S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

[Calavente]

just so you know but "steam-wagons" (either trains or "steam-trucks") are of the dragon Era... at least in the same way as dragon-cannons..
they are invented in the academy of Tear.
Rand see one in Illian mid series (I don't remember when, but it was after the conquest... at a time Rand came to Illian mostly annonymous), and it just came from Tear... because the railroad was finished a few weeks before Rand came to illian.

Then, in aMoL, Elayne, (or Egwene) notes that grain cames from gateways... tackted by "those steel-wagons from Tear"

 

[counterpoint]

ok. got a few minutes to continue today. quick post!

I think I should follow up here by asking what you don't like about the espionage stuff? I think enumerating all of the edge cases is complex, but it should play well and be more straightforward in practice.

I don't know. Nothing specific. Mostly it just seems kind of unfun to design, for some reason. It's nothing bad about our ideas, more just that it gets my brain in a knot. Yes, keep it simple, if possible.

You don't know what you're talking about, me! I think I misunderstood this suggestion the first time through - the above quote makes me think I was still mixing the spawn conditions/yields of these new GPs with the old ones and having to trade off against them. However, I think my angle might have been this one:

Traditionally GPs are generated by Specialists. Specialist slots become available in your cities through certain buildings/wonders. You can have an available citizen work as a Specialist (instead of working a tile on the map) and your city will get the yields from that Specialist slot (if unworked, Specialist slots produce nothing). One of the yields of Specialists is (often) GP points toward their respective GP (Scientist Specialists produce Great Scientist points, etc). The GP point rate can be additionally affected by a variety of building/policy modifiers, but Specialists and Wonders are the primary sources of GP points.

If we make this "WoT GP" use similar mechanics, then players would need their citizens to work whatever Specialists produced WoT GP points - sometimes at the exclusion of working "normal" Specialists. Given that "WoT GPs" aren't reliably useful for the player's specific situation, I was worried that players would always go for the "normal" Specialists because it's a guaranteed payoff.

HOWEVER, as I mentioned many pages ago (and what you guys might have been trying to tell me for the last page), we can generate GPs in any arbitrary way we like. We don't need to link WoT GPs to Specialists. They don't need to be a trade off against existing GP types that have "reliable" payoffs.

So, this might be what people have been discussing already, but what are our available triggering mechanisms?

Right, mechanisms. Well, I think the "weird" ones should probably be rarer than the normal ones, so this might work in our favor. Possible mechanisms:

1) any new specialist types we come up with (which WOULD lessen other GPs, of course)
2) buildings and wonders
3) your alignment/affiliation
4) generic factors - era, population, etc.

Connecting to the Mayan thing - it's possible that these GPs don't have to be something that is directly manipulated by the player. Maybe all civs get them at roughly the same (rare) rate, with some randomness or factors above applied.

I can see those kinds of things working. Do these slot well into the Alignment-affecting events that take place over the course of the game? I don't think we've discussed what we want the content of those "events" to be yet - just the general gist of how they're structured.

This approach leans towards Prophecies as separate entities (not GWs) - part of determining Alignment and therefore part of the Last Battle (the part of it that exists for the whole game). Also means they'd probably switch off with the Last Battle if it were disabled.

As we've discussed in the last few pages, I agree that specific GWs having in-game effects like prophecies (while other GWs don't) is weird. I think we should either change all GWs to have some effects like this or have none do that. Changing all GWs that way is a big ask. I'd be inclined to shelve that to revisit at a later date post-release - if we think the culture system needs more WoT-ification at that time.

But we like prophecies as GWs flavor wise. So, how about the following?

More generic prophetic objectives like counterpoint has here as a part of the Alignment system and therefore leading into the Last Battle. Conveniently, we could use this as a vehicle to drive non-combat participation in the lead up to the Last Battle? This brings over the WoT flavor of history being "prophesied" and that in each game the players are causing those to be fulfilled - eventually leading to the Last Battle cataclysm.

But the "actual" prophecies from the books (The Karaethon Cycle, the Jendai Prophecies, various Foretellings) are GWs - they produce culture and prestige like other GW types, but are a sub-classification of GW (like artifact vs artwork in base CiV).

So, that brings up a myriad of questions about the "generic" prophecies. On map objectives like "take a city with a ship" and "kill two false dragons" work in a similar way to city-state quests. What if the prophecies present options - or more specifically, that prophecies can be overturned and disproven? If it's a Shadow prophecy (flavor determines the prophecy's alignment), overturning it increases the player's Light alignment? The player would need to be able to tell how the Prophecies were aligned apart (as would the AI, but it's got a more practical advantage of being able to just look at the number which represents that prophecy's alignment result).

I think most prophecies would need to resolve themselves in some way after a certain amount of time - allowing them to be left unfinished makes keeping track of them very difficult, both for the player and for the game on an implementation complexity level (how certain prophecies overlap). It seems likely that tipping everyone's (or civs within a specific radius of some focal point) Alignment a specific way (which way is determined per-prophecy) would encourage specific players to engage with prophecies to avoid potential adverse affects on their own Alignment gameplans.

We would need a way to decide which prophecies are applicable on a given map and with a given game state. (Can't ask a player to take a city on a coast if there are no coastal cities on the map) These conditions are likely to be bespoke for each prophecy, which isn't ideal (I can't see a way of making this XML-configurable, where I can with most things we're doing), but I can't see how we avoid that.

The last big open question is how we decide (at runtime, for a given game) which prophecies are associated in what way with the Dragon. The only way I see that we can do that is having prebuilt "Dragon prophecies" that we know are linked in specific ways. ("The player who completes the most of the prophecies from this subset X of the set of all prophecies Y is the civ where the Dragon is born")

This ties into what I was saying in my post yesterday. For reasons I stated there, I do think the "Real" and/or "Named" prophesies are better left simply as GWs.

I think the "generic" ones you describe might work well as quests, but, again, I'm somewhat troubled by this being alignment based. "Shadow prophesies" and all. I mean, they could be flavored this way, but the results/effects should be the same - after all, all prophesies are working towards the same goal (in the books, it's Rand's victory, in ours it is the Victory of whoever wins the game). So I don't see them as affecting alignment, right - its your destiny?

That said, I do see them affecting FAITH. If your civ fulfills a prophecy, faith makes perfect sense as a bonus. That and maybe Prestige. Or maybe even Happiness These things make intuitive sense - your people rally behind your apparent significance, etc.

As far as which should be directly tied to the dragon and him being revealed.... I still don't know on this. My suggestions above seem to direct us towards a simpler, less "big deal" view of prophesies. I'm not sure how the dragon ties in, as he's obviously quite a big deal.

I disagree that having the Aztec UU as an ancient era unit was a bad idea. Their UU, based on what we know about the actual Aztec warriors, clearly fits very effectively in the ancient era. CiV doesn't aim to mimic the placement in time of the civilizations it uses - this is the same disconnection from flavor that allows us to found an American Washington (the city) in 4000BC. The fact that Civ X actually only had technology Y by date Z isn't considered - just the unique component of what that civilization did with that particular technology. Then that unique component is placed in the "time-extracted" frame of worldwide progression wherever that happens to be. It's also the same kind of thing where CiV doesn't model the relative power levels of its civilizations - America, Rome, the Mongols, etc. have flavorful bonuses that push them towards their real actions, but aren't considerably better overall as civilizations, despite their grand successes in their respective time periods.

As counterpoint mentions in the next quote block I'll come to, we're short on older era units and I think I agree that it makes sense to have the Aiel UU be towards the beginning of the tech tree. Also mentioned elsewhere, having the Aiel UA grant them military advantages over other civilizations is a representation of the Aiel's superior individual warriors, compared to everyone else. A lot of wars in CiV aren't fought by UUs, so this is in many ways a more accurate representation of the Aiel's particular societal advantages.

I can see what Calavente means about the Aiel maxing out the military tree right away and there are certainly 4X games where that happens (Endless Space has 4 tech trees that all branch out from a central point - though in practice it's difficult to beeline up one tree).

I think we'll have significant opinions on mechanics like this when it comes to wonders - it seems like the same kind of flavor issue where I'm more in favor of fudging the flavor to make the game work better. Potentially controversial example (that we'll probably have to come back to later rather than discuss at length now) - I think civs should be able to build the Stone of Tear (just named the "The Stone" much like "The Great Wall" I'd imagine), and possibly relatively early. Because it passes up such a dramatic amount of in-universe-applicable roles that we need to fill in that time frame. But anyway, that specific case is more for when we're deciding on a wonder list - which needs the overarching game systems to be set fairly in stone.

