Definitely I think we've learned our lesson with the White - steer clear of science for the Brown.
OK, in light of all of these things, I can imagine the following options:
1) A Production boost for some amount of turns (with cooldown), likely only effective on certain buildings - Wonders, culture buildings, etc.
2) Like, the Blue (and White), acts as an adviser to the governor - this time, increasing culture yields, or prestige (this of course only works if the Blues produce spark, not Prestige). I find this one as pretty nifty in-flavor - their basically cataloguing the activies of the leader and the civ in general.
I think the horn of valere could work, but to me that seems very situational - best as a secondary ability, IMO.
A production boost for wonders and cultural buildings is very interesting and definitely useful for all players. A side effect of this ability being used might be that the cultural victory becomes marginally more difficult - since more players will build culture buildings (since those buildings take less time to build).
right, when you put it that way, I agree. I think a shadow civ guy would only cleanse saidin under some weird double-agent thing ("if I do this, they'll trust me!"), not for real shadow-benefiting ways.
Awesome, exactly!
Well, considering all of that, you're totally right. Let's do the maintenance cost. I do agree that our new additions should be big and obvious - little mechanical things like the radius thing would be a bit offputting in its subtlety.
Ah, I kinda miss the ridiculous webs of roads. I'm reminded of playing c1v (don't know the abbreviation for that one) as a kid where i would literally carpet the whole continent with farms and roads, not really understanding how it worked.
Yeah, I could only win on chieftain.
I played much the same way in Civ4 and also mostly kept to Chieftain! The road carpets could be quite fun, though CiV's roads are much better representations of real ones.
OK, cool. Each Ajah will then have an list of priorities and such. I imagine these would be consistent and predictable?
Yes, I'd say so, that way players can optimize their strategies over multiple playthroughts to target specific Ajahs that help their desired strategy.
I wonder if part of the players' interactions with each Ajah is through quests. We'd said that the WT sets up quests, but what if these were each Ajah specific? Like, the Browns are the guys doing the "generate tons of culture" quest. So the players that fulfill that one, make nice with the Brown specifically. of course, sometimes a player completes a quest somewhat automatically - that would then unintentionally gain them favor with that Ajah - would it also gain that Ajah power within the Tower itself?
Now that is very interesting! I hadn't yet considered how the player would designate which Ajah they were "contributing" to when completing an action for the Tower. This solves that problem nicely and also puts the Ajahs in more of a commanding position. ("We need this and if you get it for us, we'll like you" vs "Oh, thank you for this gift, we'll be nicer to you going forward")
As you've said, we can flavor the quests so that each Ajah will give out quests that, as well as allowing players to contribute influence to that Ajah, also advances the Ajah's own overall agenda. (Example, the Red Ajah might give out a quest for a civilization to Gentle 3 male channelers.)
I would assume then that each Ajah could give out quests separately and simultaneously? As in, there might be active quests from the Blue, Red, and White all at the same time and any player can pursue any (or all) of them. This makes the Tower much more active than any other individual CS, which is also accurate. Related to something you've suggested later, we can scale how often the Ajahs can give quests based on their relative influence in the Tower. (Maybe a very powerful Ajah can have many quests going simultaneously.)
We can certainly steal some basic concepts from the base CS quests here too. There will probably be times when specific Ajahs are in particular need of recruits - sending a female channeler to the Tower (and to that Ajah specifically) will be more effective than usual. (Analogous to the "Gold gifts are more effective" quest for normal CSes.)
On that note, do players make nice with the Tower itself ever, or is a player's relationship with the Tower merely the sum of all their relationships with each ajah?
I think the player's relationship with the Tower is an aggregate of their relationships with the Ajahs, but I think it should be modified by the relative 'strength' of each Ajah. If the Blue Ajah has become supremely influential and holds 75% of Tower influence, having a majority influence with the Blue is more valuable than having 100% influence with the Grey and Brown.
Can a player piss off a given Ajah?
Interesting, yeah, I think there are instances where civs can take actions that cause them to lose some of the influence they have accrued with any/all of the Ajahs. Would we want to have a negative factor like CSes as well? Where civs can be in a state where "gaining" influence only puts them back up to 0? (That interacts slightly confusingly with the "aggregate" relationship between Ajah influence and Tower influence though.)
I think a possible lack of solidarity with an Ajah you support is totally fine. You might want the Green because they help you have badass sisters for the first 7 eras, but then cmoe time for the LB, you choose Shadow, and regret making a Green amyrlin. Or, say, you enjoy the science bonuses of the Whites because you are going for a culture victory, and you're trying to get the prerequisite techs for all the culture wonders first... and then they do an Edict that lowers culture output or something. Maybe you suffered a lot of False Dragon attacks, so you make nice with the Red, but later the chickens come to roost and they're making all sorts of Spark-Lowering edicts and you can't build an army of channelers.
