S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

[S3rgeus]

Well, I can see that we're probably going to have to make it so Trollocs can embark, but I do sort of hat that, for flavor reasons. I wish there was some way to make it so they only would/could do it with a Myrddraal present or something.

Otherwise, yeah, rickety graphics, particularly low HP, bad movement, maybe these are our tools.

Cool, these sound appropriate.

tohers? They're actually one of the Seanchan beasties. Don't really appear much in the books, but they're probably mentioned in some of the doldrums novels (books 7-9 or something).... OR it's just a misspelling of "others." I can't remember (I often forge things from those middle books, like the entire city Tanchico).

Testing to see what a keyboard shifted Draghkar is: Ftshjlst

You really don't like that range of the books. I agree they were a slow part, but I still really enjoyed it. Tanchico stands out in my mind, though I can't remember exactly why. Completely forgot tohers even existed.

These are about cities flipping sides in the LB. This all sounds good to me.

Have you seen cities flip sides very often? Seemed much more common in earlier civs. I've only had it happen to me once, and it was essentially the worst possible time, too. I was rushing to a very tenuous Dom victory (King, I think, though I can't remember who I was). I had one or two capitals to capture, only, but I had terrifyingly rampant unhappiness. One of my cities flipped sides, and it was a really bad choice and timing - Madrid, which I had just spent everything I had in capturing. So the only path to winning was to get into a war with the dominant civ at the time, who I was not ready to face. I don't remember it ending well.

I've seen at least one city flip in most of the games where I played Culture since it was patched in post-BNW. (I think it was patched in then anyway.) I saw several in one of my games, which was pretty cool - even some AI-to-AI defections.

Speaking of actual games, I lost my game against Casimir. I mean, he hasn't technically won yet, but it's a lost cause. After valiantly defending the former Morocco for many turns against superior numbers and better teched units, it all started to go sideways when the first mechanized units showed up (landships, tanks). I managed to cling onto my coastal cities next to Marrakech, but one's under serious risk of being captured. Managed to fend off a significant naval invasion while Marrakech was still under my control.

I've realized that Casimir probably has airports and is flying in all of these units as he builds them. One of my caravels wandered over to Casimir's homeland to see if I can could mount a surprise attack at his capital, but it got minced by some battleships and submarines. Attila made peace with him and all was lost.

I may try Emperor again. Or I might go for King again for one game before that, because it's difficult to spend that long on it just to die.

OK, I mostly like this, and think it's the right direction.

I'm actually leaving these here and commenting in-line, which will allow us to keep modifying this til we find a good version.

Choosing Shadow
Shadow Tier 1-2: Build Trollocs
Shadow Tier 3-4: Build Myrddraal
Shadow Tier 5-6: Build Draghkar
Shadow Tier 7-8: Build Dreadlords I actually kind of think we should make Tier 8 special somehow, right? Like maybe Trollocs are 1-3, Myrds are 4-5, Dragh are 6-7, and Dreadlords are 8. Maybe that's too hard to get, but *something* special should differentiate 7 from 8, right?

I'd be fine with changing it up so that Dreadlords are tier 8 only. Makes tier 8 special!

Neutral: -5 Happiness (people are inherently good!)
Each positive Light tier costs an additional -5 happiness (topping out at -45 for tier 8) good
At Light tier 4-5: One city rebellion (random?) it could be random, or one bordering a Shadow civ, or one that isn't Alignment Stable. It should be set up so that it isn't possible for somebody to just deflect it by building a crappy city right before the LB, knowing it'll defect - should be very possible for you to lose a good one. Also, do these happen immediately or over time (especially if there are multiple rebellions)
At Light tier 6-7: Two city rebellions (random?)
At light tier 8: Three city rebellions (random?)

These ones here happen immediately on declaration. We can do a similar thing to Ideologies where supremely unhappy civs' cities defect to the opposing side over time. Or if there's an opposing culturally influential civ on the other side of the LB, that will cause ongoing defections.

Choosing Light
Shadow Tier 1-2: -10 Happiness (more static than Light - the Shadow are more "institutional" whereas the Light is "grassroots") I must confess I don't understand what you mean here.

Just flavor dressing to explain why the Shadow happiness scales are farther apart and bigger jumps than the Light ones.

Shadow Tier 3-4: -20 Happiness
Shadow Tier 5-6: -30 Happiness (A Forsaken appears to try to kill you early, from here "down"?) how early? How does this compare to normal Forsaken behavior?
Shadow Tier 7-8: -40 Happiness I think there should probably be the possibility of Rebellion here, as well, though probably not starting until the highest tiers. As compensation, maybe the hapiness penalties don't need to be as steep or something.

The rebellions above are automatic rebellions when the civ declares for the "wrong" side. I'd be fine having those exist on both sides of the scale. I think severely unhappy Shadow civs would have cities defect to the Light via the same mechanism as described above, regardless of if we introduce automatic defections at LB-start.

Neutral: Nothing
Light Tier 1-2: +1 Aes Sedai quota (assume Light Tower for all quotas boosts) I'm guessing no quota boosts for shadow players if the Tower turns? That sounds fine to me
Light Tier 3-4: +5 Happiness, +2 Aes Sedai Quota
Light Tier 5-6: +15 Happiness, +3 Aes Sedai Quota
Light Tier 7-8: +25 Happiness, +4 Aes Sedai Quota

Yeah, I don't think the Shadow get quota boosts.

Choosing Neutral
Shadow Tier 1-3, Light Tier 1-3, and Neutral: Nothing
Light and Shadow Tier 4-6: -5 Happiness
Light and Shadow Tier 7-8: -15 Happiness Again, I'm thinking we need a city-turning thing here - turning to *either* side. Being 8 Light and choosing neutral is pretty lame.

Very true, if we step up the happiness penalties, that will happen organically. Also fine with introducing automatic defections for Neutral civs who are far along the scales either way.

Right, it's pretty hard for me to judge that. To me, -45 happiness seems pretty big, but I'm not as familiar with looking at all the stuff that goes into happiness.

By the end of that multiplayer game, I'd put a lot more hammers into cultural buildings, so I'd kept it down to -19 Happiness from culture (I had ~+20 Happiness overall most of the time leading up to the end). We called that game a draw because it was taking so long and two of us were very close to winning.

