S3rgeus
Emperor
S3rgeus: It doesn't appear you got my PM, so posting it here:
Remember I had said I might be able to do some units for your mod? Well, I haven't forgotten entirely about that, I've just been really freaking busy! First of all I don't know anything about that universe, and have no intention of reading the books to find out - while the idea of reading a new series of fantasy novels is always attractive, I just finished Raymond E. Feist's Sorcery Magician, whoops and want to move on to whatever the next one is. While I hope that the fantasy units I've done over the past few months have been somewhat useful to you, I know that the Shadowspawn units you wanted haven't shown up yet. So here goes:
Trollocs: Should be fairly easy, you probably want multiple models? Are you all right with one version that is a ram-headed satyr? I ask because that's what the future WHFB Beastman Gor will look like. Nomad or What has also done a Werewolf that you may find useful. If you have a specific idea of what a Trolloc should look like, it's your mod. Tell me what you want!
Myrddraal: What's the matter with Murphy's Vampire Swordsmen? Or do you need "mage" versions of that? Either way is easy, I'll remember to skin off the eyes.
Draghkar: I might be able to jigsaw a new model from Civ4 parts and using the animations from Nomad's Eagle Warrior for the flying... he'd have to have a spear though. And there would be no kissing. None.
Darkhounds: You are spoiled for choice here sir! Do you want the Wolf body or the Warg body? A black, red-eyed Warg exists already (and it is scary as h***). A black, red-eyed Wolf would also be easy and may already exist.
Heroes: This tends to get out of hand, so I'd rather not get into it at all for now.
In return for these, do you suppose you could help out with WHFB a bit? I'm short on coders, I really need a regular Lua and possibly C++ coder... Pazyryk, Nutty, and Bouncymischa have all helped out, but none can be counted on to give a snippet right away (plus Paz is trying to get v7 of Éa out and I broke my v6 so I really want to let him be). And none of them are DLL modders, which are really what I need.
Cheers
Civitar
So... interested? I really do need coders, and not just for Warhammer it seems.
Woops, sorry, the PM notification is really small at the top of the screen and I never remember to check up there! I completely understand you not reading the books for this - they're enormous and that would be a huge ask!
I'd be happy to provide some snippets of Lua/C++ for specific features on request, but I've got limited time to work on modding and don't think I'd have enough to be a regular on another mod and still work on this one.
I completely understand if you can only make these units for someone who can join on as a regular for your mod. On the specific models you mentioned:
- Trollocs - Yes, multiple models for this one would be awesome. Based on a quick Google, it looks to me like WH Beastman Gor looks quite similar to a trolloc. Some trollocs in the books also have beak-like mouths. Here's some artwork with trollocs in them that I think captures the right kind of image.
- Myrddraal - These are usually described as cloaked rather than armored in the books (and if their cloaks hang limp "unaffected by wind" then that is even better - plus I believe easier to animate) and they're bald as well as eyeless. They do fight with black swords though.
- Draghkar - I'd put this one on the backburner compared to the others if we can't get animations like the Draghkar from the books - think sort of like the Dementors draining souls in the Harry Potter movies. Physically I quite like this artwork for Draghkar.
- Darkhounds - I saw some of these units and they definitely look awesome. I can reskin units no problem - but have you had any success with anything like having their running animation leave blackened footprints on the ground? I saw some serious progress with NomadOrWhat's wizard with adding new particle effects to other unit skeletons.
- Completely understand here - we need to do more design work on which Heroes go into the mod and such before making any 3D models.
Related to the work NomadOrWhat did on his wizard, has there been much success having different units use arbitrary particle effects from other units? Like a spellcaster that throws the catapult's city-attack as a fireball? I've kind of lost track of where the 3D tech has gotten for CiV mods, but I see a lot of very interesting first steps. I just know that whenever I open up Blender it eats my whole day trying new stuff out!
Yes, my hope is that we could simply make the benefits of a given side be merely "different" but not necessarily better. The "moral choices" in modern gaming are usually too cliche and end up simple value decisions more all but the most serious RPers.
The thing is, it can't just be so simple as "you get more stuff for being a DF" because way more people would be DFs in the WoT universe if that were the case. True, there are many of them, but selling yourself to evil incarnate isn't a light decision made because you want a few extra Science per turn.
One thing I was thinking that's sort of related to this is that maybe the Last Battle is a sort of second ("real") victory scenario.
Sure, you LB still occurs as a sort of nobody-won-but-it's-2050 (or whatever) -scenario, but in addition, "winning" one of the other victories causes your civ some sort of big time benefit in the LB.
