... they treat them like apprenctices... and the Windmistresses are even worse.

the SeanChan are not impressed much by AesSedai... they are just a bunch of marath'daman. they want to subdue them as much as they would want to subdue the other powers of the land.
but in the WoT books, the WT was a big power... so it needed to be targetted by Seanchans.

And remember that for the SeanChan "AesSedai" is synonymous with "Tyrant Channelers" due to their history (remember when we first learned about how the adam were created) of AesSedai that didn't have the 3 Oaths.

That the WT is so predominant in WoT is because Egwene, Nyneave, even Rand are born in the westlands... If they were born in the wastelands, or in Shara, or in SeanChan, they would not have liked AesSedai so Much. And Rand accepted much the Aes Sedai, mostly because Elayne is, Egwene is and Nyneave is one.

Further the WT is also very predominant due to their vision of the Dragon : someone to control or at least to "handle". Thus it leads to much story plots in the books.
Contrarily, the Wise Ones went two ways: follow the Cara'can, follow Sevana. Not much to say here. The Wise Ones are a big force of Channelers that follow Rand, even if they try to influence him so as to save more of the Aiels.
IMO, much is biased through the fact that much of the Aiels, wise ones included, followed Rand without bickering (due to the prophecies). So the Aiels (and thus wise ones) are considered as a single group, and wise ones, having influence only in a single group are considered less important than AesSedai.

The story could have gone the other way : the WT wants to subdue Rand ? plus they are in fact all bickering over-proud es ? Elayne and Egwen become Wise Ones / translate the wise-One system to western channelers / wisdoms and create a parallel structure Rand get AesSedai by converting them to WiseOne creed, or by having Ashamen bonding them

Anyway, it is your Mod.. but for me, the predominance of the WT is due to the scenario of the WoT book and not due to the world. (or maybe it is of the "world" .. if the world starts in the Dragon Era). Indeed, the managed to maintain / improve influence in many countries, they got the three oaths to keep respectability and they are important for the story due to Egwene, Elayne and Nyneave.

Considering Tear, Amadicia, the widespread presence of WhiteCloaks, FarMadding, other countries where AE were not forbidden, but not welcome, and the "fear"/"suspicion" of Aes Sedai in most countries, it is possible to imagine a game where the WT has little influence.
The WhiteCloaks could have been as important (or more) than the WT for managing the diplomacy between the westland countries and dealing with Darkfriends. But in the books they failed, and were corrupted by the shadow (Nial being a darkfriend).

For Me, their importance is of the World (and even so, only in the westlands), but not their predominance.

Further, the AesSedai had no power of decision.
The AesSedai had no influence on the East (Aiels/Shara/rest of the eastern part) ; the Aiels, for once are at least as important (in term of soldier force/chaneler force for fighting the LB, or at least conquering the west) as half of the west lands, or maybe the whole waste lands taken together, WT comprised (not counting the "main character AesSedai"). but we forget that because most of them follow Rand Early in the Story.
The AesSedai had no influence on Seanchan (which is an Empire as big as the westlands, originally comprised of many countries).
The AesSedai had no influence on the SeaFolk
Etc

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

I agree with a lot of the facts you've pointed out from the series, but I draw a different conclusion from them. The Aes Sedai have some form of impact on every civilization in the world, bar Shara. Mapping WoT to a game of CiV, the White Tower slots perfectly into the role of international mediator, because that's a lot of what they did. Even places that didn't welcome the Aes Sedai or actively opposed them have a portion of their politics defined by that antagonistic relationship - which is still a form of influence.

I'm not saying the Aes Sedai are inherently superior to the Wise Ones in an in-universe way. It's their institution that makes them a part of the fabric (er, Pattern) of the whole world, rather than a single civilization. The Age of Legends is also the starting point for our mod too, which still gives the Aes Sedai historical founding - in the same way that the emergence of human civilization is the assumed background of base CiV.

Using the Wise Ones as a UU while the Aes Sedai are "GP-like" isn't set in stone by any means either - counterpoint and I haven't discussed channeling at length yet and I think he has a lot of ideas there too, so Wise Ones may also be 'elevated' above normal units as well, just in a different way.

Calavente said:
(Btw, I'm currently reading book 12 out of the total 14 but I'm not really bothered by spoilers.. I have a good intuition and my pleasure in reading is not really damaged by knowing the end).

You're in for a treat, book 14 was my favorite, with book 2 in second!

Calavente said:
another of mine perky remarks
I just looked at L5R mod... and they have good Ideas for UU / UB / UA that are original.
Most won't translate to WoT, but might be good inspirations.

Which mod is this? I'd be interested to take a look as well!

Calavente said:
further, I thought about his idea of clan/civ.
translate this into People / Nation
here I'm only brainstorming.. so don't take it too seriously:

Maybe you could have some global "people" groups :
aiels (different clans or brotherhoods)
seachan (we can even find 2-3 civs for them by looking at the books: Imperials(Hawkingians / mountainers (they have a name) / wildsedai (or whatever are those tyrants) / another civ ?)
Andor-Cairhen-Manetheren
Borderlanders (5 nations: Malkier / Saldea / Arafel / Kandor / Shienar)
westerners: Amadicia/tarabon/domani/Ghealdan
Easterners (only Shara)
South-easters: Tear / Mayenne/illian/altara / FarMadding / Murandy
Aathanmiere : SeaFolks / Aratham (or whatever is that other group)

Each "people" share an UA or belief or UB or UU or whatever
each Nation gets its own perks.
maybe Aiels get an UA "if a non-Aiel party declare wars, gain +5%str per friendly Aiel civ"...
..; but then it will be difficult to give different UU / UA / UB to each Aiel Clan or Brotherhood

Borderlanders: +10%vs shadowspawn +10% vs shadow influence.

It's an interesting concept, like linking up multiple civs so that they share some common bonuses as well as having their own uniques? It does add another layer of complexity. It might be a bit variable between games (what if there are no other Aiel civs in this game, for example). I think we're a bit stretched for uniques for some civs, like you mention if we go for multiple Aiel clans. We don't get a ton of info differentiating the clans aside from the Shaido vs other Aiel.

I'm not sure what this offers over the uniques system provided by CiV, where each civ has its own uniques. It will make some civs more similar to each other, which may be a positive or negative depending on your play style. Some people will like the consistency and 'tweaking' for optimal strategies with different parameters. Others will dislike that there are multiple options that feel quite the same.

counterpoint · Aug 28, 2014

My my, I close my eyes for three days and look at the novel you guys have written!

In any case, in lieu of the standard quote-everybody-in-order thing, I'm going to have to do this topic by topic, quoting Calavente and S3rgeus together, etc. Otherwise, there's just way too much to wrap my brain around.

Also, due to my schedule, I'm probably going to have to respond in pieces.

Let's begin! First I'll tackle S3rgeus' responses to me, even though they're later in the thread, because he's responding to *earlier* posts by me.

S3rgeus said:
I think making the cultural victory harder is an important side effect to consider here. I've yet to have a game where more than 2 civs focus on culture in the end-game, and most of the time it's just me because the AI is bad at it. I do run out of dig sites (even by myself) by the end of the game, and very early if I don't go for Exploration to unlock the hidden antiquity sites.

Your response is making me regret this proposition. My aim wasn't to make things super complicated or anything, just more "cool." If it's going to throw the balance all off... might not be a great idea. The goal was definitely not to make a cultural victory more difficult.

That said, it could work to just make each artifact more powerful for culture, right? To compensate for less availability? Though, again, that needs to be rebalanced....

S3rgeus said:
Oh, right! I'd say we can rebrand some (I like Tithe, since it's good, but that's a Founder belief) and make up new stuff for others. Honestly none of the pantheons stand out to me as instantly recognizable, but they tend to be targeted towards types of starting positions.

Also, I love the prime-numbered year thing! Would need to be a higher amount of faith, but yeah, that is pretty awesome.

Ha! I was being facetious about the prime number thing... doesn't really seem to fit the WoT universe much.

OK, well when I get around to doing a "treatment" of the pantheons (hopefully next few days, depending on how off topic things [continue to] get), I'll probably keep most intact.

S3rgeus said:
Interesting, but I thought you were RP guy? Something like this that's largely cosmetic (we'll probably be using a similar set of bonuses just distributed differently in each configuration? since we're catering for the same wants for faith, gold, etc.) I really like it if we can be as in-universe as possible. I can see that #2 would be much easier to associate given "peoples" with specific bonuses that we 'want' to have to fulfill a specific role.

Yes, it is definitely true that the "top-knots" and such allow us, very easily, to sneak in a whole lot of in-universe stuff without having to make it all a "big deal."

I guess one difficult thing about this, from an RP perspective, is us trying to somehow unify the given Style Tradition with a bonus that makes sense for that civ. For example, a hardcore RPer for the Shienar civ would choose top-knots, and would probably expect that that Tradition would have something to do with Shienar - combat, the blight, whatever - and not something random.

Come to think of it, maybe that makes it easier to pick stuff...

S3rgeus said:
Ah, I see. That's a difficult one. We can stretch out the eras, but it's a bit strange that we do a one-time decelaration at the end. I understand your suggestion about the War of Hundred Years more now too. That could work - have the Trolloc Wars and The War of Hundred Years be eras with fewer techs, like The Fourth Age, but in the middle of the tech tree. We can use the 'world era' to trigger those events like we do the Last Battle then?

Well, if we're trying to map the ages to Randland more-or less accurately, one other thing is we could have a deceleration happen, also, during a few other key times - Trolloc Wars, for instance. This assumes the TW are only only started by a calendar date, and not a tech thing. Seems like that changes how Civ's time periods work. What's the simplest thing to do here?

Also, how do we deal with the whole calendar change thing? Like, FY 1 is at the end of the TW, for instance (and FY1 has a different turn-count date every game, consequently)?

S3rgeus said:
Crud, did we say that? I would think that's a massive overlap with the diplo victory? I thought that winning with Prestige was something akin to the base CiV cultural victory - that you've become a dominant force in defining the way the world goes about policy/society. That's clearly possible for a Shadow civ, and necessarily affects the 'flavor' of that victory (your culture might not itself be evil, but then again this might effectively be winning by converting everyone). I'll read back on this one once I've replied here.

Yeah, unless I'm misremembering, we did say that - and I thought it was weird then, too. I guess the issue is that once we changed Tourism to Prestige, that kind of outcome appeared to be the natural result of being super Prestigious in the WoT world. Doesn't have to be that, though. Having it be identical to the end result of Tourism doesn't quite make sense either.

S3rgeus said:
Exactly, I figured the Ajahs would do something very like this. I only thought the 'sending channelers to the Tower' mechanic would make up a small portion of each Ajah's overall influence. We could link the Ajah quests to relationships with other city-states (rather than the super annoying 'bully this city-state' quest, have a 'form a relationship with this city-state' quest).

There's obviously more on diplo later on, but yeah, I agree.

As far as sending units to train, I'll remind you of the notion I had earlier that this can also be tied to promotions for channeling units (study with the Yellows at learn to heal, etc.) - more on this later, when I get to it.

One thing I find iffy about base Civ's diplo victory is the ability to snipe so easily. Like, just gather your gold, then blow tons of it one turn before the world leader election.... I don't mind diplo being the "gold" victory, but this seems kind of unfair, yes? Thoughts?

S3rgeus said:
I thought the same thing about the Tower's decrees normally being internal, but I think it's a fair extension given the Tower's influence in global WoT politics. Their internal edicts eventually come to affect other governments, just not quite as 'directly' as we're applying them here. I like the tweak, where Sitters will vote your way if you have the most influence with them. It turns the way influence is collected/displayed around (which is already in), but at this stage we probably shouldn't be reluctant to change that.

Sorry to waste code! Not knowing the way you currently have it, though, it's hard for me to say either way if we should change it.

S3rgeus said:
I wouldn't suggest that the Seanchan be locked out the Diplo victory - but instead that players who adopt the "capture all channelers" ideology would be. The ideologies in base CiV already preclude you from one of the 4 'active' victory conditions, so I think it makes sense for ours to do the same.

WHA? Mind blown again. The ideologies in BNW *lock* you out of victories? I always thought that the icons by each choice just represented which victory types are most suited for that ideology.

I don't know how I feel about that.... maybe the "capture channelers" should still be able, through difficulty, to manipulate the White tower to do their bidding?

S3rgeus said:
What do you mean by a "cap"? I'm clearly in favor of the second for this set, but it will be the weekend before I can draw up a full list of pros/cons for these sets.

One thing I'll note quickly is that either option here requires us to quantify and track each civ's alignment over the course of the game - and the mechanisms to affect that alignment will likely be the same either way. And that's the big, difficult to implement part of this whole set-up. So we can try both without much overhead, if we can't decide in theory which one we like most.

What I mean by "cap" is simply that I like the first option, with an ending "on top" to be the choice you prefer.

It sounds like you just said "they're really difficult to implement - let's try both!" Is that what you mean? That seems somewhat self-punishing of you....

S3rgeus said:
I agree with pretty much all of the issues you've outlined about the Last Battle as an event rather than a victory condition. It does throw a lot of other things into flux and I think the main gain, as you've said, is simplicity. And that's primarily up-front simplicity for us now, rather than gameplay-wise for the player. While I don't think we should bite off more than we should chew, we should go for a better end product even if it's more work now.

I'm strongly in favor of option 2 for this one (Last Battle as a parallel victory condition). It's the most difficult to balance and has some issues we've discussed with 'strangeness' from winning. But I think that strangeness is inherent to CiV and a trade-off it willingly makes against favoring a single type of victory like most games. The balancing thing is more work then, really!

OK, so it looks like LB-as-just-an-event is scrapped, then?

S3rgeus said:
You and your RPGs! I think this is a big point here though, I'd actually say that civ doesn't traditionally reward RPing in its truest sense. It tends to give thematic characteristics gameplay effects that reward a certain approach to the game (which may be what you mean), but I don't think it actively encourages RP. Not saying RP is bad, I often pick religions based on the civ I'm playing and will tend towards 'realistic-ish' strategies for given leaders. But there's also nuclear Gandhi - a bug originally, but now a staple of the series. I think a lot of civ (the whole series) rewards messing with history and trying different things.

Right. I just don't want our system to reward suicidal "meta" behavior. Like, you SHOULD be fighting trollocs, because there are 750,000 of them seiging your city. But, man, if you just build one more archaeologist, you'll win culture! Seems silly. That said, I think this point is now irrelevant because of all the later convo....

S3rgeus said:
Interesting and does sound pretty cool. It's quite complex from a player's point of view, and could be very frustrating in single player though. We can improve the AI, but only so much and a good player will basically always be better. We don't want to saddle them with a bunch of AIs that can't hold up their part of the bargain and then they lose because of it - they were good enough to win, but they were sabotaged by their 'allies.'

Right. You know the AI limitations much better than I do. Still... I've been thinking about this since I wrote this, and I'm really starting to think this is the best option. It, really, gives us both what we're aching for - you the idea of still doing your old-school victory (neutral and shadow players, or alliance-resistant light players), and me the elimination of silly stuff by putting in a "system" that rewards "doing the LB for realz" for those who want it. Anyways, it looks like Calavante suggested some things that are rather close to these ideas, anyways, so I'll look again and what he suggested and how you took those ideas.

Regarding the AI, my thoughts:

1) Maybe by having more-or-less clearly-defined roles, this can make the AI not so dumb? Like, either certain civs always default to certain behavior, or it is all prescribed by the elected Leader (putting aside disobedience for now)
2) Maybe this is balanced by the shadow guys all fighting each other and/or not cooperating?

S3rgeus said:
Good point about giving the Shadow players another target. I think that having only one Shadow winner be possible is quite essential to the balance of the Last Battle though. Otherwise why would you ever pick Light? If you pick the Shadow you don't have to fight the Shadowspawn, so there needs to be some balancing risk aversion for the Light side, otherwise choosing the Shadow is all upside. Choosing the Light may help a federation of smaller civilizations band together against a larger one because they don't have to guard against each other any more.

I don't think we've discussed yet between our False Dragons about having the real Dragon. That sounds like quite a cool idea. The first thing I wonder about is how we decide who controls him and how transporting the Seals to Thakan'dar actually works. (Are the Seals units? Held by units? Maybe only specific units? Or can you move them likes Spies?)

I wonder if maybe the key here is not that the Shadow civs must Dominate the other civs, but that they must Win some sort of Victory, in addition to beating the light. Meaning, you've gotta kill the light and do whatever we decide that is (kill Rand, etc.), but you also need to either win culture, science (shadow science), diplo, domination, etc. This supports the notion I expressed earlier about the naebliss not necessarily just being the guy who kills the most dudes. I suspect if the LB ended and still nobody had pulled off a victory, either we keep going until they do, or the DO shakes his (etherial) head in shame.
Requiring a second victory balances against the inherent easiness to the shadow, and definitely discourages (possibly unbalancing) large numbers of shadow civs.

