Neverwonagame3
Self-Styled Intellectual
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2006
- Messages
- 3,549
Nice story germanicus12.
@ Neverwonagame3: Evolution will cost 4 SP and Civilisation (or do you mean Civilization?) will cost 5 SP.
To Mann Entertainment
From TIRC
We would be willing to buy the rights to the Silent Service series and pay for the exclusivity of Civilisation.
OOC: I intended to spell it right. Oops.
Civilization's exclusivity will be on the normal terms. The Silent Service series will cost 2 SP unless somebody else bids more for it.
Stories:
OOC: Frozen in Ice, do you mind me doing this many stories?
NOTE: I have gotten considerably more ambitious in what I'm doing. Is it going to cost any more?
A Detailed Description of Civilisation: Phase I
i:
In the first phase of Civilisation, the player begins as a single individual, cast out of his original tribe for an unspecified offence. An optional tutorial mode (since the other tribes remain essentially static, and tech+population remains paused, this does not disadvantage the player) is avaliable.
After the tutorial or the skipping of it, the player needs to learn the skills to hunt food on other's tribes terrortories, and evade their people, until they can persuade a tribe to allow them to join. It is possible to suceed at this straight away and skip this part of the phase, in which case it is incoporated into the next phase.
Most tribe's hunts are abstracted, and/or assumed to be sucessful, as are their gathering expeditions (tribes fit into the traditional hunter-gatherer model, with male hunters and female gatherers). Basic personalities for tribal leaders are generated, and a very basic program for other individuals who interact with the player. At this stage, most of the system is diverted to creating later parts of the game.
Over time, the game goes in a cycle of spring, summer, autumn, winter. This change is factored for in what prey is avaliable, how hard it is to survive, and so on. This cycle lasts for the whole phase, but it's main relevance is that in winter it is significantly harder to survive.
Skills the player can build up include tool and weapon-making, knowledge of fruits (being primarily a gatherer, although perhaps easier, means considerably reduced Admiration in the next phase), hunting skills, social skills (of two or three sorts), art skills and hiding skills.
From this phase onward (and moreso over time), the player can create art to gain bonus points. If a player wins the game, then his ultimate score is increased by the number of bonus points he has earned.
ii:
Once he has joined a tribe, the player needs to try and work up the skills to become Tribal Leader. To do this, he needs to earn Tribal Prestige by his achievements. Ways of doing this include sucessful hunts, feats of courage and strategy, and arguing against what turns out to be a bad course of action. Tribal Prestige increases the Admiration Level of people, though relationships do that as well.
The personalities of the people within his tribe at this stage become significantly more complex. Most of the processing power used on this phase is on simulation of their personalties. Various circumstances allow varieties of interaction options with them. They also interact with each other independently of the player. Interactions with individual tribespeople affects their level of admiration for the player, and thus contributes to ultimately gaining the leadership.
Inciting a war at this stage is very bad for the tribe as a whole, but can be good for the player. Doing so, if caught, is probably bad for his prestige.
iii:
Once at least 60% of the tribe looks up to the player, he is Tribal Leader. Unfourtunately for him, circumstances have began to change. The player's reign begins with a particularly bad drought, which has the potential to weaken the tribe. The player's objective is to survive the drought and recover his tribe.
Personalities are now far more abstracted, if not quite back to the level they were originally. The procedural focus is far more on a realistic simulation of drought conditions, and somewhat on relations with other tribes. More processing power has been focused into the creation of more complicated things for later phases.
This is a comparatively short phase, used to ensure there is some challenge in the early phases. Options in this phase for avoiding a population cut (and thus a harder next phase) include war (for more land), cannibalism (though it requires either very desperate situations, very good social skills, or a combination to get people to accept this. Stuffing it up badly enough can get a player deposed as Tribal Leader), and others, but primarily is done by effective play (hunting or gathering well, finding good water sources).
Experimenting with agriculture in this and the next stage of the phase is possible, and boosts the amount of Tech the player accumulates over time. However, in this part doing so is harder due to the drought.
iv:
The march of generations begins, and the player tries to establish a food surplus over time. The objective is to raise both Population and Tech to their maximum, and thus enter the next phase. Tech slowly rises, and the player has only a little influence on it. Population can be controlled by means of a food surplus by effective play.
Over time, the player's character will age (making things harder as he can use his own character less directly and will have to rely on ordering others), and eventually die. The player then takes over as a diffrent character.
The processing power of this phase is mainly focused on accurate simulation of Stone Age conditions. The occassional drought or other bad circumstance is factored into events, and the player has to lead his tribe in order to reach the requisite population.
After the completion of the requisite Population and Tech levels, the player has completed the phase.
Total Time:
The phases put together are intended to take up roughly 10-15 hours of gameplay. Of course, the player can save games and reload them later.
A Detailed Description of Civilisation: Phase II
The next phase of Civilisation takes advantage to some extent of the extra complexity generated in Phase I- administration is significantly more complicated and realistic, personalities are more accurately simulated, and war is more complicated and realistic.
This is not the same character the player was at the end of last phase, but a new King, easily moldable. Molding the player's son is more important for the next phase. Things can be "staticized" temporarily for an optional tutorial at this point.
(Note: I don't know how administration actually worked back then, but it works like in history. I would consult my experts for that. The same to a lesser extent with war)
At first, the matter at hand is getting the hang of administration, while slowly molding the player's son. Wars can be attempted, but a poor administration handicaps the player's attempts to conquer himself an empire.
In war, at first, the player is better advised to extract tribute from other city states and vassalage rather then outright conquest. Sieges are long affairs, and other geopolitical movements can happen as they occur. The AI by default are more inclined to extract tribute and vassalage then outright conquest.
