IOT Developmental Thread
- Thread starter Joecoolyo
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Thorvald of Lym
A Little Sketchy
Arya's Star Wars game, aye.
Now maybe it's just the EaW talking, but I'm half-tempted to take a stab at that myself.
Now maybe it's just the EaW talking, but I'm half-tempted to take a stab at that myself.
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2008
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- 14,928
To get this thread back on track, lets take a moment to discuss something radical: Mechanics. Specifically, the mechanics of the game that this thread was originally for.
Imperium Offtopicum V was started 1 August 2010, or a little under five months after the original IOT. Coming off the heels of IOTIV, IOTV was the first mechanics heavy game of the series. The game, having looked at the previous games, must've looked "radical" given the number of GMs and the fact that "oh God how will I be able to do anything if I can write a ten page story about what my leader is doing!"
Imperium Offtopicum V used the antiquated XP system for claiming. The XP system is a system where countries can only claim a handful of provinces per turn, and usually games with a XP system counts expanding militarily against the amount of provinces you can expand peacefully that turn. Strangely, you could use all your XP to ultra-claim an owned province, but five seconds of balancing would show any modern GM that war is probably quicker.
The economic system, for those currently in IOTXV, should look familiar. Every province generates $1, and each Civic Tech generates $1 per level. If you have 20 provinces and 10 CT, you generate $30/turn. The trade system in this game was, for the time, probably the best you would get. Every country embargoing another country reduces income by 1% and, for anybody keeping score at home, makes embargoes practically worthless and completely disregards economic power.
If a game has 26 players, and everybody in the world embargo you, you would only lose 25% of your income. Declaring war with a casus belli, on the other hand, reduced your income by 50%, clearly showing that this game's focus would be on the diplomatic and military side, and that the economy would be treated with a light touch.
Which is unfortunate.
You don't need to be a finance major to scratch your head at the idea of ever in your entire life of improving Civic Technology. Imagine if you start at Civilian 1, and you're going for level 2. The cost would be $25. It would take 25 turns just to break even on your investment.
IOTIV, the longest lasting IOT up to that point, only lasted 34 turns.
Military tech, on the other hand, is extremely potent. Starting with a base strength of one, Army Tech 2 would double the power of your armies in the field.
Of course, had the game lasted any appreciable amount of time, several problems would make themselves noticed very quickly after the map was claimed.
1. The amount of new income streams entering the game is limited by the willingness of players to undertake massive infrastructure projects (researching Civilian Techs), which grew more expensive, and less worthwhile, after every level.
2. Provinces, being the meat of the game's revenue, were relatively cheap to gain, and the cost of a standing army came nowhere near the cost of trying to peacenik.
The game attempted to circumvent the problem with a casus belli problem, which I feel did nothing but further limit the already very limited options available to players. The casus belli system heavily punished a player for going to war without a CB, which wouldn't be a problem if there was anything worthwhile to do besides war.
This painfully limited economic system would further affect the military system.
Keep in mind that the game this ruleset was for had over 1000 provinces at first, and even after the cleanup had over 500.
The cost of armies and fleets are the main limiting factors. Surprisingly, upkeep is less so. If you have $100 provinces and you're not wasting money on civics, you will likely only be able to build your sixth army at that point before needing to borrow. The fact that upkeep is only $12 for six armies makes the entire system pointless in the grand scheme of things. There should be no point where a player's upkeep outpaces their income given the cost to build in the first place unless the player borrows.
And if IOT has taught one thing, it is that players don't like borrowing.
The system does attempt to limit potential abuse by allowing provinces nearby with defending armies to contribute to the attacked province's defense. However, and this is important, the difficulty of increasing military technology and/or building more armies would very likely end up forcing everything to rely on the 0-50% luck roll modifier.
However, the biggest flaw this game had was the number of Game Moderators. There was an Executive GM, Police Officer, Cartographer, Economy/Research, and War Mod.