So, according to that, the LB victory conditions would be:

1) Lightside - work together and best the Shadow (various conditions must be fulfilled) - other Victories are locked). Huge target from shadowspawn and shadow civs, but benefits from working together. Team Victory.
2) Shadowside - beat the light (various conditions must be fulfilled) AND win some victory condition. Can control Shadowspawn (and don't get attacked by them, unless they are sent to you from another shadow player). Solo victory
3) Neutral - win victory condition (No LB-specific stuff needed). Likely a lesser target of the shadowspawn... but potentially a huge target from both Shadow and Light civs if they feel you are a threat by being close to victory. Solo victory - most viable, likely, for civs quite close to victory as the LB starts, and/or those geographically removed from the Blight and other civs.

S3rgeus said:
Agreed, I'm not a big fan of choosing neutral for the Last Battle either.

I didn't mean to imply that I'm not a "fan" of neutrality as a game-mechanic. I think it serves to allow the solo-victory in that normal Civ way you've been hoping for. But by setting up the dragon peace, we offer the immersive "True LB" experience. Heck, maybe most games the majority of players choose neutral.

OK, now I'll tackle S3rgeus' responses to the 1st Calavente

S3rgeus said:
Interesting that Morgase comes up as a leader for Andor from a lot of people. I'm still a big fan of Elayne. Agree on the other points - and I'm the same as counterpoint in that out of those I can only see the Dragons as a potential UU, but then that does introduce issues with what the end-game siege units actually are elsewhere.

I actually don't think Dragons need be a UU... especially since they're only associated with Andor because of the stuff going down during the LB. I think they might make the most sense as, as I mentioned before, a late-game unit maybe available once a civ has built an illuminator's guild or something. That said, maybe Andor's UU is a better "Band Dragon" or something. Or they have the Dragons, and everybody else just has "Cannons" or something.

S3rgeus said:
I was thinking of these as potential UUs, but the fine details of the channeling system are definitely still rough. Even in (Westlands) civs that have their own channelers like this, the Aes Sedai from the White Tower play a big part in defining their nation's politics.

Will respond regarding channeler UUs and stuff in a later response.

S3rgeus said:
I think this is something counterpoint touched on briefly before and I quite like this as a way of getting Aes Sedai - it promotes them above a unit you can just pump out with impunity, which they never were in the books.

Yeah, when I respond to the backhalf of these threads (later tonight or tomorrow, probably), I'll detail this more, but one problem about the GP-AS thing is that then we'll have a lot of different GPs..... Also, GPs are slowed by wide empires, right? But the more citizens you have, the more likely you are to get channelers, i'd think, right?

Regarding Training wilders in the WT... yeah, that's an idea I dropped in one of my first posts. Waiting to develop it further once we settle all this other stuff!

More on this shortly

S3rgeus said:
Restricting the player this way is difficult without it feeling very arbitrary for the player. The AI is bad at understanding 'ramifications' of actions that it sees as unrelated, but that are very clearly related to a human observer. The White Tower AI would need to be very impressive to be able to restrict a civ's wars/decision in a non-frustrating way.

Agreed. There are other ways of simulating the three oaths and the structure of the WT, IMO.

S3rgeus said:
I think some of these are very good mechanics to locate elsewhere. I hadn't considered the Wise Ones' non-strength-based hierarchy as an incentive to allow non-GP-units to become governors - or even for that to be possible in any circumstance. I don't know if we could attribute it as a UA to the Aiel, because, while important, the Wise Ones don't really define their culture entirely, but it's a really cool mechanic.

Smells like a social policy to me!

re: "The False Dragon."... lol at "Some False Dragon," "a False Dragon," or "YOUR false dragon!"

S3rgeus said:
The diplo victory isn't as fleshed out as the Last Battle one at this stage, but I think the link to the White Tower makes a lot of sense. The base CiV diplo victory is based on a theoretical 'world leader' elected through the United Nations. The White Tower is the closest thing to an 'impartial' diplomatic body that exists in WoT beyond the influence of a single civilization.

Agreed.

S3rgeus said:
I'm strongly in favor of avoiding having a flat-out 'points' score determine a victor. There are a couple of problems with that kind of system. Counterpoint mentioned one, which is that it's not a very flavorful victory. The other is a sense of 'fairness' for the player. Why are certain things worth a certain number of points? What makes this thing that I've done worth less than what that other civ has done? Depending on the arrangement of the game, some things that are worth more points may be drastically easier for certain civs. (Example, if killing Shadowspawn is a primary source of points, a military-focused Shienar near the Blight will clean up the game by himself.) That all could, in theory, be 'fixed' with careful balancing, but I think that there will always be circumstances where it will seem unfair to a human player and quite 'game-y,' which CiV in general avoids - there are valid in-universe characterizations for how most things work.

Right. Also, it seems crazy hard to balance Score, also. If we do a more "tangible" victory condition, it seems we can test the balance by simply seeing how often each victory type is successful.... Score seems like it would be maddeningly hard to predict.

S3rgeus said:
Like I said above, I'd been thinking along these lines as well. There is a basic "wilder" unit, that's the first female channeling unit, which is in the mod already, but that can always be moved/changed.

Yeah, Calavente, you're getting it spoiled! You mentioned book 12 like you'd already read it... I think dragons exist by then, yes?

And one reason why I didn't search for this mod last year (when you first started it) was that I was deathly afraid of spoilers (I was almost through aMoL when I joined this particular party).

S3rgeus said:
This does make a lot of sense, because I'm not sure what else could be the end-game siege units. And you're right that it was (spoilers?) Aludra's idea and execution that brought about the Dragons - Elayne (and Andor) just financed it - which could easily be seen as a 'tech' that Andor just got to first

Yep!

OK, so that has me "caught up" with things that aren't Calavante's new post (and Illianor). Those will have to wait til later!

Calavente · Aug 29, 2014

@counterpoint :
you don't need to respond too seriously to my points ^^

@S3ergeus: L5R :
I agree with the issue of "too much sameness".
but, on the other hand, it only ADDS one UU/UA/UB to the group... so the civs are all as much different as without this, there is just one other layer of differences : which "people" do you belong with.

for WT : I agree to disagree

, I won't open the subject again. (anyway, my main concern is linked to the diplomacy issue being entirely dependant on WT... in the books, no Aiel civ ("bunch of wilder-savages") would be chosen by the WT as world leader..)

but IMO for AesSedai... you should/could allow other path of greatness than AesSedai for female Channelers (as opposed to "standard channelers").

On channelers:
IMO, Channelers could be of 4 types (at the same time in-game):
-basic units that you build/ buy with faith / buy to WT...Etc all Damane, most AesSedai, most WiseOnes/Windmistresses/most Ashaman (and remember, if there were few AesSedai in each nations... there were a lot of Wise Ones channelers in Aiel Clans... a lot of windmistresses, and a LOT of Damane... In fact, only the western lands were starved of channelers.... as those all got to the WT and came back by 1 and 2)
-basic non-chan units/workers that randomly become "wilder". Nyneave is a Healer that becomes Chan (or a wisdom) and join the WT in the Yellow Ajah.
-Channeler GP units : Caldsuane / Verin / Moiraine / Egwene ...etc
-normal GP Unit that evolve to Channeler (think Rand: Commander+Chan / Elayne: Scientist + Chan / Aviendha : Warrior+Chan ...etc) :

the combination of
-basic unit
-dual type unit
-GP
-dual GP
could allow for a lots of mechanics to balance different creeds of gaining channelers.

counterpoint · Aug 29, 2014

Now is the part of the convo where I go back and forth between all three of you. You know, like a real conversation!

Calavente said:
Well, I know that you haven't forgotten about them. but I'm expressing 2 points:
1)you were discussing AoL / Aes Sedai / Damane as the main foci. I think Aiel/SeaFolk are also strong contenders... they are also an adaptation of AoL Aes Sedai. Aiel, for once, are not "wilders" (save that aes sedai consider everyone as wilder)... they know A LOT. Often more than Aes Sedai.
IMO, their system should at least be a 4th path for Channelers.

I don't think I agree on this point, if only from the perspective of the *practical* considerations with regards to Wavemistress units. Sure the WM include particularly powerful chanellers, apparently, but these seem to be almost exclusively used to help make the SF ships move faster. I'm sure they can toss fireballs and such, but they don't appear to really train them to focus on that much.

To me, the SF channelers should essentially make their ships go faster, maybe be stronger etc. I'm not sure I really see a UU that is "Wavemistress," as in some lady you actually move around on land and such. It might just make sense for them to have Rakers or something with epic movement and range attack - and we assume that these benefits are due in part to the presence of WM. Similarly they could have enhanced cargo ships for the same reason. These things could be alternatively associated with the SF UU.
Of course, it's possible to have a WM be a regular channeling unit... but what would be the point? What would they do and be good at?

S3rgeus said:
Like I mentioned above, I think this conflicts a lot with Ideologies and may fall under the 'let them be free' classification (both Wise Ones and Wavemistresses - each has just used that freedom in a different way). Three ideologies is already well balanced in base CiV for us, and I'm not sure if there's enough of a distinction to warrant separating them out from that 'freedom' third category. (Aes Sedai are in a different 'central authority' category already.)

yeah. agreed. The nuance of these ideologies will likely have to wait, I'm afraid... (as in specific game mechanics). I'm still not 100% positive this is the absolute best way to go, but I'm something like 85%! The question is, S3rgeus, is your personal UA such that City-State Influence Increases or decreases over time? If we put off ideologies for awhile, will I be 80% sure next week, or 90%?

Calavente said:
2) you consider that Aes Sedai are the "best" ones....
I disagree: I find that Aiel Wise ones are pretty much more interesting: they do everything in a much better way than AesSedai... without needing the 3 Oaths.
In the Aiel lands they are negociator / judge / un-touchable for the Aiel Clans (each one in fact a small country) ... as Aes Sedai are within the Nations of the Western lands. They know much about Channeling. They transmit and preserve knowledge : Ruidean, Dreamers...Etc They miss few female that can become a channeler (whereas Aes Sedai miss most of them), They provide a strong training to ensure a loyalty to the people (all Aiels, independently of tribe) whereas Aes Sedai training only ensure loyalty to Aes Sedai, the "acceptance from the people" being due the the 3 Oaths and not due to a recognized loyalty.
...etc
In the End, they are "Aes Sedai of the Aiel Lands" ... in all but name.. and without counting that at beginning they were in awe of Aes-Sedai;
Indeed, in the books, Aiels are not 1 Nation... even if westerners thinks of it but multiple nations that have a same "religion" : ji'eh'toh : gaishin/Wise Ones/toh/Borhterhoods.. but wage wars between clans - brotherhoods, and have complicated interactions.. and nations that have allied quickly when the Caracan appeared

OK, I see your point, but I think, like with the windfinders above, you're considering "best" in a different sense than we are, from a game-design perspective. Allow me to explain in my predictable long-winded way.

You may very well be correct that the Wise Ones as an *institution* or a *social construct* are superior to the Aes Sedai. They have, perhaps, more of an overall "net positive" in what they do, and are essentially universally loved/respected among the Aiel (as opposed to AS being feared/untrusted/respected more often than not).

But, when we're talking about playable *units* in the game, this isn't all that relevant. Remember that WO are not required to channel. This means, by definition, that, even though they may "catch" all the channeling girls in the Wastes, on average a WO's channeling ability will be less than an AS's. Remember, the WT is routinely criticized for being *too strict* when it comes to letting people in, which has hurt their total numbers. The wise ones, by contrast, are chosen for their personality/personal abilities, in addition to their channeling. So for every Aviendha, there's a Sorilea and a Sevannah.

To me, this means we have to treat the AS *unit* as more powerful in terms of game-mechanics as the WOs. Sure, maybe a WO unit can dreamwalk and do some other kinds of stuff that ASs can't (often, at least), but in terms of combat units (which most units are for in Civ), the AS are likely to be superior. The *benefits* of the WO can lie in other areas of the game, perhaps reflected by a specific unit, but also perhaps merely represented by the Aiel UA in general. I'd like to hear thoughts on this.

The other consideration is balance. AS are bound by the 3 Oaths. In order to make that limitation "worth it" to the player, they need to be more powerful. If a WO was better than an AS in terms of game mechanics, that wouldn't be very balanced. This is similar to how we must deal with Ashaman and male channelers. If we want anybody to ever use them, they'll need to be pretty powerful, in order to compensate for the madness risk. Also, the must be powerful in order to make the *fear* of them going crazy be very palpable!

You do make an interesting point, perhaps unintentionally, about the Aiel being a collection of nations rather than one unified force. This is of course somewhat problematic from a Civ perspective - should the Shaido, perhaps, be their own Civ? For me, though, I think this can be justified by the fact that the Aiel represent one CIVILIZATION, if not one "country." I think CiV is a bit silly in this regard, especially as the games have progressed and they've tried to do new things - really, a VENICE civilization? Isn't that just a city-state in Italy? But, I think, to that point, the logic still holds up - perhaps the "American" Civilization could be said to also represent Canada, or something? Perhaps Ethiopia also represents Djibouti?

Of course, ultimately, while the Shaido might a fun "bad" Aiel, civ, nobody is interested in having there be different Civ types for each particular Clan, are they? Although, this might make a cool scenario - Fight for the Oasis!

S3rgeus said:
I definitely agree that the Wise Ones have a lot of positives vs the Aes Sedai, but I think that as an institution, the Aes Sedai have had much more far-reaching consequences for the way the world of WoT works. (Possible spoilers for close to the end of the series about the origins of the Aiel) The relationship to the Tower defined the entire Aiel set of cultures along with how they split of from the Tuatha'an. The nations in the Westlands' politics are heavily influenced by the Aes Sedai. Even the Seanchan, when they return to the Westlands, the Tower becomes a focal point of their objective to tame the marath'damane. I think the only civ that's truly escaped influence by the Aes Sedai is Shara.

Right, exactly. Also, the neutrality of the tower is another limiting factor - while the WO should only be Aiel units, no one civ can really produce AS without the WT being involved somehow. That lack of nationhood raises the prominence of the WT and AS in the game, whether we like it or not.

Calavente said:
As a sub-point of this: I'm not impressed, in the book, by the utility of Aes Sedai in General....why would they be special ? True, there are many Great AesSedai... that are special. But of those, 4 are main characters : Elayne, Egwen, Nynaeve, Moiraine.
there are a few others. Calusdane (or whatever her name)...etc
but there are also Great "wilders" : Aviendha; for once ; multiple Wise Ones (but the story goes quickly over them as they are "bound" easily to the Dragon), Some WaveMistresses, that former Damane girl that is supposed to kill Rand, and in some ways (as she is a potential chaneler) Tuon (due to her position in the seanchan hierarchy, and her ability to "tame" damane quickly and ensure increased performances).

I'm not sure what we should do at the moment, since I don't know how it fits in with all my suggestions in my first post way back when, but some kind of "Great Channeler" unit certainly makes some sense. I wouldn't see any need to differentiate though - a great channeler could be a WO, AS, WM, Damane, Kin, etc. As you indicate, powerful channelers pop up elsewhere.

Calavente said:
As I see it, you could have 2 system for channelers :
-basic unit buildable or buyable or whatever : normal Aes Sedai (think of the multitude of gray/brown/blue/green...etc that have absolutly no impact on anything....) / Normal Wise Ones, Normal Wisdom, Normal Windmistress, normal Damane, normal Male Channelers / Normal Ashaman: those have a few abilities : increased defense (One power/warders)/ strong attack against trollocs / healing / small happiness-maintenance-improved yield / avoid storms-seamonsters / use ter'angreal / diplomacy ... / strong attack-
their abilities can be improved by tech/policies : traveling / new attack spells / new Healing / Wise Ones brought into combat ...Etc

-GP-like Channelers: those have game-changing ability: you can have only few of them. (but those are not dependant on being WT or not)
some specific spells / can... search for the Dragon / find ter'angreal / discover new spells for GP-Chan or for all Channelers / fight the Forsaken ...whatever
maybe being Seanchan, you get less GP-Chan, and being very friendly with white tower you get more... but roughly : the more GP-Chan you get, the less your Channeler is powerful as a damage-unit.

As I said earlier, I am a little wary of the GP mechanics crossing over too totally with the AS/channeler mechanics, if only because then things will get really complicated and confusing (your city screen building up like 7 different GP, for example). Integration of non-combat channelers, like Brown Ajah and stuff, is a viable flavor-element, of course. Will come back to this another time.