It should be easy to predict that i'm in agreement with you here.

Regarding the specifics of the stone of tear. I agree that it should be generic UNLESS we decide that we need the Stone to serve as the Tairen UA or UB.

Revisiting Hawkwing as a launch civ? I think I'm a bit more amenable to this reasoning though! Do we have other good candidates for historical civs that we didn't mention last time?

Yeah, I'll keep thinking on this. Would probably make sense to have one civ per era or two. We have a 10 nation (manetheren), we have hawkwing, maybe we need one more? I don't know, will think on this. Not important now.

Still, though, no idea what to name Hawk's empire!

I'm less sold on the idea of having to manually determine the identity of the real Dragon - mostly because I'm not sure we could do it properly and in a repeatably interesting way over several games. If we were working within a scripted experience (like Elder Scrolls) then things more like the events of the books work better, but we have to make more changes for a framework like CiV.

I think not knowing who the Dragon is is part of the world vs book events. In the books, Rand, Moiraine, and Siuan work out the whole Dragon identity fairly fast, like you say. But in our case, we (the players) are the other guys - Mattin Stepaneos and his ilk who refuse to believe until it's stuffed into their faces in the form of widespread starvation and rampaging Trollocs. I think it makes sense flavor wise to "not know" where the real Dragon is in some ways, but it's mechanically difficult.

The dichotomy vanishes once the Last Battle starts because then everyone and their uncle knows Rand is the Dragon. Our Dragon mechanics rely on the assumption that a "known Dragon" can take actions - which is the case during the Last Battle, less so beforehand.

ok. what do you suggest we do, then, in lieu of this all tying directly into the dragon? leave it well alone?

I think in terms of how much it impacts everyone, the Trolloc Wars should be felt everywhere and be most player's primary concern for a while. But I'm not sure if it should reshape the entire face of the world like it did in WoT (because we can't do the re-emerging different nations stuff). Whereas the Last Battle I'd say definitely - things should never be the same in that game again for anyone.

right. well, for me i'm think of it maybe in terms of turns. Sure, it's a big deal for most civs - especially borderlanders - but I don't think it should last nearly as long. If the LB is like 50 turns, like I think you said, and a typical barb/rebel uprising is like 4. Maybe the TW should last like 15 or 20 turns or so? Really hardcore battles for a little bit, and then gone? They don't need to be "defeated" in the same way as the LB - they could just end after they've wailed on everybody for awhile, or maybe once a few shadow camps have been captured - so we control their length more specifically. I think it's cool if it sets back a few civs, provides rewards for a few civs, but otherwise the world can keep on going afterwards.

sorry for the short one - will get back to it later.

 

[counterpoint]

Ok, it sounds like the first gunpowder weapons started cropping up toward the end of our time frame! Regarding steam power, I remember one of Rand's academies had mention of someone who had made a steam-driven mechanized vehicle (it was a prototype car, but in many more words than that).

i wouldn't say it was a *car* per se - no combustion engine. sort of like a steam engine, really, maybe attached to a cart. According to the wotwiki, here were the inventions there:

Idrien Tarsin is the headmistress - Giant crossbow
Ryn Anhara - lightning jar
Herid Fel - history and natural philosophy (deceased)
Maryl Harke - glider
Jander Parentakis - paddlewheel riverboat
Mervin Poel - steam engine
Niko Tokama
Kin Tovere - telescope

I think this gives us a lot to work with, in terms of "future age techs". The giant crossbow could be maybe a super late-game ranged unit. Maybe we could make a steam engine unit, maybe not - maybe it's just a sort of railroad thing. The riverboats could be some boost to flood plain yields. Not sure what to do about the glider - discover whole map? Lightning jar is a lightbulb of sorts, it seems, this one and the telescope could be more or less generic "science" techs

i think your tech tree looks fine for now, though i'm sure it'll get tweaked when the time comes.

I also type my posts on here! And I have only just this second realized you can resize the edit box on the reply page! Infinitely useful!

mind. blown!

This also crosses over well with a "slowed" technological progression. It does make taking the lead in science less helpful at making war though - you're rewarded more for raw production capacity (the side with more units will win more - and at higher difficulties that will always be the AI).

true story! Personally, I don't mind keeping the unit/tech progression similar to in real civ. (though perhaps more spread-out)

Perhaps Shayol Ghul always spawns next to Thrakan'dar and it has some nice yields (part of what makes the city state strong, because it has a strong tile to work and/or it provided promotions to unit that pass next to it (so all the units created by Thrakan'dar), the problem with this is an enterprising player could just citadel bomb across the blight and steal the tile from them.

This ties into the discussion on this on the previous page. This is problematic since it looks like Thakandar won't spawn until later in the game. We don't want that citadel bomb!

just so you know but "steam-wagons" (either trains or "steam-trucks") are of the dragon Era... at least in the same way as dragon-cannons..
they are invented in the academy of Tear.
Rand see one in Illian mid series (I don't remember when, but it was after the conquest... at a time Rand came to Illian mostly annonymous), and it just came from Tear... because the railroad was finished a few weeks before Rand came to illian.

Then, in aMoL, Elayne, (or Egwene) notes that grain cames from gateways... tackted by "those steel-wagons from Tear"

can you give a page-number for that bit in aMoL? I definitely don't remember any of the steam wagons popping in. You put your lines in quotations, so it looks like it's from the text.

That said, the academies are in Cairhien and Caemlyn - the main one with all the techs outlined is in cairhien. I think maybe you're mistaken - maybe those were just plain old wagons in tear. I'd love to re-read that part.

Assuming they do exist, i think it probably makes more sense for them to be a part of the later era - if they exist at all, there are really just a couple of them. The dragons, by contrast, are mass-produced (though limited to only a few civs in the books). Also, the dragons are very memorable flavor, so we really want them to be a more significant presence, while the steam engine stuff is mostly speculation on our part, and a bit of an obscure reference for serious fans of the books.

 

[swieczq]

Perhaps Shayol Ghul always spawns next to Thrakan'dar and it has some nice yields (part of what makes the city state strong, because it has a strong tile to work and/or it provided promotions to unit that pass next to it (so all the units created by Thrakan'dar), the problem with this is an enterprising player could just citadel bomb across the blight and steal the tile from them.

This ties into the discussion on this on the previous page. This is problematic since it looks like Thakandar won't spawn until later in the game. We don't want that citadel bomb!

Maybe we can avoid it by having two tiles for blight - "soft" blight which expands and can be pushed back, and "hard" blight which forms a circle around central point of the Blight (future place for Thakan'dar), cannot be pushed back, and there can be no tile improvements.It can be also added that units that spawn in "hard" version are stronger, so it becomes much harder to try to get to the central parts of this area.

 

[Calavente]

can you give a page-number for that bit in aMoL? I definitely don't remember any of the steam wagons popping in. You put your lines in quotations, so it looks like it's from the text.

That said, the academies are in Cairhien and Caemlyn - the main one with all the techs outlined is in cairhien. I think maybe you're mistaken - maybe those were just plain old wagons in tear. I'd love to re-read that part.

Assuming they do exist, i think it probably makes more sense for them to be a part of the later era - if they exist at all, there are really just a couple of them. The dragons, by contrast, are mass-produced (though limited to only a few civs in the books). Also, the dragons are very memorable flavor, so we really want them to be a more significant presence, while the steam engine stuff is mostly speculation on our part, and a bit of an obscure reference for serious fans of the books.

ok... those were then invented in Cairhien... and they reached Tear or Illian when Rand arrived there.
I care about the steam engine part... not about the cities themselves... and I've a very bad memory for names...
trust me for once.
then in aMoL...
and no... those were not "wagons"... but "steel-thyingy or steam-thingy".. they were not even described... just mentionned once:

Spoiler :

you know how hard it is to find back 1 sentence in 500 pages ? (500p because as I'm at half-book it was necessarily before): What did I mean.. 1 sentence ? no its worse than that: it's 2 words !
I can't even use contexte... it was when Egwene was in a war camp... oh.. nice, remember that all book (at least first part) happens in or near war camps duh.
but I'll try.

