If we had a "roleplay focus" game what rules?

[donsig]

One way to handle the duality of having a democracy game but not having "democracy" would be to make different people's votes count differently...
The tough guy approach with winner takes all isn't as appealing to the masses

I agree with people's votes counting differently, that's what I envisioned. The thing is we can't really use forum polls. People will need to post their choices. I like some of the suggestions you made but not sure influencing is the way to go.

When I wrote about having a despot I didn't mean someone that would control everything. That's not how it works in RL, is it? Despots are only human and can't be everywhere at once to control things. I would think local events would be important in such a game. We'd really have a local despot in each city. There might be one despot who claimed to rule all but unless he or she can enforce obedience...

What the role play focuses on could also scale with the game. In the beginning say we have a city, a warrior an an explorer. Players would have to decide where they are: in the warrior unit, in the city or in the explorer unit. Those in the explorer unit control the unit. They can do this any way they see fit - by voting, by fighting for control, whatever. But they make a binding decision on what the explorer does. Anyone in the city controls the allocation of laborers and what the city builds in the same way. Now those in the explorer unit can give input on what the city should do but their advice in not binding at all. If they want to influence what happens in the city then need to leave the explorer unit and go to the city.

We would need some decision making mechanism for big things like converting to religion, making trades and setting the sliders.

Some way would be needed for people to change their stats. Random events could be one way. Another is to reward accurate predictions about the civ game. Yet another way would be to hold civ related contests and give proportional numbers of points based on results in the contest. We could even hold the occasional election, where the results of the election don't choose the official, but rather they modify the influence parameters.

Good ideas. We could also just allow players to retire their character at any time and start over with new stats. New characters should not be on par with characters that have lots of experience though. In other words, it should be better to keep the same character alive for a long time and the way to do this is to give periodic skill points out. This would also encourage players to keep their guys alive and not risk so much lethal combat.

Donsig, hope my post doesn't steal your thunder. I'm getting enough that if I don't write it down today, it might be gone tomorrow.

This isn't just my game - it's everyone's game!

@General Falcon and ice: I don't think it's imperative to ensure fairness all around in the civ playing choices. I think we'd have a much better game if we forced players to chose where they are and what specific things they want accomplished in the civ game rather than allowing everyone to control everything. It would be fun to play our characters under these constraints.

 

[Joe Harker]

So what stats would we have for each player?

 

[donsig]

So what stats would we have for each player?

We haven't made much headway on that yet. We need something for fighting ability (strength?). DaveShack mentioned an organizational ability. Do you have anything in mind? I guess we'd really need to figure out a bit of the game mechanics so we'd have an idea of what abilities were needed. Given the place of religion in we might want a religion oriented ability (spiritualism?). Maybe an intelligence ability to influence technology issues. That's all I can think of off hand.

I was thinking along the lines of just giving everyone say 100 points to divide up anyway they want among the skills. Maybe every twenty Civ turns a player can add 10 points. Any new character starts with just the 100 points.

I was also thinking that who ever is interested in this sort of thing should get together and do a pilot / practice game. Maybe we could use the current rpg and team games forum?

 

[Joe Harker]

Well you have strength, for fighting, intelligence would be good for research as you said, plus spiritualism for religion, and something for money as well, which could affect coporation when they appear (assuming we use BTS).



Other than those i can't think of any more but i don't think we should go overboard and create stats left right and centre otherwise we will confuse ourselves.

Game mechanics are tricky! But i will give it a thought over night (BST, sorry i had to do it )

 

[ice2k4]

I was thinking along the lines of just giving everyone say 100 points to divide up anyway they want among the skills. Maybe every twenty Civ turns a player can add 10 points. Any new character starts with just the 100 points.

This would discourage new-comers from joining, as they would be behind (10 x the amount of civ turns played)

 

[donsig]

This would discourage new-comers from joining, as they would be behind (10 x the amount of civ turns played)

Well, newcomers should be behind anyone who has experience playing. I'm not sure how much they should be behind though - my numbers were merely suggestions.

I wouldn't be too worried about putting newcomers behind. If all players have to focus on where they are (in a specific city or in a specific unit) then as the game progresses and we get more and more cities and more and more units newbies might actually move to a city or unit that is unoccupied. If only one character inhabits a unit then that character controls (gets to post the game play instruction) for that unit.