I think that's all cool.
Awesome, that sounds good to me too.
so, I think we're looking at two parameters that may or may not work independently, yes?:
1) a player's influence within an Ajah ('Favor")
2) That ajah's influence within the Tower ("Influence")
Are these two things necessarily always linked? Can you raise one without raising the other? On the one hand, it makes sense that you could, for example:
- complete a quest for the Brown. This obviously makes them like you (+Favor), but I could imagine the rest of the WT not caring (=Influence). However, the fact that the Brown had its goals met (via the quest) could lead to their success in the WT (+Influence)
- select a Brown Sister. they like you (+Favor), but this doesn't necessarily make them more influential in the tower (=Influence). But, on the other hand, the fact that nations are requesting Brown units raises their profile in the tower, right? (+Influence?).
- provide novices to the Brown. They thank you (+Favor) AND the Ajah gains power (+Influence).
So, which is it? Do some actions the player takes cause only Favor to rise, and others cause Influence to rise as well (I can't really think of anything that would affect only Influence, and not also favor), or are they always linked (though perhaps at different proportions)?
we also have to consider this from a flavor perspective. Which makes the most intuitive sense? If everybody is always choosing Red sisters, and thus the Reds are "allied" with everybody, does that by definition increase their profile in the WT? Or could they somehow still be nobodies within the tower?
I think the two should be linked. You've given good explanations for how we could link the two in terms of flavor and I think gameplay-wise it makes things easier to understand. (Also interesting - I hadn't thought of civs choosing sisters from an Ajah causing that Ajah to gain influence. Probably just a nominal amount, but it makes a lot of sense and could be significant when distributed across all players.)
So I think any player action that affects their standing with an Ajah also affects that Ajah's influence within the Tower. This makes sense both ways - positive for the examples you gave (doing things for/in the interests of an Ajah makes them more efficient/powerful, therefore making them more influential). If the player does something to lose influence with an Ajah, then that Ajah loses face for having placed some value upon that player for their contributions (therefore becoming less influential).
Lastly, on this point, what do we suppose the various consequences of these possibly-separate values would be?:
Favor
- Makes Aes Sedai of a given ajah better for that player.
- Compact voting more likely to go in favor of the player, inasmuch as that Ajah can influence its outcome
- Potentially less likely to propose edicts that are counterproductive for that player (this one might be a bit of a can of worms though)
Influence
- WT Quests more likely to be from that Ajah
- WT Edicts more likely to be from that Ajah
- Compact voting more likely to go in favor of the philosophy of the Ajah (and/or the player(s) that Ajah likes)
- election of an amyrlin (probably affects all of the above).
what else?
Evaluating which Edicts are counterproductive for which players is a bit of an AI can of worms, but we can make some simple adjustments. (Simple comparisons of culture per turn against science per turn for judging science/culture boosting stuff.)
Which Ajah has influence might affect how many and what kind of units the Tower has at a given time.
Do we want the Tower to establish its own trade routes, like a major civ? I think that makes a lot of sense and is really cool. So then, which Ajah is most influential could affect where those trade routes go. (What type they are? Is Tar Valon not limited to Gold trade routes internationally, unlike major civs?)
For sure. so, you're saying that a popular ajah is, by definition, an influential ajah. do we see any negative consequences of this? or at least unforseen ones? What about the black? could there be some situation where an ajah is selected all the time, but hates all the players because of their Ideologies, or something?
Yeah, I think an Ajah's influence within the Tower is a sum of the influences each player has with that Ajah.
I think the Black Ajah should be tracked separately from the influences of the other Ajahs. Seeing as the other Ajahs are all, in theory, sided with the Light, I think it makes sense to have a separate adversarial system there.
I'll also make a note about influence within the Tower, for the 'normal' Ajahs being "relative". Knowing the Grey Ajah has 10 influence (total) doesn't actually tell you how influential they are - it depends on how much influence the others have. If every other Ajah has only 2, then the Grey and their 10 have a significant share of the total influence. If the others have 100 each however, then the Greys have a only a very small fraction of influence within the Tower.
So, tracking the progress of the Black Ajah. I think the Black Ajah shouldn't "exist" as far as the players are concerned until the later parts of the game (say until the final two eras). But I would suggest that they start to manifest in some ways
before the Last Battle starts. Seeing as alignment is inherently a Last Battle victory condition thing, I'm thinking the Black Ajah only exist when the Last Battle victory condition is enabled?
