FFH provides a science fiction gameplay.

[it-ogo]

First some phylosophy.

There are two main paradigms of the history. First one, originally the marxist, approaches to history as to an exponential process of collecting human knowledge and power. SM's Civilization is based on it as well as most science fiction. The second paradigm, which is more popular in fantasy, speaks about rise and fall of ciilizations. Knowledge is gained and lost, cities are built and ruined, civs reach a peak then go down and hardly survive for a long time. etc.

FFH is fantasy in style and lore but in gameplay it still keeps science fiction essence.

Is it possible to make a real fantasy gameplay (I mean theoretically infinite gameplay) with civ engine? I believe yes. Here are some ideas:

Exponential growth of everything should be removed. The size of save after some time should fluctuate around more-less constant value. That means nothing permanent.

-Each tech discovered needs some beakers to be supported each turn otherwise it is lost.
-Each building in a city has its price in gold and/or hammers, if not paid it is abandoned.
-Mechanisms to abandon certain building and tech should be presented.
-The price for GP is always the same but great people's life is limited (maybe by the chance of disappearing each turn).
-No inflation.
-Each city with culture more then "poor" suffers culture penalty.
-Each non-unique improvement outside the cultural borders has a chance to be destroyed (including roads).
-Each unit outside the cultural borders has a chance to die.
-Each unit in unfriendly terrain suffers negative healing rate.
-The tech is concidered forgotten when it is abandoned by everybody.
-The forgotten tech can be researced after some time for "researched first" bonuses.
-Any religion can have only one holy city. If the city is razed indestructable terrain feature "holy place" remains.
-Diplomatic connection can be lost (like in Rhyes and Fall).
-Dead non-national hero can be rebuilt after his tech is forgotten and rediscovered.
-Maintenance cost from the number of cities and distance to palace grows drastically.
-If some civs are destroyed new random civ has a chance to spawn each turn in random inoccupied place.
-Some disasters as rare random events are presented.
-Rarely terrain may change, resources may spawn or disappear.

etc.

The objective is to survive and/or to complete some quests. Most victory conditions are mainly acceptable still - maybe not as something final.

 

[Calavente]

fun.

but maybe boring in the long term ..
and it would make it very difficult to ever attain a tier IV unit... maybe won't be so fun.

In fact the points the most difficult to attain are the most essential for a cyclic game : forgetting culture and tech... after "no inflation" all your points are nice.
before, they are nice but difficult to do the mechanismes while conserving interest and game play and being consistant.

for units :
maybe have units cost more money if the tech is forgotten ?? or healing of units using forgotten tech being longer? and if the tech+ requirement is forgotten : the units gets a negative healing.. your advanced tech-units would become really precious. (it would be necessary because without those kind of mechanisme you would go for arhmage, get 3 of those, get some mages, then abandon the tech tree, and go toward another tech tree..

for the tech forgetness you would need something that explain how you lose techs ... : each turn of anarchy loosen some techs. ? AC rise loosen some techs ? loosing a city ? changing religion ? events ?

 

[it-ogo]

but maybe boring in the long term ..

That's true, so you need an imagination and initiative to follow your own objective in game. And I believe it is really good for scenarios: you have a goal, go one way - insuccessfull, survived disaster, have a time to go other way. Time does not pressure you. You can make an expedition and settle very far faway, abandoning your previous capital. You can make an oath to found a Graa... Pool of tears on a huge map and liberate it from somebody. For this you should resettle as from far away you can not protect it. And so on.

 

[it-ogo]

for the tech forgetness you would need something that explain how you lose techs ... : each turn of anarchy loosen some techs. ? AC rise loosen some techs ? loosing a city ? changing religion ? events ?

If you do not make efforts to preserve a tech then you lose it. Now medieval techs of making cold weapons and use it are mainly lost. What is written in paper is not enough to reproduce. But japanese were making some efforts all the time to preserve these arts and they did keep it. Therefore japanese cold weapon arts are so popular now: they are only remained from that times.

 

[snarko]

I like the idea and I've many times thought of making something like it. I haven't is because I get bored fast and I would get bored long before I finished such an ambitious project.

 

[it-ogo]

I like the idea and I've many times thought of making something like it. I haven't is because I get bored fast and I would get bored long before I finished such an ambitious project.

Yes, that is increadibly difficult. Maybe even not in coding but in balancing (as it needs completely different kind of balance) and adjusting AI.