EDIT: found it.
it'sin fact Gawyn, that mentions, in page 424, 6th paragraph :"Food was brought daily through gateways in wagons -- some pulled by those unreliable metal machines from Cairhien."
--> does this look like total "speculation" ???
those seems more to be steam-trucks than steam trains... (or at least steam engines that can work out of a railway)

and dragons are "mass produced and limited to a few civs" ??? you are kidding ?
dragons were use ONLY by Andor... and then a small part of andor.
and they were "mass produced" only during a few weeks/months before the last battle... in only 1city... that did nothing else than produce them.
and "mass produced" ...?? reading the numbers there are at max 1-2 "units" of cannons.
unless you count them as 50cannons.... but then I suppose you would count the Saldean heavy Cavalry as 10000 Knights.
if the Saldean Cavalry representes about 10-20 knights units in civ, normally 50 cannons should represent maximum 5 units (and that's overly generous).
so 5 units being "mass production" ... is a small bit of hair-pulling.
in real life (napoleonic era where cannons were much more advanced than the ones in Rand land), 1 battery was about 6 cannons... and 220 gunners! I don't seem to remember that the Red hand had 2200 people working the cannons.

Assuming they do exist, i think it probably makes more sense for them to be a part of the later era - if they exist at all, there are really just a couple of them. The dragons, by contrast, are mass-produced (though limited to only a few civs in the books). Also, the dragons are very memorable flavor, so we really want them to be a more significant presence, while the steam engine stuff is mostly speculation on our part, and a bit of an obscure reference for serious fans of the books.

you are starting to be enervating.
steam engine is speculation?
Jordan mentions it once in the academy, a second time in another book, seeing it arriving in a city which WAS NOT the one of the Academy... and it is being mentionned by Sanderson at least twice : by aviendha's daughter and at least a fourth time in aMoL.
further... it is the ONLY thing that goes out of the academies as something useful.... (well : the only thing that is put in effect during the books) --> see "bloded" part above
Edit: they are mentionned 5 times: the three below + once in book 13 (Aviendha's vision: her daughter mentions it) and once in aMoL (Gawyn mention their use at least once) :

Spoiler http://wot.wikia.com/wiki/Mervin_Poel :

Mervin shows Rand al'Thor the invention he is working on, which appears to be a steam engine.[1]

When Rand is back at the school to retrieve some books from Herid Fel's quarters, he witnesses Mervin's steam-wagon roar to life and move about fifty paces before breaking down again.[2]

When Rand returns to Tear, he sees Poel's steamwagon, which can now travel a hundred miles a day and can also pull wagons.[3]

I can understand if when you read you have no interest about how and when the world progress and advances (in term of culture and technics )... and if you have a soft point for "weapons" (cannons and shock-lances) but an "obscure reference for serious fans" is a bit harsh ... for one of the few things that shows the worth of academies... for one of the few things that brings the WoT books out of the "medieval era" ?
it would be like saying that jo-cars and shock lances are "obscures references". you can count in the texts if you want : shock lances are mentionned 2-3 times max : during rand "vision" in Ruidean.. and casually by one of the foresaken when wondering if moridin has found one (or when wishing for one) and jo-cars are maybe mentionned only once or twice
OR mentionning that Nyneave learned how to heal the Madness... no real impact in book.. mentionned only twice.. when she healed the Ashaman and when she tried to heal rand.

finaly : remember... cannons were invented LATER... at least 4-5 books later than steam engine.
so.. right.. cannons are of use for the military... while steam wagons are not direclty... they are "only" useful for supply.... which is much less interesting to write about.

maybe cannons and Steam engines (and academies) should all be pushed back toward the

EDIT: the only other worth (for the books) of Academies... is about launching Min on the path of philosophie and study of the prophecy.
[sarcasm]oh. I remember, you defend that prophecies are too "of the books"... and "steam-wagons" are "speculation".
maybe you should also scrap "academies"..
I mean: they are one of the two legacies that Rand wants to leave behind him (the other being dragon peace)... but they have effectively NO effect on the LB and rand-time.... save for the advancing the plot of the story...
Maybe the academies should be 4age buildings.... (really useful one I mean : get a science boost when only 4 tech remain to be searched!) [/sarcasm]

 

[Calavente]

6th times for trains...
in aMoL, page 551, 6th paragraph "they seemed particulary interested by the steamwagons, though Ituralde couldn't fathom why"... when Ituralde speaks about the sea folks helping in front of Shayol Ghul and managing mainly logistics.
EDIT: found another on page 845-860 of aMoL : someone notices that the steamwagons are wreckages

 

[counterpoint]

Just a quick update. Glad to get this in before S3rgeus makes his next posts.

I'm done writing the Epic Channeling Treatise. I still want to reread/proofread, and then convert it to bbcode (hopefully the conversion works easily), but the text is done.

I mention this because it is LONG - 35,848 words. I think it's good, but that is really rather long. wikipedia considers that a Novella, lol.

Point being, I want to post it when you want me to. Since it'll likely sort of takeover the conversation for a bit, I want to post it when S3rgeus thinks I should - in other words, people should chime in on the current topics, and hopefully we can get some generally decisions made.

So S3rg, say the word, and I'll post.

 

[Calavente]

I'm done writing the Epic Channeling Treatise. I still want to reread/proofread, and then convert it to bbcode (hopefully the conversion works easily), but the text is done.

I mention this because it is LONG - 35,848 words. I think it's good, but that is really rather long. wikipedia considers that a Novella, lol.

yeah

 

[S3rgeus]

Just a quick update. Glad to get this in before S3rgeus makes his next posts.

I'm done writing the Epic Channeling Treatise. I still want to reread/proofread, and then convert it to bbcode (hopefully the conversion works easily), but the text is done.

I mention this because it is LONG - 35,848 words. I think it's good, but that is really rather long. wikipedia considers that a Novella, lol.

Point being, I want to post it when you want me to. Since it'll likely sort of takeover the conversation for a bit, I want to post it when S3rgeus thinks I should - in other words, people should chime in on the current topics, and hopefully we can get some generally decisions made.

So S3rg, say the word, and I'll post.

I'm afraid I don't have much time tonight (and tomorrow is my last evening at home until Saturday - sorry for being slow!)

Awesome that the channeling thesis is done! As you've said, I think there will be a lot of conversation around this and it will dominate the thread for a while - might be best if we wrap up the things we're discussing currently. I think there are only a couple of outstanding issues, I've included a shortlist below since I don't have time to go through and do the usual quote-reply (which I will try to start up for the relevant sections tomorrow).

Also, rather than chaining together multiple posts, might it be better to attach the document to a post? That way we can read it in our own text editors (and means you don't need to translate it into bbcode) and we can still quote sections via copy-paste and manual quote tags easily enough.

So, quick reference for our current outstanding discussions:

• Darkfriend citizens and how they work (quick note: I like the idea of existing specialists becoming Darkfriends in addition to their normal yields)
• The border with the Blight (I didn't actually mean that the Blight have a civ-style "border" - just that we can treat it that way from a culture-expansion and tile purchasing perspective. Sounds good for Blight encroaching on civ territory during the TW and LB)
• Triggering mechanisms for the WoT style GP (will respond in detail to this one later)
• Shayol Ghul vs Thakan'dar (This one is quite fast to decide, I think - we can't spawn Thakan'dar near Shayol Ghul if Shayol Ghul has always been around, because of the metagaming (the main reason we don't spawn Thakan'dar right away). Might be easier to just leave out Shayol Ghul? We can't have them spawn together because Natural Wonders can't be graphically added mid-game.)
• Prophecies (My quick note here contains the root of my thoughts, but I can't go through them all. Do all prophecies in WoT come true? I'm not sure - a lot of the key ones did, but there might be others that didn't? I don't remember. If some don't get fulfilled, I think the link to alignment makes sense - especially if this is used to spawn the Dragon, which integrates it with the Last Battle victory already. Being able to fulfill or overturn given prophecies could help or hinder each side, depending on the prophecy.)

Things I think we can leave for now, or that are already good decisions:

• Hawkwing or other old-timey civs at launch (we can decide later when we're doing a civ list)
• I'm good with Trolloc Wars just being a fixed length and 20 turns TW vs 50 turns LB sounds like a good relative difference.
• Sounds like we're all at the same place with technology? Despite back and forth, I think we're agreeing that steamwagons or whatever they're called can crop up toward the end of the tree - whether they're in the Age of the Dragon or the Fourth Age (which may be more than just 4 techs as I first suggested - seems like we have more good info than I expected) can be decided when we have a firmer idea of what that part of the tech tree looks like.

 

[counterpoint]

quick pregunta:

how do I attach a file to a post? you mean link to something stored off-site?