We could go a different way and have all players choose which city they live in. Then players could also be attached to one unit. We could evolve to a point where we have a king who creates an earl or a duke who then commands several units. Of course each unit is still ordered by those attached to it but not following the duke's or king's orders might have consequences. By the time we get to representative government we could have appointed generals, etc. Perhaps fighting and killing is ok until we get code of laws. The possibilities are limited only by our imagination, which is why I don't think we should go into this with too many rules.

So, anyone up for a pilot version of this?

 

[mike6426]

I would join.

 

[donsig]

Here are some specific proposals:

Players can choose to be based in a specifc city and they can also choose to be attached to a specific unit. Both choices are optional.

Units

Units are controlled by those players who are attached to them. If only one player is attached to a unit then that player controls (posts game play instructions) for that unit. If more than one player is attached to a unit then we need a mechanism to determine who in the group will have control. (Note any player attached to a unit is assumed to be with the unit).

Whoever controls a unit can do whatever they want with the unit, even attack another civ's units and start a war. Movement, promotion, worker tasks, founding cities, converting cities are all choices made by players who control the corresponding units.

Units not controlled by any player will act in a random manner.

Cities

Cities are controlled by those players based in the city. However, players also attached to a unit are assumed to be with the unit and therefore cannot directly control the city (unless the unit they are attached to is within the city radius). As with units, if only one player is in a city then that player controls the city. If more than one player is in a city then we need a mechanism for deciding who has control of the city.

The player that controls the city controls what is built in the city, specialists and the tile allocation for the city.

Great People
I'm not sure who should control Great People though I do think it should be a player who is connected to the city the generated the Great Person. A Warlord generated in battle should be controlled by a player attached to the unit that generated it.

Government

The tech choice, sliders, state religions, civics and foreign affairs (trades, treaties) will be controlled by the leader of the government who must be based in (and present in?) the capital city.

Playing schedule

I suggest one game play session per week (same day and time of the week) and always ten turns. (Well, this last part could be graduated so that we play less turns as the game progresses - the key is to have a published schedule that will be adhered to throughout the game.) Once the save is played (say on Tuesday), players have till Thursday to post any change they want to make regarding their city base and /or unit attachment. Then by Sunday we have to resolve conflicts over unit, city and government control so game play instructions can be posted before play on Tuesday. Then the cycle starts over.

The DP is more like a GM and not at all like the DP's we are used to. DPs will have to follow the instructions exactly and randomize everything else. (Actually, randomizations could be handled before game play and posted as instructions.) The DP in this game is merely a machine to follow instructions.

A turn chat could be used, too in this game. Heck, anyone controlling a unit or city could concievably give orders at the chat. This is different from our traditional DG since we're giving a player complete control over a city or unit, so there's no reason to deny using the chat.

Summary

This is just a bare bones outline of how the civ game decisions would be made. There is a lot to fill in - especially how we resolve conflicts to determine who controls the units, cities and government. This resolution should be based on the civics we have in place. If we have hereditary rule then we need a king and we need to figure out how to determine who is king and how his successor is chosen, etc.

Maybe next week we can start a pilot game.

 

[DaveShack]

DPs will have to follow the instructions exactly and randomize everything else. (Actually, randomizations could be handled before game play and posted as instructions.)

Currently a DP has to follow instructions, so that part isn't a change. Randomizing doesn't make sense, so I don't see how that could possibly work.

 

[HUSch]

Automatically is randomizing, that would be my opinion.

 

[donsig]

Yes, the DP has to follow instructions in our traditional DGs. But there, the DP can also make decisions for anything lacking instructions. In this game the DP would not be allowed to do any of that.

So if a unit doesn't have an order then it must either sit where it is and do nothing or do something. I'm proposing it do something. We'll make a random chart and let the RNG decide. We can say unordered units have a 59% chance to sit, a 5% chance to move in any of the 8 possible directions and a 1% chance of disbanding.

I'm not sure what you mean by by randomizing doesn't make sense DaveShack. It doesn't make sense from a game play point of view? If that's what you mean then please try to remember our focus isn't to play a perfect (or even a good) civ game. Randomizations would spice things up. It will also encourage players to attach to a unit to prevent it from wandering around aimlessly.

As the game progesses and we get more units we can alter the unit part to allow a player to control all the units in a stack or a group of units near each other. We might have a king who creates someone else an earl with command of certain units. Later on we could have career generals directing even more units.

@HUSch, automating workers would work for workers who are not controlled. That's a good idea.

 

[ori]

@HUSch, automating workers would work for workers who are not controlled. That's a good idea.

