IOT Developmental Thread

[Ailedhoo]

Oops I forgot to aid the air production icon!

 

[Sonereal]

Here is what I have.

Spoiler :

Fiat Homo

Economy

Humanity has taken a punch square to the jaw, but nothing a little farming can’t fix.

Each region/city has a population. A pop is one person. Pops can be assigned to do several things.

-Grow Food
-Mine Metals and Precious Metals
-Farm/Mine/Cut Energy
-Refine Metals
-Create military supply
-Improve Infrastructure

Each pop needs one food every turn to live, which is drained from the region’s stockpile at the end of turn processing. If you need 100 food, but only have 50, but have 150 food at the end of my turn processing, you should be fine. Starvation lowers health and increases the chance of revolt.

Metals and Energy, when combined, form a Refined Metal. Refined Metals and Energy (1:1 ratio) can be worked to create supply or improve infrastructure. Refined metals and energy can be used to create ships.

Precious Metals, with Energy, can be minted into Coins. Coins are used to pay for espionage and don’t take up space on ships when trading.

Everyone starts with a stockpile of food, precious metals, and refined metals. Do note the production chain. You can’t turn a Metal into a Weapon the same turn. It takes a turn to mine the Metals, another refine the metals, and another turn to turn those into supply.).

Think ahead. If you lack resources when you need them, you’re going to have to trade.

Building a ship requires 50 Energy, 10 Refined Metals, and the labor of 100 people.

You can also build a land trade unit. A land trade unit costs 10 Energy, 2 Refined Metals, and the labor of only 20 people.


Seasons, Health, and Population Growth

Each turn is a season: Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Summer crops multiplied by 1.5 and autumn crops are doubled. Crops cannot be grown in the winter.

Mining is dangerous. The attrition rate for miners is usually between 1-10%. During the Summer and Winter it is 5-15%.

Each turn, the population of a region grows by 1-5% multiplied by health. These new pops drain food the turn they’re created means if you only set aside enough food to feed your CURRENT population, you’re in trouble.

Every region’s health starts at 1. Assigning food to your population increases health depending on the amount of food and the size of the population. It is easier to increase the health of a small population compared to increasing the health of a large population. If a population isn’t properly fed, health falls.

If Health falls below 1, there is a chance of an outbreak of disease in the region.


Slaves

If you have slavery enabled, a quarter of the population you gain through expansion and conquest become Slaves. Slaves work like regular pops, and need food like regular pops. However, slaves only need half as much food. Despite this advantage, be careful of a slave revolt. Freeing slaves adds them to your regular population for the region.


Trade

The two trade units are Ships and Caravans (supply wagons).

Each city can have a certain number of trade routes (listed in stats). Once a trade route between two cities is established, it can’t be broken without war or embargo. The more trade units assigned to a route, the more goods and people can move between the routes.

A caravan can move 25 goods. Ships can move 100 goods. Two people take the slot of one good.

When the cities aren’t sending goods between each other, immigrations and emigrations happen naturally.

Technology diffuses along trade routes as well.

Caravans have a range of 10, subject to terrain. Ships have a range of 20.


Expansion

To expand, get a trade unit not being used for trade and select a hex within range of that unit from the city it takes off from. You must assign people and food to the expedition.


Infrastructure/Technology

Each region has different kinds of infrastructure, which can be improved over the course of the game. Different types of infrastructure increases the amount of resources produced by one pop.

For instance, a pop that farms in a region with 2.5 Food Infrastructure grows 2.5 food. Likewise, a pop that refines metals from metal with a Metalsmithing Level of .5 only creates .5 Refined Metals, but still requires 1 Metal and 1 Energy.

Here are the different kinds of infrastructure.