Calavente said:
Yes, I know My ideas are more adapted to civ4 like religions....
but anyway, just for the sake of argueing :
your capital has AS "acceptance" and your production city has Wise Women... (case for Arad-Doman) :
what happened when Paris was Catholic and Toulouse was "hugenot / Protestant" ? : not easy...
but what is your state religion ?
WT : you get a bonus with the White Tower: and can receive Aes Sedai as "present"...
but your production city get bonus for "Wise Women" being present in city, but you can't use/build units (anyway, Wise Women is not a "religion" that give much units but mostly healers + city benefitds) /but doesn't contribute much to generating wilders to give them to the WT.

Wise Ones is State religion, Capital AS / Production WO: Rand's Aiels (capital is with Rand, which is roughly pro-WT, but Aiel production city is purely Wise One system) : can produce "much" Wise One units, cordial relation with WT : can influence Ajahs but not much, can get a few AS given, but either not strong units, or on lease or something...

but I agree, that doesn't work well with civ5's religion system

Yeah this is really really complex, in a way that I don't love. Also, I don't think Hugenots get *bonuses* to stuff in France, do they? +2 to Hugenot-ness? Catholics get +2 to Catholicness?

Calavente said:
I think WT and getting hand on the Dragon should be high bonus for getting the Diplomacy victory.. but shouldn't be the only means.If SeanChan convert much people to their "control-the-marath'daman" way of thinking, plus get much territory / have many puppet states... they should be able to win by diplomacy ("all western territories plead Oaths and accept the Emperess as their Overlord...You have won a diplomatic victory"

I would argue that this seanchan diplo victory is actually more of a domination victory.

S3rgeus said:
I like this idea and we'll probably discuss it more as well nail down more details for the diplo victory. Secretly helping increase influence for the Black Ajah seems like a good way to still allow Shadow-aligned civs still participate in the diplo victory (which I don't think they should be locked out of).

Yeah, something to consider!

counterpoint · Aug 29, 2014

Calavente said:
well, IMO the LB victory needs to be a "score" victory. Otherwise people, especially light side, won't contribute as much as possible to the LB.

For other VC, you could get an independant science/diplomatic/cultural victory before the end of the LB...
if you want the LB to be a Victory Condition : as the LB is imposed to all ... how do you separate the different contributors to the LB to see who of the winning side has really won the game ?
Otherwise, the LB is only an "event" that, as you said, only spins the wheel... killing units/cities here and there (like Armaggeddon in FFH.... ) but remember : armaggeddon in FFH is a fun mechanism... even if it is not a victory condition.

Or maybe the LB is a team VC : all of the winning side Win, with no way of departaging the winners ... and if the LB drags for too long... everybody loses.
However, even in that case, you can't say that the guy that "allied with light" but turtled away without even contributing to help the others has really won the LB...

You are correct that the "fair" contribution to the cause is a potential problem. However, the Score victory is lame for reasons (both in principle and in practice). expressed well by S3rgeus.

Never played FFH - worth checking out?

Calavente said:
However what I would propose would be a bit different:
IMO, for the LB there could be 3 sides:
-Light : gain bonus for LB: Channelers / Moral / weapons to seal the DO / dragonlegion units, Ogier Warriors (unless Seanchan which already have some in the DeathGuard)...Etc, but you are ponctionned a lot : roughly you have to abandon/reduce your chance of personnal victory to give your contribution to the LB : sciencefocused contribute by giving/discovering new weapons/way to seal...Etc (new option opened, but hard to do) Food heavy contribute by improved logisitics of everybody.... etc.

-Shadow : gain bonus for LB : trolloc/Myrddhal/Channelers/ True Power / Non-Mad Channelers / ShadowFriend contribution to help disparage other countries (even before LB) /

-Neutral : don't contribute/don't win the LB : free to pursue their own victory type (really limited: domination / cultural / science), but no bonus against LB, risk of being submerged by LB... and risk of not being in the victorious team once the LB is won by one side: you think the other will protect the world (defeat the shadow's armies), but not get the full LB victory (all forsaken killed / but bore not sealed...etc)... and you will win before/after the LB. (limitation you can't declare war during LB but light/shadow can declare war on you)
but chosing that option doesn't mean that you are close to a personnal victory... it might be that you are too small/weak and contributing to the LB will kill your civ... and you might lose even if sided with light/shadow.
so you take the risk of no help for LB: dealing with trollocs the hard way...etc for the chance of surviving the LB.
typically in the books :
Shienar cannot do that : being neutral would still make them targetted by trollocs.
Seanchan in tanchico or Mayenne, or the Sea-Folk could... : not threatened directly by the blight /trollocs hords, contributing could make them lose things: Seanchan could lose many cities if armies are sent to the blight instead of maintaining control, Sea-Folk could lose all windmistress if seanchan way of treating channelers is the dominant one...Etc or if WT "takes them", plus would lose most of its "cities-ships" : ships crew would be crippled by death on land-combats
..etc

Right. Isn't this basically what I proposed a few days back? I've come around to liking this (general) idea, and it's currently my frontrunner. I don't know if I'm with you on the specifics, but in general I think this is smart.

I do disagree, in particular, that Neutral is a choice that makes any sense for a weak civilization. If I were terrible or behind in normal victories, I'd think my only real hope of victory would be to join Team Light and do my best to survive and contribute. You are right that the Seanchan almost do this, and they could potentially pull it off - but they're strong enough to win a domination victory, especially given a war-ravaged westlands. The SF... I don't know, but I'd guess they might be able to win a diplo victory or something else based on their strong economy, and great distance from the regular fight.. They're not weak, not in that regard.

Calavente said:
win LB by fullfiling multiple steps :

Spoiler :

Light side:
2) survive trolloc rushes,
3) Achievements ("international-space-station" like victory): clean trolloc camps, kill forsakens, close the bore (The Breaking kind of victory: no proper sealing of the bore) greater contributor is the "main winner" but all team wins: logisitics is one achievement, improving weapons for all team (dragons) is another, closing /sealing the bore another, cleaning camps another, killing forsaken another / killing evil chanelers black ajah or male chanelers another ...Etc.
Victory is due to the best contributor to the achievements... "prestige like victory" (needs to be balanced):
closing the bore : 1000pts, sealing it : 2000pts,
killing trolloc 1pt
killing myrdhal 10pt
killing Evil Channeler : 10pt
Killing/subduing/capturing Forsaken:50pt
Clearing Camp : 50pt
Improving weapons : +1/1 to all units of light team ; 2pt by unit owned by the light team at time of improvement + 2pt for each further unit built
Disclosing Dragons tech : +10pt per dragon build anywher in light team (dragon give points to the discloser... but even if not discloser you want them as they improve you r ods of killing myrddhal/trollocs... so more points for you.
Contributing to Logistics : 1pt/yield given to other civs...etc
Imposing Dragon Peace : 200pt

..etc
(no need to subdue shadow civs... Shara was not conquered in the books, only defeated it's army)

Shadow:
1) chose side
2) defeat all light civs
3) You win if you are the closest to the DO : more units / pop / achievements / kills / conquered cities at the end of LB.
Science civs have better access to waygates to move their units toward cities
Cultural civs can gain more trollocs
Faith civs get more channelers / True Power /
Diplomacy civs get more access to Shadow friends (assassins / turning ennemy units / easier capture of cities / CS )
another type get more Forsaken units to control
...etc
the shadow civs need thus to : conserve their forces, contribute to last battle, be sure to backstab each other to reduce the surviving forces of other shadow civs.

Neutral : you don't win the LB... but hope that the light defeat enough shadow without winning the LB.

I'm sure some of these suggestions are great, but I feel like we should hammer this out once we've settled the generalities of this victory condition.

S3rgeus said:
I think having Sealing the Bore as a separate science victory or making it a part of the Last Battle are mutually exclusive. If it 'is' the science victory, then centralizing it into the Last Battle runs into the replayability issues counterpoint and I have been discussing about parallelization-or-not of the Last Battle as a victory condition.

Interesting thought though - if Sealing the Bore is the separate science victory, does that mean a Shadow civ can use it to win? I know I'm generally leaning toward gameplay-over-flavor in terms of victory 'weirdness,' but that seems a bit nonsensical. Maybe integrating it fully into the Last Battle and have 'another' science victory is the way to go (something to do with Rand's legacy of 'schools' across the continent?). It solves some of our Last Battle winning issues and some of our 'how does science victory work' issues too.

Yeah, I agree. not inclusive with one another. I honestly like the Bore stuff better as an LB victory condition only - otherwise the science victory sort of feels like you somehow "cheated" and won the LB, right?

Remember how Rand was all about creating his legacy of Academies and stuff? I know we'd probably be using those as an eponymous replacement for Academies from CiV, but maybe building a whole bunch of these as Projects is the Science Victory? Like, you know, ushering the world into the new era. Needs to be made more compelling (and interactive, as you've wanted), but tmaybe that's doable. You know, maybe not Shock Lances and Sho-Wings, but setting the world up for the 4th age. I dunno.

If the Bore stuff is an LB-only condition, then likely the Shadow players would have some kind of related objective - destroy them, hide the real seals, etc.

Calavente said:
Here are my thought of it :
Introduction:
One wants Diplomatic victory to factor those aspects:
-WT has an important weight.
-anti-WT (amadicia / white-Cloaks / Seanchan ... even Shadow) can gain Diplomatic victory.
-Diplo victory also factor civ5 diplovictory mechanisme: CS friendship ..Etc

I would add to this that Gold should be a part of it, since that appears to be a big part of it in CiV.

S3rgeus said:
Only thing here, crossing over with ideologies that I mentioned above, is that I think we can afford to lock Seanchan-like civs (intentionally not the actual Seanchan civ, unless they choose the 'capture' ideology) out of the diplomatic victory, given that base CiV ideologies lock you out of one victory type each.

I've said this before, but I'd be happier not to *actually* lock out these ideologies, unless I'm missing something. Better, I think would be to make it more difficult for them, but not impossible. I mean, assuming you don't take over the WT or something. Using espionage, money, etc., maybe diplo victory could still be possible. Certainly for Tear or somebody like that, where they aren't killing them, but majorly distrust them.

Calavente said:
Propositions
Main Mechanism:
Periodic "World Leader Elections" (or "who will lead the Last Battle" elections) during the Age of the Dragon.

in the books : Rand could not win it in WoT 12 as tuon refused it, and WT did not agree (Egwene and Elaida want to be in control of Rand .. even if different ways of controlling)

Seanchan tried it but failed as WT did not subdue and they did not own the Dragon and the offended most "free" countries

Pax Draconis can be represented as a mechanics during the LB for chosing sides... but does not define a World Leader.

For the Elections :
Contenders are only Nations.
-the 3 biggest in score (or: 3-4 contenders for victory: the one with biggest lands, the one with more culture, the one with most influence, the one with most science)
-the one proposed by WT (or by strongest Ajah)
-the civ with the Dragon Reborn

Votes are seperated as follow
-1 part for nations
-1 part for CS (not WT)
-1 part for WT
-1 part for Dragon

Need 66% voice to be elected leader (absolute majority)

Roughly: if you own 3 parts out of the 4, you are sure to win.

Nations and CS:
fixed effect for being a nation
effect of score: can increase the fixed effect if bigger/more advanced ...Etc.
example : being a nation gives 2 points
score gives from 0 point (CS-like Nation, with few achievements) to 4 points if biggest score (or biggest pop / armies / score &#8230

CS get 2 point each

(or however that is managed in civ5)

WT:
WT part of the total depends on influence points gained by
-per Aes Sedai in game (or size of the WT / number of "aes sedai": units+pop+ whatever)
-number of Civs / CS that have cordial relations with WT/ajahs
-Dragon–civ is cordial to WT

WT votes is unanimous.
However : its decision needs the Greater Concensus.
60% are given, with prorata depending on the individual str of Ajahs, to those favored by each Ajah (sitters)
10% is given to who is favored by the strongest Ajah
5% is given to who is favored by the second strongest Ajah
25% is given by the Amyrlin (which often votes as it's Ajah or for the Civ that brought more to the WT or the civ with the Dragon Reborn)
If Black Ajah controls an Ajah sitters, all its points goes to the contender supported by Black Ajah.
If Black Ajah controls the Heads of half of the Ajahs (roughly: control half of all sisters) it controls the Amyrlins' vote.

WT total influence should fluctuate between:
-5% of total if everybody is AntiWT (WhiteCloaks / Seanchan / Tear), very few Free AE, and WT is razed.
(but still 5% as there will always be a WT-in-Exile)
to
-60% if there is no anti-WT faction, and many AesSedai units are presents in each countries, and WT controls the Dragon (15%).

So being best buddy with the WT can give an automatic win if the WT is very very strong (but you still need to get 6% so: 15% of the civ-CS parts.).
But in normal games, unless damane-country work for it, the WT should have 20-30% of votes: important, but not the only way to win, not even a blocking majority.

Dragon:
Whoever Controls the Dragon Reborn get an automatic 15% of voices.

Civs needs to have ways to Control the Dragon Reborn. (GE mix of Male Channeler / Great Capitain / Scientist)

Civs needs to have ways to "Capture the Dragon Reborn": difficult but easier than gaining control of the Dragon Reborn.
-highly dangerous as most Dragonswore hates you
-the dragon reborn can "resist"
so either : you give him to the WT..
or you need some way to "subdue the Dragon"
-shadow can get male Adam
-Damane countries can have shields or whatever
-AE / Wise Ones countries need some way other than giving to WT... but not easy to get...

So to win by dilpo:
multiple ways:
-suck up to the WT and be proposed by WT

-be friendly to all CS
-Decrease WT influence so as to be free of it's influence
+
easier access by :
Secure the Dragon (either to you, or to your friend the WT)

well, anyway,.. those are all ideas.
you may refuse them, use some parts, transform some parts...etc

My my that's a LOT of details! As S3rgeus said afterwards, I'm a bit afraid of too many details at this point, since we're in the middle of the epic LB discussion.... and the Religion discussion. But this will all be helpful later.

Generally speaking, I do like that the WT is not the sole determining factor of a diplo victory - this is how a Tear or Seanchan-like civ could still win Diplo.

As far as the importance of the Dragon (mentioned by S3rgeus) as being problematically tied up in the LB stuff), I figure he can be something like the effect of a World Religion or World Ideology - bonuses to whoever has him. That said, I'm not sure what "controlling" the Dragon should mean, outside of the LB. Maybe its just based on which Civ he is born in? Actually, that makes a lot of sense. Andor is so central to the plot, and the LB, in the books, because Rand was born in the Two Rivers. He was Elayne's lover! If he had been born in Tear, maybe it would have gone down differently. Maybe the Dragon is born in a civ based on unrelated reasons to diplomacy - culture output, religion/faith, "old blood lineage" stuff.. Interesting.

As to your specific suggestions in terms of the balancing of each element, I honestly have no idea what I think. Would take some focused study. I'm in favor of settling the generalities first - which major components we want - and then go into the specifics.

I am glad you mentioned the Greater Consensus. I'd thought of it and promptly forgot it. It's an interesting Tower-politics thing that could be interesting flavor. The Greater Consensus is *not* a supermajority, though (66%). It's unanimous, as I recall. I don't know how viable it is, but resolutions that are somehow unanimous could carry more weight? I can't imagine that happening much (maybe only in the LB-era), but it's interesting. Other tower politic things we could consider including, because they are relatively central to the books:

- Ajah's eyes-and -ears (ties to espionage)
- electing an amyrlin from a particular Ajah/deposing one
- a rebel faction (crazy, I know)

counterpoint · Aug 29, 2014

Illianor123 said:
I just read this thread today (yes, i have too much time on my hands) and I am very excited by it, but bear with me if I confuse some stuff from the 6 pages.

-The Last Battle-

I feel like this is a necessary component of any WoT game, and that winning it is part of every victory condition (and obviously losing it means youre dead and so cant win). This also means that by winning any of the standard victory conditions early, you still have to fight the last battle, but you get some major advantages from doing so. Similarly being on the way to winning one of them with give some bonuses.

Welcome!

Yeah, I started out totally with you. S3rgeus is very convincing though. I've ultimately decided that he's right.

That said, I do think if you DO win a non-LB victory, they should make you feel bad about it - yours is a hollow victory. Also, I wouldn't mind setting up some kind of mechanic to make the "Just one more Turn" thing not feel like an epilogue - more like, "you've won, no try to REALLY win". Find a way to let people keep playing. Not sure how possible it is.