Anybody who is reading this post and have read the IOTV ruleset will understand how insane this is. The game, which would take only 30 minutes to be upgraded by a modern GM these days, needed five GMs for some reason. A GM to edit the map? Why isn't the main GM doing that? Handle the economy and research? Why *can't* the executive GM do that?
IOTV should be a warning to modern GMs about starting games if you don't have Excel experience. In this day of age in moderating IOTs, there is no reason not to use Excel.
There have been posts decrying the post-IOTIV world about how "mechanically" things have become. This is a problem when GMs fail to actually modernize and improve their rulesets and make changes.
IOTV, today, would take little to no effort to run using modern systems. A more standardized combat system operating in Excel could calculate several battles in the time it would take to do one, and the results would be cleaner. The economic system could've been improved in such a way to give incentives to actually bother with techs.
But IOTV, for the most part, was new. In hindsight, of course the ruleset was painfully imbalanced and incentives the wrong behavior. Most new ideas have flaws in their initial execution, which is why we improve on them over and over and over again.
Imperium Offtopicum V was started 1 August 2010, or a little under five months after the original IOT. Coming off the heels of IOTIV, IOTV was the first mechanics heavy game of the series. The game, having looked at the previous games, must've looked "radical" given the number of GMs and the fact that "oh God how will I be able to do anything if I can write a ten page story about what my leader is doing!"
Imperium Offtopicum V used the antiquated XP system for claiming. The XP system is a system where countries can only claim a handful of provinces per turn, and usually games with a XP system counts expanding militarily against the amount of provinces you can expand peacefully that turn. Strangely, you could use all your XP to ultra-claim an owned province, but five seconds of balancing would show any modern GM that war is probably quicker.
The economic system, for those currently in IOTXV, should look familiar. Every province generates $1, and each Civic Tech generates $1 per level. If you have 20 provinces and 10 CT, you generate $30/turn. The trade system in this game was, for the time, probably the best you would get. Every country embargoing another country reduces income by 1% and, for anybody keeping score at home, makes embargoes practically worthless and completely disregards economic power.
If a game has 26 players, and everybody in the world embargo you, you would only lose 25% of your income. Declaring war with a casus belli, on the other hand, reduced your income by 50%, clearly showing that this game's focus would be on the diplomatic and military side, and that the economy would be treated with a light touch.
Which is unfortunate.
You don't need to be a finance major to scratch your head at the idea of ever in your entire life of improving Civic Technology. Imagine if you start at Civilian 1, and you're going for level 2. The cost would be $25. It would take 25 turns just to break even on your investment.
IOTIV, the longest lasting IOT up to that point, only lasted 34 turns.
Military tech, on the other hand, is extremely potent. Starting with a base strength of one, Army Tech 2 would double the power of your armies in the field.
Of course, had the game lasted any appreciable amount of time, several problems would make themselves noticed very quickly after the map was claimed.
1. The amount of new income streams entering the game is limited by the willingness of players to undertake massive infrastructure projects (researching Civilian Techs), which grew more expensive, and less worthwhile, after every level.
2. Provinces, being the meat of the game's revenue, were relatively cheap to gain, and the cost of a standing army came nowhere near the cost of trying to peacenik.
The game attempted to circumvent the problem with a casus belli problem, which I feel did nothing but further limit the already very limited options available to players. The casus belli system heavily punished a player for going to war without a CB, which wouldn't be a problem if there was anything worthwhile to do besides war.
This painfully limited economic system would further affect the military system.
Keep in mind that the game this ruleset was for had over 1000 provinces at first, and even after the cleanup had over 500.
The cost of armies and fleets are the main limiting factors. Surprisingly, upkeep is less so. If you have $100 provinces and you're not wasting money on civics, you will likely only be able to build your sixth army at that point before needing to borrow. The fact that upkeep is only $12 for six armies makes the entire system pointless in the grand scheme of things. There should be no point where a player's upkeep outpaces their income given the cost to build in the first place unless the player borrows.