 

[KillerClowns]

The more I read this idea, the more it would heavily favor the Sheaim and Sidar.
The Sheaim would need to only keep the AC rising at a steadily positive rate and basically let entropy (the concept, not the mana) do the rest. A nudge here and there, and each passing empire is a bit weaker then the last. They need only last as the constant, shadowy malevolence upon the land, focusing their efforts on remaining alive and keeping the world sliding towards decay. Eventually, one final empire would fall... and what was left of the planet would be unable to support another. Except the Sheaim.
Where the Sheaim would need only to assure their permanence for victory, the Sidar are defined by that concept. As empires rose and fell like flies, the Sidar would expand their immortal cities. They wouldn't have to expand much... just cling, as is their nature, to existence. They could dedicate their metropolises to preserving everything they had and continuing their existence. If they managed to placate the fiery lesser races for the first few cycles, and then became too permanent to be rid of afterwards, their steady expansion would assure their inevitable, if slow, rise to permanent dominance.
EDIT: I might actually enjoy a modmod focusing on a cyclical game, but the only way I can imagine it would be to pit the Sheaim and the Sidar against each other as the main players, maybe also the Mercurians, Infernals, and Illians, with the rest as minor civs, pawns in a grand game where each turn would represent decades or centuries...

 

[it-ogo]

IMO these balance issues are minor in comparison to many others. You see - it needs not a minor tweak to FFH but vast rework. Just my fantasy.

Well let us see how to balance Sheaim: Assume that AC with time is slowly going down - let us call these phenomenon "AC entropy" that means sins with time becomes less concentrated and to make an Armageddon you need to rise it more intencively. Nothing permanent.

About Sidar I did not understand. What ingame mechanism allow them to preserve anything better then other civs?

 

[KillerClowns]

About Sidar I did not understand. What ingame mechanism allow them to preserve anything better then other civs?

The main thing is their flavor. They're defined as being immortal, focused on preserving their existence indefinetly, breaking the cycle of life and death. As Morgoth Sandalphon says, "Our friends tend to die off before we Sidar notice."
Their mechanics don't hurt either. They can replace their city's Great _____ specialists by training up units, giving them an advantage even if we have their Great Specialists die off. Great Specialists are quite useful... again, the Sidar would need significant tweaking for such a game.
To preserve their artistic flavor, some sort of limit would have to be placed on the Sidar to compensate for their immortality, unless they were entirely reworked. Perhaps every civilization could have powerful Golden Ages that would mark their peak, and Dark Ages thet they would have to struggle through... and the Sidar would have neither. That makes sense. They'd be stable, but they would never be great, unless they managed to simply outlast everyone else.
The Sheaim could compensate for the suggested AC entropy. Doing so wouldn't be easy, and would probably be the point of playing Sheaim...
This is all theoretical, of course. I know nothing of modding, but sometime after the release of FfH 1.00, if there is interest, I can see a Rhye's and Fall style mod for it, sort of like what you imagine...

 

[it-ogo]

The main thing is their flavor.

There was much discussion about their flavor and its implementation. I am not perfectly happy with what we finally got. Still I do not think that it is something breaking. Maybe the cap will be slightly higher, but it depends more on the AI behavior. In any case super specialists are not much help against, let us say, Gurid.

In general I think there will not be many barbs as in this world an initial settler party should be able to survive mainly always and everywhere. (Except of rare random monsters) And civs are usually not so close, so waging war is tricky as well as gaining lvl 6 units.

This is all theoretical, of course. I know nothing of modding, but sometime after the release of FfH 1.00, if there is interest, I can see a Rhye's and Fall style mod for it, sort of like what you imagine...

Rhye's and Fall is a great work and nice gameplay but it is in some sense completely opposite to what I would like. RaF provides severe mechanism of artificial restrictions to "model" real world history while I'd like to have self-regulating self-balancing world with unpredicted combinations.

 

[zxcvbnm]

It's RFC, not RaF

 

[it-ogo]

That's it. Does "RaF" mean something else?

 

[zxcvbnm]

The Royal Air Force

The german commie terrorists

The third meaning might be not suitable here

 

[it-ogo]

Poor my english! Sorry for the third. I didn't really mean...

 

[Tarquelne]

Nifty idea!

That's true, so you need an imagination and initiative to follow your own objective in game. ... Time does not pressure you.

I think I'd rather be pressured by time. In this manner:

The scenario comes with a goal, or a well-developed Quest and/or Event system supplies me with a goal... or I make up my own, of course. The time-pressure comes from the nature of the world you've made: You "win" if you accomplish your goal before your civ. falls/fails/gets wiped out. Otherwise, you lose.

If you pare your idea down to the essentials you might be able to go most of the way - far enough to make a good mod - toward realizing your idea with a not-terribly complicated modmod.

"The essentials" would include a variety of mechanisms that'd tend to make civs impermanent, yes?