This would need to be set up such that the civs who didn't win would still have incentive to play - they could "win" the last battle still, or at least still play an interesting role in it.
Perhaps each "victory" type gave an appropriate effect when it came time to fight the LB - which would vary of course based on which side you end up on.
- Cultural - based on "presitge," this means you are elected leader/commander of the Battle (for light side, at least). Obviously this doesn't mean you control all other civs, but you'd be able to make some key decisions or something.
- Diplomatic - similar maybe, but you'd get some sort of white-tower-based benefit, or channelers would be better or something (get some angreal,e tc.)
- Domination - this one's weird, obviously. Some sort of extra military might, or something
- Science - I'm still holding out on the whole sealing-the-bore is the science victory thing, for reasons stated before regarding the AoL. What if it is, instead, *breaking* the seals? After all, it took research to determine that that was what had to happen. In any case, the winner here could get an easier time accessing Thakan'dar or something.
And of course, flip-side versions of that for the dark side.
The key thing is of course to try to offer incentive for the non-winners to not quit the game once that first person "wins." Maybe we can offer second and third-place benefits. You know, like in those games where you only have on SS part left to build, and somebody wins a cultural game? Well, maybe here you'd still finish the SS a few turns later, and get a lesser version of the benefit above.
Anyways, just an idea.
I think I have a few conflicting ideas with the way this would work. The Last Battle victory condition does replace the Time victory, but I'm in favor of "promoting" it from Time's 'second class citizen' status as a victory. Firaxis have balanced CiV so that players going for different victory conditions will all be approaching their endgame and final victory at around the same time if played with relatively equivalent skill - but the Time victory only really happens if everyone suitably hamstrings one another that no one wins a 'primary' victory.
But if balanced like the Firaxis victories, the Last Battle would occur around the same sort of time that players would be heading toward different victory conditions. What if the Last Battle were relative to 'world era' like the Trolloc Wars? We could even gate the other victories via techs on the tree that trigger the Last Battle. The science victory is easily gated due to its dependence on tech, but I think a suitably swing-y boosting tech for both diplo and culture would force diplo/culture players' hands to triggering that. What we don't want is someone who's really good at civ to run away with the game and never see the Last Battle because they always win before then.
I think having the normal victories as a stop-gap towards the Last Battle will put off a lot of players. I think once someone has completed a victory condition, the game feels very over. The only reason I've ever hit the "one more turn" button is to fire my entire nuke stockpile for fun. I see what you mean about changing the way these work - making them less 'final' - but I think that centralizes the game a bit much - there's only one real way to win and it definitely requires an army. Being able to win without one has always been one of civ's strengths.
I'll reply to a lot of your second post here as well, because we touch on some related topics there.
In terms of balance, I don't think we should prescribe a similar country-split of Light/Dark as the books. I don't think they're unbalanced if too many people choose the Shadow (remember: only one Shadow player can win, so they need to kill their rivals as well "only one first among the Dark One's Chosen" and all that - whereas the Light players can win as a group). Even if most/all of the world sides with the Shadow, it's still a massive slaughter.
I think this avoids players picking a side just to game the system. Players who choose the Shadow are at war with all other players, so it's not an effective way to stall to complete a different victory type midway through. Players who side with the Light can band together somewhat - but that may be restricted by geography, and is mitigated by Shadowspawn cropping up all across the map. In fact, the path of minimum internal turmoil is likely to be choosing the side you've leaned toward thus far (if you factor in what we've been talking about for bonuses/penalties of choosing against your actions thus far). I think anyone who wins a science/cultural/diplo victory in the middle of the Last Battle should already have been well on their way to winning the game that way - rather than for the war to drag on long enough that anyone might win another way before it's over.
I also think the competitiveness between civs will be a big factor of keeping the Last Battle balanced - particularly between Shadow players. If one Shadow player is about to win a cultural victory, the others will turn on him. This kind of setup can also create the great betrayals you've mentioned. Suppose you've been leaning mostly Light throughout the game, but you realize leading up to the Last Battle that one of your neighbors is going to win a cultural victory before you can win a science one. They've been leaning Light (as far as your espionage tells you). You make the ultimate betrayal. You side with the Shadow and tear them to pieces to crush their cultural hopes.