Farming: Amount of food grown by one pop.
Mining: Amount of metals and precious metals mined by one pop.
Lumberjack (?): Amount of energy gathered by one pop.
Metalsmithing: Amount of refined metals and coins created by one pop.
Supplies: Amount of supplies created by one pop.
Shipbuilding: Amount of ships created by ten pops.
Fortification: Percentage bonus added to city defense.
Engineering: Percentage increase for increasing the other infrastructure. Starts at 1.00 and never falls below.
Trade Tech: Amount of trade routes the city can have. Starts at 1.00 and never falls below. Truncate the number to determine the actual number of routes.

To raise infrastructure requires 1 pop and 1 refined metal. The amount a pop raises infrastructure is .01 * Engineering.


Soldiers and Ships

You can recruit a percentage of a city to be professional soldiers and another percentage to be levies. Professional soldiers will not farm, mine, or any basic economic tasks. Levies will when not mobilized.

Professional soldiers can attack at any time, while levies must be mobilized to attack.

Finally, professional soldiers consume two food per turn.

Professional soldiers double as sailors, and are required to sail a ship. It takes a minimum of twenty for a ship to work at 100%. Any less incurs combat penalties, while anymore grants additional power through boarding action. A ship can carry a maximum of one hundred people.


Military Missions

When order your troops to do something, you have to specify not only what troops are doing what, but which cities the troops are coming from. When ordering your troops to do things, food and supply is drained from the nearest supply point using supply wagons or ships.


Defend X: Troops will defend an area or a trade route
Raid: You send your troops, either by land or overwater, to raid a trade route or a hex adjacent to a city hex. Raids carry off slaves as well as other resources.
Siege: You send your troops to invest a city. The most expensive action in terms of supply as cities can last quite a bit of time. Successfully establishing a siege cuts off all trade routes and disables resource gathering.
Attack: Attack a city

 

[Tani Coyote]

Wars not ending quickly is the current problem of IOTs. A war that last a turn, two tops, is far more likely to deal severe damage with dragging wars into unrealistic decade long bouts of supremacy where every battle is a Stalingrad.

Only if you make it so the wars wipe out a massive amount of infrastructure and population, rendering them unprofitable.

As it stands there's a clique of individuals who see war as something to go to for profit... so I set things up to deter that. A campaign that eats up resources like crazy's a fairly good deterrent to attempting to zerg rush the world.

It is un-realistic to have a small nation of 5 provinces to defend for 5 or 6 turns against a far Greater power.

Maybe so, but when aiming for soft power, making it a bad idea to go to war is good.

Gameplay versus realism. I choose gameplay.

Play the nation that has war as one of its tools and not its big one, or don't play at all.

 

[Double A]

It seems like infra should be damaged exponentially as time goes on to make short wars of annexation actually worth it and make total wars big bundles of !!FUN!!

 

[NinjaCow64]

It seems like infra should be damaged exponentially as time goes on to make short wars of annexation actually worth it and make total wars big bundles of !!FUN!!

But IRL wars of full annexation AREN'T worth it! Look at Afghanistan (both wars), Vietnam, Korea...

 

[Sonereal]

Only if you make it so the wars wipe out a massive amount of infrastructure and population, rendering them unprofitable.
Maybe so, but when aiming for soft power, making it a bad idea to go to war is good.

As it stands, parroting "soft power" has been justification to make war entirely unprofitable, which it shouldn't be either.

It seems like infra should be damaged exponentially as time goes on to make short wars of annexation actually worth it and make total wars big bundles of !!FUN!!

If the war is about annexation, the occupation mechanics should do enough to cause problems. I'm talking about short wars where the goal isn't complete annexation, but at the same time aren't WW1 trench slugfests, such as the Occitanian-Roman War in NRIOT.

The war part is easy. Occupation is difficult. Then again, since the ruleset below is roughly ~1000 AD in terms of technology, slavery is probably a decent solution anyway.

 

[Mosher]

The war part is easy. Occupation is difficult. Then again, since the ruleset below is roughly ~1000 AD in terms of technology, slavery is probably a decent solution anyway.

Isn't it always a decent solution?

 

[Sonereal]

Isn't it always a decent solution?