Some extra disaster events would probably be relatively easy to add. This might be the hardest part of what's absolutely needed. Well, apart from balancing everything to make it really work...

Tech maintenance would be very good. I have no idea how easy it'd be, though. (Assign many techs to a mini-wonder? If the wonder gets destroyed you lose the tech or several related techs? Supply the wonder automatically with the tech? It represents the place where the people who really _know_ how to work and make bronze are, for example. There's reasonable precedent for that in the ancient world.)

Building maintenance is easy. At least if it's in gold or research, and probably culture.

Maybe culture penalties for most production oriented buildings? (The assumption here being that production and culture or fundamentally opposed.) So a civ would need a steady supply of Great Bards or some other cultural boosts or face an inevitable decline. Or forgo the production buildings.... and face a greater risk of getting wiped out.

I like the negative-healing for units outside the cultural boundaries. How'd that be done?

Increased maintenance costs for # cities and distance would be very good. This in the xml?

Seen jdog5000's "Revolution" mod? It adds a number of (excellently done) features to reflect how difficult the internal dynamics of an empire can be and could fit very well with this. A lot of the mod is in the .dll, unfortunately. I'll see if I can figure out how much is contained in the easier-to-work-with xml and python.

One possibility is have civs start with an extra-good "golden age." A "founding age" where the various maintenance penalties don't apply. (Or, more likely, are canceled by the "age" bonuses.). This might require abandonment of the game's normal golden age mechanic.

Which would be too bad, because...

On the Sidar:
"The main thing is their flavor. They're defined as being immortal, focused on preserving their existence indefinetly, breaking the cycle of life and death."

The idea about depriving them of GAs is a good one, I think.

I think the Sidar would be well suited to such a game, though. their goal is to _actually pull it off._ Being immortal, I mean. There'd have to be a time-limit for practical purposes, of course. But they could refrain from conquest, questing, etc. etc. and just try to build up a small but unassailable position.

Perhaps a "win" could be awarded for X # of permanent great people and/or Shades created. ("Arcane" units would need to be either disallowed or have the # of xps needed increased.)

Maybe give them a number-of-cities limit? One?

In a hostile civ-crushing world they'd probably need some extra opportunities to create that unassailable position. But I don't think story behind the civ would need to be changed significantly. (Though maybe I'm missing something about the story...)

Apologize for any incoherence. Being eaten by dog, gotta go...

 

[Tarquelne]

Further thoughts

What follows is kludgey and limits re-playability (but not as much as traditional scenarios). But I think it'd be relatively easy, may not be _too_ kludgey, and contributes to the the "rise and fall" idea:

Set up the mod(mod) to be played as only a handful of the available civs. A few of the neutral or good ones, say.

Some of the other civs are re-balanced. Imbalanced, in fact, to act as villains or obstacles.

The mod is a pseudo-campaign where the goal of each scenario is to make the world a little better in preparation for the next scenario. The next "cycle". Whenever possible use the already existing features of FfH2.

The scenario's goal is accomplished by claiming a holy site (if you can get that working) or building a specific wonder. Hopefully a pop-up can be added informing the player (in as flavorful a manner possible) that, if they're playing scenario X, they've won. Feel free to quit now or play on until you're wiped out...

For example:

Scenario one: Nasty, Brutish, and Goblin. Play with Raging Barbarians and/or the option (Lebsomething?) that seeds the world with barbarian cities. Select the AI opponents from a list. (The important thing is to not include certain civs.) The goal is to create a wonder that will "tame" the barbarians in the next cycle.

Scenario two: The Bleeding World. Turn off RB and Leb. But now add the Calabim. They're rebalanced to be the heavies. They start with extra settlers and perhaps their basic melee units - especially vampires - are cheap. The goal is to wipe out the vampires.

Scenario Three: The last vampire put a curse of the world, turn on the Living World option. The Events in the mod are tilted strongly toward bad ones, so this makes things tough. Create a certain wonder or claim a specific holy site to win.

Etc...

Some other possibilities: Rise of the Dwarves. The Khazad have emerged to claim the surface. They're an obstacle. They start with lots of settlers but lack upper-tier units. Fiddle with the diplomatic files: They're very reluctant to go to war (Is there a "No war" option?) but aren't helpful either.

Decline and Fall of the Elves: Early scenarios have the Ljosalfar that are "rebalanced" to fail. That's "Decline" - A latter scenario might feature resurgent but angry elves- the Svartalfar are the heavies. That's the "Fall."

The Immortals: The powerful and enigmatic Sidar must be persuaded to release some of their secrets to the other civs: Achieve a "Friendly" relationship with the Sidar and trade at least 1 tech.