And what about those games that truly go into territory that would normally be caught by the Time 2050 victory? (This has honestly never happened to me, and I've played a lot of CiV. Maybe it happens more in specific circumstances I'm unfamiliar with?) I'm a fan of the Dark One deciding that all of humanity isn't worth it after a certain amount of time. An unmanageable sea of Shadowspawn that crushes even the most competent human tactician. I think "everyone dies" is a more apt description of a game where *no one* could get a victory together by this point.
The way I see the Last Battle victory condition working, after our last few posts, is something like this (I use the imperative for all these descriptions to make them clearer, feel free to question each one regardless of if I pose the way they work as optional):
The religion system is being rebranded and directed into a relationship with this victory condition (which is cool - it's a bit strange that religion doesn't really tie in to any of the existing victory conditions). Religion is now the Path to the Light (and referred to as Paths rather than religions), and by accruing faith you can choose a particular Path and spread it to other cities/nations. Your Path provides bonuses to you and any city following it in a similar-but-changed structure to the Founder/Follower beliefs in base CiV.
However, you are also presented with choices throughout the game that allow you to perform actions in favor of the Shadow in exchange for more immediate, short-term bonuses for yourself (potentially long-term ramifications for the world and negatives for other players). However, doing so is done at the cost of faith and possibly even weakening of your Founder beliefs on your Path. (I say Founder beliefs get weakened to avoid tipping your hand to other civs following your Path who would notice weakening in Follower beliefs, but that may not be an issue? It could be a form of 'espionage' to follow someone else's Path. Weakening follower beliefs certainly has a more immediate drawback on the Shadow-choosing player to counteract the bonus they're getting from the Shadow's boon.)
These actions accumulate over time to represent an overall 'leaning' of your civ toward the Light or Shadow. It's worth discussing how discoverable one civ's Light/Shadow balance is for others through espionage/other means.
The Last Battle is triggered at a fixed 'world era' that is equivalent to Earth's early Renaissance - the end of the WoT techs. However, 'world era' is determined by 'half of the civs reaching it or one civ reaching the era beyond it'. You can game that system by crippling but leaving alive enough civs that they hold back the world era from reaching the final one. So, we do something slightly different from what you'd expect. The 'world era' that triggers the Last Battle is the second to last era. There are only three techs in the last era and they represent the pinnacle of what any WoT civ achieved (books timeline, not AoL) in culture, diplomacy, and science. The science tech unlocks the final piece of the science victory project (see after this Last Battle section for discussion on cleansing saidin vs. breaking the seals). The culture and diplo techs I'm currently less clear on, but they'll need to be something essential like a wonder with a targeted ability that can push them over the edge for the victory of that type.
So one of the above triggers goes off (half of civs reach the penultimate era or someone researches a game-ending tech) and the Last Battle bursts onto the scene in full. Each civ is presented a choice: side with the Light or Shadow. But their choices are weighted differently based on their Light/Shadow balanced of Path vs Boon during the game (can we make a proper noun out of Boon for gifts given by the Shadow? That sounds like the kind of name they'd give to gifts from the Dark One in the vein of "Great Lord" and "Chosen" replacing "Dark One" and "Forsaken").
For these bonuses/penalties, I'm glad you liked the rebellions ideas! I'm a big fan of some of the ones you listed here (my favorites in bold):
For the Lightside:
During the battle (or perhaps in general), if your civ is totally hardcore pro-Light, you might:
- be especially resistant to darkfriend espionage, sabotage, trollocs travelling through waygates, etc.
- attract more aes sedai support
- be a larger target of the shadowspawn
- be more resistant to influences from darkside players, whatever that means (maybe you can be turned?)
And if you're much less light-dedicated, or even slightly dark (but still chose light):
- much less likely to be attacked by shadowspawn
- much more likely to have generals and units turned (think the great captains in aMoL
- much less resistant to darkside players, etc.
And for the Dark:
If you're civ has totally been run by darkfriends the whole time, whether by design or by accident, you might:
- gain control of shadowspawn units
- be a huge target for the lightside
- remain more-or-less autonomous from the shadow.
But if you're a last-minute convert, or barely dark:
- get far fewer, or no shadowspawn to control
- be much less a target for the lightside
- probably have much less autonomy, being untrusted by the DO. Maybe some of your cities are even puppetted, or some similar mechanic.
I think being "turned" to either side in the Last Battle is being defeated in the game. Rebellions to the other side (not necessarily related to unhappiness - I can have rebellions triggered for any reason we like - in this case an ongoing thing proportional to how much your population disagrees with your decision. I figure Light-side rebels will join other nearby Light side nations and Shadow rebellions will be controlled directly by the Shadowspawn player.)