Really depends. Mechanically, gaining too many too fast means you probably don't have enough cities to distribute them over, increasing your revolt risk. :shrug:

 

[Mosher]

Really depends. Mechanically, gaining too many too fast means you probably don't have enough cities to distribute them over, increasing your revolt risk. :shrug:

That's when you use the excess as food.

 

[Sonereal]

On another note, because I didn't include it in the quoted ruleset due to me still working on it, there are different religion. Again, sorta works like the disease mechanic, except it spreads along trade routes by people moving around, settling, and slowly growing. Assimilation and conversion is a factor, with the majority usually pressuring the minority.

 

[Mathalamus]

you know... i want an IOT in which a single province nation is not only possible, but viable.

i wanted to play as Cyprus for a long time...

 

[Tyo]

Maybe in a 1000-1500 IOT.

 

[Double A]

But IRL wars of full annexation AREN'T worth it! Look at Afghanistan (both wars), Vietnam, Korea...

Point to the part of my post where I said full.

 

[Lighthearter]

Coming after IOTMAD dies a fiery nuclear death -

Imperium Off Topicum: Empires Through Time

LEAD people from the Stone Age to the Nanotech Age as you attempt to provide for their survival and prosperity.

FIGHT for what's yours using 12 different unit types, each one with its own relationships with each other.

WAGE WAR as necessary for the survival of your people on a massive map. From clubmen beating on each other to battlemecha and antigravity gunships, your equipment could save you from defeat at the hands of cannier but lower-tech neighbors.

TIME PASSES and you must keep up. As the epochs progress, will you fall behind in the arms race and be consigned to the ash heap of history?

Inspired by the Multipolarity Series, Rise and Fall of Empires, Empire Earth and Rise of Nations.

-L

 

[Tani Coyote]

Re: Wars

Well if it's quick wars one wants that's entirely doable in MP4. Only people who want to occupy vast swathes of land really need to worry.

I do have it so war isn't too easy to stumble into either; go all out or go home.

Unfortunately no one listens to my suggestion to plant a large espionage base beforehand.

you know... i want an IOT in which a single province nation is not only possible, but viable.

i wanted to play as Cyprus for a long time...

Theoretically doable in MP4. One would just need a massive infrastructure and population to compensate for the lower landmass.

 

[Sonereal]

Re: Wars

Well if it's quick wars one wants that's entirely doable in MP4. Only people who want to occupy vast swathes of land really need to worry.

I do have it so war isn't too easy to stumble into either; go all out or go home.

Unfortunately no one listens to my suggestion to plant a large espionage base beforehand.

I wonder what was more important: US air strikes against Iraqi radar stations or a spy switching off a switch.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Not to mention if you've tied your whole grid to a single point of failure you're either too stupid to have ever earned that command, or are Sombra de Mar.

 

[Double A]

And if it's the latter, the whole base will probably be designed to collapse when the switch is flipped.

 

[Tani Coyote]

I wonder what was more important: US air strikes against Iraqi radar stations or a spy switching off a switch.

Not to mention if you've tied your whole grid to a single point of failure you're either too stupid to have ever earned that command, or are Sombra de Mar.

It's not a switch. It represents infiltration throughout the whole defensive network. Misdirection of intelligence, jamming of radars and satellites, the works.

Which is why I have it as one of the missions where success or failure is absolute. You either do enough damage they don't see the invasion coming... or don't.

As for the "US versus Iraq," that requires massive levels of disparity between militaries. I don't think we've seen that level of disparity in any of my games yet. So it is invalid.

Also Thor you were one of the first people to advocate for banning sneak attacks so I don't get why you're so vehemently against this idea.

Anyway. Gameplay > Realism. I want the would-be Napoleons to suffer, and suffer greatly.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Please reveal unto me a real-world example of enemy agents compromising the whole network at once. Even D-Day didn't pull off the scale you're describing.

Also Thor you were one of the first people to advocate for banning sneak attacks so I don't get why you're so vehemently against this idea.

This all stinks of a back-handed ploy to justify them / provide ulterior mechanisms.