Illianor123 said:
- Domination: Beating all the civs beforehand means that you have the choice of choosing the Light and fighting the last battle yourself (with all the land under your control0, or choosing the shadow and winning then and there.
- Diplo: At the outbreak of the LB, Tar Valon calls for a vote on who should lead the war, the winner getting some bonuses. I think tar Valon should give every light side Aes Sedai and the winner twice as many.
- Cultural: Any Civs that you are influential over must choose the same side as you, in case of being influenced by multiple civs, the one with the highest prestige wins
- Science: Science Victory doesnt really happen in stages, but being high on science should mean advanced units, and being prepared for the outbreak of war. A suggestion could be the capacity to reproduce terangreal and saangreal

In particular, I am definitely interested in the Cultural and Diplo things you mentioned. Clearly the Tower should play into the light-side bonuses... unless they are controlled by the Black!

I don't think you should be forced to join with civs that are influential to you, but it should definitely affect your leaning somewhat, I'd say. Makes sense.

I agree with S3rgeus' hangups on the capital-capturing and domination implications.

Illianor123 said:
Winning would involve breaking Thakandar (a large pop city that spawns with many defensive buildings, and shadowspawn camps around it).

During the LB Civs also gain points for each shadowspawn they kill and the winner of this gets some bonus as well. This is to make sure everyone contributes. Additional paying a war subsidies thing could also get points (and give units or bonuses to the Civ receiving subsidies)

I also like Thakandar/Shayol Ghul as a city, though we'd need to be careful to program it not to behave like a civ, right? Like, shouldn't be building settlers and farms and the Colossus and stuff.

As far as points, that's kind of become a dirty word here... Um, I think another way we can make sure people play nice as the Light is to put in some mechanism for them being unanimously voted off the team or something (most useful if somebody appears to be Griefing)

Illianor123 said:
-Light and Shadow Choice
Your actions and alignment influence what you choose. Going against your alignment will cause rebellions and unhappiness (darkfriend led revolts, or light worshipping rebels).
Or all must choose the light but those who gave in more to the DO will have more revolts.

Understood, but I don't really see it as "alignment." Not really something you'll choose and then try to stay within. Civs probably all start as Light-until-proven-Shadow. Your actions, and things out of your control, might steer your Dark. I don't really see, given the WoT world, it making sense for a Shadow-oriented civ to have Rebellions if they do something GOOD. I think if you're a shadow civ, you probably either have a ton of unhappy rebellious people, or you are crushing those rebellions by murdering your own people or something. In WoT, it doesn't appear there are any real "Evil Civs" - just civs that have corrupted leaders and such. No Dark Elves here, I don't think.

Illianor123 said:
-Misc-
I think you should change the starting conditions. These civ are rising from the ashes of civilizations gone. First founded city is 2 pop, start with 2 warriors and worker.

Interesting. Can't say I have an opinion on this. Not yet, at least.

Calavente said:
Thanks for having read all .
please be aware that I have not GK nor GoN...
so I'm not familiar with either civ5 religion nor civ5 ideologies ...

and personnally, I thought of another point.
IMO, it would be flavorful that in the age of the dragon, or maybe even earlier, one may chose to "go toward shadow" even if not public (and being secret).

it is one of the main trends of the books.... the forsaken had their hand in every one of the main nations... (even the Shaido got influenced by the forsaken) to pass it is IMO not a good idea.

maybe you can make secret deal with a virtual "DarkOne CS" or something.
this deal pushes you on the "Dark One Victory"

or maybe, if you played DO for a few "DO vs Light quests", you get this choice way before the LB.

-you can control trollocs (or only summon/decide were barbarian trollocs will appear)
-access to shadowfriends
-easier access Aes Sedai of ajah with large black ajah influence
..Etc : many thing that can help you but that cannot be traced to you.... and that makes you leaning on joining

you could have some penalties : heavier cost for certain units, lighter costs for other things, risk of getting some angry ppl in your cities...etc

I don't really know how, but IMO there could be something to be done there.

Yeah, this was the basic thing we were tossing around that led to the epic re-evalution of the LB in general. I do think the idea of there being a CS (Thakandar) that we can secretly do stuff with is interesting.

Calavente said:
On Aes Sedai
Really I disagree with you.
Aes Sedai being predominant in the books is only incidental.... and a remnant of the AesSedai of the AoL.
As soon as the Wise-Ones discover that AesSedai are not as in the AoL... they treat them like apprenctices... and the Windmistresses are even worse.

the SeanChan are not impressed much by AesSedai... they are just a bunch of marath'daman. they want to subdue them as much as they would want to subdue the other powers of the land.
but in the WoT books, the WT was a big power... so it needed to be targetted by Seanchans.

And remember that for the SeanChan "AesSedai" is synonymous with "Tyrant Channelers" due to their history (remember when we first learned about how the adam were created) of AesSedai that didn't have the 3 Oaths.

That the WT is so predominant in WoT is because Egwene, Nyneave, even Rand are born in the westlands... If they were born in the wastelands, or in Shara, or in SeanChan, they would not have liked AesSedai so Much. And Rand accepted much the Aes Sedai, mostly because Elayne is, Egwene is and Nyneave is one.

Further the WT is also very predominant due to their vision of the Dragon : someone to control or at least to "handle". Thus it leads to much story plots in the books.
Contrarily, the Wise Ones went two ways: follow the Cara'can, follow Sevana. Not much to say here. The Wise Ones are a big force of Channelers that follow Rand, even if they try to influence him so as to save more of the Aiels.
IMO, much is biased through the fact that much of the Aiels, wise ones included, followed Rand without bickering (due to the prophecies). So the Aiels (and thus wise ones) are considered as a single group, and wise ones, having influence only in a single group are considered less important than AesSedai.

The story could have gone the other way : the WT wants to subdue Rand ? plus they are in fact all bickering over-proud es ? Elayne and Egwen become Wise Ones / translate the wise-One system to western channelers / wisdoms and create a parallel structure Rand get AesSedai by converting them to WiseOne creed, or by having Ashamen bonding them

Anyway, it is your Mod.. but for me, the predominance of the WT is due to the scenario of the WoT book and not due to the world. (or maybe it is of the "world" .. if the world starts in the Dragon Era). Indeed, the managed to maintain / improve influence in many countries, they got the three oaths to keep respectability and they are important for the story due to Egwene, Elayne and Nyneave.

Considering Tear, Amadicia, the widespread presence of WhiteCloaks, FarMadding, other countries where AS were not forbidden, but not welcome, and the "fear"/"suspicion" of Aes Sedai in most countries, it is possible to imagine a game where the WT has little influence.
The WhiteCloaks could have been as important (or more) than the WT for managing the diplomacy between the westland countries and dealing with Darkfriends. But in the books they failed, and were corrupted by the shadow (Nial being a darkfriend).

For Me, their importance is of the World (and even so, only in the westlands), but not their predominance.

Further, the AesSedai had no power of decision.
The AesSedai had no influence on the East (Aiels/Shara/rest of the eastern part) ; the Aiels, for once are at least as important (in term of soldier force/chaneler force for fighting the LB, or at least conquering the west) as half of the west lands, or maybe the whole waste lands taken together, WT comprised (not counting the "main character AesSedai"). but we forget that because most of them follow Rand Early in the Story.
The AesSedai had no influence on Seanchan (which is an Empire as big as the westlands, originally comprised of many countries).
The AesSedai had no influence on the SeaFolk
Etc

(Btw, I'm currently reading book 12 out of the total 14 but I'm not really bothered by spoilers.. I have a good intuition and my pleasure in reading is not really damaged by knowing the end).

Ah, so I won't repeat a lot of the points re: AS I said earlier today. See them for more detailed feedback.

I definitely don't think "incidental" is at all an appropriate word for their importance. The importance of Emond's Field is incidental and circumstantial - the WT, by contrast, is important because it dominates the cultural and political landscape of the Westlands. Sure, if 98% of the main characters had been born in Shara (instead of the Westlands), the AS wouldn't be as important. But it also wouldn't be the WoT, would it? We are trying to capture how the books "feel," and, circumstantial or not, there are probably 3000 pages dedicated to the White Tower, if not more. Shara, by contast, hasn't even appeared in the 12 books you've read.

You say how the SF, Aiel, and 'chan perceive the AS... Well, recall that the AS perceive *them* as children as well. This is a Robert Jordan thing. Without getting into his (controversial, somewhat) gender politics, he really seems to like intense rivalries between groups of women in his books! I wouldn't read into it as having any actual objective meaning in terms of one group's formidability.

I think you just might be extending the "play the world, not the story" idea too far. Yes, we're not trying to recreate the story of Rand and his friends, but it needs to feel like what we're familiar with. Taking your points to an extreme... why not create a game that's based on the 1st age? Fourth age? The Land of Madmen? We shouldn't because we know nothing of those things, and they aren't going to draw in fans of WoT (beyond side scenarios or something).

And the speculative aspect you illustrate (things could have gone a different way) CAN happen in this mod. We could have WT-loving Seanchan, Aiel living in the middle of the ocean, Evil Andor, Tear conquering Illian immediately. Etc. Having Aes Sedai in a prominent role doesn't ruin that.

The WT could emerge as having little influence, of course (as you say) - because the Civs play things that way. If everybody chooses anti-tower stances, or somebody even invades the WT early on (and takes it), things would be as you say.

Recall, also, that the AS - wow, I just realized I've been abbreviating that as AE this whole time... wow. sorry guys. will go back and fix some). - were one of the only strong forces after the world broke. That's why the 10 Nations had some Queens that were actually AS - everything else was in chaos, but they were the key to stopping the male channelers, and rebuilding.

I disagree that the AS have no influence on the Aiel, the SF, and the 'chan.
- The Aiel are in the three fold land for the sole reason that they felt they had failed the AS and needed it as punishment.
- The SF's culture and secretive nature is in part due to their wanting to hide their channelers from the AS.
- The whole philosophy of the Seanchan, including their hatred of channelers, is all wrapped up in the AS and their perceived evils.

True, the WT doesn't have POSITIVE influence on these cultures, but it is extremely IMPORTANT to them. Yes?

Calavente said:
another of mine perky remarks
further, I thought about his idea of clan/civ.
translate this into People / Nation
here I'm only brainstorming.. so don't take it too seriously:

Maybe you could have some global "people" groups :
aiels (different clans or brotherhoods)
seachan (we can even find 2-3 civs for them by looking at the books: Imperials(Hawkingians / mountainers (they have a name) / wildsedai (or whatever are those tyrants) / another civ ?)
Andor-Cairhen-Manetheren
Borderlanders (5 nations: Malkier / Saldea / Arafel / Kandor / Shienar)
westerners: Amadicia/tarabon/domani/Ghealdan
Easterners (only Shara)
South-easters: Tear / Mayenne/illian/altara / FarMadding / Murandy
Aathanmiere : SeaFolks / Aratham (or whatever is that other group)

Each "people" share an UA or belief or UB or UU or whatever
each Nation gets its own perks.
maybe Aiels get an UA "if a non-Aiel party declare wars, gain +5%str per friendly Aiel civ"...
..; but then it will be difficult to give different UU / UA / UB to each Aiel Clan or Brotherhood

This idea is provocative, but I don't think its the best one for us. Basically, it doesn't feel very "Civ" to me. In the real world, the UK and the US are culturally extremely linked, both in terms of shared history, language, alliance, etc. In CiV, they have no similarities whatsoever, aside from preferred religion and the fact that they have exploration-oriented Uniques (this latter is incidental, I think). I think we should continue like that.

Of course, your idea makes sense realistically, but I'm not sure its in the spirit of the way civ tends to work. I love the absurdity of the weird Eon-spanning alliances I see in Civ.

If each Nation has something in common with other nations, then their UAs/UUs probably will accommodate that fact. All borderland nations, probably, will have abilities that help them counter the blight.

I mean, mechanically your idea is interesting, so I'm not opposed to it. I default to S3rgeus on this one. It makes balancing harder, I bet, too.

S3rgeus said:
You're in for a treat, book 14 was my favorite, with book 2 in second!

I've found my opinions vary each time I've read. I've read EotW probably 3 times, and only been past CoT once (this past year, when I finished the series).

First time through. tGH and LoC were my favorite. This past time, I really really enjoyed tSR as well, which I think is often considered one of the best.

Really didn't enjoy 7-10 that much this past time... Kind of a drag.

But yeah, 14 is probably one of the most fun to read. I feel like there might be a little *too much* to it for it to objectively be the "best," but things wrapped up well and that counts for a LOT.

Calavente said:
@counterpoint :
you don't need to respond too seriously to my points ^^

But they're so well reasoned and you clearly spend a lot of time on them!

Calavente said:
for WT : I agree to disagree , I won't open the subject again. (anyway, my main concern is linked to the diplomacy issue being entirely dependant on WT... in the books, no Aiel civ ("bunch of wilder-savages") would be chosen by the WT as world leader..)

well, hopefully you will consider what I've been saying above before you agree to disagree.

But I do think we are in agreement that the diplo should not be 100% WT (certainly not in every game).

Calavente said:
but IMO for AesSedai... you should/could allow other path of greatness than AesSedai for female Channelers (as opposed to "standard channelers").

On channelers:
IMO, Channelers could be of 4 types (at the same time in-game):
-basic units that you build/ buy with faith / buy to WT...Etc all Damane, most AesSedai, most WiseOnes/Windmistresses/most Ashaman (and remember, if there were few AesSedai in each nations... there were a lot of Wise Ones channelers in Aiel Clans... a lot of windmistresses, and a LOT of Damane... In fact, only the western lands were starved of channelers.... as those all got to the WT and came back by 1 and 2)
-basic non-chan units/workers that randomly become "wilder". Nyneave is a Healer that becomes Chan (or a wisdom) and join the WT in the Yellow Ajah.
-Channeler GP units : Caldsuane / Verin / Moiraine / Egwene ...etc
-normal GP Unit that evolve to Channeler (think Rand: Commander+Chan / Elayne: Scientist + Chan / Aviendha : Warrior+Chan ...etc) :

the combination of
-basic unit
-dual type unit
-GP
-dual GP
could allow for a lots of mechanics to balance different creeds of gaining channelers.

I still feel like when you say "path to greatness" you aren't thinking of the same thing as me. WO can be "great," just not in the same ways as AS. Sure, they will be great and nice for the Aiel, but they really have nothing to do with other civs. The WT is neutral and can interact with many civs. Same goes for the other Civ-specific channelers.

While thematically appropriate, I think the regular-units becoming channelers is too complex and unpredictable. And, due to the sheer math of it all, would not be something that would happen much (because so few humans are born with the spark).

That said, I do think the idea of the production of channelers (some kinds) being out of your control. More on this later! Man, how many times have I said that.

OK, people. I am DONE with this. I'm supposed to be at the gym!

Illianor123 · Aug 30, 2014

A few side points to consider.
If the LB is avoidable, what is different about the science victory if I can just turtle Ina corner and research the (new) tech tree? What makes this mod different to the standard beyond new Civs in that regards?

Make an upgrade line for the scouts.

Should 'ideologies' be chosen quite early? This seems to fit with WoT. It is only after choosing that you would start to get your first controllable channellers?

If there are any Unique improvements you want to add (though I can't think of any that are necessary), because bloublou has a mod for making them equally accessible.

counterpoint · Aug 30, 2014

Illianor123 said:
A few side points to consider.
If the LB is avoidable, what is different about the science victory if I can just turtle Ina corner and research the (new) tech tree? What makes this mod different to the standard beyond new Civs in that regards?

Yeah, I don't love the Turtling aspect of science. We've been trying to figure out a different way of making it somehow more interactive.

That said, the idea is that the LB would start before anybody would (in most cases) reach Victory. S3rgeus probably knows better, but I guess that might be something like 1900 AD equivalent? A really good Civ player could do it before then, of course, but I don't know if we can really accuse them of Turtling... more like just being awesome.

I don't worry at all that there's not enough to differentiate this mod from regular CiV. In addition to the obvious CiV changes, we'll be implementing new GP, new Techs, a new diplomacy system, new buildings and units, a Light/Shadow system, new diplomacy, and major world events (last battle, trolloc wars, etc). Not just a civ-add mod.

Illianor123 said:
Make an upgrade line for the scouts.

Is this suggestions gameplay based or WoT-universe based? I agree from a gameplay perspective. However, I'm not sure I know how to rationalize it in-universe (though I'm sure some Civ-Specific units would be possible, like certain Aiel warriors, Seanchan flyers, etc.) Sniffer?

Illianor123 said:
Should 'ideologies' be chosen quite early? This seems to fit with WoT. It is only after choosing that you would start to get your first controllable channellers?

I think, mechanically, ideologies would lie late in the game, as they do now. Otherwise we might as well make them social policies. That said, it does complicate things a bit, thematically, as the Seanchan wouldn't really be able to become "them" all tower-hating until late in their history... Although actually maybe that's how it actually went down.

Illianor123 said:
If there are any Unique improvements you want to add (though I can't think of any that are necessary), because bloublou has a mod for making them equally accessible.