 

[S3rgeus]

Back again! I won't requote anything that my above summary has already addressed, but I'll pick out some of the smaller pieces I haven't discussed since last time.

quick pregunta:

how do I attach a file to a post? you mean link to something stored off-site?

Like this:

Spoiler :

If it doesn't like your file extension (only specific ones are accepted) you can just put it into a zip. (Or change the extension to something it likes and tell us what it should be - we can change it back once we download it.)

All good questions and points...

An idea - what if "darkfriend" was just a label slapped on pre-existing specialists? Sorry if this is what you were proposing above. But what if a scientist was either a Scientist or a Darkfriend Scientist? This wouldn't be optional - they would become DF based on your alignment, corruption from outside, your own efforts to quell DFs, et. Their production would probably be equivalent, with one key difference. Maybe the yield was slightly less or more, but also had some of the effects we've been pondering previously?

Other than that, I'm not sure what to suggest. I don't love the idea of people metagaming this too much - sitting there, choosing which number of DFs gives you optimal production... bleh. Let it be a symptom/cause of your alignment, mostly. I wish I had more clear thoughts on this at this time.

I like this idea - it fits in well with existing CiV but flavors it and is an effective mechanic. So, we don't want these to affect alignment, otherwise players will have to micromanage to avoid it, which is annoying. Like you said - symptom, not cause. So, Shadow civs operate more effectively in Light cities that have worked Darkfriend citizens. (Do we want tile-citizens to be Darkfriend-able as well?) I think it makes sense that a Shadow civ's prestige output would also cause Darkfriend to pop up in influenced Light civs/cities. In keeping with the way our alignment stuff has worked thus far, we could have the Darkfriend Specialists produce extra of their own yield (Darkfriend Scientists make +1 science compared to normal Scientists, for example) but also produce negative faith.

About people meta-gaming for optimal production - I don't really think the situation here is meta-gamey. Citizens/Specialists are already like this - if you want optimal production and as high as you can get of specific other things, you'll need to manually adjust your Specialist allocation. Most players don't do this because it's very micro-manage-y and takes a long time for only incremental gain, but a truly optimal strategy likely wouldn't use the AI presets to allocate citizens. (I've seen it recommended in the strategy forums that players should manually allocate citizens - particularly in the early game - when playing on higher difficulties.)

also, this does seem to foster somewhat realistic gamesmanship - players will put forts and citadels and units right on the blight bordre during these eras, i'd think.

Especially if the Blight can't spread through forts! Might make someone actually build one.

Right, mechanisms. Well, I think the "weird" ones should probably be rarer than the normal ones, so this might work in our favor. Possible mechanisms:

1) any new specialist types we come up with (which WOULD lessen other GPs, of course)
2) buildings and wonders
3) your alignment/affiliation
4) generic factors - era, population, etc.

Connecting to the Mayan thing - it's possible that these GPs don't have to be something that is directly manipulated by the player. Maybe all civs get them at roughly the same (rare) rate, with some randomness or factors above applied.

Alignment is interesting, but then what do we do when the Last Battle is disabled?

Buildings and specialists suffer from the same issue - you need to focus on the WoT GPs (for at least some number of turns) to the exclusion of the more reliable ones.

I think incidental stuff might be our best bet. We don't want to invalidate some strategies by making others WoT-GP-fests either though.

Some random ideas:

• First civ to found X cities (possibly repeating multiple? first to 4. first to 8. first to 12. etc.)
• First civ to conquer X cities (same as above)
• First city to reach population X (multiples)
• First player to control X units
• First player to produce X culture/faith/prestige/gold/science per turn
• First (and second and third?) players to reach era X
• Reward for a specific tech on the tree (One random WoT GP appears when you research this tech.)
• Reward for a wonder (one off and combined with other bonuses isn't too much of an opportunity cost)
• First civ to conquer X foreign capitals
• First civ to liberate X cities

There are infinitely more - do any stand out?

Prophecies and the Dragon

Piles of stuff I could quote here, but this is the general topic. If we make prophecies the 'quests' that are a part of the alignment events over the course of the game, then I think having a subset of those prophecies that are "Dragon prophecies" makes sense (the player won't know which ones are Dragon prophecies - they'll just see prophecies to be fulfilled/overturned).

My big question here:

Can prophecies be overturned?

This is really important and informs a lot of our decisions about how prophecies work. I think we're somewhat limited if they can't be overturned. I'm going to assume they can be for now.

I previously mentioned the prophecies affecting alignment - which makes sense if they're a part of the alignment events system. (Remember these are the "generic" prophecies, not the named ones - those are GWs.) Each prophecy would give the fulfilling/overturning player an alignment 'boost' in one direction - depending on the prophecy. Not all prophecies need to change alignment - only some is fine.

Once X Dragon prophecies are fulfilled by a single player, the Dragon is born in that civ. Once a specific time is reached (Y turns before the Last Battle as we estimate it) the Dragon is born in one of the civs that have completed the most Dragon prophecies. (So if none are fulfilled, it's just pure random.)

Next question:

Is this too complicated?

I worry that prophecies will still have to be bespoke, each one will have to have its own unique code that handles it, instead of the overall system having a "way that it works".

Maybe we can avoid it by having two tiles for blight - "soft" blight which expands and can be pushed back, and "hard" blight which forms a circle around central point of the Blight (future place for Thakan'dar), cannot be pushed back, and there can be no tile improvements.It can be also added that units that spawn in "hard" version are stronger, so it becomes much harder to try to get to the central parts of this area.

This could be pretty cool - Deep Blight or whatever we'd like to call it - being impenetrable to civilizations' borders. I don't think it solves our Shayol Ghul natural wonder problem though - players still know where Thakan'dar will spawn, so they can still focus on that part of the map. I'm not sure if that's entirely a bad thing - the nations of the Westlands did know where the Shadowspawn were going to be based. We'd just need to keep them back at a suitable distance so they can't autorush and win in a turn or two when the Dragon goes to take Thakan'dar.

This could also make the border of the Blight near that location an attractive place to own for strategic reasons. We're worried about players restarting near the Blight, but if you're near Thakan'dar then you are in a prime position to achieve or block the Last Battle victory.

 

[swieczq]

An idea - what if "darkfriend" was just a label slapped on pre-existing specialists? Sorry if this is what you were proposing above. But what if a scientist was either a Scientist or a Darkfriend Scientist? This wouldn't be optional - they would become DF based on your alignment, corruption from outside, your own efforts to quell DFs, et. Their production would probably be equivalent, with one key difference. Maybe the yield was slightly less or more, but also had some of the effects we've been pondering previously?

Other than that, I'm not sure what to suggest. I don't love the idea of people metagaming this too much - sitting there, choosing which number of DFs gives you optimal production... bleh. Let it be a symptom/cause of your alignment, mostly. I wish I had more clear thoughts on this at this time.

I'm not sure if I understand correctly, does this mean that whenever you choose a specialist, you have an option for him to be darkfriend?
If that's the case, it doesn't seem appealling to me, IMO it's not appropriate flavour-wise - it's too much control for the player whether his cities are filled with dakfriends or not. Player should have means to influence number of DF's in his city, but IMO it would be better if it was rather not direct control - affected by player's actions(e.g. backstabbing), buildings, wonders, trade routes, missionary-style units, how religious his people are and so on.

I still think that something similar to religion would be better
but yeah, it would be hard to affect yields that way.
Btw I'm curious, is it possible to mod into civ that each city would have two separate counts for religion? Such that there would be a normal religion and a DFs count?

 

[S3rgeus]

I'm not sure if I understand correctly, does this mean that whenever you choose a specialist, you have an option for him to be darkfriend?
If that's the case, it doesn't seem appealling to me, IMO it's not appropriate flavour-wise - it's too much control for the player whether his cities are filled with dakfriends or not. Player should have means to influence number of DF's in his city, but IMO it would be better if it was rather not direct control - affected by player's actions(e.g. backstabbing), buildings, wonders, trade routes, missionary-style units, how religious his people are and so on.

I don't think the idea was for players to choose - players who were leaning Shadow (due to the actions you mentioned) would have some of their Specialists become Darkfriends out of their control (and possibly Shadow players during the LB could more explicitly 'inflict' Darkfriends on other civs) - so if the civ wanted the yields from that Specialist, then they would have to "work" that Specialist - incurring the effects of having an active Darkfriend as well.