I'd say the Black Ajah can give out quests as well, but not in the same way as normal Ajahs. Normal Ajahs (mostly) announce their quests as goals that players can complete at their leisure. Every player knows what (the majority of) all normal Ajah quests are at any given time. But the Black Ajah can give quests out in secret and to specific players. (Likely selected based on their already leaning Shadow.) They can give more targeted quests. Some examples of Black Ajah quests:
- capture this player's capital
- declare war on this player
- capture this CS
- kill this unit (likely a GP?)
- build a city near the Blight/near Thakan'dar (defend the Shadow in the coming battle)
- find/break a Seal
Any more suggestions for Black Ajah quests?
So, this brings up the question of how we're evaluating the success of the Black Ajah. A simple way would be for their quests to generate influence (secretly) for the Black. We can compare this influence against the aggregate influence of all non-Black Ajahs. This would mean Black Ajah quests would need to generate
a lot of influence to compensate for the other Ajahs' majority and six era head start. This method is relatively simple, but I don't think it's that fun.
What if there are quest lines on both sides (provided by the Black to specific players and some targeted/some global from the normal Ajahs) that center around the Amyrlin? The Black Ajah takes over the Tower by having a Black Sister elected as Amyrlin. I would think the Shadow quest line leads to the Black Ajah taking over the Tower. The normal ones lead to a Light side Tower. And if neither side is completed, then we've also got a Light side Tower (since that's how the Tower leans by default anyway).
Questions that lead on from this are how Amyrlin elections work - which is a more general question than specifically dealing with the Black Ajah, though worth considering in the context of how it would
change around the start of the Last Battle when one side might flip the Tower to the Shadow.
Jumping back to measuring the Black Ajah against the others, a separate or possibly fuse-able approach is one where the Black Ajah's influence is somehow a proportion of the existing normal Ajahs' influences. Now this is more flavorful - the Black Ajah doesn't exist as a separate independent entity, it's made up of Sisters from all of the other Ajahs that work for the Shadow. I don't have as many concrete ideas about this approach. The influence provided by players who are Shadow-aligned could be treated as Black Ajah influence, but I worry that would make turning the Tower quite easy. Even in a majority Shadow players game, it should require a concerted effort from a few players to pull it off.
mmm, you're making me think that the proper way to go here is to maybe just scale it by era. what do you think?
Yeah, that sounds good, there are a lot of complications with other systems.
Yes, achievements, for sure. Is that possible? I like it. We could do some super insanse recreate-the-book achievements. Like let use a Wolfbrother to kill shadowspawn and whitecloaks in Andor or something.
We can't do Steam achievements because we're not the actual title itself (those are defined by metadata Firaxis provides to Valve as well as within the game itself, so while we can mess with some of the game definitions (not all of them), we can't affect the Steam end which does some verification before unlocking anything). But there's nothing to stop us from layering an achievement system directly into the game, accessible through the normal CiV UI. It's probably not our highest priority feature, but I know I love achievements as a player, so it would be awesome to add.
Hmmm... yeah. Do you mind throwing together the first ideas, actually? I don't feel quite as comfortable with the diplo resolutions as I think you are. I'd say we should probably start off by reinterpretations/adaptations of the ones from BNW and then add more as we see fit.
Sure thing! I'll go through Edicts first, then resolutions.
So, as we discussed above, Edicts are also likely to be split by Ajah, or at least that some are more likely to propose certain Edicts than others. Edicts and quests are at opposite ends of the Tower's feedback system - players complete quests, which cause Ajahs to gain influence in the Tower, which changes the voting propensity and Edict selection of the Tower, thereby affecting all players.
When writing these, another potential use for Edicts has occurred to me. Do we want to tie Edicts more closely to Ajahs? We could make certain Edicts primarily affect players who are influential with specific Ajahs. It might be a bit complicated though.
I'm also envisioning that the Tower will be issuing Edicts relatively often (every 10 turns once it has met all players?), so not all of them need to be massive and earthshattering (though some can be). Some will be irrelevant to some players. Some will be extremely helpful for some players. And some will be an absolute pain in the face for some players. The upshot of this is that we will need a
ton of Edicts to make sure the Tower isn't repeating itself too much in a given game! (Perhaps even across games.) This obviously isn't an exhaustive list, but I think it's a good start.
Another thing that I've seen is that some interesting effects are not really "refusable." I'm thinking that only some Edicts should ever be refusable, because some are completely independent of any civilization's input. That makes me wonder if it's worth putting the refusal system in at all, given its complexity. Anyway, before we swing off on that tangent, here are some edicts.