We also had an epic world-spanning war between two ~2000 point human players, which was great fun. Very different from fighting against the AI! I realized that a lot of my strategies are quite AI-centric, they capitalize on reliably stupid things the AI does. Humans tend to just ignore obvious bait and bad trades. Units focused fire a lot more from both of us too - so gathering them into armies made a much bigger impact.

Cool, let's revisit this in a million months when we're there!

Looking forward to it!

Alas, I think I'm a few years to old to know that tune. My cousins were into Yu-Gi-Oh, but I was already too "cool" for cartoons by then, and hadn't yet reached the age where I could engage with such things ironically or without self consciousness yet...

Yu-Gi-Oh! is the show, it was great fun. It all went a bit weird once Yu-Gi-Oh! GX started though. Never really the same.

Let me be clear that when I say it's "too specific," I mean that the plot point of Brigitte being ripped from the Pattern is really very specific, in a way that doesn't make me feel like we must include it in the mod - perhaps just having her as a Hero is enough. See, also: Slayer; the cool double-bond telepathy from aMoL, etc.

Now, tackling this issue and your proposals specifically, don't get me wrong, there's a lot to like here. But there's also a few issues with it, mostly concerning the fact that these Threads/Quests apply to only one player. So only one player gets a chance to rescue Hawkwing? So, it's luck-based then? (if it's a forsaken quest [how could it be?] it would also be based on how Shadowey you are) So, what if the randomness makes it so like 5 civs get this Thread, but not the others? Are there fewer Horn Heroes, or they've all been subbed out? It just seems like we're really expanding the reach of what Threads can be (i.e. not just yields) with something like this.

That said, I *do* like what you have here. It is flavorful and seems fun. For sure. I think maybe part of the issue here is that we 1) haven't done other threads, so we're still a bit unclear on the scope of them, and 2) I don't view this flavor as worthy of "creating an exception".

The role of Threads! I agree that the HotH stuff isn't flavor worthy of creating an exception, but I wasn't thinking this would be an exceptional kind of Thread. (Unlike this WoTMod thread, which is clearly exceptional. *rimshot*)

So this plays into a much wider discussion about what we think threads should do. Not necessarily the flavor, but more what the mechanical rewards should be - do they go beyond yields? I think having yields-only could risk making them quite bland. Do we want to go into more depth on this topic now or shelve it for another time? (If so, when?)

In answer to your specific questions, yes, only one player gets the chance to rescue Hawkwing. It's luck-based who gets which Thread, but as long as there are enough with each major type of effect, then we should be fine. (In terms of flavor, the easy explanation is he's in a location that's only accessible in time to the civ seeing the Thread.)

I do agree with your other point about Threads affecting other civs. Their direct effects should be limited to the civ viewing the Thread. (so they should never modify foreign yields or anything like that.) Because that's just random punishment for other players.

currently i'm in the "no defense" camp.

All right, the Light have no direct objectives that thwart the Shadow's Turning objectives. That's fine with me!

good!

Responding to "good!" with this seems like a total non-sequitur, but I've added the Edict for generating Culture when Heralds are expended to the overall Edicts list. This still makes sense when Heralds are equalizing units now, right? (Not just Light)

I noted that lordoflinks mentioned that he hadn't really known much about the LB mechanics. Might we update the 1st page of the thread to have a Disclaimer to New Posters or something directing them to the Summaries? That might save people some headaches.

Also, this is a lot of work for you, but you could also periodically update that first page (every few weeks, probably) indicating Under Discussion topics. At least hte broad ones (like now it would be Darkfriends and Alignment, and that's maybe all that'd be worth mentioning).

Done. I'll try to keep that updated as our high-level discussions move on. We seem to be approaching the end of the LB stuff - we're largely agreeing on things now and there don't seem to be any big proposals outstanding, barring possibly diving deeper on the role of Threads.

this is regarding balefire. I'd say if we did do this, the way it should probably work is just to "undo" the units previous action, and only that action. If they dealt damage, that damage is restored, if they upgraded, they go back down, if they healed, they unheal (asssuming they survived the blast, which I suppose is impossible). Right?

Finally catching up with where I said I'd mention this at the beginning of my second-to-last post. Undoing any arbitrary action would be crazy complicated - for every single action a unit could take we'd need to have a corresponding undo action, and record enough information to undo that specific instance of that action. (Does this undo spreading Path? Healing other units? Pillaging things? The list is endless and incurs huge costs for us to make them all work properly.) So if we do do undoing (great sentence), then we should probably isolate it to just kills.

You've got to pretty significant lengths to make the point here, and I think you probably could have convinced me with "Hey, isn't Rand more like a Plane than a spy?"

I agree. But, it doesn't actually matter, right? Like, him as a plane or a spy is only something that'll float around in this thread, right - not actually how he'll be described in the game, right?

Fine, then! I think it does have a big impact with our plans though. Not in what he can actually do, but how we plan to present it. I've been thinking he would be presented very like a spy with some caveats - so there'd be an Espionage-like screen and such. But we can actually be much more unit-like about it, which is significantly less work.

I'm gonna try to respond to this before you finish dinner!

Bargh! Got there before me, but I'll catch up now!

I should mention I won't be around tomorrow night though.

OK, I'm adding this to the LB summary. Please check how I'm explaining it. Are we calling it "Student of the Forsaken"? Also, does it stack/improve if he kills many of them? Is there a cap?

Also, how large is the bonus? 15%, then 5% more for every Chosen killed? Does this gel with how promotions work in Civ?

It should give a combat bonus against cities controlled by the Shadowspawn civ as well.

15% for the first and then an additional 5% per Forsaken sounds fine. Up to a maximum of, say 7? With the way promotions work, there will need to be a maximum, but if the maximum is greater than 13, then the number of Forsaken is the limiting factor (so the promotion maximum is irrelevant).

OK, idea here (though it's quite possible this is what you're suggesting). Let's just make it a distinct unit, NOT a worker. Call it "Gentled" or "Gentled Channeler" or something. Make it *not* a civilian, but make it a very bad combat unit. Maybe it can't even attack, but dies in a couple hits. But, it has the moves (most of them?) of a worker. Sort of like a crappy Legion. The purpose of this is to make it A) stand out the player, and B) not capturable by opposing civs.

thoughts? which summary should all this go under, anyways?

