IOT Developmental Thread

[Double A]

Should we take this as shorthand for "Warhammer IOT when"

TIL CityIOT is bascially Warhammer.

 

[Sonereal]

So I have an idea for a medieval IOT. Would anyone be intrested?

Do you want to see it in our world (with the CKII:RoI map), or do you want to see it in a fictional world?

If you want to see it in our world, I will need help. Although I can manange Europe well, I will need help in minor details like how the Indian nations will work.

It depends on if the IOT is fresh start or not, but I suggest using the CK2 Rajas map. It should be up around here somewhere in the map thread I think.

Military mechanics being fun depends a lot upon the scope of systems - I know I alter them pretty readily, so systems have had all sorts of varying interpretations.

I dunno. One of the more mundane but also less concerning parts of the orders. Players tend to be pretty apathetic to the fine details, despite how much war is in these games

The only thing I find interesting about military mechanics is how they end up interacting with other mechanics. Not so much the mechanic itself I suppose.

 

[Civ'ed]

TIL CityIOT is bascially Warhammer.

Rules for the Rule God!
Stats for the Stat Sheet!

 

[TheGryphonPrince]

It depends on if the IOT is fresh start or not, but I suggest using the CK2 Rajas map. It should be up around here somewhere in the map thread I think.

Yeah, I already blanked the whole map. And it will be (sort of) a fresh start, since I want to make the divergence point by the time of the Umayyad-Abbasid split (we will start in 1066).

 

[Sonereal]

I think that modeling military is the easiest thing we can do. It is what most board games do, after all, albeit with varying levels of success/realism/fun. Even just listing "126 Infantry Divisions, 22 Panzer Divisions" etc... is sufficient for most purposes. If you want to go in depth, it's honestly somewhat trivial to keep detailed records of each nation's armed forces down to the division level. If you don't want to write that much, move up to corps. The reason it's easy is because adding more infantry does not increase the complexity of the system.

I think the real reason modern NESes don't exist, aside from the popular perception that modern times just aren't as "interesting" as past times (specifically people who think nukes have somehow ruined the "fun" of warfare), is because modeling economics is such a major pain in the ass. I know it's a conversation I had with EQ a lot, and more recently with Masada, that while for pre-20th century IC or EP works reasonably well as an aggregate spending capabilities stat, the more realistic you want to go, the more you have to account for, and failing to do so obliterates verisimilitude. Furthermore, even in a 19th century situation, how do you realistically differentiate between industrial powers, merchant economies, and vast volume economies (say the UK, Netherlands, and Qing China respectively)? Simply using IC is not satisfactory at representing the ability of a country to produce, much less the ability of a government to... govern.

That having been said, it still works OK and in fact I think IC is the best we can do because you can add more non-IC IC stats - like in SysNES2, there was also a science stat, a talented workforce stat, etc. which were all hard integers, and I think it worked well from a playing perspective but it was obviously not very realistic - but the more modern you go, the less you can get away with. There's no excuse not to try to model GDP and trade balance and in fact you kind of have to because the notion of IC simply fails to encapsulate enough phenomena when you apply it to a modern, globalized economy.

And then the real killer is... okay, we can model stuff produced, we can model different productive sectors of an economy, and with enough creativity and BS we can model supply and demand, but... the more you add to the system, the more complex it gets. Two interacting economies behave very differently from an economy in a "vacuum," especially when governments start changing the rules and doing their own stuff. Bozhe moy, it's too much, I say! And now you want 200 interacting economies in the modern day? Sheezus.

Source: Listening to Masada-sama's lectures on economics and trying to incorporate it into a NES and failing very badly.

Well if we're just doing my pie-in-the-sky desires at this point, first of all let me say that stat-pages should be wholly eliminated. There are innumerable better ways of presenting information than these dumb stat blocks, and realistically the quantity of things that have to be to be simulated warn against using stat blocks anyway.

Suppose you are actually the immortal godlike non-Human entity that has been ruling this nation since time immemorial or the gestalt consciousness of the executive branch of government or the sum total embodiment of the zeitgeist of the nation or whatever (not explicitly defining the player's relation to their "character" is another thing NES has dragged its feet on for literally more than a decade) and you're sitting at your desk (?) one day and a crisis pops up on the other side of the world and you want to muck around in it.

