Dark Souls "multiplayer" aspect

[Naokaukodem]

In Dark Souls you can read messages on the ground left by players. OK, they can be misleading sometimes but... let's say it would not here.

The goal would be to provide Helpers who was in the form of "governors" in past iteration, but not saying rubbish that everybody knows ("you should build a warrior, because i'm the war minister and i want to kick some ass")

Those helpers would be programmed beforewards, by modders or users of a tool provided by Firaxis. This could be "if you are declared early, stop building everything and build walls or an archer instead". Or even : "troops are amassing near your frontier, you will be declared soon and do this" or again "if you accept this right of passage, you will be invaded sooner. Prepare for war anyway."

I don't know. Those example are not that convincing and can be seen as dumb as "governors" advices, but put all once in a pack, they could synergize and help for the meta game. Do I have to recall that developers have no clue of any meta game when they design their Civ ? It has always been players who designed ways to play the best possible, and criticized them in consequence.

Don't get me wrong, such a thing would need an engine on its own, and some great work. For the user, it could simple commands like "do this IF that, BUT do that instead if there's this", and this can become very complicated.

It's from a player who finds Deity mode sometimes overwhelming, and watch Youtube a lot in order to improve. But it takes time. And it's not necessarily 100% efficient. (my attention is not always where it should be)

So if there could be true advisors that would help for the meta game, that you can disable of course, it would be a revolution for me.

AFAIK, it could also be a system of early spying that indicates you the intentions of the AI, and the proximity of the danger in time and space, or an improving-over-patches best advices from the community about the meta game.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Nobody interested in that ? Hmmm, that's however honest as a wish i believe.

 

[ABI3]

Hello there Jolly Sun Bro!

I find this idea to be good in esence but not quite sure they will do in actual game mainly because AI is not rational it does dumb things like settling cities not on fresh water and without an acqueduct possibility, building Chichen Itza for just one jungle tile. It is just not focused towards any kind of victory at all, I wouldn't like to see that kind of advice from governors, if Fireaxis can manage to have governors give actual useful advice then I'm in. Having them say something like this city has a good adjacency bonus for xxx or xxx district, or saying you may not want to build this kind of district or you can do this to help this city grow or you may want to trade with xxx to get more ammenities, you know the kind of advice that is actually useful.

I feel Fireaxis has already implemented a Dark Souls like mechanic with Barbarians just spawnning outside your city and then instantly multiplying like masive invaders which just came to mess up and ruin your game.

 

[Naokaukodem]

As I said it would be backed by players for the meta game. So it would obviously be useful advices about the meta game vs. the AI. Your examples are good I think.

As to barbs, I don't remember in GS, but in vanilla they can't take your cities, they are simply attacking them and losing health without stopping until they are all dead, which is kind of funny.

 

[ABI3]

As long as those are useful advices I'm in. Barbarians tend to be a pain in the but at least in the GS version and Immortal difficulty
which is how I ussually play. If a barb scout spots you and makes it back to his camp they will spawn not 3 or 4 units but up to 10. Also barbs will rase any of your taken city just like city states do, the only city they cannot rase or take is the capital so any other regular city can be permanently lost to barbs.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Oh yeah you must be right about barbs taking cities. The time it happened to me it must have been my capital. Was still funny though.