I like it! This wasn't exactly what I was suggesting, but it meshes very well with the notions I had. There's nothing stopping us from allowing another unit to have a subset of the worker's available actions (and even to work slower). Firaxis did actually make that system relatively modular for things like the Legion.

I think this could go in the Channeling summary - in the Gentling section?

Related to this, what do we think of the following Edict then, from a few posts back?

Cure for Gentling
One Gentled male channeler worker unit owned by each civilization becomes a male channeler again. (Civs with none receive nothing, civs who don't have enough Spark still get him, but go into "negative strategic resources mode" as with traded supplies.)

OK, I think I agree. I think an important thing to decide is what exactly scales. Probably not everything.

I'd say the strength of Thakan'dar, strength of any of the units (spawn and forsaken), and speed of Blight spreading will remain unchanged.

However, I'd say shadowspawn spawning rates and forsaken spawning rates (though probably not the cap) should scale. Is there a specific formula we should adopt? Perhaps it can be interwoven ergonomically into the "Touch of the Dark One" level, or something.

Agreed about Thakan'dar strength and unit strength remaining the same. Didn't we decide not to do spreading Blight in the end? Or did we only decide against receding?

Shadowspawn spawn rates definitely makes sense. I think if we curtail spawn rates outside the Blight when there are a lot of Shadow players, that will make a big difference. There should be enough Shadow-inspired armies wandering around without even more Shadowspawn on top of that. (Though we should still have a couple to keep the Light on their toes.) This may be the only thing we need to scale, because it should drastically affect how many Shadowspawn are on the map.

What's the "Touch of the Dark One" level, stuff? Is that the ramping up from the Seals being broken?

The other thing to consider are the Seals. How does the Shadow win if there are *no* Shadow civs? I guess just by capturing the light cities, right? But don't they have to break seals still to complete the victory?

Very good point. This is probably worth adding a new Seal-related point about. If the Shadowspawn civilization captures a city that contains a real Seal or captures a Sealbearer, the Seal is immediately broken. This sound fair? (The Shadowspawn know what the Seals are, where to look from the Dark One's guidance, and have nothing to lose from breaking them.)

Also, I think the rate of Forsaken Quests should tie into this. Forsaken quests are a way of helping the Shadow side in general - at no cost to the shadowspawn civ. More shadow civs = more benefits all around. Should there be fewer Forsaken Quests per civ, the more shadow civs there are? Probably shouldn't be a linear relationship, but some sort of curve seems to make sense to me.

I think we'll need to go into more detail on what Forsaken Quests entail exactly before we decide on this. Do we want to do that now?

Putting the one-word goal aside, it still sounds a little bit like you're hoping for an impossible linguistic feat. You want something that coveys that a civ is "too light" without presuming that its Dark (e.g. your previous issues with my suggestions [though i don't like them either]). I'm not sure how to get around it.

So you wouldn't like using a word like "Corrupted." If your city is "Corrupted (+2)" it tells the player that it's too "dark", regardless of whether the civ "is" dark or light (this is just TOO dark).

- Corrupted or "Corrupt" or "Touched" could work for being too dark. "Twisted," Deviant"
- Light is more difficult, as I'm looking for words that convey goodness in a bad way.... "Puritanical," "Prudish," "Self-Righteous," "Holier-than=though", "Priggish"
- for stability, well, there's "Stable," "Serene," "peaceful," "Comfortable," "Stoic," "Balanced"

thoughts?

What about if we have four words? There are four categories that are flavorfully distinct (even if there are only two mechanically distinct categories, this is just a word we're presenting on the UI, so we should make the distinction as it makes sense from the player's PoV):

Too Shadow for the Shadow (Shadow civ has a very Shadow city)
Not Shadow Enough for the Shadow (Shadow civ has a not-Shadow-enough city)
Too Light for the Light (Light civ has too Light city)
Not Light enough for the Light (Light civ has not-Light enough city)

Neutral civs can use the Too Shadow for Shadow and too Light for Light when any of their cities diverge.

Some attempts at flavorful names (totally stealing yours):

Too Shadow for Shadow: Corrupted (I like this one, though there is some risk of Shadow players thinking this is the intended state of their cities)
Not Shadow Enough for the Shadow: Uncommitted, Traitorous, Unspoiled
Too Light for the Light: Overzealous, Zealous (and most of your suggestions)
Not Light enough for the Light: Uncommitted (works both sides), Isolationists, Mediocre, or some other "not good enough" synonyms

In terms of what Stable could be. Peaceful, Serene, and Comfortable sound quite good, but these cities may be at war and other normal CiV happenings, which could make those descriptions quite strange. Balanced is pretty good - it's less clinical than Stable, which is good.

ok, so do you like this setup, then? In terms of how many change for each tier.

Yep, totally happy with how many change in each tier.

yeah, the conversion is the same, but I was approaching it from a very, very different place!

It's great that they slot together so well even though we were coming at the underlying structure differently!

totally! Let's do random!

Random it is!

ok, so there's really two separate (but related) issues here:

A) doing Alignment Decisions
B) Choosing which side to fight on in the LB.

For A), I'm tempted to just say "touch luck." Each civ can make their own decisions, and if one chooses totally Shadow and the other Light... tough. Don't play on a team with an AI! You might need to program an AI tendency towards agreeing on one path, though, even if its a two-AI team.

For B), obviously we can't just say "tough." An actually decision must be made. You're gonna hate this, but maybe whoever has the highest score gets to choose? Voting could work, but if it's based on numbers of cities/population, I also wonder if Alignment strength should factor in as well. Like, if their leaning shadow and you're hardcore Tier 8 light, you should maybe win, assuming your populations aren't *that* different.

But we could sort of split the difference here. Like, make every Thread totally distinct between the player, but ultimately pool the actual Alignment itself. I dunno, it does suck though. And that certainly doesn't save us from the Big Decision at the start of the LB.

Points!

Spoiler :

I'm actually fine with the player with the highest net Alignment leaning getting to choose. Like, we could straight up do that comparison and just let only that player pick. Teams would be unlikely to choose Neutral then though? Or we could have them vote and weight it, as you've said. I'm just worried that that's quite a complicated system of internal voting that we'd need to make and balance and I'm fairly sure most players don't play on a team.