What does Obama do when this happens? Well, he goes and talks to the Pentagon and says "What do we have in the region?" He does not go and consult a catalog that lists every last weapon system and munition the US Military holds on to to create a custom response package to that crisis. (Set aside the fact that having the player's role undefined means that by some peoples' definitions, Obama would go talk to himself in some weird puppet show because they're all played by the same guy.) The Pentagon has various units that do various things and consist of various pieces of hardware. That hardware is important in terms of what it can do, but it's the unit that makes it happen.

You might initially be thinking "So divisions and air wings." No. Because that runs into the same problem of lacking any kind of granularity as to what those things contain.

So to return to my wish list, you should probably imagine something like a Paradox Map, wherein military forces are actual discrete things located in space rather than smeared across the national aether. These are attached to an Order of Battle, which nobody has to my knowledge ever attempted to implement across the board, down to the Divisional or Brigade level (former earlier in time, latter later in time). You go and you grab units based on regional commands or however your military is setup or based on specialty or whatever the circumstance calls for and they go and they do whatever it is you have tasked them with.

In actual practice, this probably means that control of a lot of the military should actually be out of player hands, and that the military would be akin to a faction within government like a political party, with that nation's history and values and traditions determining how much the military listens to the political apparatus or does its own thing or whatever (maybe compare the US Military, PLA, and Indonesian Army for different ideas of how this could look). Incidentally, this would give more value to military reforms and reorganizations than "make mans shoot better" because there would be all these response systems to tinker around with.

Realistically, a player should never have to count up how many guns they have. But that doesn't mean nobody should. Within each of those discrete units on the map there should be a counter of every last gun and bomb they possess. You could cheat and skip this, just giving the unit a net version of what QJM calls "Operational Lethality Index," but the math exists for actually computing it so me personally, I would say actually go and compute it. Actually computing it would mean that if a player really wanted to, they could click on that unit on the map and get its information (or more realistically, since the idea of interactive maps has been kicked around for years and years and nobody cares about that either, open a spreadsheet) right down to how many Makarovs or Berettas it has. Some people would be more into it than others and they would have that operational flexibility to go in and tinker with their stuff as part of their national policy, but they wouldn't have to.

All of this would be hooked into outside variables. For example, say you have a volunteer force, like the US does. It's not actually steady-state in size: people are joining and leaving all the time. You could compute force attrition and recruitment rates (based on... what? National mood? Military benefits? All kinds of fiddly variables you could add in here) to give a total force size that doesn't end in "0" and is actually attached to other things that are going on.

Or we could just continue making it all up as we go because that's a lot of work, which is why we haven't done it, even though it would be easier on everyone once it was actually done and produce a better experience. But if you're going to make things up, don't involve numbers at all, they just complicate things and make it easier for people to call you on having made things up.

To summarize, either go "simulationist," or go "storyist," and never betwixt should the two meet, because compromise makes no one happy.


Some people don't like Alien Space Bats and not everybody has the same interests. I know this is a shocking revelation.

The linked documents are scans from (or in one case, a retype of) material from Numbers, Predictions, & War, first published in 1979 by T. N. Dupuy; T. N. Dupuy is himself dead, and the publishing company for this book, Bobbs-Merrill, is defunct, so this information is presented with the understanding that as long as it is not used for commercial interests, no laws are being broken in its transmission. You are of course invited to purchase the full book on Amazon, or perhaps a later book such as Understanding War. They're pretty cheap, though the availability seems to be going down over time.

Your uses for them, if any, are your own.

Saving these here for later.

 

[SouthernKing]

To be honest I don't think there's a whole lot that's relevant in any of those posts, especially symph's, since realism for realism's sake isn't really fun for anyone except the worst of megalomaniac fetishists.

 

[Sonereal]

worst of megalomaniac fetishists.

Hello.

I don't think that statement is true whatsoever. If it was, then nobody would accept an CK2 economy for a game set during the Victorian period and an EUIV combat system for games set during WW2. It has always been just a balancing act between mechanics and making things easy to understand for players.

Or, at least, make sure they only need to worry about the relevant things. There's always been a lack of creativity in stat design in IOT, but even basic things like freeze frames, strategic hiding of "irrelevant" and GM-only stats could go a long way.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

When Double A says he wants war stats to be fun, my immediate thought is "make the calculation a game in itself"; sorta like what I did with OFP in IOT4, but instead of just filming the battle I'm actually fighting it.

In fact, after Reus released his mod I started pondering using Civ itself as the calculator in a sort of hotseat AAR. Might yet try it in a future game.


P.S.: Remind me again why IOT and NES are in separate forums?

 

[Sonereal]

Nobody could agree on the prenup.