We'll have the see what S3rgeus says, but I do think we were talking about having new resource-types (tabac, oilfish, etc.) - whether that includes a new improvement (or just plantations, etc.), I don't know. I was toying with having a new strategic resource that ties to channelling, but haven't fleshed it out yet.
If you mean UI like specific to a Civ (kasbah, moai, etc.), I have no idea [so why did I respond, then?]

MaegSil · Aug 30, 2014

I love what it looks like you guys are doing! Anyway, Ive only read this far but I had an idea. You might have a satisfactory answer for your religion issues now though. Anyway, here's the quote that gave me the idea.

In general your approach is good. I think we should almost consider creating a set of religions with a set of beliefs that would work together to form that religion in "real life," and then let the player mix and match them. That way somebody could actually create a "real" Ji'e'toh' civ if they wanted, but wouldn't have to (like the "Cha Faile" who adopted random tenants of Ji'e'toh).

What if instead of looking at them as and calling them 'religions' you called them 'Customs'? This fixes the reasons for naming them Ji-eh-toh, The way of the leaf, The Way of the Light (if you decided for them to be separate from Tarabon), or even Cha Faile. It allows you to have many Customs and tons of different tenants to add, including Carneira, polygamy, Marriage Knives, Righteous Fervor (drawn from The Children of the Light) etc.

Just an idea, I love what you're doing. Keep it up!
:goodjob:

I read on and see that you had thought of that... I feel like an idiot lol
Oh well.

S3rgeus · Aug 30, 2014

I've tried out a new way of writing these quote-heavy posts (which I don't think I'll do again) involving many tabs, which turned out to be a bit confusing. If I've wholesale missed any posts, let me know.

counterpoint said:
My my, I close my eyes for three days and look at the novel you guys have written!

And now you've written one too!

counterpoint said:
Your response is making me regret this proposition. My aim wasn't to make things super complicated or anything, just more "cool." If it's going to throw the balance all off... might not be a great idea. The goal was definitely not to make a cultural victory more difficult.

I'm not sure if it will make it significantly more difficult - I just think we should investigate what effect it might have before adding more things that use the antiquity sites.

counterpoint said:
That said, it could work to just make each artifact more powerful for culture, right? To compensate for less availability? Though, again, that needs to be rebalanced....

We could do that, and like you said we'd need to balance it. (Add to the long list!)

counterpoint said:
Ha! I was being facetious about the prime number thing... doesn't really seem to fit the WoT universe much.

I didn't think the prime numbers were, but what about divisible by 13?

counterpoint said:
I guess one difficult thing about this, from an RP perspective, is us trying to somehow unify the given Style Tradition with a bonus that makes sense for that civ. For example, a hardcore RPer for the Shienar civ would choose top-knots, and would probably expect that that Tradition would have something to do with Shienar - combat, the blight, whatever - and not something random.

Come to think of it, maybe that makes it easier to pick stuff...

Hopefully easier, since those attributes will be associated with civs that evoke the kinds of bonuses we're looking for!

counterpoint said:
Well, if we're trying to map the ages to Randland more-or less accurately, one other thing is we could have a deceleration happen, also, during a few other key times - Trolloc Wars, for instance. This assumes the TW are only only started by a calendar date, and not a tech thing. Seems like that changes how Civ's time periods work. What's the simplest thing to do here?

Absolute simplest is to ignore era length and just use in-universe names, divorcing them from the actual calendar time period that they occurred in. (That dissociation will likely happen anyway, because of the way time works in CiV.) I think starting the Trolloc Wars by tech makes a lot of sense from a gameplay perspective, we want it to start at a specific progression, not too early or too late.

counterpoint said:
Also, how do we deal with the whole calendar change thing? Like, FY 1 is at the end of the TW, for instance (and FY1 has a different turn-count date every game, consequently)?

I haven't looked much into how the calendar system works with the whole slowing down from weeks/months/years and how the game decides what to display to the user. (All of this scales with selected game speed.) I would think we should be able to present whatever arbitrary dates we want to the player, so no problem switching calendars part of the way through.

This is a bit strange compared to original CiV. The 'turn timer' date in base CiV is the Gregorian Calendar and progresses through dates as turns pass. The 'eras' progress based on player tech, regardless of the 'date' in game. WoT links the changing of calendars to specific portions of history/technological progress, which is problematic. The era 'Free Years' may occur (for some civs) before or after FY1, depending on how many turns it took them to get there. I don't know if we can avoid this while still using in-universe era names and calendars. Maybe we're approaching eras wrong? We're using the calendars and 'time' names, which, in reality, would really just be B.C. and A.D. (for modern humans, using our calendar). There are no other obvious divisions. Are there progressive evolutions of technology in WoT that defined civilizations there, like 'Classical,' 'Industrial,' etc.?

Have to say though, I really like this problem, it's quite fun because I'd never even thought of it. It's just that kind of little thing that most players wouldn't notice but that really makes the immersion!

counterpoint said:
Yeah, unless I'm misremembering, we did say that - and I thought it was weird then, too. I guess the issue is that once we changed Tourism to Prestige, that kind of outcome appeared to be the natural result of being super Prestigious in the WoT world. Doesn't have to be that, though. Having it be identical to the end result of Tourism doesn't quite make sense either.

Probably worth us coming back to after our Last Battle and Path stuff is more firm then!

counterpoint said:
As far as sending units to train, I'll remind you of the notion I had earlier that this can also be tied to promotions for channeling units (study with the Yellows at learn to heal, etc.) - more on this later, when I get to it.

Sounds like a plan!

counterpoint said:
One thing I find iffy about base Civ's diplo victory is the ability to snipe so easily. Like, just gather your gold, then blow tons of it one turn before the world leader election.... I don't mind diplo being the "gold" victory, but this seems kind of unfair, yes? Thoughts?

Possibly, though the AI doesn't do that (because it isn't programmed to) and I think even they may not have enough gold to buy out everyone they need to win completely unexpectedly. By the end of the game (when elections are happening) most civs will have very high influence with the few city states near them since they'll have been completing their quests for the whole game. Buying them out is much more expensive for a 'sniper.'

A candidate that's already well ahead will be able to buy out a few key votes at the last minute, but he was already winning to make that possible. It can be reversed as well, buying out a few key votes at the last minute to prevent a victory, since number of votes each civ has is public information. The biggest upsets are if you can convince another civ to vote for you (particularly if they have a decent number of votes) since that can't be 'sniped.'

I'm not sure what my conclusion is really, I've found diplomacy a lot better since BNW.

counterpoint said:
Sorry to waste code! Not knowing the way you currently have it, though, it's hard for me to say either way if we should change it.

The way it is now each Ajah accumulates influence for itself, rather than each player with each Ajah (need to store that data in a different way, because who gave what influence to each Ajah isn't stored as I have it now, just which Ajah has how much.) Hopefully that makes sense. Basically, there are however many Ajahs, I'll just use three for an example. Under the surface, each has 'influence points' which represents how much influence that Ajah has, and their overall influence is determined as a percentage of the whole. Example:

Blue: 50
Red: 40
Green 30

Blue has 50/(50+40+30) = ~42%
Red has 40/(50+40+30) = ~33%
Green has 30/(50+40+30) = 25%

You can see from there that we have no concept of player influence, only the amount for each Ajah. But that can change, it's not too much work and if we come up with something better, I'm all for it.

counterpoint said:
WHA? Mind blown again. The ideologies in BNW *lock* you out of victories? I always thought that the icons by each choice just represented which victory types are most suited for that ideology.

See, occasionally I'm, apparently, making things up. I did a bit of checking and you're right, you're not locked by the ideology, they're just not very helpful for the last victory type. So I guess our Seanchan-ish dudes should be able to win a diplo victory, though with some more difficulty!

counterpoint said:
I don't know how I feel about that.... maybe the "capture channelers" should still be able, through difficulty, to manipulate the White tower to do their bidding?

I assume we don't want to funnel them into the Shadow way of winning a diplo victory through the Black Ajah? (which we haven't finalized exists yet, but seems to make sense and I haven't seen anyone reluctant about the idea)

First thing that springs to mind is capturing the Tower and running your own 'rigged' election, but that's rife with problems. It makes the diplo victory military focused and makes it monstrously more difficult for civs that are geographically far from the Tower on the map.

If we go with an influence-per-player approach, these kinds of policies could inflict static penalties on you when dealing with the Tower? You could still talk to them if you weren't too serious about it (a la Tear) or you could go full on 'capture them all' and the influence penalties would stack up (a la Seanchan).

counterpoint said:
What I mean by "cap" is simply that I like the first option, with an ending "on top" to be the choice you prefer.

It sounds like you just said "they're really difficult to implement - let's try both!" Is that what you mean? That seems somewhat self-punishing of you....

Not quite! I mean that the biggest parts of what needs to be implemented for either system is the same, so if we go with one, we'll have mostly implemented the other as well in the process. Who knows, we could even make it a game option when you're setting up the game whether or not you can 'choose' a side at the end.

counterpoint said:
OK, so it looks like LB-as-just-an-event is scrapped, then?

Yeah, seems like neither of us are big fans of that one and it comes with its share of problems. One down, one to go!

counterpoint said:
Right. You know the AI limitations much better than I do. Still... I've been thinking about this since I wrote this, and I'm really starting to think this is the best option. It, really, gives us both what we're aching for - you the idea of still doing your old-school victory (neutral and shadow players, or alliance-resistant light players), and me the elimination of silly stuff by putting in a "system" that rewards "doing the LB for realz" for those who want it. Anyways, it looks like Calavante suggested some things that are rather close to these ideas, anyways, so I'll look again and what he suggested and how you took those ideas.

Regarding the AI, my thoughts:

1) Maybe by having more-or-less clearly-defined roles, this can make the AI not so dumb? Like, either certain civs always default to certain behavior, or it is all prescribed by the elected Leader (putting aside disobedience for now)
2) Maybe this is balanced by the shadow guys all fighting each other and/or not cooperating?

The difficulties with the AI are a bit more systemic - they're really bad at optimizing for something that's a "good idea." They just tend to do stuff and then react to the position they end up in. They 'understand' threats from other players like nearby military units, people competing for city-states, and the value of specific trades. The things in common there are that they're quite immediate value judgements that can be quantified and compared, so it does that.

Getting them to do a specific series of actions in a optimal way is very difficult and frustrating for the player. Example, you give a science-y civ a Seal and it needs to build a project in a city, but its best cities are occupied doing something else that's important to it. So it starts building it in a worse city - which takes longer than it would have taken you. Now you need a mechanism to demand it back.

If the AI had control of the Dragon and needed to get him safely to a specific (war-torn) position on the map, you might as well kiss the Dark One's boots now. The AI is supremely terrible at getting specific (individual) units to do anything sensible. It'd be embarking him within range of enemy siege units, or taking massive circuitous routes (that include unnecessary backtracking because its own and particularly other players' units are in the way) that take way too long to reach Thakan'dar.

I'm not criticizing this concept as an idea, I think it would be quite good and in an MP game it would play awesome. I should be able to make the AI 'better' at things like this so it's less frustrating for the player, but CiV is way too complex of a game for the AI to consider so many variables as quickly as a human does. We may not make 'optimal' moves most of the time, but we always make sensible ones. How we do that is a bit crazy, because there are hundreds of options to consider for something as simple as 'where do I move this unit,' we just immediately discount all the 'obviously' unhelpful ones. The AI has to evaluate those obviously terrible options just as much as the good ones, and we have to restrict its decision making so that it completes in a reasonable amount of time.

So it is a lot of work to make this kind of system work correctly for the AI. It's also not 'obvious' work in the finished mod - the game just goes more smoothly, which the player doesn't really notice. (They don't notice a lack of bugs.)

However, saying all of that, I find AI work really interesting. I haven't looked much at the CiV AI code yet, but there might be room for a different approach that's more performant and smart than the simple 'if these conditions, take these actions' approach Firaxis seems to have used.

There's a very appropriate comment in the CiV source code about the pre-BNW cultural victory (where you had to complete five social policy trees and then build the Utopia Project). In a function that the AI uses to evaluate how much it wants to do the cultural victory, one of the Firaxis devs said:

// If we somehow got to 5 branches...

And then just returned a big number to make the AI change strategy.

counterpoint said:
I wonder if maybe the key here is not that the Shadow civs must Dominate the other civs, but that they must Win some sort of Victory, in addition to beating the light. Meaning, you've gotta kill the light and do whatever we decide that is (kill Rand, etc.), but you also need to either win culture, science (shadow science), diplo, domination, etc. This supports the notion I expressed earlier about the naebliss not necessarily just being the guy who kills the most dudes. I suspect if the LB ended and still nobody had pulled off a victory, either we keep going until they do, or the DO shakes his (etherial) head in shame.
Requiring a second victory balances against the inherent easiness to the shadow, and definitely discourages (possibly unbalancing) large numbers of shadow civs.

So, according to that, the LB victory conditions would be:

1) Lightside - work together and best the Shadow (various conditions must be fulfilled) - other Victories are locked). Huge target from shadowspawn and shadow civs, but benefits from working together. Team Victory.
2) Shadowside - beat the light (various conditions must be fulfilled) AND win some victory condition. Can control Shadowspawn (and don't get attacked by them, unless they are sent to you from another shadow player). Solo victory
3) Neutral - win victory condition (No LB-specific stuff needed). Likely a lesser target of the shadowspawn... but potentially a huge target from both Shadow and Light civs if they feel you are a threat by being close to victory. Solo victory - most viable, likely, for civs quite close to victory as the LB starts, and/or those geographically removed from the Blight and other civs.

I didn't mean to imply that I'm not a "fan" of neutrality as a game-mechanic. I think it serves to allow the solo-victory in that normal Civ way you've been hoping for. But by setting up the dragon peace, we offer the immersive "True LB" experience. Heck, maybe most games the majority of players choose neutral.

Emphasis added because when I read that, the way I considered 'neutral' and the whole context of the Last Battle flipped on its head. I'm completely on board, neutral sounds like an awesome idea! I'm not quite sure if I can articulate the change in how I'm thinking about this.

Despite being the advocate for 'all victories are independent,' I'd still been thinking of the Last Battle as the 'end of the game.' Having 'neutrality' makes it much more like the other victories, which I think is really awesome. It's something that civs can choose to participate in, but which affects everyone. Hope that make sense.

I'm not sure about is locking the Light players to only the Last Battle victory, but I think I can see the logic behind it - it's what makes 'neutral' a sensible choice and means 'non-participaters' won't join the Light side to mess it up, because it will prevent them from winning like they'd planned. Nice, I like the symmetry. I said I wasn't sure, actually this seems pretty cool.

I'm still stewing over the Shadow players needing to win 'another' victory as well. However, we can come back to that in a moment.

I'm going to go into some details/theorizing/questions about the Last Battle here, using some information from later posts as well, so I'll 'skip' those sections when I come to quoting them.

I'm good with merging the Sealing the Bore into the Last Battle (that you mention later) and using something else for the science victory. This gives us some fun to have with the different sides having control of the Seals.

For the Shadow players, what do we think the objectives are for the Last Battle? Killing the Dragon seems to come up a lot here, as does the Light using the Dragon in a battle at Thakan'dar. So, shall we say that the Dragon is 'revealed' when the Last Battle starts? He(/she?) can be a unit, controlled by one of the Light side civs. How do we choose which one?

He can be a fairly powerful combat unit. The Shadow's objective is relatively simple: find the Dragon and kill him. If the Dragon Reborn is dead, the Last Battle cannot be won by the Light. This is a bit of a risky avenue to go down - the way combat is structured in CiV isn't very amenable to protecting a single, game-defining unit. AI issues exist here too - the player is a much better tactician than the AI and can 'snipe' a victory by attacking just the Dragon in an effective manner. I don't think that means this idea is dead, but it has these kinds of limitations that we might be able to work around.

Maybe 'killing' the Dragon is more complex than taking out one unit? I'm not sure about how though. The other objective is to keep the Seals from the Light civs. In the books (spoilers) Taim had several of the Seals for a while, if I remember correctly. I'm unclear on why he didn't break them right away - isn't that bringing the Dark One closer to being released?

How about the Shadow are trying to break all of the Seals during the Battle? The Light are trying to get them all and protect them until the Dragon takes Thakan'dar. Then breaking them wins the game for the Light side. (press a 'break the Seals' button by the player who has them? Is it even necessary to that then - they've won but just need to press a thing? Maybe breaking the Seals is something that requires production?) The more Seals are broken during the war, the more Shadowspawn appear, the more static penalties to the land. (Offshoot - we can have food penalties across the board to simulate the whole 'spoiling food' thing. Happiness can plummet too. These can get worse as Seals are broken.)