I think we should keep Threads and Alignment accumulation isolated per player. It just seems like it would suck for your Alignment pool to be fighting with your ally's on a team. Though it would draw both of your attention directly to it. It would also be quite odd. The only base CiV yield that does this is science, but because of the way tech progress is represented as "turns remaining" this isn't so much of a problem. Alignment is represented as a number (like Gold or Culture). Imagine if your Gold changed more than your GPT, because your teammate was also making gold (or worse, losing it). That would be totally bizarre.

In terms of if players diverge on the same team. Then yeah, tough luck, y'all should've worked together better!

in this vacuum of game design, those numbers look good to me!

Those numbers are decided then!

OK, so I've gone through and done a very big update to the LB summary incorporating our current thoughts on darkfriends. check it out when you can.

The whole section D - Darkfriends looks good to me. I'm happy for all of that red to be black now, I think. The only exception is the name ("Stable" vs its competitors) which we're discussing above.

This line:

If a civ moves to a different Alignment Tier, their cities do not automatically change. Instead, Darkfriends and Normal citizens remain, and any new growth in the city reflects the cycle of civ's new Alignment Tier.

I think it can just become:

If a civ moves to a different Alignment Tier, any new growth in the city reflects the cycle of civ's new Alignment Tier.

We got kinda confused on this one because the difference is subtle, but I think the summaries are generally inclusive definitions - nothing happens that isn't explicitly called out in a summary somewhere. So summaries only need to specify exclusions when they're making a change from base CiV. I'd have no problem leaving it as it is now if we think we might forget this specific difference later.

 

[counterpoint]

So I think we definitely need an era at the end of the tree. Given that our existing divisions up into 9 seems to work quite well with our alternate form of time compression and WoT events, I'd be inclined to keep it this way.

...

Yep, good point, no reason to stick to 4. We may not even have decided that, I might just be remembering something different and getting them mixed up!

...

Something I do remember us discussing last time that I think is still valuable is that the Fourth Age stuff be a projection of the tech the Westlands were headed towards going into the Last Battle. So things like more widespread uses for steampower and stuff. Having some of the Innovations be Fourth Age techs makes sense - they're at the end of the tree and will presumably converge into some Future Tech equivalent. The Science victory should require the most techs of all victory types - as base CiV does for the spaceship parts, there are very few techs you can leave out and complete all of those, and they're almost exclusively in the last row before Future Tech.

Also because of time compression, we're not projecting really far ahead. If EotD represents 30 years, then Fourth Age is only the first 15-20 after the LB. Technology itself will be mostly developments of nascent ideas we saw in the books in that timeframe.

I'd say let's go with Prophesy and see how it goes. If players are wondering why it isn't the Era of the Last Battle or some equivalently referential name (because everyone is playing with the LB on) then we can change this name easily.

I've noted this in the misc summary.

ok. Agreed on all points!

Exactly, I think a full on ban is more of a Compact Resolution. I'll add this to the Edict list if you're happy with it then?

I am.

Yeah, this sounds cool too. Do we want to do both? I think they can function as separate bonuses. These Aes Sedai don't consume any of that civ's quota, right?

correct, don't consume quota.

As far as doing both, I say yes, but make the culture bonus less. Say, 25%. The Dragon's homeland will probably feel random (even though it isn't) so I wouldn't want people feeling like it was an arbitrary bonus.

Awesome! Should we call this Dragonsworn Denunciation, or something similar? A panic would be an effect of the Tower's decree, rather than what the decree itself is.

denunciation!

Nobody controls the Dragon before the LB starts, right? Or is the intention that this would start pre-LB and the 30 turns would include some Dragon-controlling time once the LB started? Seems a bit strange that the ability wouldn't be active once it was announced.

don't know why I put "pre-lb." I think what I was thinking was "plane mode," which is obviously very much IN the LB.

Can keep or scrap this one, however you choose. In any case it's obviously not pre-lb.

This is about the Edict that reduces madness tier by one on all saidin units. Would this Edict still be available to a Shadow Tower? It would certainly mechanically help Shadow players, but I'm not sure if it makes sense for the Shadow to fight against the Taint.

you've always been more on the side of "shadow wants to keep the taint" than I am, so I'll go with your gut on this one. If you want consistency, it probably shouldn't be a part of he Shadow Tower

I'm liking option 2, it gives us more room to have civs' decisions influence how often they see the False Dragons.

I think that given how annoying a single barbarian unit can be (because they always show up where your army is not currently stationed!!! How do they know?), even if the False Dragon isn't that strong, the fact that it's him and a few other units acting as an "army" can make him very disruptive.

So I'd say we should have False Dragons scale, like Aes Sedai and Warders, so that they remain relevant throughout the game (though obviously stop appearing once the LB starts and the Dragon becomes controllable). The False Dragon himself can be relatively powerful - stronger than the current best unit the civ who spawned him has, but not significantly so. The other guys can be standard Dragonsworn units of the time, just organized to fight in a unit. (How well those units can be made to fight as a group is anyone's guess at this point - I've heard the martialling AI for forming armies is actually relatively good, it's the toe-to-toe fighting bit where they stand on each others' faces.)

Agreed! We'll now do it via invisible False Dragon points! (tracked per civ).

And yeah, let's make the False Dragons a bit more powerful than normal units, but not much more so. Are you sure it should be based on the civ that created it, though? Not based on the world as a whole?

You really don't like that range of the books. I agree they were a slow part, but I still really enjoyed it. Tanchico stands out in my mind, though I can't remember exactly why. Completely forgot tohers even existed.

ok. re "tohers," you still aren't following me.....

Yeah, I'm giving those books a hard time. The truth is, my opinions have fluxuated a bit based on the various readings I've done of the books. I've done three read throughs, each going as far as which books were then published (aCoS, then CoT, and finally aMoL) and I've found my opinions on the books have varied.

For example:
1st read - loved tGH and LoC
2nd read - really didn't like aWH and CoT
recent read - loved tSH and tFoH, really bored by aCoS, aPoD, surprisingly ok with CoT, didn't like KoF, loved the last three.