And then war. *dramatic music*
And whether it's a world of swarming Shadow-worshipping madmen that duke it out until only one stands victorious, a few staid followers of the Light who are swept under an overwhelming tide of Shadow, a cunning few Light followers who capitalize on the weaknesses of constantly bickering Shadow players to achieve a hard-won victory, to an entire world united under the banners of Rand al'Thor (dramatic name-dropping, not suggesting we use him) that fight bravely (spoilers?) and defeat the Dark One and save all of Creation - I think we've created an awesome ending to the game.
*deep breaths* What do you think? I've been considering this structure while we've been discussing changes to this victory type and I think it strikes a great balance between flavor, balance, and gameplay fun. But do question me on it - there must be things I haven't considered.
A quick side note: black and white choices are drastically easier from a programming perspective, because all I need to do is present the choice, and then set game state based on the feedback from that (player or AI). Organic systems that evolve over the course of the game (which definitely describes the above Last Battle victory condition) are dramatically more complicated because we need to keep track of all of the variables that are involved with either side and persist them with the player and have AIs make reasonable choices based on those values. (The AI will need to use these variables to make choices even if they don't have a final one, because they need to consider whether Light or Shadow benefits them more and weigh the benefits each provides accordingly.) You can use randomness to fuzz the logic, but eventually the code has to reduce down to:
Code:
if (lightPoints >= 0)
// do Light side stuff
else
// do Shadow stuff
Caveat for all of you technical readers, we could avoid the above decision structure by making the civ AIs adaptive machine learning systems. I am one man and can't do that in a timely manner - though it would be crazy fun to try. Or we could make the AI capable of 'simulating' the game with 'assumptions' based on choices they can make. Either of these approaches would require a fairly beastly upgrade to civ's minimum specs. And strictly speaking we're not making an AI mod.
- Science - I'm still holding out on the whole sealing-the-bore is the science victory thing, for reasons stated before regarding the AoL. What if it is, instead, *breaking* the seals? After all, it took research to determine that that was what had to happen. In any case, the winner here could get an easier time accessing Thakan'dar or something.
The Science Victory: Cleansing Saidin vs. Sealing the Bore
I'm not hugely attached to the Cleansing of Saidin being the scientific victory, and like you said, Sealing the Bore fits better into the timeline of eras that we're going for. I think this is a slightly separate-but-related decision to the above Last Battle wall of text.
Actually, just from quick consideration, I think I prefer Sealing the Bore. The science victory in CiV is the only remaining victory that can favor turtling up and not interacting with others (except for research agreements - and an otherwise isolationist approach probably prescribes going tall rather than wide to avoid war). The diplo victory makes you chase CSes (in our case, Ajahs and other civs supporting them), the cultural victory has you scouring the map for great works, and the domination and Last Battle victories are definitely very interactive.
What if the Science victory required finding the Seals on the map? Can we make that competitive? Where some civs are trying to protect the Seals and others to destroy them? (fun synergy: final tech that triggers the Last Battle reveals where the seals are/who has them already) It would be awesome if trying to win a science victory could put you in a position where you needed to steal a Seal from someone who was trying to keep them safe (either by conquest or espionage?). But then how do civs that are protecting the Seals ever win a science victory? Are there two 'competing' science victories? (that's kind of weird?) Or is 'protecting' the seals a mechanism ostensibly used to stop another civ from winning a science victory? I assume the Seals get broken if where they're held is captured by Shadowspawn?
It's a nascent idea, so there are a lot of unformed things and unknowns, but what do you think of the overall idea?
So I took the liberty of posting a thread in a couple WoT fan forums to see what ideas people had. Nothing groundbreaking, but I thought I'd share some of the interesting thoughts.
Awesome idea, thanks for doing that! Good to get more perspective.
- For our Omen religion, some possible names tossed out were Omen Reading (which I had previously mentioned) and Augury. That last one is the correct word, I think, but it'd kind of arcane and isn't specifically mentioned in the books, so might not have the right "feel."
I'm inclined to agree about the "feel." The word "omen" was used quite a lot in the books in reference to this (I think?) and whenever we're talking about it, we seem to use 'omen' as a clarification that we both understand right away. I think other readers will similarly recognize it, but I'm still not sure how to turn it into a suitable phrase for a Path.
- coming up with a name for the "white bread" religion was tricky, though somebody did remind me of the "listening to the wind" concept, that would probably make a cool belief (or wisdom ability?) One person brought in the word "Abram," as in the Feast of Abram, one of the holidays. Definitely we could go in a direction like this, naming it after one of the holidays or something.