So, the Light are trying to capture Thakan'dar with the Dragon. Thakan'dar as a city in the Blight seems to be a good idea and I think most of us like it? So, how does the Light attack it? Fighting in the Blight is difficult for non-Shadowspawn, so the Blight can damage and slow down other units that enter Blight hexes. We want the Light to have to use the Dragon. So, what if only the Dragon can capture the city? But then you can barrage it down to 0 health while the Dragon is safely outside the Blight, then bring him in the for the finishing blow. Is this valid?

If not, we can make it so that 'normal' units only do tiny amounts of damage to Thakan'dar and the only 'reasonable' way to damage it is with the Dragon. (Think 'Shadowslayer' promotion - +500% damage against Thakan'dar, or something to that effect.)

This also means Light civs will need all the Seals before this will work. I'm warming to the idea of breaking the Seals taking production to do - it makes it more difficult to 'snipe' them. A weirdness is that since the Shadow civs are breaking Seals as the war goes on, they're making this easier for the Light civs to win at the very end - which may not in itself be a problem, it's a trade off for them. They can hang onto them and force the Light to come to them to get them back if the Shadow civs don't immediately need more Shadowspawn reinforcements. This means it's also in the interest of neutral civs that have Seals to hang onto them and keep them safe, so neither side can win. Obviously makes you a big target.

I think the biggest issue here is how 'snipeable' the Dragon is as a single unit for the Shadow civs to kill. Can the Dragon 'respawn' after a certain amount of time? ('Ha, that one was an imposter!' or 'The Dragon is reborn anew. Again.') That way the Shadow civs also need to break all of the Seals, which isn't nearly as 'snipeable.'

Or, how about the Dragon doesn't respawn? What if he's dead and you have to try to take Thakan'dar without his bonus? Unlikely but possible, and I think it works all right, mechanically. It'd a bit punishing if the AI controls the Dragon and does something stupid with him, but there will be AI difficulties with this system regardless.

I love the idea of the Seals as in-game things that move between cities. (Do they move as units? Any unit? Or like planes?)

A lot of questions above and the idea 'evolves' a bit throughout, so I'd be interested what you think! Hopefully if you read it like a 'conversation with myself' (I'm not mad, I promise) then the prevalent ideas come through as a consistent system - there are a lot of "devil's advocate" thoughts in there too.

counterpoint said:
I actually don't think Dragons need be a UU... especially since they're only associated with Andor because of the stuff going down during the LB. I think they might make the most sense as, as I mentioned before, a late-game unit maybe available once a civ has built an illuminator's guild or something. That said, maybe Andor's UU is a better "Band Dragon" or something. Or they have the Dragons, and everybody else just has "Cannons" or something.

Yes, sorry, I was unclear there. I meant that out of the options presented, I could see the Dragons as a UU but not the other ones. I think we agree on Dragons being a standard siege unit now anyway!

counterpoint said:
Also, GPs are slowed by wide empires, right? But the more citizens you have, the more likely you are to get channelers, i'd think, right?

The way GPs traditionally work is based on 'GP-points' which is produced on a per-city basis, so tall empires with more developed cities tend to generate more GPs. A GP being born also increases the cost of that GP type for your entire empire (I think). I think there are also relations between some GP types, like a scientist being born also makes engineers more expensive, or something like that. I should probably look into more of this before we change.

However, all of that said, there's nothing stopping us from giving players GP units in completely unrelated ways to the above systems. They're units just like any other that can be spawned from code for each player for any arbitrary condition. So we could make channeler GPs a function of total empire population (though tall empires also tend to be more populous, because of the way CiV populations work).

counterpoint said:
Smells like a social policy to me!

Very true! I haven't been thinking about them enough, this is a good one.

Calavente said:
@S3ergeus: L5R :

Interesting, I'll try to check it out after I've won my current game as Attila!

Calavente said:
I agree with the issue of "too much sameness".
but, on the other hand, it only ADDS one UU/UA/UB to the group... so the civs are all as much different as without this, there is just one other layer of differences : which "people" do you belong with.

Good point, it's adding on top. I think we'll definitely keep this in mind when we're working on uniques for the individual civs in more detail. If we can, it would be great to create more differentiation.

Calavente said:
in the books, no Aiel civ ("bunch of wilder-savages") would be chosen by the WT as world leader..)

Only because of the way the Aiel set up their civ in that game.

Calavente said:
but IMO for AesSedai... you should/could allow other path of greatness than AesSedai for female Channelers (as opposed to "standard channelers").

On channelers:
IMO, Channelers could be of 4 types (at the same time in-game):
-basic units that you build/ buy with faith / buy to WT...Etc all Damane, most AesSedai, most WiseOnes/Windmistresses/most Ashaman (and remember, if there were few AesSedai in each nations... there were a lot of Wise Ones channelers in Aiel Clans... a lot of windmistresses, and a LOT of Damane... In fact, only the western lands were starved of channelers.... as those all got to the WT and came back by 1 and 2)
-basic non-chan units/workers that randomly become "wilder". Nyneave is a Healer that becomes Chan (or a wisdom) and join the WT in the Yellow Ajah.
-Channeler GP units : Caldsuane / Verin / Moiraine / Egwene ...etc
-normal GP Unit that evolve to Channeler (think Rand: Commander+Chan / Elayne: Scientist + Chan / Aviendha : Warrior+Chan ...etc) :

the combination of
-basic unit
-dual type unit
-GP
-dual GP
could allow for a lots of mechanics to balance different creeds of gaining channelers.

Channeling will clearly be one of the most important aspects of defining the new units for this mod. I share counterpoint's reluctance about other units becoming channeling units mid-game, though I do like the flavor of it. It would be quite complicated for the player to manage. There is definitely a lot of overlap between channelers and non-channelers in terms of roles (like you said, Rand was a commander and King, Aviendha was a warrior), the ability to channel mainly determines how they go about those tasks.

counterpoint said:
yeah. agreed. The nuance of these ideologies will likely have to wait, I'm afraid... (as in specific game mechanics). I'm still not 100% positive this is the absolute best way to go, but I'm something like 85%! The question is, S3rgeus, is your personal UA such that City-State Influence Increases or decreases over time? If we put off ideologies for awhile, will I be 80% sure next week, or 90%?

Exactly 87.5%.

We should discuss it now if the idea gets worse over time though.

counterpoint said:
You do make an interesting point, perhaps unintentionally, about the Aiel being a collection of nations rather than one unified force. This is of course somewhat problematic from a Civ perspective - should the Shaido, perhaps, be their own Civ? For me, though, I think this can be justified by the fact that the Aiel represent one CIVILIZATION, if not one "country." I think CiV is a bit silly in this regard, especially as the games have progressed and they've tried to do new things - really, a VENICE civilization? Isn't that just a city-state in Italy? But, I think, to that point, the logic still holds up - perhaps the "American" Civilization could be said to also represent Canada, or something? Perhaps Ethiopia also represents Djibouti?

A Venice civilization makes some kind of sense - particularly given the way their UA makes them actually behave like real Venice, which is very interesting.

CiV already has a precedent for 'a people as a civilization,' even several peoples that aren't necessarily the 'same,' which some players do get annoyed about. I've heard a lot of players asking about the validity of Polynesia, since it's apparently an amalgam of various nations/peoples in Oceania and Hawaii.

The Iroquois and Shoshone are similar to the Aiel - they were (as far as I know) loose confederations of tribal nations acting as a single body.

counterpoint said:
Of course, ultimately, while the Shaido might a fun "bad" Aiel, civ, nobody is interested in having there be different Civ types for each particular Clan, are they? Although, this might make a cool scenario - Fight for the Oasis!

Definitely a scenario I've had in mind! The Shaido are a candidate 'expansion' civ as well, I'd say.

counterpoint said:
I would argue that this seanchan diplo victory is actually more of a domination victory.

Interesting, then maybe 'conquering' the Tower like I mentioned above might work here?

S3rgeus · Aug 30, 2014

counterpoint said:
Never played FFH - worth checking out?

I'd say so, even from the little bit I've played. Kael, FfH's 'primary' modder now works for Stardock (they also make 4X games) after they liked the work he did on the mod.

counterpoint said:
Remember how Rand was all about creating his legacy of Academies and stuff? I know we'd probably be using those as an eponymous replacement for Academies from CiV, but maybe building a whole bunch of these as Projects is the Science Victory? Like, you know, ushering the world into the new era. Needs to be made more compelling (and interactive, as you've wanted), but tmaybe that's doable. You know, maybe not Shock Lances and Sho-Wings, but setting the world up for the 4th age. I dunno.

I'll think more on what we could do here as well, I was thinking along the same lines for this.

counterpoint said:
I am glad you mentioned the Greater Consensus. I'd thought of it and promptly forgot it. It's an interesting Tower-politics thing that could be interesting flavor. The Greater Consensus is *not* a supermajority, though (66%). It's unanimous, as I recall. I don't know how viable it is, but resolutions that are somehow unanimous could carry more weight? I can't imagine that happening much (maybe only in the LB-era), but it's interesting. Other tower politic things we could consider including, because they are relatively central to the books:

I believe different Consensuses were required for different types of discussions? They needed the Greater Consensus to depose the Amyrlin, but only a (super)majority for some more mundane things. It's definitely interesting and we could do something with it when we're discussing the mechanics of what the White Tower actually *does* throughout most of the game.

counterpoint said:
- Ajah's eyes-and -ears (ties to espionage)

Espionage is another can of worms we haven't really touched yet. I don't suggest we discuss it in depth now, but just a quick question, do we plan to overhaul how espionage works entirely or work within the existing CiV system? Like, we could go full CIV (Civ4 - that abbreviation is really ambiguous) and have 'spy' units again.

But that's a whole other discussion.

counterpoint said:
- electing an amyrlin from a particular Ajah/deposing one

Having an Amyrlin with biases based on which Ajah she was raised from is already in there. Only in the sense that it 'records' which Ajah the current Amyrlin is from (and elections are decided based on influence and some randomness). Nothing in yet about what effects that has.

counterpoint said:
- a rebel faction (crazy, I know)

I've been keeping this possibility in mind while working on the White Tower stuff (making it agnostic of the number of Towers there are and such) but I think it's too much craziness for the 'random' games. Makes an awesome scenario though.

counterpoint said:
I also like Thakandar/Shayol Ghul as a city, though we'd need to be careful to program it not to behave like a civ, right? Like, shouldn't be building settlers and farms and the Colossus and stuff.

It should be simple enough to cut the city off from doing 'normal' city things and acting more like a fortress.

counterpoint said:
Yeah, this was the basic thing we were tossing around that led to the epic re-evalution of the LB in general. I do think the idea of there being a CS (Thakandar) that we can secretly do stuff with is interesting.

There's already a 'Shadow player' that controls the Shadowspawn, so I think it makes sense to have them own Thakan'dar.

counterpoint said:
the AS - wow, I just realized I've been abbreviating that as AE this whole time... wow. sorry guys. will go back and fix some

This confused me greatly, but I figured that's what you were doing!

counterpoint said:
I've found my opinions vary each time I've read. I've read EotW probably 3 times, and only been past CoT once (this past year, when I finished the series).

First time through. tGH and LoC were my favorite. This past time, I really really enjoyed tSR as well, which I think is often considered one of the best.

Really didn't enjoy 7-10 that much this past time... Kind of a drag.

But yeah, 14 is probably one of the most fun to read. I feel like there might be a little *too much* to it for it to objectively be the "best," but things wrapped up well and that counts for a LOT.

I've only read through the series once, I'm afraid. I keep reading other books rather than going back! I really liked that 14 felt like the end of a book, but for the entire length of it. It was quite amazing and I think an artifact of how AMoL was originally planned as book 12 and got split into 12-14. Definitely kept me reading and there were epic things happening every chapter. I also liked how the 'beginning' of the Last Battle was sort of nebulous, there was no snap moment where 'suddenly, Trollocs!'

Illianor123 said:
A few side points to consider.
If the LB is avoidable, what is different about the science victory if I can just turtle Ina corner and research the (new) tech tree? What makes this mod different to the standard beyond new Civs in that regards?

I think counterpoint addressed this very well. We're looking into making the science victory more interactive. If the player is good enough to win a science victory before the Last Battle kicks down their door, then they've won through skill, which should be rewarded. I definitely think we've got enough other content that the mod is very different from base CiV even without a Last Battle.

Note: if we keep the approach to triggering the Last Battle that we discussed a few posts ago, it will be impossible to win the science victory without at least triggering the Last Battle. It may not really get going, but it will start.

Illianor123 said:
Make an upgrade line for the scouts.

Interesting and I think a good idea. I think it's weird that base CiV doesn't have a scout upgrade line (and that scouts upgrade to archers in ruins despite that), because while disadvantaged at combat early on, they become completely useless at it long before you get the techs that make their mechanical function useless as well.

Illianor123 said:
Should 'ideologies' be chosen quite early? This seems to fit with WoT. It is only after choosing that you would start to get your first controllable channellers?

I think I'm with counterpoint on this one, CiV is balanced for ideologies to be late game and I think it helps us to keep to that.

Illianor123 said:
If there are any Unique improvements you want to add (though I can't think of any that are necessary), because bloublou has a mod for making them equally accessible.

I've added an improvement to the mod already, though right now I forget what it is. There's definitely a new one in SiegeMod (even has its own terrible 3D artwork made by yours truly!), it's a 'steampunk landmine' is how I'd describe it. Do you mean access to the base game uniques improvements and their artwork? There's a database column (or table, I forget which approach Firaxus used) for making improvements 'unique' to one civ, which we can clear to make them accessible to everyone.

counterpoint said:
That said, the idea is that the LB would start before anybody would (in most cases) reach Victory. S3rgeus probably knows better, but I guess that might be something like 1900 AD equivalent? A really good Civ player could do it before then, of course, but I don't know if we can really accuse them of Turtling... more like just being awesome.

Due to the calendars and dates vs. eras stuff that I discussed above (many eons above, toward the beginning of this (series of) post(s)), it's difficult to describe where the Last Battle starts.

Assuming we're going for the 'world era' triggering, because that made a lot of sense. (There is also a 'date' upper limit on this, if everyone is being terrible at science.) In base CiV (BNW), you win a scientific victory in the Information Era, because that's where the techs are to unlock the last of the spaceship parts. I propose the Last Battle starts when the 'world era' reaches the Atomic Era (our WoT analogue for it).

I figure put the 'date' limit (latest possible time the Last Battle starts) at the equivalent of 2000 AD (which is I think around 350 turns on the default game speed - if you started your game later than the ancient era you won't have played all of those turns, but the 'turn counter' starts at a higher number if you start the game in a later era).

Assuming similar balancing to CiV, I think, because of the way our eras are structured (longer eras, with fewer of them), the most frequent Last Battle trigger will be half of the world's civs reaching the penultimate era (which is Age of the Dragon). Someone would need to be many, many techs ahead to get to The Fourth Age before that happens.

I would hope that this occurs, in terms of game 'progression' (as in, how close to the end of the tech tree you are), most often around the start of the Modern era in base CiV (BNW). If everyone is around there, there's still a ton of work to do to win any of the traditional victories, so the Last Battle will become a lot of players' primary concern quite quickly.

There are a ton of caveats above for dealing with date vs era, reality vs CiV vs WoT vs our system, so tell me if anything is unclear and I'll try to clarify.

counterpoint said:
Is this suggestions gameplay based or WoT-universe based? I agree from a gameplay perspective. However, I'm not sure I know how to rationalize it in-universe (though I'm sure some Civ-Specific units would be possible, like certain Aiel warriors, Seanchan flyers, etc.) Sniffer?

I like the idea of Sniffers, and maybe Thief-Takers too.

counterpoint said:
That said, it does complicate things a bit, thematically, as the Seanchan wouldn't really be able to become "them" all tower-hating until late in their history... Although actually maybe that's how it actually went down.

I think this is fine because the Seanchan (in fact most of our civs) are analagous to playing as America in base CiV and starting in the ancient era. Obviously there was no Washington and US back then, so they can't do all of the things that they're 'known for' right away, because those things don't exist yet either.

counterpoint said:
We'll have the see what S3rgeus says, but I do think we were talking about having new resource-types (tabac, oilfish, etc.) - whether that includes a new improvement (or just plantations, etc.), I don't know. I was toying with having a new strategic resource that ties to channelling, but haven't fleshed it out yet.

New resources is definitely on the table! I've already folded part of Barathor's More Luxuries mod into this mod (with permission!) to rebrand tobacco as tabac and to use olives at least. Barathor's mod is awesome and has really high quality artwork, both 2D and 3D, so it adds a lot of authenticity. I believe they all use existing improvements since they're reskins of other resources.

S3rgeus · Aug 30, 2014

MaegSil said:
I love what it looks like you guys are doing! Anyway, Ive only read this far but I had an idea. You might have a satisfactory answer for your religion issues now though. Anyway, here's the quote that gave me the idea.

