Divine Intervention II

[JujuLautre]

I also liked the idea of the ice, the terrain was really beautiful, adding to the roleplay side But I also agree with CivCorpse's suggestion, in this case, of having a quest for redemption.

Otherwise, I'd advise you to post your save at different moments of the day, so that people living in different parts of the world can all have an opportunity to intervene first

Great read, thanks for it !

 

[digitCruncher]

The problem about contantly "giving" is that it ends up with nearly the entire world covered with 17 resources in it's BFC, all grassland / Floodplains / Hills -.-

So obviously there is a need for 'taking' as well, even if it is less fun.

That said... some more 'evil' gods can always give a quest for redemption... although that would be at great hammer cost!!

Quick reccomendation for a varient game...

Each God ties itself with a religion (all religions can have multiple gods). Gods can only effect things within (say) 5 tiles of a city with the influence of a religion, or a region outside cultural borders (including, probably, Barbarian cultural borders). Also, for AI, a God controling the State Religion of the AI may, at thier request, call for a religious inquisition, that kills all people of a certain religion (if there are 2 religions, half the city dies, if there are 3 religions, a third of the city dies). For the player, the player in-game can call for a inquisition, if they don't think that a certain god is playing fair in thier lands, at great cost to thier population

Obviously the fact that Gods shouldn't be able to reverse the effects of another god should stay. (However, they should be able to reverse it after, say, 90-120 turns or so).

Finally (and this is just a suggestion), we could also remove the whole "Cannot modify twice in a row", but we can have multiple Gods modifing it at once. Each God should only really do one thing, whether it be acting on a quest, creating a quest, or modifying the world. Of course, and I learnt this the VERY hard way. Its no fun to play with the entire world shifted beyond the balance. But its also no fun spending 1 hour in World Builder trying to fix up the 7 quests you gave last turn -.-

(PS. How was Atlantis? Did it do good for the Egyptians? That was my crowning joy )

Oh, and before I forget, gratz on the win!!

 

[mice]

Bravo TheForestAuro and gods. Good thread , good read. Crazy fun.

 

[Eldarion]

That was an amazing read, Forest. I especially liked how you gave tribute to each god at the end of the story... an excellent inclusio.

As far as limitations - I'm curious to see what the final analysis ends up being. I was going for limitation based on domain by selecting beasts, although I managed to figure out how to get around my own limitations with that horse. Your wording - that the gods are ultimately there to make things more interesting, not necessarily to just add pluses or minuses - helps give better context.

Meditate on this, I will.

 

[TheForestAuro]

I knew mice had to be lurking around here somewhere.

What I don't want to do is make the thread too complicated. The cool part about Divine Intervention is that you don't have to understand a bevy of rules to get involved - and thusly we allow anyone to participate.

@Digit:
I think you are viewing the idea of adding too narrowly. Dresden, for example, added a bear. Obviously not all gods will make positive additions but think about it more from this perspective: is your addition adding to everyone's enjoyment of the game? or is it just needlessly hindering the player? While I found Maximullus suspect in his reasoning and depth of thought, I thought moving Sumer to its own island ended up being a very story-rich decision [perhaps not on purpose, but...] instead of just deleteing all of my troops.

I am thinking about tweaking the no-double-edit rule to read that you cannot make an edit twice in a row; not that you can't edit two turns in a row. Obviously we had more exposure by the end of the game, so more gods edited per turn. The new tweak merely states that someone else had to edit it before you get a shot, and I'll admit that I did some things with the knowledge in mind I wouldn't get punished for a little bit.

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

Hooray, Space! Congrats, Forest.

The gods should limit ourselves to...well....what we can do. Adding ice, but holding forth a glimmer of hope in that. One. Sea route. Out. Or seeing that near-by civilization and tearing them off the map, away from the main one to "protect" them. Or attaching Shaka to the landmass, to scare the main civ, or something.

Can we play with knowledge of stuff, like revealing tiles you should have no way of knowing about (like Coal, Oil, and Uranium) given your tech level? For both AI and Player, of course.

 

[TheForestAuro]

One of the things I really, really, really want to avoid is everyone dropping me a Modern Armor in the Classical Age. Revealing information is not much of a problem but gifting me a working refinery or something might be a bit much.

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

Nah, just showing you (or the aforementioned Shaka) where the near-by Oil is. No add-ons, just revealing the tile.

 

[CCRunner]

-Sample Rules-​

1. Changes shouldn’t be to drastic or game-breaking.

2. Only WorldBuilder changes. XML or python changes can discourage other gods that can’t mod.

3. No editing twice in a row

4. No more than three edits per turn. Two or less is preferable.

5. Quests are good but should be complete able.

6. The changes of other gods must stay in effect for at least two turns. No immediately canceling them out. Ex: giving health resources to a recently jungle-tized city.

7. Try to only do one thing each edit. To many modifications make it not as fun. Less is more.

I think those rules are easy enough to understand and will still allow for a good game. They’re not set in stone obviously as I don’t run the game so feel free to critique them.

 

[TheForestAuro]

XML and Python changes strike me as sort of "extra credit" sort of changes. Obviously if you can't do them you still have lots of options in the worldbuilder and if this progresses long enough we might accumulate enough skilled Gods that some truely spectacular interventions might develop. Banning that doesn't make sense.