Global Edicts
These are likely to be proposed by any Ajah and are a reflection of the Tower's general disposition. This section is where the Tower has the most overlap with the WC, but the majority of resolutions have stayed with the WC. (So most of these are completely new effects, rather than variants on existing resolutions, the variants come in the section after, for our WC replacement.)
Enemy of the Tower
Analogous to
Embargo Player in the WC, the Tower picks out a player that is acting against their interests, calling for other players to embargo (cut off all trade routes) with them. Note that unlike the WC resolution, this is refusable, so the AI is likely to refuse only if they are very staunch allies of the target civilization.
Channeler Recruitment
Any civs with non-Aes-Sedai female channelers must give one/two of them to the Tower when this Edict is issued. (This is separate from a quest which asks for channelers because it is being forced on the players. It also applies to potentially active female channeling units, whereas sending units the Tower of your own volition is unlikely to involve units you want to use elsewhere.)
Bowl of Winds
Initiates a global project to find and harness the Bowl of Winds. (Loosely analogous to the
World's Fair in the WC.) The highest contributor receives two Aes Sedai from the Tower and +100% culture for 30 turns. Second receive a single Aes Sedai and +50% culture per turn. Third receive +25% culture and +10% Prestige for 30 turns. (Second and third positions can be shared between several civs whose contributions were close in value.)
Completing the Bowl of Winds global project unlocks two additional Edicts that the Tower may issue:
Power-Wrought Surplus
Farms on continent X produce an additional +1 Food per turn for 40 turns.
Power-Wrought Drought
Farms on continent X produce 1 less Food per turn than normal.
Black Tower Denunciation
Civilizations cannot train Asha'man units for 30 turns. (Obviously only occurs toward the end of the game - probably gated by any civ researching the tech that allows the Black Tower wonder to be built and Asha'man unit to be trained.)
Ajah Specific Edicts
These Edicts are made by the Tower when the noted Ajah is in a definite majority, has a significant portion of overall Tower influence (even if not the greatest - this is likely a function of weighted probability), or when the Amyrlin has been raised from their Ajah. They reflect the overall objectives of the Ajah concerned.
Blue Ajah
Shepherd of the Dragon
The Dragon Reborn may take actions more frequently for 30 turns. (Every 5 turns instead of every 10, or something like that. Clearly only works if the Last Battle victory is enabled.
Eyes and Ears
Civilizations allied with the Tower (or just influential with the Blue Ajah) have active vision (no fog, can see units in real time) for 2 hexes around the capital cities of civilizations aligned against the Tower for 30 turns. (Not sure how applicable this is to the AI, I don't know how/if it respects fog of war.)
White Ajah
Logical Focus
Civilizations gain science at the expense of Culture (and Prestige?). Every civ's cultural output is decreased by 10% and their science is boosted by an equivalent amount. (Note that while this is bad for culture players in some ways - their progress toward victory - it actually gives them the biggest science boost. Is that what we want?)
Notable Study
Trade routes with the Tower produce +3 science per turn for their founder for 45 turns.
Brown Ajah
Heritage Catalog
Antiquity Sites (or whatever we call them) produce +4 culture per turn for 20 turns. (Potentially helpful for non-culture players, since they are less likely to have dug them up.)
Heritage Discovery
Reveal all Antiquity Sites within 10 hexes of the hex at co-ordinate X,Y.
Traded Relics
Trade routes with the Tower produce +8 Culture per turn for 45 turns.
Red Ajah
A Healthy Fear
Civilizations that have adopted the "Fear" channelers Social Policy tree get +5% science per turn for 30 turns. Those that have adopted the "Acceptance" tree get -5% science per turn for 30 turns. (This is meant to reflect their liking civs who fear male channelers, though the "Fear" tree does encompass more than just attitude toward male channelers, the Reds seem more authoritarian in general and would 'benefit' from people fearing them.)
Tower Inquisition
Targeted non-False-Dragon male channeler unit is immediately Gentled by agents of the Tower. (Could include False Dragons if we like, but it seems a bit anticlimactic?)
Green Ajah
Battle Ajah Training
All Aes Sedai units have +25 (thin air number) ranged combat strength for 20 turns.
Righteous War
Targeted civilization that is at war with one of the Tower's enemies receives an extra Aes Sedai unit (just a Green or of any Ajah?).
Yellow Ajah
Itinerant Healers
All units within 30 hexes of the Tower (that are owned by civs the Tower is not at war with and has positive disposition towards) heal 10 HP per turn every turn, even if they took an action.