What if instead of looking at them as and calling them 'religions' you called them 'Customs'? This fixes the reasons for naming them Ji-eh-toh, The way of the leaf, The Way of the Light (if you decided for them to be separate from Tarabon), or even Cha Faile. It allows you to have many Customs and tons of different tenants to add, including Carneira, polygamy, Marriage Knives, Righteous Fervor (drawn from The Children of the Light) etc.

Just an idea, I love what you're doing. Keep it up!

I read on and see that you had thought of that... I feel like an idiot lol
Oh well.

No worries, this topic has become a series of massive walls of text, so it's easy enough for those of us who have been writing them to get lost, let alone people trying to read through and work out what we've decided on!

You're right, I think we've got a fairly good solution for our initial religion problems now.

And thank you for your support!

It means a lot to know there are fans who will enjoy this mod when it's finished.

counterpoint · Aug 31, 2014

First off, I decided to finish my pantheon ideas before I responded to any recent posts - will get to them in the next few days

Anyways, here are some sets of Pantheons I put together for our consideration. There are three distinct sets (the three that hadn't been completely ruled out before):

1) Lineage
2) Iconography
3) National Festival

As I said before, my plan was to do a mini-treatment based on a reduced set of the CiV pantheons' bonuses - I most certainly wasn't going to invent my own bonuses, since that would be an impractical use of time, especially since we seem to be leaning towards copying them in complete form as is.

Unfortunately (for my time!) as I started my work I realized that in fact the only way to expose the cracks in these proposals was to try to incorporate the full 26 Pantheons - it might be easy to come up with the first 8 names, but if we can't fill out the whole roster, the idea is a bust.

So here are my three versions, based on the CiV pantheons. It should go without saying that these can be adjusted in any number of ways: specific bonuses paired with them, precise name, etc.

For the purpose of clarity, C=Culture, F=Faith, P=Production, H=Happiness, FD=Food, G=Gold, and S=Science.

Also, each entry is written as:

Pantheon Name (any clarification) - CiV equivalent (benefit) [any further notes and justification about the connection]

1) Lineage

This wasn't one S3rgeus particularly enjoyed, but I wanted to set it forth because, in some ways, it's the "safest" in that the connections are relatively logical, and its all pretty intuitive. This is the only set that doesn't involve any eye-rolling connections between a concept and its bonus.
The idea is this is the "core" of your people, the kind of people they descended from. Specific to WoT, this can be interpreted to mean either what your people were like during the AoL, or what they were like/did during the Time of Madness. Perhaps the latter makes more sense (no "neurosurgeons" from the AoL here...)
Unfortunately (and this is a big unfortunately), this is completely devoid of any WoT-specific flavor, though the idea of a people have inherent traits is definitely in keeping with the WoT style.

Curators of Tradition - Ancestor Worship (+1 C from Shrines)
Hardy Folk - Dance of the Aurora (+1 F from Tundra tiles without Forest)
Nomadic People - Desert Folklore (+1 F from Desert tiles)
Craftsmen - Earth Mother (+1 F for each Copper, Iron, and Salt resource)
Zealots - Faith Healers (+30 HP healed per turn if adjacent to a friendly city)
Thriving Populace - Fertility Rites (10% faster Growth rates)
Industrious Workers - God of Craftsmen (+1 P in cities with Population of 3+)
Horse Traders - God of the Open Sky (+1 C from Pastures)
Fisherman - God of the Sea (+1 P from Fishing Boats)
Crusaders - God of War (Gain F if you win a battle within 4 tiles of your city)
Ritualists - Goddess of Festivals (C and +1 F Faith for each Wine and Incense)
Urban Society - Goddess of Love (+1 H from cities with Population of 6+)
Guardian Class - Goddess of Protection (+30% increase in city Ranged Combat Strength)
Hunter Society - Goddess of the Hunt (+1 FD from Camps)
Loyal Subjects - God-King (Palace provides +1 C, F, G, P, and S)
Traveling Scholars - Messenger of the Gods (+2 S in cities with a City Connection)
Builder People - Monument to the Gods (+15% P of Ancient/Classical Wonders)
Explorers - One with Nature (+4 F from Natural Wonders)
Landed Gentry - Oral Tradition (+1 C from Plantations)
Merchant Elite - Religious Idols (+1 C and +1 F for each Gold and Silver)
Prospectors - Religious Settlements (15% faster border growth)
Woodland Folk - Sacred Path (+1 C from Jungle tiles)
River Traders - Sacred Waters (+1 H from cities on rivers)
Mining Tradition - Stone Circles (+2 F from Quarries)
Masters of Harvest - Sun God (+1 FD for each Bananas, Citrus, and Wheat resource)
Artisans - Tear of the Gods (+2 F for each Gems or Pearls resource)

2) Iconography

This probably needs a better name. Style Tradition or something. Suggestions?
This one seeks to bring in the various visual flair of the peoples of Randland. As such, its full of in-universe content, some of which more immediately recognizable than others.
Understandably, the connections between the style and the bonus is often tenuous at best. Instead of trying to dream up what possible benefits Beards could give a civilization, I instead tried to find benefits based on the culture's associated with that particular style - the Aiel are a warlike, desert people, so their styles should perhaps reflect that. This is nice if a player wanted to actually try to play an Aiel civ as Aiel as possible.
Some of these sound lamer than others. Some of them also have cool, in-universe names, while others sound awkward in their plainness (looking at you, Illian!).
One unfortunately thing if we choose this is that CiV doesn't associate an image with a pantheon - aside from the lightning bolt that is replaced by a religion. Would be cool if you could have an icon like that that would stay with you for the whole game - sort of like choosing your piece in a game of Monopoly (people who don't know that game, its a board game where each player's avatar can be one of a set of pretty random things, like a dog, a thimble, an iron, a car, etc.)
If these go unused, I don't yet know how/when we'd work these into the game.

Shawls (Aes Sedai) - Ancestor Worship (+1 C from Shrines) [the AS are quite concerned with ritual]
Hadori (Malkier) - Dance of the Aurora (+1 F from Tundra tiles without Forest) [this is the cord Lan wears. Reference to the northern geographic location of the country]
Cadin sor (Aiel) - Desert Folklore (+1 F from Desert tiles) [obvious ties to the Waste]
Velvet Bows (Amador) - Earth Mother (+1 F for each Copper, Iron, and Salt resource) [reference to the mountains near to the country]
Ki'sain (Malkier) - Faith Healers (+30 HP healed per turn if adjacent to a friendly city) [very tangential. This is the malkieri dot wears, and is associated only through Nyneave being a healer]
Sheer Clothing (Arad Doman) - Fertility Rites (10% faster Growth rates) [sensuality/mating rites = high birth rate]
Coats with Wooden Buttons (Ghealdan] - God of Craftsmen (+1 P in cities with Population of 3+) [essentially chosen out of desperation. They must have some production there, though...]
Wool Coats (Two Rivers) - God of the Open Sky (+1 C from Pastures) [connection to the shepherding of the TR]
Earrings (Sea Folk) - God of the Sea (+1 P from Fishing Boats) [SF live in the sea...]
Top-Knots (Shienar) - God of War (Gain F if you win a battle within 4 tiles of your city) [reference to the war-culture of the nation]
Cylindrical Caps (Tarabon) - Goddess of Festivals (C and +1 F Faith for each Wine and Incense) [tangential reference to the wine shop(s) in Tanchico. Mat goes to one]
Marriage Knives (Altara) - Goddess of Love (+1 H from cities with Population of 6+) [trying to tangentially associate the matriarchy and marriage customs of Altara with a stable, contented population... that duels a lot]
Bells in Hair (Arafel) - Goddess of Protection (+30% increase in city Ranged Combat Strength) [reference to the country's Borderlanderness, and their fiery reputation]
Forked Beards (Kandor) - Goddess of the Hunt (+1 FD from Camps) [Kandor is noted for success in the trading of furs]
Shaved Heads (Seanchan) - God-King (Palace provides +1 C, F, G, P, and S) [Seanchan has, perhaps, the strongest central authority in WoT]
Powdered Hair (Cairhien) - Messenger of the Gods (+2 S in cities with a City Connection) [reference to the academy in Cairhien]
High-Necked Dresses (Far Madding) - Monument to the Gods (+15% P of Ancient/Classical Wonders) [Reference to the Guiardian, which is obviously a sort of Wonder]
Veils (Aiel) - One with Nature (+4 F from Natural Wonders) [of all the peoples, they seemed to live in the most natural environs... there aren't many natural wonder-like things described in the books]
Beards without Mustaches (Illian) - Oral Tradition (+1 C from Plantations) [reference to the marshlands that border Illian, which is topography that can yield plantation kinds of things]
Pointed Beards (Tear) - Religious Idols (+1 C and +1 F for each Gold and Silver) [intended to reflect the wealth of the Tairen nation]
Clashing Colors (Tuatha'an) - Religious Settlements (15% faster border growth) [tinkers are nomadic and spread around]
Tatoos (Shara) - Sacred Path (+1 C from Jungle tiles) [Not sure if there are jungles in Shara, but there might be. There certainly aren't in the westlands]
Braids (Two Rivers) - Sacred Waters (+1 H from cities on rivers) [connected to the eponymous rivers]
Handlebar Mustaches (Saldaea) - Stone Circles (+2 F from Quarries) [reference to the rocky coast of the country]
Lacquered Nails (Seanchan) - Sun God (+1 FD for each Bananas, Citrus, and Wheat resource) [tangential, but Seanchan is a very large place and I think there are some hot, subtropical places]
Kesiera (Cairhien) - Tear of the Gods (+2 F for each Gems or Pearls resource) [this is Moiraine's and other Cairhienin's jeweled head-necklace thing. Jeweled and associated with nobility]

unused fashions (mentioned here if you'd like to swap some out):
- Murandian curled mustaches
- anything from non-TR Andor (what is there? somewhat modest dresses? those red things queen loyalists wore in the EotW?),
- any specifically military regalia,
- Cairhienin horizontal slashes on coats
- Tairen tightly-fit coats
- Kandori pearl earrings
- Altaran many-layered petticoats
- Amador bonnets
- any ashaman or whitecloak clothing

3) National Festival

This is attempting to suggest that each civ has a holiday that they view as most important. Many of the WoT holidays are, apparently, celebrated in a wide range of nations, though there are some that are city-specific (Ebou dar tends to have several), though this may be just due to bias from where the characters were.
Most of these have pretty absurd connections to their bonuses - moreso than with the Styles, because there I could at least associate it with a clear nation. You might look at something like Winternight being associated with Tundra, and think "hey, there's got to be something better for Winternight"... and there probably is. But then, I would say to you "Which one would you then choose to associate with Tundra? Also don't be so snarky." Catch my drift?
This stuff is of course all in-universe flavor, though with varying degrees of recognizability. Some are very much a part of the WoT experience, while some have literally no info but the fact that they exist (some of these are found in the big white book of bad art, and maybe only there).
If we don't use these, a few would likely make good Customs.

Amaetheon (day for the remembrance of the dead) - Ancestor Worship (+1 C from Shrines) [reference through ceremonial burial and such]
Winternight (last day of winter, spend time with friends, give gifts) - Dance of the Aurora (+1 F from Tundra tiles without Forest) [cheating here - winter = tundra]
Low Chasaline (fasting) - Desert Folklore (+1 F from Desert tiles) [random and cheap connection, but fasting=barren=desert?]
Swovan Night (decorate doors with pine, and dancing) - Earth Mother (+1 F for each Copper, Iron, and Salt resource) [totally random]
Day of Repentance (no other info) - Faith Healers (+30 HP healed per turn if adjacent to a friendly city) [ repent and you shall be healed!...........]
Shaoman (appreciating children and such) - Fertility Rites (10% faster Growth rates) [children come from fertility. I have proof of this]
Asadine (fasting) - God of Craftsmen (+1 P in cities with Population of 3+) [pretty much random... fasting = dedication and discipline?]
Bel Tine (start of Spring) - God of the Open Sky (+1 C from Pastures) [shepherds, the Two Rivers, spring, etc.]
Feast of the Half Moon (no information) - God of the Sea (+1 P from Fishing Boats) [this is 100% random]
Lamma Sor (Day of Remembrance, specifically for those taken by the Bligh) - God of War (Gain F if you win a battle within 4 tiles of your city) [finally, one that makes sense. faith from the eulogizing of the wars you've fought]
Feast of Fools (day where people swap places and rank) - Goddess of Festivals (C and +1 F Faith for each Wine and Incense) [ sounded like a big party to me]
Feast of Lights (hanging lamps, loss of inhibitions) - Goddess of Love (+1 H from cities with Population of 6+) [lack of inhibition = big party and happiness]
Feast of Embers (no information) - Goddess of Protection (+30% increase in city Ranged Combat Strength) [completely random, though embers to lead to mental associations with a rain of fiery arrows]
Feast of Thanksgiving (no info, but at the spring equinox) - Goddess of the Hunt (+1 FD from Camps) [chosen solely because it is as the spring equinox... so let's kill some animals]
Maddin's Day (celebrates the founding of Altara) - God-King (Palace provides +1 C, F, G, P, and S) [very problematic since it celebrates the founding of a specific civ, but, if extrapolating to a more general "nationalistic" independence day thing, it makes some sense]
Feast of Abram (concerns itself with travellers) - Messenger of the Gods (+2 S in cities with a City Connection) [travelling = city connection]
Tirish Adar (people get one hour of sleep for weeks!) - Monument to the Gods (+15% P of Ancient/Classical Wonders) [seems like people would have to fill the time doing something...]
Tandar (reconciliation) - One with Nature (+4 F from Natural Wonders) [why not? this felts kind of zen, like a majestic landscape]
Feast of All Souls Salvation (no other info, but at the Autumn equinox) - Oral Tradition (+1 C from Plantations) [this connection is solely based on the fact that it is in autumn, often when there is the harvest]
High Chasaline (day of reflection on your good fortune) - Religious Idols (+1 C and +1 F for each Gold and Silver) [pretty random, but good fortune can equal money!]
Mabriam's Day (day off for everybody, people play tricks) - Religious Settlements (15% faster border growth) [totally random, though this is a very likable holiday, so I figured maybe its influence/culture would spread]
Festival of Birds (people dress up in feathers, give away money) Sacred Path (+1 C from Jungle tiles) [birds tangentially leads me to jungle... somebody has to be jungle]
Sunday (festival with feast, dancing, and competition/games] - Sacred Waters (+1 H from cities on rivers) [cheap connection, only via its importance in the two rivers]
Festival of Lanterns (build and hang paper lanterns) - Stone Circles (+2 F from Quarries) [absolutely random]
Chansein (gluttonous holiday) - Sun God (+1 FD for each Bananas, Citrus, and Wheat resource) [producing food = epic feast]
Firstday (kinda hard to find, apparently the day after the Feast of Lights, known as a day to give alms) - Tear of the Gods (+2 F for each Gems or Pearls resource) [pretty lame connection, but giving of wealth associates with jewels and wealth]

Unused holidays (to be swapped if desired):
- Bailene (no information)
- Dahan (celebrates the end of the trolloc wars) - could be useful for the military ones, but.... you need to actually fight and win the trolloc wars first, right?
- Danshu (no information)
- Feast of Freia (no information)
- Feast of Maia (no information)
- Feast of Neman (no information)
- Genshai (people wear ribbons)

ok, that took longer than i wanted. Which you like?

counterpoint · Sep 1, 2014

S3rgeus said:
Absolute simplest is to ignore era length and just use in-universe names, divorcing them from the actual calendar time period that they occurred in. (That dissociation will likely happen anyway, because of the way time works in CiV.) I think starting the Trolloc Wars by tech makes a lot of sense from a gameplay perspective, we want it to start at a specific progression, not too early or too late.

I haven't looked much into how the calendar system works with the whole slowing down from weeks/months/years and how the game decides what to display to the user. (All of this scales with selected game speed.) I would think we should be able to present whatever arbitrary dates we want to the player, so no problem switching calendars part of the way through.

This is a bit strange compared to original CiV. The 'turn timer' date in base CiV is the Gregorian Calendar and progresses through dates as turns pass. The 'eras' progress based on player tech, regardless of the 'date' in game. WoT links the changing of calendars to specific portions of history/technological progress, which is problematic. The era 'Free Years' may occur (for some civs) before or after FY1, depending on how many turns it took them to get there. I don't know if we can avoid this while still using in-universe era names and calendars. Maybe we're approaching eras wrong? We're using the calendars and 'time' names, which, in reality, would really just be B.C. and A.D. (for modern humans, using our calendar). There are no other obvious divisions. Are there progressive evolutions of technology in WoT that defined civilizations there, like 'Classical,' 'Industrial,' etc.?