I think part of it was that I was really really looking forward to getting to the stuff I hadn't read, and that was a LOT of books to get through to get to the last few ones.

(sad story of your Casimir game)

I may try Emperor again. Or I might go for King again for one game before that, because it's difficult to spend that long on it just to die.

you can do it! I actually won another Emp game, after trying a few times. I got off to a famously bad start as Napoleon in a recent MP game, so I gave him a shot. I ended up winning, but man, high-difficulty Culture games are so stressful... I feel like if I miss a wonder, I'm done for.

I'd be fine with changing it up so that Dreadlords are tier 8 only. Makes tier 8 special!

special!

These ones here happen immediately on declaration. We can do a similar thing to Ideologies where supremely unhappy civs' cities defect to the opposing side over time. Or if there's an opposing culturally influential civ on the other side of the LB, that will cause ongoing defections.

ok, but what happens if you become that Tier *after* the LB starts. It'll be hard, but you could theoretically be on the Light side and go more shadow. Would you still lose cities then? Or is it happening via unhappiness only?

Very true, if we step up the happiness penalties, that will happen organically. Also fine with introducing automatic defections for Neutral civs who are far along the scales either way.

OK, so here's what we have. Approve for Summary:

Choosing Shadow
Shadow Tier 1-3: Build Trollocs
Shadow Tier 4-5: Build Myrddraal
Shadow Tier 6-7: Build Draghkar
Shadow Tier 8-9: Build Dreadlords
Neutral: -5 Happiness
Each positive Light tier costs an additional -5 happiness (topping out at -45 for tier 8)
At Light tier 4-5: One immediate random city rebellion
At Light tier 6-7: Two city rebellions
At light tier 8: Three city rebellions

Choosing Light
Shadow Tier 1-2: -10 Happiness
Shadow Tier 3-4: -20 Happiness
Shadow Tier 5-6: -30 Happiness (A Forsaken appears to try to kill you early, from here "down"?) still could use a little clarification on this point.
Shadow Tier 7-8: -40 Happiness, one immediate city rebellion
Neutral: Nothing
Light Tier 1-2: +1 Aes Sedai quota (assume Light Tower for all quotas boosts)
Light Tier 3-4: +5 Happiness, +2 Aes Sedai Quota
Light Tier 5-6: +15 Happiness, +3 Aes Sedai Quota
Light Tier 7-8: +25 Happiness, +4 Aes Sedai Quota is there any "special" bonus for being Light Tier 8?

Choosing Neutral
Shadow Tier 1-3, Light Tier 1-3, and Neutral: Nothing
Light and Shadow Tier 4-6: -10 Happiness
Light and Shadow Tier 7-8: -20 Happiness, one immediate city rebellion

The role of Threads! I agree that the HotH stuff isn't flavor worthy of creating an exception, but I wasn't thinking this would be an exceptional kind of Thread. (Unlike this WoTMod thread, which is clearly exceptional. *rimshot*)

So this plays into a much wider discussion about what we think threads should do. Not necessarily the flavor, but more what the mechanical rewards should be - do they go beyond yields? I think having yields-only could risk making them quite bland. Do we want to go into more depth on this topic now or shelve it for another time? (If so, when?)

In answer to your specific questions, yes, only one player gets the chance to rescue Hawkwing. It's luck-based who gets which Thread, but as long as there are enough with each major type of effect, then we should be fine. (In terms of flavor, the easy explanation is he's in a location that's only accessible in time to the civ seeing the Thread.)

I do agree with your other point about Threads affecting other civs. Their direct effects should be limited to the civ viewing the Thread. (so they should never modify foreign yields or anything like that.) Because that's just random punishment for other players.

OK, as far as the Hawk-man specifically, I like the suggestion.

As far as Threads in general, yeah, we could maybe do that topic. I kind of want to do the Domination victory first, though. This stuff is wrapping up very quickly, so I'll post a quick bit on Dom as a stand-alone post. Will probably be resolved very quickly.

Maybe start up a Threads post, and let this particular branch slowly die?

I would say, though, let's talk about the Threads *mechanically*, write now, not *artistically*. I don't want to go through and make all the phrasing awesome and do the actual *writing* right now. I'd rather just get meat and potatoes. Later, we can go in and actually make it pretty. I say just settle the mechanics for now. For example:

Thread: Should you make a law punishing Nobles who abuse their power ( a la Tear)
Option 1: do it, +250 Light, +4 Happiness
Option 2: don't do it, +50 Shadow +400 gold

right?

Responding to "good!" with this seems like a total non-sequitur, but I've added the Edict for generating Culture when Heralds are expended to the overall Edicts list. This still makes sense when Heralds are equalizing units now, right? (Not just Light)

sure, why not!

I'm liking the name Heralds more now. It seems to make sense as an "equalizer." I'm imagining the government sending in a bunch of town criers to spread propaganda and such.

It should give a combat bonus against cities controlled by the Shadowspawn civ as well.

15% for the first and then an additional 5% per Forsaken sounds fine. Up to a maximum of, say 7? With the way promotions work, there will need to be a maximum, but if the maximum is greater than 13, then the number of Forsaken is the limiting factor (so the promotion maximum is irrelevant).

summaried!

I like it! This wasn't exactly what I was suggesting, but it meshes very well with the notions I had. There's nothing stopping us from allowing another unit to have a subset of the worker's available actions (and even to work slower). Firaxis did actually make that system relatively modular for things like the Legion.

I think this could go in the Channeling summary - in the Gentling section?

Ah, the ol' Channeling summary! It needed some attention. I've put this in for now, but will definitely have to dig in there and fix some things another time.

Related to this, what do we think of the following Edict then, from a few posts back?

Cure for Gentling
One Gentled male channeler worker unit owned by each civilization becomes a male channeler again. (Civs with none receive nothing, civs who don't have enough Spark still get him, but go into "negative strategic resources mode" as with traded supplies.)

looks good. Is this the only way? Can a tech do it? Or maybe a wonder/national wonder/project?

Agreed about Thakan'dar strength and unit strength remaining the same. Didn't we decide not to do spreading Blight in the end? Or did we only decide against receding?