 

[Civ'ed]

I wanted to use warband as a battle sim once
nobody liked the idea

 

[Double A]

When Double A says he wants war stats to be fun, my immediate thought is "make the calculation a game in itself"; sorta like what I did with OFP in IOT4, but instead of just filming the battle I'm actually fighting it.

Yeah kinda, except in a way that doesn't make each update take a month.

 

[TheGryphonPrince]

P.S.: Remind me again why IOT and NES are in separate forums?

I haven't seen much of NES, but from what I can see is that the NES forums are more generalistic on strategy games and tend to be more diverse, while the IOT forums are more based on geopolitical games.

And in case you're wondering about the OP of the medieval IOT (not yet fully complete, need help on religious stuff and governments)

Spoiler :

MEDIOT: A Game of Medieval Politics​

Welcome to MedIOT! This game is, as the title will suggest, set on the medieval ages. This IOT was inspired by, *drums roll* Crusader Kings II. However, I swear I won’t make it half as complex as that. I promise.

We start at the year 1066 A.D, with divergence point at 750 A.D

So let’s get to the basics of the IOT.

Armies

To be completed later

Income

To be completed later

Stability

Your stability depends on various things. Mainly how your subjects fit in with your nation.

Your subjects, depending on how similar are on you, will be loyal or rebellious if you are too different. If you are on France and are Catholic

If your nation is too big, or it spreads in lands very different of eachother (for example, an empire that rules Italy, Spain, Greece, Tunisia and southern Russia), it will also suffer penalties.

Religion

General stuff about religions

All religions will be on the map like most religions. (Although if your story is convincing enough, I might change that) Areas like Russia are places where you may choose whatever religion you want but an area like France will stay loyal to Catholicism.

Religious heads, in special cases, might call for Crusades/Jihads/Holy Wars. For example, the pope might call a crusade on Jerusalem if the year is after 1090 or Rome falls to infidels, or the Caliph will call a crusade on Mecca if it falls to the infidels.

If a religion is faring badly (losing territories to infidels, having rulers of the religion convert to an infidel religion, etc) there will appear heresies. Heresies, unless a ruler embraces them, are never a good sign and need to be exterminated immediately or else they might spring into a rebellion against the ruler. While a strong empire might handle them, a weak ruler will have a very bad time if they spread. The stronger the moral authority of a heresy is, the faster they’ll spread. If they have more territories than their father branch, they will replace said branch as the head of the religion and the former branch will become a heresy instead.

Example: If Catharism has more moral power than Catholicism, and is big in comparison to Catholicism, Catharism will replace Catholicism and Catholicism will become a Cathar heresy.

Christianity

Catholicism:

Catholicism is the religion predominant in most of Western Europe and widespread in Eastern Europe. The head of the Catholics is the pope, which will be represented by the papal state and which will have it’s territory placed at the start of the game in a convenient location. You may attack the pope, but you’ll suffer severe penalties like excommunication, a crusade called against you and other nasty stuff.


Orthodoxy

Orthodoxy is the predominant religion

Eastern

Eastern Christianity represents the Nestorian, Ethiopian and Armenian churches. They are predominant in

Islam

Sunni

Sunni Islam is predominant in Arabia, North Africa, Southern Hispania and parts of Sicily. Their head is the Caliph, which will be randomly selected from Sunni players.

Shi’a


Pagan

Pagans are predominant in areas like Northern Russia, Finland and Tartaria.

The pagans are especially strong when it comes at war and infidels suffer penalties when attacking pagans. However, they also suffer instability problems more than any other nation. It is also harder for them to convert infidels and infidels have a higher revolt risk.

However, if a pagan kingdom grows strong and big enough, they may reform their faith, which will remove the instability problems attributed to being a pagan, they may convert infidels easier and may even send missionaries from their branch to convert other pagans. They will lose, however, most of their military strengths as pagans and their enemies will no longer suffer so many penalties.

Initially, the pagan religion is one huge religion but as rulers from different origins reform their religion, it will start splitting up. For example, if a pagan ruler from Scandinavia gets strong enough to reform his religion and does so, the Norse branch will split off the main pagan religion.

Just for fun, also try restoring Roman, Germanic and pre-arab cults .

Zoroastrians

Zoroastrians are predominant in Northern Persia and are located between Persia and Tartaria. Although they are already an organized religion, they may “reform” themselves and become even stronger (that is, if they don’t start out with Persia or something like that)

Government

Feudal kingdom:

Feudal kingdoms are the governments predominant in Western, Central and much of Southern Europe, as well as in Russia. Feudal kings have armies that have 10% more power than other armies, but have a 20% stability penalty.

