Idea: MMOG for civ4, eclusively online persistant world.

[rajofpsg]

For those not in the know:

MMOG = Massively Multiplayer Online Game. Thousand, sometimes tens of thousands of other players playing the very same game you are playing all at the same time in the same game world. Games are hosted on big corporate servers and runs continously 24hrs a day, 7 days a week all year long.

Peristant World = The game world still functions and goes about its daily business even without you logged into the game.


the most rapidly expanding game market right now has to be MMOG's. Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies, Everquest, Asherons Call etc etc.

why not Civ as well?

It already has a huge following with its standalone single player version. the Multiplayer versions were all the rave to duke it out with humans. how about a step further and set up a Persistant Online World?

The details can definetely be worked out by the very imginative among us. It obviously couldn't be turn-based or you;d never be able to sleep again. When you do sleep something would have to be done about the safekeeping of your empire (who's gunna micromanage the defence opf your territory when you are gone?).

But golly why not a Civ MMoG?

I'd pay a monthly fee for it. On going dynamic content patched in regularly.

I could see it as a cross between Moo2 and traditional Civ. I doubt it could be a game contained within one specific world.

Maybe it could be an RTS hybrid.

Who knows.

But, what do you guys think about it?

If you like it, lets get some ideas going.

If you dont like it, then dont pay attention to this thread, dont rain on our parade, and dont buy it when it comes out lol.

 

[Dell19]

If each player has to manage an empire what happens to the first players who create a large empire as couldn't they just use their power to destroy new players and this effect would just snowball...

 

[rajofpsg]

Valid point.

This will need to be looked at. But this concern shouldnt stop civ from going online in a persistant world.

I dont have an answer for this right now, but i'll keep thinking.

Can anyone else maybe add something that could solve this?

 

[Talesin]

A good idea but when you are offline somone could just oblitarate (wrong spelling soz) your entire empire. You would come back on and it wouldn't be there. You couldn't start again because you would have no settlers. Dell19 is right the snowball effect could ruin it

 

[Dell19]

An idea would be to create a world where you weren't guarenteed to be the leader of a nation so instead you would have to work up from being a military unit or a worker or some city related task like a temple worker and then eventually you might be able to seize power by force or be voting in depending on the current government and then you would get to command the civ. Initially the AI would be the leaders but over time they would be replaced by a series of human empires fighting each other.

Ultimately though your idea isn't Civ and would probably be best subcontracting to a completely separate design team that create a MMOG which is loosely based on Civ.

 

[ybbor]

it would kill trading, simply build an airport or harbor and you can trade with virtually anyone in the game allowing you to find the lowest price and trade stuff very cheap.

this is a horrible idea, civ was never made to be MMOG, civ wasn't made to be MM

 

[warpstorm]

Plus not sleeping would give you a major advantage.

 

[Chieftess]

I thought about this once (it would probably be more like a MMORPG). CIV:MMORPG (hey, there's strategy RPGs out there, too!).

The more people you have, the greater effect it would have on battles. You could even have desertions, and spies. You could even have something like the demogame. But, you'd have to find a way to simplify it enough so that the game doesn't become too complex. The question would be, "How does one go about making this sort of game, and what features should it have? How will some standard game features be represented in a MMO game?".

Take rails for instance. In Civ3, they have infinite movement. How will you represent that in a MMO game? How do you represent walking on terrain, roads, and rails as being different? Would you see all trains moving at mach 7?

I do agree on one thing - it would add some nice roleplay to a stretegy game (even if it isn't historically accurate).

- Help in building the pyramids
- Participate in the Cavalry invasion of Korea
- Play as a barbarian and sabotage the railways (i.e., train robberies)
- Be a dictator in a despotic civ, Emperor in a monarchy, senator in a Republic.
- Play as a leader of an organized group of barbarians and create a barbarian civ, if you can!
- Be one of the first settlers to the new frontier!
- Play as a citizen in one of the cities.
- Create weapons and armor for the troops.

Things like the player (or leader) switching worked tiles would have to cause the "civ world" to change as well. i.e., if you're working in the forest, and get moved to the floodplains, how will that transpire in the MMO world? Would some NPC order you to go to the floodplains? What if you refuse, and continue the supply of wood?

How would culture flipping work?

Resistences could be much more dynamic, though, since you can have players actually organize a resistence to regain control of the city.

 

[sampedestal]

heck no... i want to build my civ on my own, and i don't want stuff happening in the world when i'm not playing. i want to always be able to follow what other countries r doing at any moment, and i don't want to have to play 24/7 to do that.

 

[one_man_assault]

I think the better Idea was stated by Dell.Where onewould join an existing clan or group start out as a Officer (controlling troops on minor details) or a minor spy trying to discover troop positions or city queries and work your way up to a General in charge of armed forces Or Head of Intelligence. Basicly if there was the Demo game structure of nations not run by one player but a set of players. This would be interesting if you throw in attempts at a coup, double edged spys, incompitant Generals, Defectors, Revolutionists and Dirty Politians...oh wait cant we all witness that by walking outside in the real world?

 

[Headline]

It is impossible.
reasons:
1. As others have mention. Once you get offline, someone or computer has to replace you as the ruler of your empire. It'd be similar to succession game. However, the computer has to find a human player immediatly. Once the player log on, he has to immediatly understand everything about his empire. There is no time to spare because the game is realtime.