Shadowspawn spawn rates definitely makes sense. I think if we curtail spawn rates outside the Blight when there are a lot of Shadow players, that will make a big difference. There should be enough Shadow-inspired armies wandering around without even more Shadowspawn on top of that. (Though we should still have a couple to keep the Light on their toes.) This may be the only thing we need to scale, because it should drastically affect how many Shadowspawn are on the map.

What's the "Touch of the Dark One" level, stuff? Is that the ramping up from the Seals being broken?

The Blight still spreads. Remember, *forts* stop them! It no longer recedes.

the Touch of the Dark One refers to the world getting crappy as the Seals are broken.

OK, I've noted this in the summary, though we obviously don't have specifics yet (and won't for now, I'm guessing).

Very good point. This is probably worth adding a new Seal-related point about. If the Shadowspawn civilization captures a city that contains a real Seal or captures a Sealbearer, the Seal is immediately broken. This sound fair? (The Shadowspawn know what the Seals are, where to look from the Dark One's guidance, and have nothing to lose from breaking them.)

yes! Good thinking. But... how will the shadowspawn civ ever find them? Like, they'd essentially have to conquer every city, right? Seems sort of impossible.

Also, to clarify, if the seal is "real," but still not verified, it still counts, right?

I think we'll need to go into more detail on what Forsaken Quests entail exactly before we decide on this. Do we want to do that now?

Same exact thoughts on this as above with Threads!

What about if we have four words? There are four categories that are flavorfully distinct (even if there are only two mechanically distinct categories, this is just a word we're presenting on the UI, so we should make the distinction as it makes sense from the player's PoV):

Too Shadow for the Shadow (Shadow civ has a very Shadow city)
Not Shadow Enough for the Shadow (Shadow civ has a not-Shadow-enough city)
Too Light for the Light (Light civ has too Light city)
Not Light enough for the Light (Light civ has not-Light enough city)

When I first read this, I was thinking.... "he can't *possibly* want to call them these names..." Turns out I was right.

Some attempts at flavorful names (totally stealing yours):

Too Shadow for Shadow: Corrupted (I like this one, though there is some risk of Shadow players thinking this is the intended state of their cities)
Not Shadow Enough for the Shadow: Uncommitted, Traitorous, Unspoiled
Too Light for the Light: Overzealous, Zealous (and most of your suggestions)
Not Light enough for the Light: Uncommitted (works both sides), Isolationists, Mediocre, or some other "not good enough" synonyms

In terms of what Stable could be. Peaceful, Serene, and Comfortable sound quite good, but these cities may be at war and other normal CiV happenings, which could make those descriptions quite strange. Balanced is pretty good - it's less clinical than Stable, which is good.

OK, I think I'm fine with this. I think we don't *need* it to have the four options, but I think it's fine and probably more fun that way. I do think coupling it with a number is best ("Corrupted +3") or whatever.

As far as the specific names, I do think the "Not ____ Enough" options need to be more negative. Consider that this word will be used not only when a Light city is a little less Light, but also when it is TOTALLY SHADOW. So the word should be stronger, IMO. So, maybe I'd go with:

2S4S: Corrupted could work, but that feels kinda good, as you say. Chaotic? Hysterical? Contemptible? Ruined? Spoiled? Rotten?
NSE4S: Uncommitted is ok, but I think I like Weak or Cowardly or Hesitant better
2L4L: Fanatical. I think this is a little better than Overzealous, so that one's my #2.
NLE4L: Uncommitted is again fine, but also Cowardly, Impure
Stable: Balanced

The other thing, I know you don't want to label a city as "shadow or light," but we could have 7 varieties instead of 5.
2Shadow4Shadow
NotShadowEnough:
WayNotShadowEnough (so that it's essentially "Light", probably some Darkfriend # Threshold crossed)
2Light4Light
NotLightEnough
WayNotLightEnough (such that it's essentially "Shadow")
Stable

This would certainly let us come up with names that "fit" a little better. For example:

2S4S: Rotten
NSE: Cowardly
WNSE: Prudish
2L4L: Fanatical
NLE: Uncommitted
WNLE: Corrupted
Stable: Balanced

I'm actually fine with the player with the highest net Alignment leaning getting to choose. Like, we could straight up do that comparison and just let only that player pick. Teams would be unlikely to choose Neutral then though? Or we could have them vote and weight it, as you've said. I'm just worried that that's quite a complicated system of internal voting that we'd need to make and balance and I'm fairly sure most players don't play on a team.

ok, in the summary!

BOOM! Wrapping up most of these topics!

Posting a quick set-up on the Dom victory now. Can hold off on responding to it if you wish.

 

[counterpoint]

We've been discussing this a bit in the background, and agree that for the most part, we're going to leave the Domination Victory unchanged.

However, I did want to take a moment to examine it closely, just to be absolutely certain. I think once we dug into the Science and Culture victories, we realized that in fact there was some stuff worth changing.

So, here I simply bring up the various components of the dom victory, and introduce some paths we *could* take. I should say that I'm not necessarily *suggesting* any of these.

1) Last Player in Possession of Capital
We theoretically could return it to where it was before BNW (so the legends say), enabling victory when you are simply the last player in possession of their original capital. This, to me, makes the victory condition a bit too easy.

2) Control all Original Capitals
This is probably where we can leave it, but I can imagine us making it slightly different, for instance, rephrasing it so you must hold all original capitals for X number of turns (5, let's say). This would prevent those suicidal victories where your last unit rolls in before the reinforcements arrive. Again, just a thought of what we *could* do, not necessarily a suggestion.

3) Effects for controlling capitals
Could we/should we make something happen when you control multiple capitals? Like diplo ramifications, bonus (or penalties) to yields, or something. I'm not sure what exactly, but in any case, this is where we have a chance to adjust the difficulty curve of the Dom victory.
The domination victory, along with the Diplo victory, are such that as you start winning them, it makes you more able to successfully complete them (The Culture and Science I don't think are like this - completing one innovation doesn't in and of itself help you). This is probably fine, but we *could* set things up so holding capitals somehow makes things slightly harder for you - they are an extra drain on happiness (more than any old city), for example. Or we could do the opposite, and make the curve easier. In any case, this is an element we *could* manipulate if we wished

4) Nods to Flavor
It doesn't appear to me that there's anything specifically WoT we could do with the Dom victory. We don't want to tie it to Alignment, as with all victories. The only "domination" parts of the lore concern the Seanchan and Hawkwing, I'd say, which will already be represented as civs.
Is there any way to make this victory have a WoT-esque element? Succession? Puppeted Capitals (being somehow different from normal capitals)? Could governors tie in somehow?