And if IOT has taught one thing, it is that players don't like borrowing.
The system does attempt to limit potential abuse by allowing provinces nearby with defending armies to contribute to the attacked province's defense. However, and this is important, the difficulty of increasing military technology and/or building more armies would very likely end up forcing everything to rely on the 0-50% luck roll modifier.
However, the biggest flaw this game had was the number of Game Moderators. There was an Executive GM, Police Officer, Cartographer, Economy/Research, and War Mod.
Anybody who is reading this post and have read the IOTV ruleset will understand how insane this is. The game, which would take only 30 minutes to be upgraded by a modern GM these days, needed five GMs for some reason. A GM to edit the map? Why isn't the main GM doing that? Handle the economy and research? Why *can't* the executive GM do that?
IOTV should be a warning to modern GMs about starting games if you don't have Excel experience. In this day of age in moderating IOTs, there is no reason not to use Excel.
There have been posts decrying the post-IOTIV world about how "mechanically" things have become. This is a problem when GMs fail to actually modernize and improve their rulesets and make changes.
IOTV, today, would take little to no effort to run using modern systems. A more standardized combat system operating in Excel could calculate several battles in the time it would take to do one, and the results would be cleaner. The economic system could've been improved in such a way to give incentives to actually bother with techs.
But IOTV, for the most part, was new. In hindsight, of course the ruleset was painfully imbalanced and incentives the wrong behavior. Most new ideas have flaws in their initial execution, which is why we improve on them over and over and over again.
Right now that I've actually read that.
Why the hell are there still people who don't use Excel, OpenOffice, or gdocs? The last two are free, and if you have Word, you already have Excel. It's not like you have to use the formulas in Excel (but you totally should if you have to keep track of anything more complicated than the number of provinces and armies someone has). A table or, god forbid, list in Word is just horrible to maintain. Excel is a bigass table that takes negligible amounts of time to make additions to. I still remember when I tried to take over an IOT a few years back and the former GM sent me a goddamn Word document. I was horrified.
Use Excel. Please.
Why the hell are there still people who don't use Excel, OpenOffice, or gdocs? The last two are free, and if you have Word, you already have Excel. It's not like you have to use the formulas in Excel (but you totally should if you have to keep track of anything more complicated than the number of provinces and armies someone has). A table or, god forbid, list in Word is just horrible to maintain. Excel is a bigass table that takes negligible amounts of time to make additions to. I still remember when I tried to take over an IOT a few years back and the former GM sent me a goddamn Word document. I was horrified.
Use Excel. Please.
Thats not what I was directing it at
arya126
Squad Leader
Future Ideas
1. Tennis IOT. Each PC would create and control a tennis player and personalize their strengths and weaknesses through stats. Compete in the 4 Grand Slam tournaments and compete to become the best tennis player in the world.
2. IntelligenceIOT. An IOT about the intelligence agencies of the world. Each player chooses a country and takes over the operations of its spy agency. Has to defend against foreign infiltration, work with supposed allies, take out specific targets and threats, etc as they see fit. Manages a system of agents through embassies as well as NOCs.
3. The Office. An IOT revolving around Mossad, Israel's spy agency that is known internally as The Office. Each player takes over an operations leader who customizes multiple teams under them and has to work together with other players in order to outsmart the players working as Israel's enemies (PLO, Hamas, ISIS, Iran, etc), while at the same time jockeying for position within the office, as well as the coveted chief position.
4. Box Office. An IOT as a sequel to AWOM that will focus exclusively on movies, their production, and the box office sales of each. Confirmed as being run in december during my winter break.
