[Religion and Revolution]: Context of Major Features

[raystuttgart]

Hi guys,

maybe it is a good time now to give an overview / a vision / context of some of our major concepts so far.
(For details to single concepts, please follow the links in our overview.)

Let me first state the obvious.
Most of us dream of more realistic, more complex and more interesting new game mechanism.

We have talked about several of these so far and I will try to summarize.

Economy

A lot more Yields, Buildings, Improvements and Professions also creating complex productionlines.
(Using Multiple Yields Consumed / Produced and Multiple Professions per Buildings.)

"Domestic Markets" with sales depending on size of colonies and "social status" of citizens.
(With desire for some goods from Europe.)

"Growing Improvements" for example is one of the many "minor" concepts around that.

The concept Africa, Port Royal and Slavery will give different harbours with different availability and demand of goods
and can be considered a major part of overall "Economy".

Generally to enhance diversity, strategic planning, specialisation and micromanagement.

Religions

Basic idea here is to introduce 2 Religions (Protestants and Catholics).

Each Nation will have one of these as primary Religion.
Colonists / Immigrants will have a Religion, too.

Also there will be a "Second Religious Parent".

Depending on your actions, you will

* Get more or less Immigrants
* Keep your "Second Religious Parent" happy or not
* Gain or loose colonists from / to other European colonies

Health

There are many aspects that positively or negatively influence Health.
(City size, Terrains, Rivers, using Hospitals, Healers, Medicine ...)

Low health could cause higher food consumption, low productivity rates, death of citizens or negative events.
High health could cause lower thresholds for "birth" and high productivity rates.

With big cities, you will need to take care of that aspect.

Native Knowledge and Inventions

In the beginning of the game the efficiency of your colonies and the availabilty of units and buildings is quite limited.
You will need to learn from Natives and also get Inventions ("researching" yourself or trading them) to become efficient and powerful.

This is an incredibly huge topic with almost endless possibilities.

Culture / Influence

"Bells" will not determine growth of area of influence anymore.

Size of cities, some buildings (Theatres, Cathedrals, Markets, Taverns, ...) but also some professions will create a Yield ("Culture").

Culture will increase area of influence.
It could also cause other Colonies to switch sides.

Administration
(It has been mentioned lately.)

Basic idea is to split functionality of Yield Bells even more.
(Area of Influence has already been replaced by "Culture".)

This could be done by having 2 Yields ("Administration" and "Bells").

Basically the same buildings could be used (Multiple Professions per Building).
Of course it would also be possible to have a new SPECIALBUILDING, with its own Buildings.

"Administration" would then mainly determin "Productivity".
Eventually "Administration" could contribute to "Area of Influence".

Problem:
We would strip "Bells" of all functionalities except "Founding Fathers" and "Revolutionary Rate".

Loyalty to the King

Basically this is feature will cause colonies and troops to stay loyal to the King and fight against you, if you are not careful, when declaring Independence.

High Revolutionary Rates and enough troops stationed in the cities can prevent that colonies turn to the King for example.

Satisfaction

Satisfaction would exist on 2 Levels, on City-Level and on Nation-Level.
I am talking about "calculated values" here and not a Yield.

Satisfaction on Nation-Level, would be calculated from Cities.

Satifsaction on City-Level would be influenced by:

• Revolutionary Rate
• Economy (Supply by "Domestic Market")
• Religions ("Satisfying" the Religions of your colonists with buildings and soulkeepers)
• Health
• Culture
• Administration (if implemented)
• Stationed Troops
• Founding Fathers
• Wars
• Taxes
• Slaves, Criminals or Indentured Servants (compared to total population)
• ...

It would:

• Influence defensive / offensive bonusses for military (Cities and Map)
• Influence Immigration from Europe
• Cause special Events or Riots (if too low)
• Eventually influence productivity (if "Administration" would not be implemented)

-------------------------------

Summary:

Over time, our mod might become more and more realistic and complex.

There are several "challenges" to be considered:

1. AI will need to be taught all of that.
2. If it gets too complex, players will not like it.
3. City-Slots for new buildings are not unlimited and we are talking about massive amounts of buildings.
4. Generally implementation efforts and risk of bugs.