Absolutist kingdoms:

Absolutist kingdoms are predominant in the Muslim areas and in much of Southern Europe (see: Greece and the Byzantine Empire). An absolutist kingdom is a type of government where the king reigns supreme over their subjects. If a feudal kingdom mananges to maintain a stable kingdom and with a powerful crown authority, it will evolve into an absolutist kingdom. An absolutist kingdom is free of many of the problems that plague a feudal kingdom, but they suffer a bigger revolt risk thanks to their oppression on peasants. Absolutist kings have 10% more stability but their revolt risk is multiplied by 20%.

Tribes/Khanates

Tribes/Khanates are a more exaggerated version of the feudal kingdoms and may only exist in Pagan, Muslim or Zoroastrian nations and must be located in the east of Europe or Central Asia. They have 30% more strength and have 20% less maintenance but are 50% more unstable.

Republics:

To be completed later. Have 20% more income but 30% less military strength.

Rules

The basic one is that your nation must make minimal amount of sense. You can make a Sultanate of Greece if you want (although you’ll suffer rebellions from the Orthodox population), but a pagan crusader equestrian khanate of France in Ethiopia won’t cut it.

Joining

Simply state the basic things of your nation (name, government, religion, etc.), give yourself some claims and you’re all set.

The claims may be very big, but not too much (France and England is fine, but not an Empire ruling the Middle East, all of Persia, all of North Africa, all of Hispania and France)

You have a full week to send in the applications. After that, I will break up the world between the NPCs. You may join after that point, but the world will have been already divided by then.

 

[CivOasis]

P.S.: Remind me again why IOT and NES are in separate forums?

A lot of legitimate differences between the games that run between the two, but mostly that the two communities can't get along.

Which doesn't prevent me from taking advantage of the situation, but I digress.

 

[Civ'ed]

Guess what may or may not be coming back...

Spoiler :

Link to video.

 

[Ailedhoo]

@Kinkaz: Norse is a option I see? Good: I must raid and bring joys with the blót as the Fylkir of the Norse faithful!

P.S.: Remind me again why IOT and NES are in separate forums?

"The Sneetches" scenario, perhaps? After all CityIOT has shown we do divert from geopolitics at times and the Void game may prove quite intensive indeed. Any-rate I encourage better relations between NESers and IOTers. Hostility is not going to benefit either section of this forum. The 'communities' could get along if we only try.

 

[Double A]

It's clearly because we're better because we don't always say we're better.

 

[GreekAnalyzer]

I'll play MEDIOT. Reserving Abbasaids in Exile.

 

[NinjaCow64]

Somehow I unsubscribed from this thread so this is a re-subscription post.

 

[SouthernKing]

"The Sneetches" scenario, perhaps? After all CityIOT has shown we do divert from geopolitics at times and the Void game may prove quite intensive indeed. Any-rate I encourage better relations between NESers and IOTers. Hostility is not going to benefit either section of this forum. The 'communities' could get along if we only try.

+1

Speaking of which, I had a non-XVII-related idea.

Is everyone here familiar with cradle NESes? If you aren't, they basically are (End of Empires is far and away the most successful example) fresh starts on a non-Earth map, but with the start limited to a small section of the world - the eponymous "cradle" - with everything outside blacked out until the cradle physically gains knowledge of what's out there. (I'm bad at descriptions but you get the point )

So my idea was running one of these, but with two cradles (on the same map, obviously), with one cradle filled with IOTers and that thread here, and one cradle filled with NESers and their thread there. Perhaps it could end up having two mods, one for IOT and one for NES, if that could work better.

Would there be interest in this?

 

[NinjaCow64]

+1

Speaking of which, I had a non-XVII-related idea.

Is everyone here familiar with cradle NESes? If you aren't, they basically are (End of Empires is far and away the most successful example) fresh starts on a non-Earth map, but with the start limited to a small section of the world - the eponymous "cradle" - with everything outside blacked out until the cradle physically gains knowledge of what's out there. (I'm bad at descriptions but you get the point )

So my idea was running one of these, but with two cradles (on the same map, obviously), with one cradle filled with IOTers and that thread here, and one cradle filled with NESers and their thread there. Perhaps it could end up having two mods, one for IOT and one for NES, if that could work better.

Would there be interest in this?

That would be fun, although if I've learned anything from my psychology class it will probably end with the two continents flinging nukes at each other...