2. Once the empire expand, the person who has larger empire will not have time to manage all of his empire.

 

[Dell19]

The biggest problem is that those with the largest empire would just get larger... Assuming everyone spends similar amounts of time playing the game... I'm sure it would be possible to set some basic instructions for what the AI should do whilst you are offline, like just defend territory if a war starts whilst the player is offline.

 

[warpstorm]

And I would study the habits of my neighboring civs so that I'd hit them just after they've logged off (or maybe just when the log on since they'll be busy trying to figure out waht happened since yesterday).

 

[Chieftess]

Or, someone could create a 2nd logon, join your team, "take over" when you leave, raze your cities, and then attack as their origanal user. All of your hard work, down the comm-port (for the lack of a better term).

 

[rajofpsg]

OK...

how about this in regards to the "when you log off you are screwed" popular opinion here:

Team Effort.

This means one single Civ/Nation/Empire wouldnt be run by just one person, but probably by council or committee. The "team" can have an unlimited number of members, or a restricted amount, or even a *required* amount before starting out as a civ. However many team mates are online at the time will have to agree with each other completely, or, by majority, or select a head-honcho to do all the deciosnmaking, in order to make decision of what to build, what to move.

With a big enough team dedicated to making thier Civ advance, it would work. Civ with less dedicated teams will fail to the same fate Civs in reality fall to when run by lazy do-nothings who show little interest in the wellbeing of thier nation.

With regards to the "first civs in the game will be biggest over time" opinion, lets think about this one. Does the online MMOG game need to follow the same standard of time that the standalone single player does? I dont think it would, seeing as how this would be a very different dynamic in playing civ, a new time standard would need to be used. I cant see the MMOG version having colossal empires built on the first day, whats the point then of paying a monthly fee when you did it all and saw it all on the first few days? MMOG's all need to have a somewhat slower paced exploration of the game systems and mechanics to begin with in order to stay in business beyond the first 3 months. No, I dont see any overnight empires being built here. So yes new players a month or 2 after game relase wont be at much of a disadvantage. Players a year or 2 will be, just as they are in any MMOg out that long.

How about this:

all movement in the game costs "mana".

"mana" is gained when a unit is victorious in battle, when a unit raises in experience (a game like this all sorts of amazing things can happen to units that gain experience over the long haul, new abilities and other customizations), when a city is in WeLoveTheKing mode, for ever citizen that is happy, from certain resources, by buying it with gold (also a good gold sink), and other ways.

Also, not all other civs are human cotrolled either. NPC's (computer controlled civs, or special characters or creatures throught the MMOG world) will also populate the game world. Barbarians can be a real menace in the MMOG and mana could be earned in many way with regards to them.

With a game like this alot of game-content could be added regularly. Small storylines, or quests, or events. Maybe there would be a huge plague ravaging across the world, or say an undead rising around the globe.

with regards to the naysayers on the first 2 topics, what say you with the possibilities I've presented?

 

[Dell19]

The game you now describe is moving towards a MMORPG that only has a vague connection to civ. It might be a good game but its no longer really Civ and also would the game ever end as a game of Civ ends in the modern age yet the idea of a MMOG would be for it to go on for a long time. Although I guess the game could restart every month so that new users always have a chance and the game could become more like Civ again by concentrating each person having their own empire and relying on the AI being capable of running the empire with the instructions that the player gives it.

 

[Hephaistos]

Ok, here I go

I have some experience with MMOG's and I think the system they use with 'earth2025' (might be another number) has some good things to take over.

First off all, you're nothing when you're not in a clan. Your civ would be your clan and you would be in control of once city only!

Secondly, keep it turnbased! That way it can be a lot like Civ is now. In earth you get 1 turn every 40 minutes and extra turns if you haven't logged in for over 12hrs and even more extra if you haven't logged in for 18hrs. that way you make ppl play their turns and wait a whole day (or more) to play again. Good for the servers, good to discourage ppl who have no live and are online all the time.

Thirdly, to counter the reaction off 'they'll kill my civ when offline'. In earth that can happen yes, but not unless a huge group of people spend all their turns just to kill you. And even then, the rest of your clan/Civ will retaliate for your loss. It was great fun organizing 'war chats' where we would decide what our next target would be and arrange ourselves to attack together etc... Just make sure that killing cities (players) takes up a MASSIVE amount of effort.

Fourthly, every three months the game was reset, all would start equally again. Also this would be necessary because otherwise you'ld have no tech advance!

Sixly, I can't count

Sevently, I see one pretty big problem though, you'ld be bound by who your neighbours are so that would need to be adressed. Maybe put everyone on islands with jumpports or something? Not very realistic though but I'm sure we can work it out.

Eightly, Mutual Protection Pacts can be made with other clans, you can have all kinds of them, we had mutual defense pacts, non aggression pacts, mutual attack pacts and all kinds of varieties. Some were breakable some weren't (meaning if another ally would force you to, the unbreakable would take precedence etc)

I'm sure I can keep talking but I really would like to see this happen!
Great thread rajofpsg!

 

[one_man_assault]

man now that I think of it....I like the multiplayer with 8 folks just fine...I meen who would want to play in a world with 50000 countries...

 

[RussiaWarMachin]

Good point.

 

[Hephaistos]

Think different servers, different worlds, it would offcourse still be larger then the 8 player that you do now. There's over a 100 countries in real life so it'll still be realistic.