Healer's Bounty
All capitals generate +5 Food per turn for 30 turns. (Could do all cities within 50 hexes of the Tower? This bonus is reflecting increased longevity and health from more widespread Healing, which boosts population - therefore Food.)
Grey Ajah
Bonds of Trade
Trade routes with the Tower produce an additional +10 Gold per turn for 45 turns. (Approx. 1.5 trade route lifetimes.)
Mediated Treaty
Forces peace between civilization X and civilization Y.
Land Brokerage
Targeted tile's ownership is transferred from its current civilization to a neighbor. (I considered targeting a city instead of a tile at first, but that could be colossal. Might be an idea though, if refusable? If the city wasn't
that important to the current owner, they might decide the penalties for refusal are more damaging.)
I have to say I could keep going at this for a good while more, coming up with more cool abilities, but I'll stop at the above for now! (Also quite appropriately, the Grey Ajah are an easy source of Edicts!) Do you think this is the kind of direction we want to take with Edicts?
Now, we've also got a World Congress (Compact of Nations) to be thinking about! This is a lot more directly inspired by base CiV's resolutions. In fact, a lot of the CiV resolutions translate fairly directly into WoT. Do we want to change them for the sake of it or just reflavor the existing ones and then add more new ones on top? I think the latter approach makes sense. So here we go:
Compact of Nations Resolutions
These resolutions are proposed and voted on a similar format to the World Congress in base CiV. The Tower has significant voting power in the Compact and will act according to its own wishes. The Ogier also vote in a block, but have a smaller portion of votes available than the Tower. (Their votes are likely related to how many Stedding remain on the map.)
Splitting
Embargo City-States into three:
Embargo Stedding
Players can no longer establish trade routes or
receive Stonemasons from Stedding.
Embargo Tar Valon
Players can no longer establish trade routes or
send channelers to Tar Valon. (The Tower will obviously vote against this.)
Embargo other City States
Players can no longer establish trade routes with city states that are not Stedding or Tar Valon.
Embargo Targeted Civilization
Same as base CiV, I think this is still appropriate. (We might choose a different word than "embargo"?)
Ban Resource
Also very similar to base CiV, bans the use of a specific Resource.
Army Tax
Very similar to base CiV, though we could exclude channeling units?
Dangers of Saidin
No civilizations may train Asha'man units, but existing Asha'man units remain in play. (Analogous to
Nuclear Non-Proliferation.)
Artifacts of Legend
Renamed
Cultural Heritage Sites (world wonders produce +3 Culture). (Want to draw parallels to Age of Legends, since I think a fair number of wonders will be "from" that time period, but it's a bit weird since definitely not
all wonders will be.)
Universities of the Dragon
Renamed
Scholars in Residence (civs research techs 20% faster if they have already been researched by someone else).
Wonders of the Pattern
Natural Wonders produce +10 Prestige per turn. (Because I've always been really unimpressed with
Natural Heritage Site's +5 Culture per turn.)
Arts/Science Funding
I want to rename these but keep their effects, but I'm drawing a blank on WoT-y names. They've got important endgame effects nonetheless.
Path of the Dragon
Designate one Path to the Light as the true and righteous Path and way to serve the Creator. (Analogous to
World Religion.)
Channeling Decree
Analogous to
World Ideology, but choosing between our new channeling Ideologies. Same bonuses for civilizations following that Ideology. The Tower will vote for Authority.
Reverence for Ta'veren
Standing in for
Historical Monuments (GP improvements produce +4 culture). I think we can do more with GPs here though. We could give extra abilities to our cool new WoT GPs like Wolfbrother/Min/Slayer?
Revel for <Holiday>
Standing in for
International Games, this is the "happiness" global project. Holidays seem to be the biggest thing that bring together the Westlands in WoT (and even those are relatively fragmented). Do we want to pick one holiday and have the project for that? Or should there be multiple available and each have different effects?
Available holidays off the top of my head, but counterpoint produced a comprehensive list several pages ago:
- Bel Tine
- Festival thing in Cairhien where everyone is much more relaxed (I forget the name)
- Winternight
- There are more!
Making of Ter'Angreal
Now, maybe this one should be an Edict instead, but mechanically I want to replace the
International Space Station with another global "science project".
I'm assuming we're going to take the base CiV approach and have a Host for the Compact and a World Leader election. These are technically resolutions, but don't get proposed by players.
As long as we're always doing "substitutions" of Black Sisters in place of other Ajah Sisters (rather than Turning of individual units) we won't have a problem with those abilities changing. (Otherwise what do we do with the Green's second Warder? The Blue who's still a Governor right now?)