It also makes it a good flavor match-up - some of your citizens have been turned to the Shadow and while they look like they're doing their normal job, they're also secretly helping the Shadow. Darkfriends in a Light civ would be a drawback this way (as they should be), but Darkfriends in a Shadow civ could be beneficial.

I still think that something similar to religion would be better
but yeah, it would be hard to affect yields that way.
Btw I'm curious, is it possible to mod into civ that each city would have two separate counts for religion? Such that there would be a normal religion and a DFs count?

It's certainly possible (complicated but possible), but I'm not sure it's better. I think the DF mechanic is quite different to what you mentioned above though - so you might change your mind from my explanation?

 

[counterpoint]

Things I think we can leave for now, or that are already good decisions:

• Hawkwing or other old-timey civs at launch (we can decide later when we're doing a civ list)
• I'm good with Trolloc Wars just being a fixed length and 20 turns TW vs 50 turns LB sounds like a good relative difference.
• Sounds like we're all at the same place with technology? Despite back and forth, I think we're agreeing that steamwagons or whatever they're called can crop up toward the end of the tree - whether they're in the Age of the Dragon or the Fourth Age (which may be more than just 4 techs as I first suggested - seems like we have more good info than I expected) can be decided when we have a firmer idea of what that part of the tech tree looks like.

Yeah, I'm happy with that stuff. will be fun to revisit all that later.

Like this:

Spoiler :

If it doesn't like your file extension (only specific ones are accepted) you can just put it into a zip. (Or change the extension to something it likes and tell us what it should be - we can change it back once we download it.)

looking around... ah, the Manage Attachments button! Nice. I may do both this and a real post - if the bbcode converter works really well and easy, that is.

I like this idea - it fits in well with existing CiV but flavors it and is an effective mechanic. So, we don't want these to affect alignment, otherwise players will have to micromanage to avoid it, which is annoying. Like you said - symptom, not cause. So, Shadow civs operate more effectively in Light cities that have worked Darkfriend citizens. (Do we want tile-citizens to be Darkfriend-able as well?) I think it makes sense that a Shadow civ's prestige output would also cause Darkfriend to pop up in influenced Light civs/cities. In keeping with the way our alignment stuff has worked thus far, we could have the Darkfriend Specialists produce extra of their own yield (Darkfriend Scientists make +1 science compared to normal Scientists, for example) but also produce negative faith.

yeah, i like it, though i will say that we may need to use tile citizens as well. Otherwise, DFs would occur more regularly in Tall civs... or, rather, you could metagame your way into having more or less DFs based on the size of your cities. you know, not ideal. If we have tile and specialists, we'd just need to make sure the end results are consistent.

On that note (and tying somewhat into what swieczq was saying), it could just be a % of population that is DF... though that's less intuitive, seems to intrude on religion, and is less fun to play around with. On a related note... way to hog all the consonants, swieczq!

As far as the prestige-causes-neighbors-to-have-DFs, question: would the prestige cause the DF citizen, or would it cause an Alignment-shift, which would THEN cause the DF citizen to pop us? This is also relevent if you have DF spies or whoever corrupting your cities (evil missionary!) - do they create Citizens, or merely sew discord and lower your alignment, which creates DFs. Tricky, I could see either way working. If we think of the DFs as a "symptom," it doesn't make sense to have them appear spontaneously - they'd just disappear shortly because of the outstanding alignment, right? But, on the other hand, if we make it change the alignment (assuming that THAT would later create DFs), a DF-spy (or high prestige) would theoretically be totally unable to create DFs in a super-light civ, since the alignment shift would likely not be great enough to create evil people..... actually, maybe that's perfect. So, yeah, symptom, I think.

On that note, though, would even super-light civs have them, or do you have to be "bad?" I'd imagine most civs should have at least one, right? So maybe the issue above isn't an issue - yeah, it's a super light civ, and they have a few DFs, so what?

About people meta-gaming for optimal production - I don't really think the situation here is meta-gamey. Citizens/Specialists are already like this - if you want optimal production and as high as you can get of specific other things, you'll need to manually adjust your Specialist allocation. Most players don't do this because it's very micro-manage-y and takes a long time for only incremental gain, but a truly optimal strategy likely wouldn't use the AI presets to allocate citizens. (I've seen it recommended in the strategy forums that players should manually allocate citizens - particularly in the early game - when playing on higher difficulties.)

yes, i understand that meta is a part of this. But becoming juuuust evil enough for production bonuses seems a little silly.

Especially if the Blight can't spread through forts! Might make someone actually build one.

yeah, never built one, myself. Though, i'm also the guy who didn't get the citadel.

I wouldn't want them to be "immune" to blight, though - after all, all of malkier was swallowed.... i bet they had at least 1d20 forts....

on that note, maybe Malkier would make a good CS that is always placed on the blight? I mean, if it isn't a civ.

Alignment is interesting, but then what do we do when the Last Battle is disabled?

Buildings and specialists suffer from the same issue - you need to focus on the WoT GPs (for at least some number of turns) to the exclusion of the more reliable ones.

Ahh... yeah, maybe alignment is a bad idea. If we do use it, though, it could simply be a modifier - with no LB, we just take away the modifier.

I don't know if i share the problem with buildings and such... I mean, maybe its worth it to some people. Also, these buildings could have primary effects that are the "real" reason you've built them.

I think incidental stuff might be our best bet. We don't want to invalidate some strategies by making others WoT-GP-fests either though.

Some random ideas:

• First civ to found X cities (possibly repeating multiple? first to 4. first to 8. first to 12. etc.)
• First civ to conquer X cities (same as above)
• First city to reach population X (multiples)
• First player to control X units
• First player to produce X culture/faith/prestige/gold/science per turn
• First (and second and third?) players to reach era X
• Reward for a specific tech on the tree (One random WoT GP appears when you research this tech.)
• Reward for a wonder (one off and combined with other bonuses isn't too much of an opportunity cost)
• First civ to conquer X foreign capitals
• First civ to liberate X cities

There are infinitely more - do any stand out?

I like a lot of these! honestly, it kind of ties into the prophesy situation below - sort of game-wide "quests" you can tackle.

Most of those look good. I do think we would want to balance for different playstyles. For every "kill 50 Wisdoms" we should probably have a "create a great Craft" or something.

Piles of stuff I could quote here, but this is the general topic. If we make prophecies the 'quests' that are a part of the alignment events over the course of the game, then I think having a subset of those prophecies that are "Dragon prophecies" makes sense (the player won't know which ones are Dragon prophecies - they'll just see prophecies to be fulfilled/overturned).

My big question here:

Can prophecies be overturned?

This is really important and informs a lot of our decisions about how prophecies work. I think we're somewhat limited if they can't be overturned. I'm going to assume they can be for now.

Yes, I think I like this idea, these are sort of game-long quests that are open to anybody. Very nice... assuming we make good ones. And yeah, I think some (though not all) can tie into alignment as well. I think most of these can be the kinds of things the civs likely want anyways, but it may be fun to have at least one or two per game be super weird.... for the prophesy enthusiasts!

When you say "overturned", do you mean "proven false"? I think they can theoretically be overtuned, if the situation becomes impossible. Like, the prophesy needed you to capture a coastal city, and there aren't any, or something (stupid example). why would you want to do so, though? Do you get bonuses for overturning them? Or there's a turn limit or something.

I previously mentioned the prophecies affecting alignment - which makes sense if they're a part of the alignment events system. (Remember these are the "generic" prophecies, not the named ones - those are GWs.) Each prophecy would give the fulfilling/overturning player an alignment 'boost' in one direction - depending on the prophecy. Not all prophecies need to change alignment - only some is fine.

Once X Dragon prophecies are fulfilled by a single player, the Dragon is born in that civ. Once a specific time is reached (Y turns before the Last Battle as we estimate it) the Dragon is born in one of the civs that have completed the most Dragon prophecies. (So if none are fulfilled, it's just pure random.)

ok, yeah. so, question: does a civ get rewarded (beyond the dragon birth and alignment) for completing a prophesy? prestige/culture?

Next question:

Is this too complicated?

I worry that prophecies will still have to be bespoke, each one will have to have its own unique code that handles it, instead of the overall system having a "way that it works".

I admit that I had to look up bespoke, and I have way too many degrees - it made little sense to me in this context. British thing? programmer thing? Here, my turn: hexachordal combinitoriality.

Anyways, dictionary or no, I still don't quite get the last line, here. you're referring to each one needing to be individually tagged and followed, and stuff. that's a problem, I gather?