Heh. The final scenario could be that the world has been "fixed", nasty cycles no longer take place... but now everybody wants a piece of the pie: Play a normal FfH2 game at a higher difficulty level than you normally do.

 

[it-ogo]

Nifty idea!
The scenario comes with a goal, or a well-developed Quest and/or Event system supplies me with a goal... or I make up my own, of course. The time-pressure comes from the nature of the world you've made: You "win" if you accomplish your goal before your civ. falls/fails/gets wiped out. Otherwise, you lose.

Usually time-pressure is good for RTS, FPS etc. The worth of RPG is a world where you can live without hurry. Kael made progress much slower then in vanilla civ to feel more free...

"The essentials" would include a variety of mechanisms that'd tend to make civs impermanent, yes?

Let us say to make time impermanent. I do not like any civ to be completely destroyed. Maybe if a civ have no one city any unit can act as settler and create a city.

Tech maintenance would be very good. I have no idea how easy it'd be, though. (Assign many techs to a mini-wonder?

A wonder for each tech? Too much! I'd prefer something like a new menu with a list of techs (and their prices) allowing them to disband. I have few ideas about modding and just have ideas about interface. What to do if you disband early tech and want to keep later? Logically it is correct. What about units and buildings which need disbanding tech? I think they should remain.

The exponential growing of tech price should be removed so later techs are much cheaper then now. You do not need to maintain all the tech tree but only a few prerequisites for the next tech you research. And some techs supporting civics and bonuses like Agriculture and Sanitation. But then event "city fire" is introduced. Few buildings are burnt and you have no tech to rebuild them.

That may be very tricky with FFH giantic tree.

Building maintenance is easy. At least if it's in gold or research, and probably culture.

Even hammers should be I think. Though they are hardly collectable. The problem is disbandind when you have no resources to maintain. First - manual disbanding. Then if you run over resources you are not allowed to end turn. Again micromanagement may become a problem.

Spoiler :

Maybe culture penalties for most production oriented buildings?

Do not know. Not sure.

I like the negative-healing for units outside the cultural boundaries. How'd that be done?

It was done in former FFH versions - some promos were able to provide negative healing.

Seen jdog5000's "Revolution" mod?

Haven't seen. You recommend?

Spoiler :

One possibility is have civs start with an extra-good "golden age."

I don't like that. It's looks too artificial.

Maybe give them a number-of-cities limit? One?

I think that real problem are Kuriotates, not Sidar. One-city limit may be good for them.

 

[War Chicken]

This sounds like a good Idea for a Mod-Mod.
I'd not want to play every FFH Game like this, but quite some for sure.
I like the never-ending-game concept.

 

[it-ogo]

Further thoughts

That's too far from the beginning for me...

This sounds like a good Idea for a Mod-Mod.
I'd not want to play every FFH Game like this, but quite some for sure.

Sure it is very far from FFH as it is.

 

[Tarquelne]

Multi-quote isn't working with my browser, so bear with me...

Usually time-pressure is good for RTS, FPS etc.


_Usually_, yes.

I do not like any civ to be completely destroyed. Maybe if a civ have no one city any unit can act as settler and create a city.

Ah, I see what you're going for now. The mod would be more difficult than I thought then - the "balance" more finely tuned.


A wonder for each tech? Too much!

By "many techs" I meant "A single wonder would act for the maintenance of many techs." If you lose the wonder you lose all the techs associated with it.


I'd prefer something like a new menu with a list of techs (and their prices) allowing them to disband...

I think (I'm far from sure) what I propose above would be easier... I wanted to explore how difficult the mod would _need_ to be... but other than that I think your way would be better. A lot more flexible at the very least.

And you're going for a system where players voluntarily "disband" a tech, yes? Because they can't/don't want to pay the maintenance costs?

And some techs supporting civics and bonuses like Agriculture and Sanitation. But then event "city fire" is introduced. Few buildings are burnt and you have no tech to rebuild them.

So someone who has built all the farms they want and who doesn't want to use the Agriculture civic might disband the Agriculture tech, hoping he won't need it again? Though I suppose usually players would keep things like Agriculture but might allow Drama to slip away.

How do you see it usually working in a game? Someone might attempt to pursue too many branches of the tech tree and, when they re-focus, they "disband" the techs in the branches they won't be following up on?

The Revolution mod:
Haven't seen. You recommend?

Very much. All the civ games I play are either FfH2 or Revolution. I'd love to see a merged mod but I don't see it happening:

a) I'm pretty sure it'd be difficult.
b) I'm not sure if most of "Revolutions" changes, which reflect the "real world" pretty well, are suited to FfH. Or, at least, well suited enough to make a merge worth the trouble.