The same holds probably true for scouts or similar units that one can just let the RNG gods decide what they do. I'd see problems with randomizing in times of war though - there won't be enough players to even attach to all city defenders, no matter how many people play this. While the aim may not be a good civ game the aim should be to ensure the game survives for a while and does not end too early to be fun.
I'd propose to leave any unit that has no player fortified in the city it is produced in and allow whomever controls the city to use those units to prevent pillaging in the city radius. If a unit in the field loses its player (i.e. the player is not posting any instructions for x sessions the rng gods might decide what the unit does (disband and go back to their families and farms, join a city as a garrison, deflect to an AI (aka "gift the unit"), wander around aimlessly (set on auto explore) - you name it)).
This way any sort of offensive would have to be conducted by units controlled by a player, but defending the cities can be done even if the game does not have too many active players. Of course once generals appear (in the RPG) one could have them control more units for offensive actions...

 

[grant2004]

I like this idea of players directly controling cities and units, but I fear that we won't have enough players to comand all of the units and cities directly. I like the proposal of froming groups of units so that they may be ordered by a smaller number of people, and I like the idea of attaching garison units to cities to give the players controling cities a reasonable way of defending themselves.

However I've also been thinking about another idea for how we could work this. Even in my own mind it seems a little complex, but I'm going to throw it out there anyway to see if there is any interest in such a system, or if any of the wise individuals here could prune it down to a more managable scope.

What if we assume that the player is not RPing as an individual in our nation but rather as the head of a prominent family? Each member of this family could then be assigned to a particular city or unit, increasing the area of influence of each player and increasing the number of individual units that we can control under Donsig's system. Randomized events in the form of births and deaths would allow us to manage the population of characters in game so that we would not have too few characters to control all of the game aspects, but would also not have so many that controll of units and cities became overly complex.

Under the traditional system each player creates on character, and part of the fun is developing a personality for this character, I believe that can still be done under the family system. Players might choose to fully develop one or a few prominent family members, and leave the rest underdeveloped in background roles, or they could develop the character of the family by having the individuals act with similar thoughts or mannerisms.

Earlier in the discussion it had been suggested that players might specialize in different aspects of decision making. I see the family system as a good way of doing that. Each character in addition to belonging to a city or unit could also be a member of an organization or committee, and would have voting rights inside that organization. This would still require a system that didn't use the forum polls, but posting the votes of your list of characters in the polling thread doesn't seem too much of a hassle to me.

 

[Falcon02]

Giving each citizen a unit to control does sound interesting, though I'd hate to be the DP for that long list of 20 posts saying "move my unit(s) 1N and 3 E"

As for "Randomizing" build queues we could go with the civ suggested (ie. one the top two, normally suggested based on military, growth etc.) with maybe a 50/50 chance of unit or Building.

Though I still have my doubts as to the whether the mechanics will work well, but it will be interesting.

 

[Provolution]

To get a good RPG Civ4 game, we need to attach player characters to cities, units and civic/tech choices.

For the cities, there would be competition and rivalry to get the best city in the game, still the civ would need to cooperate in order to survive.

For the units, we could attach players to a unit each (using the renaming function in order to label each unit to a particular players). The autonomy of the said unit would belong to that player, and the Warlord/General would have to persuade the citizen owning the said unit to use it for a certain battle under Feudalism, for example.

For tech choices, I think we should allow factions representing a certain tech-route. This could be as political parties or dynasties. Each party/dynasty should have a limited amount of players, so that they are equally sized.

I like the idea of a family system, and I think it should be rooted in a dynastic model, with family structures changed every time anarchy shifts for a revolution. The revolution and change of civics should be our real election, so when a civics change is announced, we also hold whatever "elections" we need. If people are happy with a regime, they will not call for a civics change, and if it is still called for, one may still try to contest every single position. The RPG model allows normal citizens to have a role as city leaders and unit leaders, as well as key members of a political faction.


The party/dynasty mechanism could also be attributable to Civics, where we got real civic choices, there could be radicals, conservatives and moderates. We see this in games anyways, so I do not see why we cant organize it properly. What this game proves, is that merely playing to win is too easy, and it becomes a game technique debate only, with no soul.

 

[DaveShack]

I'm not sure what you mean by by randomizing doesn't make sense DaveShack. It doesn't make sense from a game play point of view? If that's what you mean then please try to remember our focus isn't to play a perfect (or even a good) civ game.

Sure, if you like the idea of losing in 1000BC then go right ahead and allow random things. It won't be a very long RPG that way.

The Civ game has to be at least good enough to act as a support structure.

 

[donsig]

Sure, if you like the idea of losing in 1000BC then go right ahead and allow random things. It won't be a very long RPG that way.