In terms of whether its too complex... I think, with most of these things, we should probably simply hide much of this from the player. If long-term quests exist, players can choose to follow them, or let them sit in the background - something I often do with CS quests when I don't care about diplo. Might be a situation of "oh, cool, I completed a prophesy" more often than "I need to go complete that!" - which I think is probably fine.

This could be pretty cool - Deep Blight or whatever we'd like to call it - being impenetrable to civilizations' borders. I don't think it solves our Shayol Ghul natural wonder problem though - players still know where Thakan'dar will spawn, so they can still focus on that part of the map. I'm not sure if that's entirely a bad thing - the nations of the Westlands did know where the Shadowspawn were going to be based. We'd just need to keep them back at a suitable distance so they can't autorush and win in a turn or two when the Dragon goes to take Thakan'dar.

This could also make the border of the Blight near that location an attractive place to own for strategic reasons. We're worried about players restarting near the Blight, but if you're near Thakan'dar then you are in a prime position to achieve or block the Last Battle victory.

Why not call it Blasted Land?

Yes, the westlands knew where Shayol was, adn also Thakandar, but the thought of actually going and killing it, or purposefully building near it, was unthinkable - you'd end up Malkier'ed. If we can recreate that, sure. Otherwise... probably best to get rid of Shayol Ghul.... Or just put it somewhere in the blight, but not necessarily anywhere near Thakandar (would be fine).

So aside from being immutable, any other difference between Blight and Blasted Lands?

I'm not sure if I understand correctly, does this mean that whenever you choose a specialist, you have an option for him to be darkfriend?
If that's the case, it doesn't seem appealling to me, IMO it's not appropriate flavour-wise - it's too much control for the player whether his cities are filled with dakfriends or not. Player should have means to influence number of DF's in his city, but IMO it would be better if it was rather not direct control - affected by player's actions(e.g. backstabbing), buildings, wonders, trade routes, missionary-style units, how religious his people are and so on.

S3rgeus is correct here, you've confused it a tiny bit. The players do not have the option to select whether they are darkfriends. If they've done evil stuff, they get darkfriends.

 

[swieczq]

I think the DF mechanic is quite different to what you mentioned above though - so you might change your mind from my explanation?

Yes, now it is clear and sounds like a good idea

ok, yeah. so, question: does a civ get rewarded (beyond the dragon birth and alignment) for completing a prophesy? prestige/culture?

IMO prophecies fit as the main source of WoT GP.

Can prophecies be overturned?

I think it should be avoided, but if we want "goals" of the prophecies not to be too general, some of them won't be fulfilled (unless we show them to player only as a flavourful, vague text with many possible meanings, but that can be frustrating for the player)

Might be a situation of "oh, cool, I completed a prophesy" more often than "I need to go complete that!" - which I think is probably fine.

I like it too, some could be done 'by the way', and some would require some effort, be more distinct, and give better rewards (it is quite WoTy too, propably very few of the randland people know about heron markings, but nearly every nation knows that fall of the Stone is something special)

 

[S3rgeus]

yeah, i like it, though i will say that we may need to use tile citizens as well. Otherwise, DFs would occur more regularly in Tall civs... or, rather, you could metagame your way into having more or less DFs based on the size of your cities. you know, not ideal. If we have tile and specialists, we'd just need to make sure the end results are consistent.

On that note (and tying somewhat into what swieczq was saying), it could just be a % of population that is DF... though that's less intuitive, seems to intrude on religion, and is less fun to play around with. On a related note... way to hog all the consonants, swieczq!

Sounds good - having Darkfriends replace tile citizens is good then, as you said, we don't want to weigh on tall civs. Using citizens as Darkfriends is effectively % of population anyway, 1 citizen == 1 population. Do we want to present it that way? (on the city banner?) It might give players a better overall image of where Darkfriends are in their civ, rather than restricting it to the detailed city view.

As far as the prestige-causes-neighbors-to-have-DFs, question: would the prestige cause the DF citizen, or would it cause an Alignment-shift, which would THEN cause the DF citizen to pop us? This is also relevent if you have DF spies or whoever corrupting your cities (evil missionary!) - do they create Citizens, or merely sew discord and lower your alignment, which creates DFs. Tricky, I could see either way working. If we think of the DFs as a "symptom," it doesn't make sense to have them appear spontaneously - they'd just disappear shortly because of the outstanding alignment, right? But, on the other hand, if we make it change the alignment (assuming that THAT would later create DFs), a DF-spy (or high prestige) would theoretically be totally unable to create DFs in a super-light civ, since the alignment shift would likely not be great enough to create evil people..... actually, maybe that's perfect. So, yeah, symptom, I think.

On that note, though, would even super-light civs have them, or do you have to be "bad?" I'd imagine most civs should have at least one, right? So maybe the issue above isn't an issue - yeah, it's a super light civ, and they have a few DFs, so what?

I think we could have both effects - "evil missionary" type units that spread alignment, and other effects (tied to wonders/prophecies/quests) that immediately spawn Darkfriends in some cities. I would think that, like you said, only super-Light civs could ever reduce their number of Darkfriends (in the late game) to a very small (if 0) number. Shadow civs would be infested with them, neutral civs would have a decent number.

yeah, never built one, myself. Though, i'm also the guy who didn't get the citadel.

I wouldn't want them to be "immune" to blight, though - after all, all of malkier was swallowed.... i bet they had at least 1d20 forts....

The problem with forts is that they don't produce yields, so it's a waste of a tile unless you've got prolonged warfare across that tile - which you don't usually have, usually it swings one way or the other. I would like them to be useful against the Blight in some way, but I think you're right that it doesn't fit with Malkier. I think it might also make the borders a bit more complicated, where we've got quite a simple, understandable system right now.

on that note, maybe Malkier would make a good CS that is always placed on the blight? I mean, if it isn't a civ.

I think we can leave Malkier to be a later civ, I don't know if a CS in the Blight would contribute much. We could put some city ruins in the Blight though? Let the player fill in for themselves what happened up there? Besides, the Malkier in our game might not have been near the Blight.

Ahh... yeah, maybe alignment is a bad idea. If we do use it, though, it could simply be a modifier - with no LB, we just take away the modifier.

I don't know if i share the problem with buildings and such... I mean, maybe its worth it to some people. Also, these buildings could have primary effects that are the "real" reason you've built them.

Yeah, an alignment modifier makes sense (certain WoT GPs more likely for Shadow civs, others for Light civs), because we can just remove the modifier if the Last Battle is off.

The building stuff might work then - like you've said, normal "reliable" uses can be used to offset it.

I like a lot of these! honestly, it kind of ties into the prophesy situation below - sort of game-wide "quests" you can tackle.

Most of those look good. I do think we would want to balance for different playstyles. For every "kill 50 Wisdoms" we should probably have a "create a great Craft" or something.

Sounds good - looks like these prophecies as a part of the ongoing alignment quests system (though not all affect alignment - some are just rewards) works.

Yes, I think I like this idea, these are sort of game-long quests that are open to anybody. Very nice... assuming we make good ones. And yeah, I think some (though not all) can tie into alignment as well. I think most of these can be the kinds of things the civs likely want anyways, but it may be fun to have at least one or two per game be super weird.... for the prophesy enthusiasts!

When you say "overturned", do you mean "proven false"? I think they can theoretically be overtuned, if the situation becomes impossible. Like, the prophesy needed you to capture a coastal city, and there aren't any, or something (stupid example). why would you want to do so, though? Do you get bonuses for overturning them? Or there's a turn limit or something.

And

I think it should be avoided, but if we want "goals" of the prophecies not to be too general, some of them won't be fulfilled (unless we show them to player only as a flavourful, vague text with many possible meanings, but that can be frustrating for the player)

Like counterpoint said, I do mean "proven false." I was thinking that there was indeed a bonus for proving prophecies false, but that the bonus was appropriate for the action you've taken. (Example, you prove a prophecy false that would have made the Dragon more powerful in the Last Battle - part of your "reward" is your alignment moving more Shadow.) This prevents the prophecies from being useful to some players and completely ignorable to a majority - it's only people who have genuinely no care about the result of a prophecy that should ignore it (fulfilling a prophecy that gives culture to its fulfiller or overturner is irrelevant to a player going for a science victory - unless they really want the alignment change from one result of the prophecy (and assuming that prophecy is alignment based)).