The other thing to consider is that any changes we make will necessarily change the LB as well, since, for the Neutral and Shadow civs, Domination remains a possible path to their victory. Some of the suggestions above (especially the "last guy with his capital" thing) significantly effect how things might work during the LB.

The answer is probably to leave it all alone, but those are some of the possibilities I see.

Thoughts?

 

[S3rgeus]

I am.

Cool, I've added the balefire condemnation edict to the list.

correct, don't consume quota.

As far as doing both, I say yes, but make the culture bonus less. Say, 25%. The Dragon's homeland will probably feel random (even though it isn't) so I wouldn't want people feeling like it was an arbitrary bonus.

Awesome, I've added this one to the edict list.

denunciation!

Renamed!

don't know why I put "pre-lb." I think what I was thinking was "plane mode," which is obviously very much IN the LB.

Can keep or scrap this one, however you choose. In any case it's obviously not pre-lb.

Ok, let's scrap this one.

you've always been more on the side of "shadow wants to keep the taint" than I am, so I'll go with your gut on this one. If you want consistency, it probably shouldn't be a part of he Shadow Tower

Cool, I've removed the red in the edicts list.

Agreed! We'll now do it via invisible False Dragon points! (tracked per civ).

And yeah, let's make the False Dragons a bit more powerful than normal units, but not much more so. Are you sure it should be based on the civ that created it, though? Not based on the world as a whole?

That probably depends on how we want the False Dragons to act. I was thinking a False Dragon spawned by a civ's accumulation of FD points would spawn near their borders and try to harass them. It would make sense to use that player's technological progress to decide the False Dragon's strength so that it could compete with (and wouldn't outclass) their units.

Then again, we may be thinking of False Dragons being a more international thing. Thinking about it, this is probably our intention. We want there to be a couple of civilizations involved in the capture of most False Dragons. This would make a more Barbarian-like technological progress make sense. (Also makes sense since the Dragonsworn are the Barbarians.) Barbarian tech advances partially with the whole world, but is majorly affected by continents, as far as I know.

A consequence of more globally-influenced False Dragon strength is that civs who are far ahead will find it easier to deal with them, since they have better teched units. Players who have fallen behind will also find it quite difficult, for the inverted reason. These may not inherently be problems though - those players are doing well or badly and the game in general is reflecting that.

Are players notified when a False Dragon spawns? (Other than the person who invisibly accrued enough points, I assume they are?) We could notify everyone who's met the player that spawned the FD (not suggesting we reveal the source that way though, we could just use it under the hood to choose which players).

ok. re "tohers," you still aren't following me.....

Is there more to the actual tohers discussion? This is about embarking Shadowspawn, right?

Yeah, I'm giving those books a hard time. The truth is, my opinions have fluxuated a bit based on the various readings I've done of the books. I've done three read throughs, each going as far as which books were then published (aCoS, then CoT, and finally aMoL) and I've found my opinions on the books have varied.

For example:
1st read - loved tGH and LoC
2nd read - really didn't like aWH and CoT
recent read - loved tSH and tFoH, really bored by aCoS, aPoD, surprisingly ok with CoT, didn't like KoF, loved the last three.

I think part of it was that I was really really looking forward to getting to the stuff I hadn't read, and that was a LOT of books to get through to get to the last few ones.

Man, that's dedication. I've only read through the books once - book 12 came out about 6 months after I finished book 11, which was my first time through, I'd started reading them earlier that year. I read 13 and 14 when they came out.

you can do it! I actually won another Emp game, after trying a few times. I got off to a famously bad start as Napoleon in a recent MP game, so I gave him a shot. I ended up winning, but man, high-difficulty Culture games are so stressful... I feel like if I miss a wonder, I'm done for.

I'll try again sometime, currently I'm playing through Dragon Age: Inquisition. Nice one on your next emperor game! Culture is definitely super stressful because the AI gets so many crazy bonuses that make them good at building wonders. Especially early, since they start with a ton of free techs, it's difficult to catch up with that lead!

ok, but what happens if you become that Tier *after* the LB starts. It'll be hard, but you could theoretically be on the Light side and go more shadow. Would you still lose cities then? Or is it happening via unhappiness only?

This is happening via unhappiness only, so a Light civ that chose Shadow and became more Shadow post-start-of-LB would have their unhappiness penalties lowered when they change tier. So a civ could prevent further rebellions by becoming Shadow-er, in this case. This is analogous to building tons of culture buildings to fight off the unhappiness from foreign Ideologies, which I think makes sense.

OK, so here's what we have. Approve for Summary:

Choosing Shadow
Shadow Tier 1-3: Build Trollocs
Shadow Tier 4-5: Build Myrddraal
Shadow Tier 6-7: Build Draghkar
Shadow Tier 8-9: Build Dreadlords
Neutral: -5 Happiness
Each positive Light tier costs an additional -5 happiness (topping out at -45 for tier 8)
At Light tier 4-5: One immediate random city rebellion
At Light tier 6-7: Two city rebellions
At light tier 8: Three city rebellions

Choosing Light
Shadow Tier 1-2: -10 Happiness
Shadow Tier 3-4: -20 Happiness
Shadow Tier 5-6: -30 Happiness (A Forsaken appears to try to kill you early, from here "down"?) still could use a little clarification on this point.
Shadow Tier 7-8: -40 Happiness, one immediate city rebellion
Neutral: Nothing
Light Tier 1-2: +1 Aes Sedai quota (assume Light Tower for all quotas boosts)
Light Tier 3-4: +5 Happiness, +2 Aes Sedai Quota
Light Tier 5-6: +15 Happiness, +3 Aes Sedai Quota
Light Tier 7-8: +25 Happiness, +4 Aes Sedai Quota is there any "special" bonus for being Light Tier 8?