In battle, the player can set unit formations, but except whereever his king is personally on the field has very little control after the start. Development of war institutions such as Combined Arms, War Archery, and Professional Soldiers are very valuable but also very difficult.
AI at this time are significantly more sophisticated then in previous phases, especially the player's eldest son and enemy rulers. Diplomatic options are expanded significantly, and even further depending on what institutions are developed. Some, like Royal Marriage and God-Kings, are likely to develop in a time period like this, but any given instiution is unlikely to develop, even factoring for the player.
Molding the player's son can be done by the player's actions, but psycological experts are hired to determine results. It is very difficult to form the character of the child completly, though the player can influence him somewhat.
At this time, powerful players can start building early Monuments. These get more bonus points then cave paintings in the earlier phases, and they also mold institutions in various ways. Finally, they increase Prestige, which is factored into relations with other monarchs.
The skill system still exists, and other members of the royal family are factored for (mainly for their influence on the son). The skill system itself is as complex as the last phase, but is only used for kings, and the player's eldest son. The energy saved is put into simulating personality traits of the player's family, mainly to try and determine their influence on the eldest son.
Over several generations, the player's empire will either form or fail to emerge. This is intended to take about 10 hours of gameplay. Eventually, the next phase begins. And it begins with something of a bang.
A Detailed Description of the Game Civilisation: Phase III
As before, a cutscene greets the transition as barbarian forces gather for war. The player may, optionally, have a tutorial at this time explaining the new phase.
Also, from this phase onywards things go in "real time", with game days equivilant to actual aging rates. However, game time passes at more then a day a second by default. (With the game paused and "zoomed in" for major events if the player wants)
i:
The new phase metaphorically greets the player with a barbarian invasion. This is intended to be a major setback for the player's fledgling empire, which is a challenge to even survive.
This phase introduces the war aspects, while generating processing power for the future parts of the phase. War changes depending on the player's Institutions, and the barbarian culture interacts with it to produce the war system. Possible ones over Phase III and IV include a system of formations, war based around outflankment, honorable chivalry, emphasis on decisive battle, war based around capturing opponents (e.g- Aztec), and others.
It is possible the player may face the problem of cultural synthesis, with him losing some control over his culture due to barbarian invaders (and later, possibly other factors). This introduces the feature of Cultural War, where he attempts to spread his own culture, and form it, at the expense of not controlling any one state while doing so.
ii:
After the barbarian invasion, the game simply continues. Things evolve over time in accordance with the player's actions and historical forces created by Institutions. The player can control any state influenced even the slightest by his culture, but his percentage of control is equal to the percentage his culture dominates. He can also fight Culture Wars.
The next section, Features, shows various things which can happen, various things which happen, and ways the game can evolve in this phase.
(NOTE: Never did this bit)
Other Parts of the Game Civilisation
2 player Mode:
Throughout the game, several players can play in one of two modes- Competitive or Cooperative. They are warned that the Competitive mode can be significantly slower, and it is recommended they allow for some extra loading time on a file before they begin playing. All modes use splitscreen.
After each phase stage, the players have the option to switch types.
In the two modes:
Phase I- In Competitive, the players each try to achieve the joining of, then control of tribes and raise them in population to try and get to Phase II first. In Cooperative, they try to join a tribe (if one does, the other does automatically), and take the leadership together.
Phase II- The players are seperate city states in Competitive. In Cooperative, they are co-Kings working together with their own characters and eldest sons.
Phases III&IV- In Competitive, the players are seperate nations and cultures. In Cooperative, the players temporarily cooperate in control of the same nation until the culture has several nations. One then can take control of another nation.
Difficulty Levels:
Difficulty levels can be set at the start of each phase.
In Phase I, the extent to which the land is livable, providing food, water, and so on, is the difficulty level. The procedural characters in the Tribal Leader stage are, depending on difficulty level, arbitrarily set to make the task easier or harder.
In Phase II, the difficulty level is the relative power of the city state initially.
The age of the player's civilisation determines the difficulty level for Phases III and IV. By default, they are one of the oldest civilisations in the world, but a younger civilisation can make things harder.
NOTE FROM PREVIOUS POST:
EDIT: germanicus12, sorry about that. I'll stop the practice.
(NOTE: Almost considered posting it right after yours, but that would metaphorically contradict the point...)
NOTE on above note (For lurkers, for the record): Originally had two other posts below this one, between germanicus12's posts)
OOC: Don't want story bonuses for anything below this point up to the next update.
The Court of Peter Tallman
Under the executiveship of Peter Tallman, several factions emerged which competed to control the direction of the company. In practice, Peter was mostly driving things but the combined arguments of the other groups were faced by him at every meeting. Some were beggining to undermine his resolve...
The Executive Faction argued for the development of Procedural Generation technology. They were strongly supported by Peter, and argued based on the hype they had succesfully generated for Civilisation. They argued they could make large profits selling the game at a high price. They advocated the large-scale generation of games for profits.
The Traditional Faction were the heirs of Edward Mann, and argued that the series should attempt to improve in the Silent Service and Crystal Chronicles branches in more traditional directions, and emphasise employee quality more as the original secret to suceess. They would argue that more time could be afforded to develop games.
The Neo-Deakinist faction were about half Australians, and argued for the use of the Blood Feud series and the Pride Doctrine (making players feel powerful, especially feeling like a badass, was the best way to sell games) as the key to profit. They also argued for the creation of more intenrational branches to sell money where other companies didn't concentrate, in places such as Taiwan.
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