Most players will be on the positive or negative side, whereas if prophecies only have one "affirmative" fulfillment, they'll be relevant for much fewer players. I would think most prophecies (if not all) are time-limited (turns) too - that they are proven either true or false (depending on the prophecy) after that time runs out.

ok, yeah. so, question: does a civ get rewarded (beyond the dragon birth and alignment) for completing a prophesy? prestige/culture?

Yes, I think we need "normal" rewards, otherwise prophecies won't be relevant to the majority of players. I think we could give out any yield as a boost, depending on the prophecy, possibly free units, a variety of other things.

I admit that I had to look up bespoke, and I have way too many degrees - it made little sense to me in this context. British thing? programmer thing? Here, my turn: hexachordal combinitoriality.

Anyways, dictionary or no, I still don't quite get the last line, here. you're referring to each one needing to be individually tagged and followed, and stuff. that's a problem, I gather?

Sorry, programmer thing. It means that we'll need unique code for each one - that each different prophecy has to be handled individually by the game code, because they do such disparate things. For example, a belief can have a variety of different static (global to a civ) yield bonuses, and that can be used across multiple different beliefs. (Belief A gives +5 culture per turn, belief B gives +5 production) Behind the scenes, both of those can be wrapped by a system that allows the game to deal with "+X of yield Y from belief Z" - then it's just simple configuration to create the variants.

Whereas if we have a "capture a coastal city" prophecy - there's no way to generically apply the logic from that prophecy's requirements to others. We need code that searches the map for a coastal city to make sure the prophecy is valid. Then code that picks up when a player captures one of those cities and tells the prophecy to be fulfilled. That code is useful for just that one prophecy and nothing else - and if each one is like that, then it becomes much more work to add new ones. (Compared to the rewards - I can create new DB tables that allow yield/unit/EXP rewards to be added and removed from prophecies very easily, without changing the underlying system.)

It doesn't mean we can't do it, but we should just be aware that adding more of prophecies that are structured this way won't be as simple as other approaches. However, all that said, this system gives you more variety for the prophecies, which is probably good. I'd say the World Congress resolutions are probably much the same kind of thing - there's explicit logic that deals with individual resolutions, because their effects aren't variants on any other in-game effect.

In terms of whether its too complex... I think, with most of these things, we should probably simply hide much of this from the player. If long-term quests exist, players can choose to follow them, or let them sit in the background - something I often do with CS quests when I don't care about diplo. Might be a situation of "oh, cool, I completed a prophesy" more often than "I need to go complete that!" - which I think is probably fine.

Ok, sounds good.

Why not call it Blasted Land?

Yes, the westlands knew where Shayol was, adn also Thakandar, but the thought of actually going and killing it, or purposefully building near it, was unthinkable - you'd end up Malkier'ed. If we can recreate that, sure. Otherwise... probably best to get rid of Shayol Ghul.... Or just put it somewhere in the blight, but not necessarily anywhere near Thakandar (would be fine).

So aside from being immutable, any other difference between Blight and Blasted Lands?

I think swieczq also suggested stronger Shadowspawn spawning there, which we can do. I think I'm in favor of either leaving the Shayol Ghul natural wonder out or having Thakan'dar spawn completely unrelated to Shayol Ghul's map position.

IMO prophecies fit as the main source of WoT GP.

I don't know if we'll have enough prophecies over the course of the game for a subset of them to grant enough WoT GPs (and prophecies are presumably selected via weighted randomness) to be relevant in most games. But I do like the idea of some prophecies giving WoT GPs in addition to other trigger methods.

I like it too, some could be done 'by the way', and some would require some effort, be more distinct, and give better rewards (it is quite WoTy too, propably very few of the randland people know about heron markings, but nearly every nation knows that fall of the Stone is something special)

Definitely, I also think that variable "difficulty" can be good. (Maybe some prophecies are even filtered by the game's difficulty - unavailable on too low a difficulty or too high.) Proportional rewards to that sounds good!

 

[counterpoint]

OK, first things first: IT IS DONE! Converted to bbcode and everything - S3rgeus, are we at a decent place for me to post it? Are many of these things "settled" enough for now?

Sounds good - having Darkfriends replace tile citizens is good then, as you said, we don't want to weigh on tall civs. Using citizens as Darkfriends is effectively % of population anyway, 1 citizen == 1 population. Do we want to present it that way? (on the city banner?) It might give players a better overall image of where Darkfriends are in their civ, rather than restricting it to the detailed city view.

yeah, i like the idea of it being in the banner as well. Is this info that is potentially visible to other civs, via espionage, etc?

The problem with forts is that they don't produce yields, so it's a waste of a tile unless you've got prolonged warfare across that tile - which you don't usually have, usually it swings one way or the other. I would like them to be useful against the Blight in some way, but I think you're right that it doesn't fit with Malkier. I think it might also make the borders a bit more complicated, where we've got quite a simple, understandable system right now.

just to clarify, my point about Malkier was not that it would be IN the blight, but on the blightborder.... waiting to be swallowed. But yeah, its placement should be random, so that's not a great idea.

I think we can leave Malkier to be a later civ, I don't know if a CS in the Blight would contribute much. We could put some city ruins in the Blight though? Let the player fill in for themselves what happened up there? Besides, the Malkier in our game might not have been near the Blight.

ruins. Why not?

Like counterpoint said, I do mean "proven false." I was thinking that there was indeed a bonus for proving prophecies false, but that the bonus was appropriate for the action you've taken. (Example, you prove a prophecy false that would have made the Dragon more powerful in the Last Battle - part of your "reward" is your alignment moving more Shadow.) This prevents the prophecies from being useful to some players and completely ignorable to a majority - it's only people who have genuinely no care about the result of a prophecy that should ignore it (fulfilling a prophecy that gives culture to its fulfiller or overturner is irrelevant to a player going for a science victory - unless they really want the alignment change from one result of the prophecy (and assuming that prophecy is alignment based)).

Most players will be on the positive or negative side, whereas if prophecies only have one "affirmative" fulfillment, they'll be relevant for much fewer players. I would think most prophecies (if not all) are time-limited (turns) too - that they are proven either true or false (depending on the prophecy) after that time runs out.

i guess i take some issue with the proven false thing. First off, these prophesies, will they only be towards the end of the game? If so, fine. If not, I don't want to force people to pick shadow/light too early in the game.

secondly, a mechanical issue. I imagine many of these will be proven false by simply not being proven true. Like nobody bothers to prove it. So, to me, the proving it false thing seems like a weird mechanic - how does the game know "who" proves it false, when it's ambiguous and/or occurs "naturally." To me, I think maybe the "bonus" for ruining a prophesy is spoiling somebody else - they won't get the benefits, maybe. I dunno.

I think maybe a cleaner way of looking at "false" prophesies is simply that we could have some prophesies that *contradict* each other. Like one says "conquer at least one city of every civ" and another is "be the only civ not to lose a city." These cannot both exist. By completing one, you are debunking the other. I guess, for me, instead of civs wasting energy on debunking propehesies, they might better spend that energy completing others. you know?

Yes, I think we need "normal" rewards, otherwise prophecies won't be relevant to the majority of players. I think we could give out any yield as a boost, depending on the prophecy, possibly free units, a variety of other things.

agreed.

Sorry, programmer thing. It means that we'll need unique code for each one - that each different prophecy has to be handled individually by the game code, because they do such disparate things. For example, a belief can have a variety of different static (global to a civ) yield bonuses, and that can be used across multiple different beliefs. (Belief A gives +5 culture per turn, belief B gives +5 production) Behind the scenes, both of those can be wrapped by a system that allows the game to deal with "+X of yield Y from belief Z" - then it's just simple configuration to create the variants.

Whereas if we have a "capture a coastal city" prophecy - there's no way to generically apply the logic from that prophecy's requirements to others. We need code that searches the map for a coastal city to make sure the prophecy is valid. Then code that picks up when a player captures one of those cities and tells the prophecy to be fulfilled. That code is useful for just that one prophecy and nothing else - and if each one is like that, then it becomes much more work to add new ones. (Compared to the rewards - I can create new DB tables that allow yield/unit/EXP rewards to be added and removed from prophecies very easily, without changing the underlying system.)

It doesn't mean we can't do it, but we should just be aware that adding more of prophecies that are structured this way won't be as simple as other approaches. However, all that said, this system gives you more variety for the prophecies, which is probably good. I'd say the World Congress resolutions are probably much the same kind of thing - there's explicit logic that deals with individual resolutions, because their effects aren't variants on any other in-game effect.