5. Hotspots. An IOT that revolves around the hotspots of action around the world, such as the Syrian Civil War, the crisis in Ukraine, Israel's siege and assault on Gaza. Players would be divided into 2 permanent teams. They would then manage a 'side' of each hotspot, for example Team A would fight on behalf of Assad while Team B would represent the rebel groups. Would function similar to a war room in that each player would have his own supplies/soldiers/equipment and would either branch out on his own or work together with his teammates in order to vanquish the other team. Starts would NOT be fair. It MIGHT be possible to do multiple hotspots at once; for example Team A would manage Israel, Assad, and west Ukraine, while Team B would manage Hamas, FSA, and Russian separatists. Turns would likely be monthly.
Discuss.
1. Tennis IOT. Each PC would create and control a tennis player and personalize their strengths and weaknesses through stats. Compete in the 4 Grand Slam tournaments and compete to become the best tennis player in the world.
2. IntelligenceIOT. An IOT about the intelligence agencies of the world. Each player chooses a country and takes over the operations of its spy agency. Has to defend against foreign infiltration, work with supposed allies, take out specific targets and threats, etc as they see fit. Manages a system of agents through embassies as well as NOCs.
3. The Office. An IOT revolving around Mossad, Israel's spy agency that is known internally as The Office. Each player takes over an operations leader who customizes multiple teams under them and has to work together with other players in order to outsmart the players working as Israel's enemies (PLO, Hamas, ISIS, Iran, etc), while at the same time jockeying for position within the office, as well as the coveted chief position.
4. Box Office. An IOT as a sequel to AWOM that will focus exclusively on movies, their production, and the box office sales of each. Confirmed as being run in december during my winter break.
5. Hotspots. An IOT that revolves around the hotspots of action around the world, such as the Syrian Civil War, the crisis in Ukraine, Israel's siege and assault on Gaza. Players would be divided into 2 permanent teams. They would then manage a 'side' of each hotspot, for example Team A would fight on behalf of Assad while Team B would represent the rebel groups. Would function similar to a war room in that each player would have his own supplies/soldiers/equipment and would either branch out on his own or work together with his teammates in order to vanquish the other team. Starts would NOT be fair. It MIGHT be possible to do multiple hotspots at once; for example Team A would manage Israel, Assad, and west Ukraine, while Team B would manage Hamas, FSA, and Russian separatists. Turns would likely be monthly.
Discuss.
1 and 3 simply don't excite me. 2 depends upon how it's done, 4 would be interesting.
As for 5, I think that's just asking for trouble. Not that it's not interesting, but there are a lot of IOTers with friends, family, loved ones, or political interests in those events going one way or the other IRL, and those aren't always on the same side or civil discussion - I'm concerned you'd end up with a lot of OOC/meta player arguments detracting from the game. Maybe if you went at least a couple years back, instead, you'd be able to dodge that?
As for 5, I think that's just asking for trouble. Not that it's not interesting, but there are a lot of IOTers with friends, family, loved ones, or political interests in those events going one way or the other IRL, and those aren't always on the same side or civil discussion - I'm concerned you'd end up with a lot of OOC/meta player arguments detracting from the game. Maybe if you went at least a couple years back, instead, you'd be able to dodge that?
Ailedhoo
wonderer
- Joined
- Mar 19, 2012
- Messages
- 7,809
How many years? History, as is everything, be political. That said a crisis games scenario would be excellent if played well...
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
I like 4.
GreekAnalyzer
Back from the Dead
- Joined
- May 9, 2013
- Messages
- 1,936
I'd like to play 2 and 3.
Civ'ed
I ain't gotta explain a thing
So chaps, questions
1. how much market is there for a colonial IOT
2. what's the best map to use for such a thing
1. how much market is there for a colonial IOT
2. what's the best map to use for such a thing
Terran Empress
Hornet
Sign me up and call me a conquistador because i am so down for a colonial IOT.
Robert Can't
Éponine
Civ'ed - What era colonial?
Civ'ed
I ain't gotta explain a thing
Starting 1550 or so with 100% less Spaniard
JohannaK
Heroically Clueless
I approve.