The Civ game has to be at least good enough to act as a support structure.

Wow, I go away for two days and come back to lots of good suggesitons and then DaveShack tries throwing a bucket of ice water on the whole works. You don't have to play with us if you don't want to Dave.

I'm not suggesting we randomize everything. There are two reasons for randomizing. One is to spice things up a bit. Another is to give players additional reasons to attach themselves to a unit. We don't want to lose in 1000 BC so we do want to ensure randomization doesn't get out of hand. And there were some very good suggestions for doing this. Before commenting on those I'd like to just throw out two more quick suggesitons.

First, we can have a smallish map to ensure the number of cities and units we have remains reasonable. We can also keep the level of difficulty lower which would allow us to remain viable despite gameplay mistakes from randomization and / or a society that is too fractured.

Now on to suggestions made by others.

@ ori: Good ideas. We can go further along the lines you suggested. We can have one random table for peace and a different one for war. Making up these tables can be handled through discussion and polls where we all get to participate as players rather than characters. We could also have a rule where all units in the same tile can be controled by one player/character. Your idea of allowing a city to control its garrison, especially within the city radius is great. I do think that with stacks and city garrisons we should have a mechanism for allowing a player / character to take control of a unit or units in order to move them somewhere else.

@grant 2004: Your family idea is inspired. It not only helps us to control more units but it can be used for hereditary rule. I've been stumped trying to figure out how we'd simulate a new king. By using a family we could do that.

@General Falcon: Good idea for randomizing build queues. I agree it could be tough being DP but if we keep to a smaller map this could be manageable.

@Provolution: Yes, you have hit the nail on the head! Our recent DGs have had no soul, no life of there own since there were mainly (rather boring) technical gameplay debates.
I'm not sure how we should go about changing civics. I really think we need more than one mechanism in place for this and it should really depend to a certain extent on the current civics in place. If we have hereditary rule then the King (or Queen) should be able to make some choices (like state religion) single handedly. A monarch should also be allowed to abdicate. Whether that would merely result in a new dynasty or a new civic I guess would be up to the people. The people can also rise up and depose a king in favor of a new king or another type of government.
The tech issue is tricky. Your idea of a faction is similar to one I was kicking around where we allowed each city to vote on the next tech(s) and weight the vote according to the number of beakers the city produces. Since they make the beakers they should choose what they are researching.

@everyone: I really think we should just dive in and start a pilot game and see what happens. If we play a few rounds we'll get an idea of whether we're on the right track or not.

Here's a sign up thread.

 

[dutchfire]

Just throwing out some ideas (I didn't follow the entire discussion as I was on holiday):

What's the benefit of being attached to a specific unit for the player(s) in question? I think it might be an idea to give players a small reward based upon the role of the unit during that turn. And perhaps it's an idea to split this reward based on the number of players attached to the settler so it's more attractive to choose a "unique" unit.
Say: "Unit X pops a hut and receives 30 gold, players A, B and C are attached to unit X. They will all get 10 gold. Unit Y fights a barbarian and wins, players D, E and F are attached to unit Y. They will all get +1 strength stat"
Of course, this would need to be balanced, so that it can be attractive to be a palace guard, or an explorer, or a fighter.


We should also think which general conditions must be met to make a rpg succesful. I'm thinking of the following:

• The game should be open to newcomers. So the accumulation of cash, stats and property (or whatever we'll be using) musn't be too great to overcome.
• There should be various goals one can work for which give advantages, within a reasonable timespan. This will give people something to do in the game. (Just another 100 gold and I can buy X!)
• There should be no one optimal way to play. It's no fun having a game where everyone is the same.

 

[donsig]

What's the benefit of being attached to a specific unit for the player(s) in question?

The benefit is a chance to control that unit. Control here means to write the game play instructions for that unit or oder the units during the chat session (or both). It's the interface between the RPG and the civ game. Likewise, the benefit of residing in a city is the chance to control the city.

I do like your idea of rewards for civ related things. This could work well in cities, too. We could have players earn gold in connection with the amount of gold their city generates. There are many possibilities but as you say we have to be careful not to make things too unbalanced.

It's a complicated game we're suggesting and I really hope some of you will join in and do a little playtesting with me.

 

[Falcon02]

Something I think we need to try to take into account is "learning curve"

The more a rookie player has to read to understand what's going on the less likely the rookie player will actually join.

The RPG is likely to add alot more to the "necessary/helpful reading," when it's something I feel even the regular DG has struggled with.