Again, hexachordal combinatoriality. and to that, may i add double-inverted counterpoint at the twelfth.

But yes, I get what you're saying. In a sense, these are on "more than one plane," which makes them hard to manage. As ever, I think we should follow your lead with regards to feasibility - do prophesies that are simple enough, avoid those that are hard. I think these prophesy ideas are cool, but I definitely don't think they are essential - honestly, they strike me as something we may end up evolving a bit post-release.

I think swieczq also suggested stronger Shadowspawn spawning there, which we can do. I think I'm in favor of either leaving the Shayol Ghul natural wonder out or having Thakan'dar spawn completely unrelated to Shayol Ghul's map position.

i vote for making them unrelated. what do you think of calling the deepblight "blasted lands"? (if we have it).

lemme know when, and I'll post!

 

[S3rgeus]

OK, first things first: IT IS DONE! Converted to bbcode and everything - S3rgeus, are we at a decent place for me to post it? Are many of these things "settled" enough for now?

Yeah, I'd say go for it. If you post today (Saturday?) or early (UK time) tomorrow, then I should be able to make some headway on one of my rare free Sundays!

yeah, i like the idea of it being in the banner as well. Is this info that is potentially visible to other civs, via espionage, etc?

That sounds good - once you've got a spy in a foreign city, I believe you can bring up the city summary, though with some key info (what's being built) still blocked. We can present Darkfriend distribution or at least overall percentages at those times.

i guess i take some issue with the proven false thing. First off, these prophesies, will they only be towards the end of the game? If so, fine. If not, I don't want to force people to pick shadow/light too early in the game.

secondly, a mechanical issue. I imagine many of these will be proven false by simply not being proven true. Like nobody bothers to prove it. So, to me, the proving it false thing seems like a weird mechanic - how does the game know "who" proves it false, when it's ambiguous and/or occurs "naturally." To me, I think maybe the "bonus" for ruining a prophesy is spoiling somebody else - they won't get the benefits, maybe. I dunno.

I think maybe a cleaner way of looking at "false" prophesies is simply that we could have some prophesies that *contradict* each other. Like one says "conquer at least one city of every civ" and another is "be the only civ not to lose a city." These cannot both exist. By completing one, you are debunking the other. I guess, for me, instead of civs wasting energy on debunking propehesies, they might better spend that energy completing others. you know?

I think this is our only outstanding topic, but I'd say go ahead with the channeling stuff anyway. I figured that "proven false" could be available for some prophecies to make them more rounded for different players. The degree to which they are embedded with alignment could increase as the game goes on - preventing people from having to choose early.

Prophecies that are "false" because they "run out of time" I figured would have fixed global/locational effects (configured per-prophecy). The two different ways for prophecies to be false (either by expiring because it's been too long or because someone does something that makes fulfilling the prophecy impossible) seem quite interlinked to me - if we have one then we should support the other. I didn't think there would be enough active prophecies at a time in a game that players would be diverted from completing prophecies they want.

I think of it like a culture player going to war with another civ that's going to win a science victory. The culture player has to shift their focus away from their culture building and into military, at least temporarily. Explicitly trying to "disprove" prophecies is much the same - the cost of the other player completing a prophecy you know about is higher than the cost of you disproving it. Maybe it is enough that the other player doesn't complete the prophecy - but it seems to me that fulfilling the prophecy or disproving it would both be things rewarded by entities in the game? Guilds like it when their competitors are put out of business by your actions - even when they seemed destined to do well. The Dark One likes it when you take action that weakens the Dragon and will reward you for it. That kind of thing.

Again, hexachordal combinatoriality. and to that, may i add double-inverted counterpoint at the twelfth.

I'm disappointed that combinatoriality isn't combinatorics, which Wikipedia seems to think is a reasonable mistake! Looks like interesting stuff - music via mathematics.

But yes, I get what you're saying. In a sense, these are on "more than one plane," which makes them hard to manage. As ever, I think we should follow your lead with regards to feasibility - do prophesies that are simple enough, avoid those that are hard. I think these prophesy ideas are cool, but I definitely don't think they are essential - honestly, they strike me as something we may end up evolving a bit post-release.

Cool, this certainly isn't the most complex of the systems we've come up with thus far, but like some others, it does layer well on top of an already functional mod if we focus elsewhere first. I think we'll come back to this when we're fleshing out a list of alignment quests that take place over the course of the game.

i vote for making them unrelated. what do you think of calling the deepblight "blasted lands"? (if we have it).

Unrelated it is, I prefer that option too. It's easy to just remove Shayol Ghul later (just don't place it in the mapscripts) if we decide otherwise anyway. Blasted Lands sounds good - was that phrase used specifically in the books? It rings a bell.

lemme know when, and I'll post!

Let's do this! 3...2...1...

 

[counterpoint]

That sounds good - once you've got a spy in a foreign city, I believe you can bring up the city summary, though with some key info (what's being built) still blocked. We can present Darkfriend distribution or at least overall percentages at those times.

cool. i could imagine though, it might be fun to make some of this hidden until a civ some special investigation/spy, etc.

I think this is our only outstanding topic, but I'd say go ahead with the channeling stuff anyway. I figured that "proven false" could be available for some prophecies to make them more rounded for different players. The degree to which they are embedded with alignment could increase as the game goes on - preventing people from having to choose early.

Prophecies that are "false" because they "run out of time" I figured would have fixed global/locational effects (configured per-prophecy). The two different ways for prophecies to be false (either by expiring because it's been too long or because someone does something that makes fulfilling the prophecy impossible) seem quite interlinked to me - if we have one then we should support the other. I didn't think there would be enough active prophecies at a time in a game that players would be diverted from completing prophecies they want.

I think of it like a culture player going to war with another civ that's going to win a science victory. The culture player has to shift their focus away from their culture building and into military, at least temporarily. Explicitly trying to "disprove" prophecies is much the same - the cost of the other player completing a prophecy you know about is higher than the cost of you disproving it. Maybe it is enough that the other player doesn't complete the prophecy - but it seems to me that fulfilling the prophecy or disproving it would both be things rewarded by entities in the game? Guilds like it when their competitors are put out of business by your actions - even when they seemed destined to do well. The Dark One likes it when you take action that weakens the Dragon and will reward you for it. That kind of thing.

ok, i think maybe i just would like to see a specific example or two to wrap my brain around this. I think i'm down with all of this in theory. it's just hard for me to see the whole "prophesy block" thing working out smoothly without seeing some examples. Care you paint a picture for me?

In any case, for now, I'd say we have an understanding.

I'm disappointed that combinatoriality isn't combinatorics, which Wikipedia seems to think is a reasonable mistake! Looks like interesting stuff - music via mathematics.

Spoiler :

music IS math!

Unrelated it is, I prefer that option too. It's easy to just remove Shayol Ghul later (just don't place it in the mapscripts) if we decide otherwise anyway. Blasted Lands sounds good - was that phrase used specifically in the books? It rings a bell.

The Blasted Lands is the name for the region immediately surrounding Shayol Ghul. *Nothing* lives there, really, even the blight-creepies.

 

[counterpoint]

Below us the table on contents, which will show you how this thing is laid out. I'd hoped to attach it as a .doc, but the file is too large for the forums!

counterpoint's Ideas on Channeling the One Power

1 – Introduction

• Channeling in the WoT
• Design Concerns Challenges
• Process

2 – Types of Channelers and Acquisition

• Types
• Brief Summary List of Channeler Types
• Acquisition of Channeling Units

3 – Aes Sedai

• Abilities
• The Three Oaths
• Warders
• The White Tower
• Balance Throughout the Technological Tree
• Ajahs and Promotions
• Persistent Aes Sedai
• Novices and Accepted
• Thoughts on Diplomacy

4 – Other Channelers and Aspects of the Power

• Units or Not Units
• Technological Progression of Female Channelers
• Distinct Abilities of Channelers
• Normal and Unique Female Channelers

5 – Saidin

• The Taint on Saidin
• General Characteristics of Saidin Units
• Acquisition of Saidin Units
• The Black Tower
• Gentling
• Saidin Units
• The Cleansing of Saidin

6 – Social Policies and Ideologies

• Simple View – Channeling in Social Policies
• Complex View – Contradictory Policies
• Alternative Use of Ideologies

7 – Miscellaneous Aspects of Channeling

• Unusual Channeling Situations
• Additional Channeling-Related Concepts
• Enemy Channelers