So let us continue to go step by step with this.
(... but still keep an eye on the global context.)

After Release 1, I think we should focus on Economy first.
After that, I would like to take care of Religions.

When this is all done, we can consider which part we want to do next.
(... and also discuss details of that concept again.)

Eventually we might also leave out some parts completely.
For example "Health" and "Administration" are not that important to me personally.
"Satisfaction" could be left out because of its complexity.
But these are no decision we need to make now.

Currently I think that detailled (technical) discussions about single concepts like "Health" or "Administration" are pretty much useless.
Too many things will change until then.

But we could discuss if we generally like the ideas or not.

 

[orlanth]

Those all sound cool and interesting I think; though as you mention its best to see a few features get implemented and become fun & playable with good AI before adding lots more. Personally I most look forward to:
Domestic Market
Native Knowledge and Inventions
Africa, Port Royale and Slavery
Health
Loyalty

Do you think that in addition to TAC the AI can be helped any further to plan for complex production lines? Although TAC is definitely an improvement from vanilla AI, I still seem to be observing issues where they cannot plan ahead for building/unit construction and yield transport nearly as well as human players. So I'm worried that if they need to plan ahead for professions needing multiple different yields, or optimize supply lines for multistep production, they may start falling behind humans.

It seems that adding more yield/building types will need larger city populations in general, especially if separate professions are needed for some things that many colonies might need (such as Culture, Influence, Health, Administration, Shopkeeper, Tavern, Religion-specific Crosses, etc.) while city radius remains at 1. What are your thoughts about this, could it need higher Food yields, lower immigration threshholds or perhaps both?

 

[raystuttgart]

Do you think that in addition to TAC the AI can be helped any further to plan for complex production lines?

If enough efforts and time would be spent ...

Although TAC is definitely an improvement from vanilla AI, I still seem to be observing issues where they cannot plan ahead for building/unit construction and yield transport nearly as well as human players. So I'm worried that if they need to plan ahead for professions needing multiple different yields, or optimize supply lines for multistep production, they may start falling behind humans.

TAC AI is a lot better than Vanilla.
But it is not "perfect" of course.

Multiple-Yields-Consumed
-> We might have one or two of that.
Should not be that important if AI cannot plan ahead for that.
As long as it can generally use it, I am already happy.

Multi-step-production-lines
-> We won't do that. Very difficult for AI.

It seems that adding more yield/building types will need larger city populations in general, especially if separate professions are needed for some things that many colonies might need (such as Culture, Influence, Health, Administration, Shopkeeper, Tavern, Religion-specific Crosses, etc.) while city radius remains at 1. What are your thoughts about this, could it need higher Food yields, lower immigration threshholds or perhaps both?

Players are supposed to specialize their cities.
Trying to do everything everywhere will be a bad idea.

Eventually you will also need to supply large cities with food from small "food-generation"-cities or even buy food.

Micromanagement to have everything perfect or in balance will be a "struggle", it will not be easy.
But that makes it interesting and realistic for me personally.

And as you and also myself have said:
Programming good AI for all of that will really be a challenge.

If we do "Economy" in the next step after Release 1, I don't see any problems until then.
For everything later, we will see.

It really does not make a lot of sense to discuss balancing of features, we have not even created yet.
All "answers" I could give would be nothing more than guessing.

I only wanted to give a general vision about what Religion and Revolution could look like in a few years.
(... summarizing some of the ideas / concepts we have generally agreed to.)

We will go step by step, improve our mod every week, give our best considering quality and have fun modding together.
That is all I can really say.

 

[Robert Surcouf]

Great, I like the sound of this!

Thank you Orlanth for your support!
I like everything except the administration part... Or rather, I would not like to strip bells to only rebellion factor and founding fathers. But maybe we should discuss this again...

This even give me another idea (I'll post it on the main thread! )

 

[raystuttgart]

I would not like to strip bells to only rebellion factor and founding fathers.

That is my concern about "Administration", too.