One of the things I want to make a guideline is to think about what you would do if this change just happened. There were a few changes that were drastic in scope and negligable in execution. Desert Rolopolis still had a massive workforce.

 

[Winston Hughes]

I also agree on the city whacking. I did like the Sea-god doing the ice block but perhaps it could have come with a quest of redemption to melt the ice.

I did intend to have another go, which would've included a quest to get the ice melted (and, in all likelihood, some thoroughly unreasonable demands for the future). But the game moved so fast I couldn't keep up.

 

[TheForestAuro]

Perhaps we should limit the speed of the game to give people a chance? Perhaps we update regularly, once per day, or something like that, and everyone who can get an edit in has a chance to do so?

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

Good idea. Will let the gods wreck there hav.....I mean grant there blessings and quests in a timely manner. You may need to increase the turn count of the rounds in that case, though.

 

[TheForestAuro]

The thing about turn counts is that the game is balanced by the amount of time it takes to progress, not by the amount of turns. As the game progressesl later and later, things take more time but ultimately less turns. A lot can happen in 30 turns in the endgame but your first thirty turns are far less eventful.

Perhaps moving the game to Epic and increasing the turn count to 50?

 

[LiberiGlacialis]

Epic//50 works. It's a longer, slower game overall, though (I play on Noble//Epic).

 

[TheForestAuro]

So I've mulled over what we are discussing, and I have come up with a preliminary set of rules. Tell me what you think!

Divine Intervention III

Map: Large Continents
Speed:Epic
Difficulty: Noble
Leader: Ragnar, of the Vikings

The Ten Commandments of Deityhood

I.Thou shalt announce your intentions.
--(Be sure to "got it" so we don't run into continuim errors. We reserve the right to ignore not announced updates)

II. Thou shalt not Intervene if you were the last deity to intervene, and thou shalt only intervene once per waking
--(You may only intervene once per my update, and you must wait for another God to intervene before intervening again.)

III. Thou shalt not reveal the secrets of knowledge or the heavens to mortals.
--(No units or techs should be revealed to any civilization if they are not in the current or previous era of the player)

IV. Thou shalt not use your powers for cataclysmic destruction
--(Remember, less is more. Be subtle. It is far more interesting for everyone if you make subtle, interesting changes like forming a choke with mountains than if you just tear giant swathes of ice through my cities. I reserve the right to reject saves I think are unnecessarily apocalyptic.)

V. Thou shalt reveal yourself to the mortal with grace.
--(Everyone loves a good story, and if you decide to contribute to it, be creative! Choose a name and domain [i.e., Winston, the Sea God] that you govern, even if the characters don't know it's you acting)

VI. Thou shalt not be vindictive, and thou shalt not halt progress.
--(You are not allowed to strip techs away from me. Anything I research is mine permanently. You are also not allowed to remove any named unit, for any reason.)

VII. Thou shalt not be unnecessarily nice to the puny mortal.
--(I do not need a stack of thirty Level 9 Praetorians to win my fights. You do not need to fill my BFC with flood-plain grassland goldmine hills next to rivers. The only exception to this is if you genuinely make me work my ass off to get it, and even then it not ought to be as good as the dream city outlined above.)

VIII. Thou shalt reward him for piety, and thou shalt offer him redemption for his punishments.
--(If you give me a quest and I succeed, reward me! If it was easy don't give me a big bonus, and if it was hard I am going to be miffed if I get another Great Prophet for all my hard work. Likewise, if you punish me, tell me how I can fix it!)

IX. Thou shalt not war with the other gods. Much.
--(Obviously there's going to be some strife between those who would support Ragnar's Conquest, and those who would seek to protect the world from his tyranny. Having said that, Gods are not allowed to reverse the effects of an intervention without waiting for the update after the effects have been felt. This includes quests. In fact, you would do well to leave the other god's quests alone entirely. If you want me to do yours instead, make it more interesting or more lucritive)

X. Thou shalt obey the natural order of things, and of time, and of destiny.
--(There is a storyline going on here. Do try and fit in. Do not take great lengths to completely detract from it. Be smart.)

 

[digitCruncher]

Agree with all of those...

Again, just a suggestion, referring to Rule III. In extreme circumstances, could it be "You cannot provide a unit/building that cannot be built in the previous, current, or immediatly future era) (So if you are in the Classical era, you could get / the AI could get *1* Longbowman (Which is a Medieval Era unit). Thus... no Modern Armors, but you can get up against, recruit, futuristic weaponry in extreme, and rare, circumstances...

I don't think 1 era is *too* much... an era is like an upgrade of a unit, sometimes not even that! (The difference between Axe (Ancient), and Maceman (Reinessance) is the largest, for example...)

 

[Eldarion]

I like the modified rules as well. Reserving the right to reject changes that are too drastic is a good one - after all, the game should be fun, not frustrating. I'm looking forward to the next installment for sure, though I think I'll opt for a different domain next time.

 

[CCRunner]

Can you be sure to include Hannibal as an AI in the next one? I have some plans for him.

 

[GooglyBoogly]

I second the suggestion of digit to allow +1Era units for special circumstances.

Thou should be mindful of lurkers and make changes public (use spoiler tags if you must, against other gods or just forestauto), this way watchers can 'see' what changes have been made without having to second guess or poke around in worldbuilder/xml to figure out what was done.