The holiday I remember most clearly is Bel Tine, but I think that was Two Rivers specific? Taking a name from one of the holidays specifically sounds like a good idea. Do we have a comprehensive list anywhere?
- one person reminded me of the "Watchers over the Waves," who are in the Great Hunt. They're the people who were supposedly supposed to be watching and waiting, ready for the return of hawkwing's armies. They were punished for somehow failing that. Not sure if it really counts, but it might be awfully close for our purposes. Could have some sort of coastal belief or something (they built watchtowers).
Even after you mention it, I'm not sure I remember this. (Maybe something about watchers for Luthair Hawkwing's return - but not much.) Still, we're short, and if it's there then let's use it!
- one person wasn't a fan of the Sea Folk's religion being Jendai-based, since, in their opinion, it didn't really have much to do with their way of life. They did seem to only begrudgingly follow Rand, after all. Another person suggested "Wind Seekers" be a sort of made-up name for their stuff.
It's a good point, though honestly I had to check to remember the association between Jendai and the Sea Folk (it's been too long since I read the books). Like you said before, the Water Way and the Amayar are only really associated tangentially to the Sea Folk in the books. Is it worth possibly merging the Amayar and the Sea Folk into a single Atha'an Miere civ like Firaxis did with Polynesia?
- one user suggested that we might just adopt similar nomenclature for all of them: Way of the Leaf, Light, way of the Ravens (seanchan), way of the sea, etc. This has elegance to it - but it also limits the associations a bit (Ravens is so obviously seanchan-related).
I thought of doing this at first as well, but it breaks down pretty quickly, like you've said.
- no bright ideas about the Sharans, though one person did point out how they are very isolationist and also think themselves superior (like the seanchan). The messiah thing is interesting, but it'd odd because all the Dragon ones are sort of similar.... but this messiah is actually a bad guy. Cult of the Wyld?
Is Wyld a name/word used in the books? I haven't come up with more for this particularly.
Sure, I think this will all require a lot of very specific talk and design - like really getting int their and crunching numbers and such. Obviously, playtesting as well.
This ties in with what we're discussing above with the Last Battle, Paths vs Boons (I'm liking that name more) and such. Just thought I'd say I'm definitely interested into getting into specifics of design for beliefs! We should nail down the overarching victory first though.
all good, though we'll have to think carefully about what "special events" might occur in these eras. If we call it the Ten Nations era... there obviously won't be just 10 nations, but there will have to be something that happens to justify it.
I don't think using Ten Nations as an actual era name is a good idea, like you've pointed out there are a few problems with it. I think leaving some eras to be like normal civ is good too, because we don't want to overload the game with other stuff that drowns out the core gameplay.
wow, what a funny limitation. Well, instead of making them called False Dragon, couldn't we just name them? Like Mazrim Taim or w/e, similar to the way they do it for GP? There probably wouldn't be so many of them that we couldn't find a list of a handful of them from the WoT histories.
It is really weird! The naming system used by the game is a bit different from that - I definitely think we should name the False Dragons, but at least in base CiV it works like this: "Great Scientist (Isaac Newton)". Which becomes: "0 (Mazrim Taim)", because the CiV code makes some weird assumptions. How we fix this will depend on the technical side of it, I think, because if it's completely impossible to pull a string starting "False" out of the DB then we'll need to avoid "False Dragon" as a name of anything unfortunately. Hopefully, there's something in the gameplay C++ code that's doing a dumb "if I can make this a bool, do it" which I can change.
Right, BUT we might "need" the longbow to be for Manetheren, since we obviously don't have a lot of UU ideas for them.
I think the Band of the Red Hand makes a good Manetheren UU. Alternatively I was debating if Manetheren should have two UBs (or a non-combat UU or maybe even a UI) but their UA swaps out the majority of their 'normal' units with 'Band of the Red Hand' equivalents (that are stronger/give each other bonuses/etc).
Right, so as far as the Civs, I was thinking about it, and I think a few of these Expansion ones might deserve to be First launch ones, and a few of the initial launch ones aren't as important. Specifically:
- Why Ghealdan? I mean, they should be there eventually, but I don't recall spending enough time there to get a clear sense of the culture? Was one of the [middle, forgettable] books there?
Masema's madness and the whole Dragonsworn ordeal kicked off in Ghealdan and Queen Alliandre became quite important in the books. I do agree that they're minor compared to a lot of the others though.