Have to say though, I really like this problem, it's quite fun because I'd never even thought of it. It's just that kind of little thing that most players wouldn't notice but that really makes the immersion!

I played my first game as the Mayas a few weeks back, and noticed how they totally changed the way the calendar counted, and show the gregorian date when you highlight it - though it was a simple translation or something, not nearly as complex as what we're doing. But that gets me thinking if there is a simpler way to do this.

This is terrible, but it might be a compromise - could we show two dates? Like, choose one calendar as our primary, like the AB date. This calendar counts upwards consistently, and should reach around 3000 years or so by the end of an average game. Then, we have a second date, either shown alongside the first one (ideal), or shown when highlighted, that shows the in-universe, tech-based "era" date. So, say after 1000 years, everybody advances to the second calendar era, we'll call it the FY for now. 50 years later (a couple turns, probably), the "real" date is AB 1050, but the secondary date is FY 50. In another game, however, the tech reaches the 2nd era after 1300 years. Fifty years later it would be AB 1350, but still 50 FY. Is this possible? If so, is it a good compromise.

Since there's really only three "calendar"-based divisions in the Third age of WoT, and not really much divisions like classical, industrial, that we know of, maybe we need to free ourselves of this and subdivide the eras, fudging the numbers slightly. This is made more palatable if we're able to still somehow salvage the "real" pacing using a method described above.

-AB already seems to divide, with a Ten Nations period (we can rename) this occupying the last part. As described though, this actually is some 80% of the era - we could fudge the numbers and rename it such that its more like 50%.
-I'm not sure what to do with the FY, since there's not much about this int he books. Maybe the first half is rebuilding-oriented/named, and the second half is Hawkwing centric?
- Maybe the NE divides into three sections, with the first being the reformations post-hawkwing - or maybe we do it based on the Consolidation of Seanchan. The last era is of course the Dragon, but I'm not sure what to do with the middle.

This is iffy in that its much less in-universe sounding if we give these our own names (or semi-WoT based, but I'm not sure what the other options are.

S3rgeus said:
I'm not sure what my conclusion is really, I've found diplomacy a lot better since BNW.

Yeah, I should note I didn't play CiV until BNW was already released. I have no idea what diplo looked like beforehand.

S3rgeus said:
The way it is now each Ajah accumulates influence for itself, rather than each player with each Ajah (need to store that data in a different way, because who gave what influence to each Ajah isn't stored as I have it now, just which Ajah has how much.) Hopefully that makes sense. Basically, there are however many Ajahs, I'll just use three for an example. Under the surface, each has 'influence points' which represents how much influence that Ajah has, and their overall influence is determined as a percentage of the whole. Example:

Blue: 50
Red: 40
Green 30

Blue has 50/(50+40+30) = ~42%
Red has 40/(50+40+30) = ~33%
Green has 30/(50+40+30) = 25%

You can see from there that we have no concept of player influence, only the amount for each Ajah. But that can change, it's not too much work and if we come up with something better, I'm all for it.

I see, that's why you were concerned that sometimes the Ajah would do something you hate, when you've worked so hard to get it to be powerful. I definitely think the players should be able to influence them.

That said, I think the element you've created - boosting an Ajah's influence within the Hall itself is a great mechanic that could probably be useful to us. This ties in the Amyrlin elections and stuff like that. Ajahs are each influences (somewhat but maybe not wholly) by players, and each are also jockying for position.

S3rgeus said:
I assume we don't want to funnel them into the Shadow way of winning a diplo victory through the Black Ajah? (which we haven't finalized exists yet, but seems to make sense and I haven't seen anyone reluctant about the idea)

First thing that springs to mind is capturing the Tower and running your own 'rigged' election, but that's rife with problems. It makes the diplo victory military focused and makes it monstrously more difficult for civs that are geographically far from the Tower on the map.

If we go with an influence-per-player approach, these kinds of policies could inflict static penalties on you when dealing with the Tower? You could still talk to them if you weren't too serious about it (a la Tear) or you could go full on 'capture them all' and the influence penalties would stack up (a la Seanchan).

I think you have the right idea. I'm fine with the Black thing, but I'll say that these methods - black ajah, invasion, etc. - should be balanced to be significantly more difficult than a "real" diplo victory - as you said, we don't want diplo rewarding the military strength of a player disproportionately (or their evilness).

S3rgeus said:
The difficulties with the AI are a bit more systemic - they're really bad at optimizing for something that's a "good idea." They just tend to do stuff and then react to the position they end up in. They 'understand' threats from other players like nearby military units, people competing for city-states, and the value of specific trades. The things in common there are that they're quite immediate value judgements that can be quantified and compared, so it does that.

Getting them to do a specific series of actions in a optimal way is very difficult and frustrating for the player. Example, you give a science-y civ a Seal and it needs to build a project in a city, but its best cities are occupied doing something else that's important to it. So it starts building it in a worse city - which takes longer than it would have taken you. Now you need a mechanism to demand it back.

This is a great point and reminds me that we aren't designing in a vacuum, unfortunately.

Maybe the answer here is to simplify the mechanics of the LB teamwork somewhat. This is tricky, though, because we don't want to make it too boring for the humans.

Maybe the seals, financing, culture contributions, whatever non-military "roles" don't have to be completely all-or-nothing. Like, for example, a civ contributes 50% of all its production (or science, etc.) towards some goal (if it elects or is ordered to complete that goal). This would take the "choice" away from a terrible AI, and lets, for instance, the Seal-cracking civ still be able to pump out units and fight, or do other random stuff in the LB.

Of course, we could say AI always follower player orders, and the leader is always human-controlled, but that breaks a lot of civ rules, and doesn't work if the player chooses shadow (and the light leader is, presumably, AI-controlled).

S3rgeus said:
If the AI had control of the Dragon and needed to get him safely to a specific (war-torn) position on the map, you might as well kiss the Dark One's boots now. The AI is supremely terrible at getting specific (individual) units to do anything sensible. It'd be embarking him within range of enemy siege units, or taking massive circuitous routes (that include unnecessary backtracking because its own and particularly other players' units are in the way) that take way too long to reach Thakan'dar.

This is perhaps more relevant later in the post, but I think this AI issue actually might need to seriously impact the way we choose to use the dragon. Some thoughts:

1) The AI can't be trusted with him.
2) Rand is super powerful, potentially too powerful.
3) In the books, very rarely does Rand go all rambo on everybody - he spends the entirely of the LB in Thakandar
4) Not getting to control the dragon might be unfun.
5) Rand is often either in disguise, or has his location hidden from the shadow (and even his own people, at times)
6) Rand can travel, and does, anywhere, all the time.

Number 6 above suggests that we could perhaps just have him Airlift to various cities at will. This would preserve his life, potentially, but seems like something the AI would freak out over.

Also, similar to my previously expressed concerns about the Horn, I don't like the idea of the game becoming a big game of Capture the Rand. Everybody just chasing him around the map. Thats not how CiV is, and that's not how WoT is. Also, I don't really love the idea of him being an ultra powerful unit that is free to go wherever he wants. In order to be realistically powerful, he'd probably be unbalancing in any other fronts of the LB.

I wonder if instead of the Dragon being a regular unit, he's something else, maybe more like a Spy (in terms of mechanics) you move between locations. Perhaps, when the time is right, then the real unit appears and goes into Thakandar, fighting and Powering his way to victory for a few moments.

In the interim, maybe the Light team (or the "owner" civ or something) moves him to various locations, like a spy, and certain effects happen:

1) Rands crazy ultra Ta'veren-ness shows. Crazy good things and crazy bad things happen to that city. Don't know the mechanics of it, just the spirit of it. Bubbles of Good and Evil, etc.
2) He is "garrisoned" there, the effect being that that city has much stronger ranged defense/strength. I guess he isn't necessarily garrisoned, because htat would imply that another unit couldn't also be there.
3) Perhaps, if he's in a shadow city, he can do epic stuff there, but there's a chance he'd be caught (which probably makes this a bad idea). Maybe he can capture Seals? Root out DFs?

Rand would take a few turns to move between locations, as a spy, so he couldn't be everywhere at once. Shadow players could determine where he was through espionage, and also by noticing which city has crazy stuff happening to it and its stronger defenses. If they capture that city without him escaping, that's probably bad for the Light.

This would potentially made the Dragon a much less chaotic thing for the AI to manage. either one player determined its movements, or people could request him to move around (and form a queue of sorts), and/or vote on it,

Is this too much less fun than having a "real" unit? I do think this takes the sting away from not being the dragon owner.

As far as how he pops up, should it be based on how Light-ish a civ is? If he is born in a shadow civ, I suppose he needs to flee or something, but what if he was born in a neutral one? Personally, I like the idea of him being born a little bit before the LB starts (like in the books), ushering in the Age of the Dragon, causing civs to get ready and really decide their path. This would definitely mean he could be born in a civ that wasn't obviously light-allied. Implications?

S3rgeus said:
However, saying all of that, I find AI work really interesting. I haven't looked much at the CiV AI code yet, but there might be room for a different approach that's more performant and smart than the simple 'if these conditions, take these actions' approach Firaxis seems to have used.

Well, Ill follow your lead, then, regarding the feasibility/worthiness of this stuff. I will say again, though, that I'm liking this set up the most, in terms of the concept about the LB? What about you? If you agree, than I think the priority is tweaking it so it is possible from an AI perspective, rather than scrapping it and finding a worse option. (IMO, at least)

S3rgeus said:
Emphasis added because when I read that, the way I considered 'neutral' and the whole context of the Last Battle flipped on its head. I'm completely on board, neutral sounds like an awesome idea! I'm not quite sure if I can articulate the change in how I'm thinking about this.

Despite being the advocate for 'all victories are independent,' I'd still been thinking of the Last Battle as the 'end of the game.' Having 'neutrality' makes it much more like the other victories, which I think is really awesome. It's something that civs can choose to participate in, but which affects everyone. Hope that make sense.

I suppose my ideal is that there'd usually only be a couple civs that go neutral in a game - those really far away or those winning already. If it because something that people always thought was preferable, I think we've balanced things wrong.

S3rgeus said:
I'm not sure about is locking the Light players to only the Last Battle victory, but I think I can see the logic behind it - it's what makes 'neutral' a sensible choice and means 'non-participaters' won't join the Light side to mess it up, because it will prevent them from winning like they'd planned. Nice, I like the symmetry. I said I wasn't sure, actually this seems pretty cool.

I think locking the victories makes sense as the only way to make sure people cooperate - i don't think anybody's suggested a better way. That said can you leave the alliance? If so, there'd need to be some kind of penalty or something. Betrayal should maybe be possible, but it shouldn't be necessarily encouraged.

S3rgeus said:
I'm still stewing over the Shadow players needing to win 'another' victory as well. However, we can come back to that in a moment.

Similarly, I haven't seen a proposal that makes the Shadow civs not just "better" than the light civs, aside from this one.

S3rgeus said:
I'm good with merging the Sealing the Bore into the Last Battle (that you mention later) and using something else for the science victory. This gives us some fun to have with the different sides having control of the Seals.

Good. I guess we can figure out just what the regular "science victory" is later, then.

S3rgeus said:
For the Shadow players, what do we think the objectives are for the Last Battle? Killing the Dragon seems to come up a lot here, as does the Light using the Dragon in a battle at Thakan'dar. So, shall we say that the Dragon is 'revealed' when the Last Battle starts? He(/she?) can be a unit, controlled by one of the Light side civs. How do we choose which one?

I already stated some prelim thoughts on the dragon above. I'm not sure him being a unit is a good thing at all.

Shadow objectives:

maybe its only 2 out of the 3 of the following:
1) kill (or capture) dragon
2) do... something with the seals.
3) take Light capitals
plus:
4) another victory condition.

The LB itself would be over once the first set happens. but the GAME wouldn't be ovr until the last one happens.

I can't really think of any other victory conditions that make a whole lot of sense for the shadow... maybe something like "corrupting" other capitals with DF?

S3rgeus said:
Taim had several of the Seals for a while, if I remember correctly. I'm unclear on why he didn't break them right away - isn't that bringing the Dark One closer to being released?

How about the Shadow are trying to break all of the Seals during the Battle? The Light are trying to get them all and protect them until the Dragon takes Thakan'dar. Then breaking them wins the game for the Light side. (press a 'break the Seals' button by the player who has them? Is it even necessary to that then - they've won but just need to press a thing? Maybe breaking the Seals is something that requires production?) The more Seals are broken during the war, the more Shadowspawn appear, the more static penalties to the land. (Offshoot - we can have food penalties across the board to simulate the whole 'spoiling food' thing. Happiness can plummet too. These can get worse as Seals are broken.)

I like this. the world falling to pieces is cool. Could results in penalties, even bubbles of evil and such. The whole everybody wants to break the seals thing feels weird, but it is the way it's supposed to be. I guess the game is about when they get broken - the light wants to wait til the last minute. I do like how the seals breaking makes the game harder for the light (maybe these things hurt the light more?) but ultimately help its victory. Hiding seals does seem natural for the neutral players, though there should be a non-military way to retrieve them, I guess.

And sure, production project or research project to break seals is fine.

S3rgeus said:
So, the Light are trying to capture Thakan'dar with the Dragon. Thakan'dar as a city in the Blight seems to be a good idea and I think most of us like it? So, how does the Light attack it? Fighting in the Blight is difficult for non-Shadowspawn, so the Blight can damage and slow down other units that enter Blight hexes. We want the Light to have to use the Dragon. So, what if only the Dragon can capture the city? But then you can barrage it down to 0 health while the Dragon is safely outside the Blight, then bring him in the for the finishing blow. Is this valid?

If not, we can make it so that 'normal' units only do tiny amounts of damage to Thakan'dar and the only 'reasonable' way to damage it is with the Dragon. (Think 'Shadowslayer' promotion - +500% damage against Thakan'dar, or something to that effect.)

I think all of these things make sense to me.

S3rgeus said:
I love the idea of the Seals as in-game things that move between cities. (Do they move as units? Any unit? Or like planes?)

This is somewhat like the New World conquest civ5 scenario, and its "treasure." Don't have strong opinions about it. If they are units, though....do we like the idea of them being able to float around the poles, far away from units?

S3rgeus said:
However, all of that said, there's nothing stopping us from giving players GP units in completely unrelated ways to the above systems. They're units just like any other that can be spawned from code for each player for any arbitrary condition. So we could make channeler GPs a function of total empire population (though tall empires also tend to be more populous, because of the way CiV populations work).

ok, will consider this when I come up with channeling ideas

S3rgeus said:
Good point, it's adding on top. I think we'll definitely keep this in mind when we're working on uniques for the individual civs in more detail. If we can, it would be great to create more differentiation.

I'm still not quite sure what I think of this idea.

S3rgeus said:
I believe different Consensuses were required for different types of discussions? They needed the Greater Consensus to depose the Amyrlin, but only a (super)majority for some more mundane things. It's definitely interesting and we could do something with it when we're discussing the mechanics of what the White Tower actually *does* throughout most of the game.

right. next topic, probably...

S3rgeus said:
Espionage is another can of worms we haven't really touched yet. I don't suggest we discuss it in depth now, but just a quick question, do we plan to overhaul how espionage works entirely or work within the existing CiV system? Like, we could go full CIV (Civ4 - that abbreviation is really ambiguous) and have 'spy' units again.

But that's a whole other discussion.

I seem to remember kind of hating the micromanagement required with CIV spies.... I could be convinced. Similar, you could have "darkfriend" units that do stuff. Or, I guess, what we could do is have multiple kinds of spies (CiV style) that have a darkfriend option. Definitely there will need to be some more tasks associated with espionage, because of all the systems we have. Another topic to tackle soon...

S3rgeus said:
I've been keeping this possibility in mind while working on the White Tower stuff (making it agnostic of the number of Towers there are and such) but I think it's too much craziness for the 'random' games. Makes an awesome scenario though.

OK, nothing to worry about now then

S3rgeus said:
New resources is definitely on the table! I've already folded part of Barathor's More Luxuries mod into this mod (with permission!) to rebrand tobacco as tabac and to use olives at least. Barathor's mod is awesome and has really high quality artwork, both 2D and 3D, so it adds a lot of authenticity. I believe they all use existing improvements since they're reskins of other resources.

S3rgeus said:
No worries, this topic has become a series of massive walls of text, so it's easy enough for those of us who have been writing them to get lost, let alone people trying to read through and work out what we've decided on!

Yeah, I think that's my fault...

S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

Richard's voice

Emperor

Emperor

Warlord

Richard's voice

Richard's voice

Emperor

King

Richard's voice

King

King

King

Warlord

King

Chieftain

Emperor

Emperor

Emperor

King

King

Similar threads