Choosing Neutral
Shadow Tier 1-3, Light Tier 1-3, and Neutral: Nothing
Light and Shadow Tier 4-6: -10 Happiness
Light and Shadow Tier 7-8: -20 Happiness, one immediate city rebellion

Re Forsaken thing in red, I was thinking we could spawn a Forsaken near the player at the start of the Last Battle. Originally I was thinking that unit would specifically harry them, but given how unusual this circumstance is and how specific that AI would be, I'm thinking that's probably a bad idea. We could just spawn the Forsaken near/in the player's civ, or just scrap it.

As for bonuses for tier 8 Light civs, I think we should do something to reward the player for getting that far. We could make the intra-Light trade routes more effective for them? (Or should that scale as a part of this system too?) Tier 8 Light civs could have one sided defensive-pact-like relationships with other Light civs? So any civ that wants to attack the most devoted of the Light has to deal with all of the others. That sounds a bit flavorfully questionable though, and only really affects Neutral civs.

OK, as far as the Hawk-man specifically, I like the suggestion.

As far as Threads in general, yeah, we could maybe do that topic. I kind of want to do the Domination victory first, though. This stuff is wrapping up very quickly, so I'll post a quick bit on Dom as a stand-alone post. Will probably be resolved very quickly.

Maybe start up a Threads post, and let this particular branch slowly die?

I would say, though, let's talk about the Threads *mechanically*, write now, not *artistically*. I don't want to go through and make all the phrasing awesome and do the actual *writing* right now. I'd rather just get meat and potatoes. Later, we can go in and actually make it pretty. I say just settle the mechanics for now. For example:

Thread: Should you make a law punishing Nobles who abuse their power ( a la Tear)
Option 1: do it, +250 Light, +4 Happiness
Option 2: don't do it, +50 Shadow +400 gold

right?

Cool. I was thinking that we would want to have an even higher-level approach to start with. Like we could decide on what kinds of bonuses Threads would ever give out. Yield bonuses have been the thing we've talked about so far, so that's one category. Alignment is given out by all Threads, so it's relatively separate. We can of course mix and match reward categories within a single thread (one result gives you a unit, the other a yield).

Another thing I'm not sure if we've discussed is costs? The Hawkwing suggestion involved some decisions requiring the player to pay some cost, which seems like it adds a lot of flexibility to what we can do with Threads. Otherwise it's more difficult to balance the outcomes against one another when the player always has the option to choose the "best" one.

So, categories ideas, for things the player could receive from Threads (and questions concerning each in brackets):

• Yields (are these permanent or timed? Permanent happiness is uber powerful.)
• Military Units (Seems appropriate to just receive these, not only be "loaned" them for a certain time?)
• Aes Sedai Quota/Tower Influence (since this isn't affecting another player, I don't see it as disruptively external as, say, reducing yields for foreign hexes)
• GPs (would probably need to be quite rare, probably skew towards WoT GPs?)
• Civilian Units (Settlers, workers.)
• Combat bonuses (Either global or against specific foes, i.e. Dragonsworn/Shadowspawn/specific civ? We could make these occur only when useful, say during a war for a player, or when an FD spawns for the Dragonsworn?)
• Technologies (Goody huts give us a precedent for giving these out, we'd probably want to go with the goody-hut-random approach, rather than a player-selected one. Only available if it will take them very short amount of time to finish/research that tech. Say like 2-3 turns left, or a 2-3 turn total time if they've beelined on and left some old techs lounging.)
• Buildings (An unusual one, but potentially quite cool, getting a specific new building in a specific city. Not too powerful since it's only that one building in that one city and I don't think we should include national wonders or anything, just stuff like Granaries, Libraries, Workshops (their equivalents).)
• Golden Age (Or possibly just points toward it?)
• Great Works (Good source for foreign works that you wouldn't otherwise have been able to find.)
• False Dragon points (would have to be flavor-splained rather than have a number quoted)
• Male channeler points (if that's how we're spawning them too?)

Anything else? What (if any) of the above is too much?

sure, why not!

I'm liking the name Heralds more now. It seems to make sense as an "equalizer." I'm imagining the government sending in a bunch of town criers to spread propaganda and such.

Sounds good!

summaried!

Awesome!

Ah, the ol' Channeling summary! It needed some attention. I've put this in for now, but will definitely have to dig in there and fix some things another time.

I've been looking through the channeling summary while doing the Warders stuff and I don't think we'll have nearly as much on a second pass there as we did for the LB. That's understandable since the LB was the first summary and we hadn't quite gotten into the swing of how we wanted all of this to work yet! Glad we've gone through and nailed a load of stuff down, it's looking good!

looks good. Is this the only way? Can a tech do it? Or maybe a wonder/national wonder/project?

I've added the Cure for Gentling edict to the list.

I think there should be a more generally accessible way for this to occur, but not on such a widespread scale. I think it's something the player should have to do on a per-unit basis. A technology seems like a good unlocking mechanism, but then we need the actual action that causes an individual unit to lose a madness tier.

Just having a new custom mission that costs money to do it seems lame, but would be easy.

Making it Tower-related would be quite flavorful, but it would be a complex per-unit relationship. Same problem with unlocking an ability on the Yellow Sisters or something like that - it feels like it should be part of the Tower's unlocking scheme if we do it that way. And making it part of the diplo bonuses with the Tower doesn't make sense because it's only useful in some relatively particular circumstances.

This could be a part of Aes Sedai upgrading over time though? Sister units gain the ability once you reach a certain endgame tech?

The Blight still spreads. Remember, *forts* stop them! It no longer recedes.

Right, yes, I remember this now!

the Touch of the Dark One refers to the world getting crappy as the Seals are broken.

OK, I've noted this in the summary, though we obviously don't have specifics yet (and won't for now, I'm guessing).

Yes, I'm fine with us coming back to this later when we're discussing specifics of what and how we want to scale things for map sizes and types. We've been keeping that in mind while making other design decisions, but it's probably worth having a quick pass at a later date with that in mind specifically. Game speeds and difficulties fall under the same umbrella.

yes! Good thinking. But... how will the shadowspawn civ ever find them? Like, they'd essentially have to conquer every city, right? Seems sort of impossible.

This is to cover for the case where the Shadowspawn does most of the killing in a game, because there are few if any Shadow civs. I don't think they need to be able to find the Seals - the Shadowspawn will necessarily capture cities if they're doing well. Given that they spawn all over the place, moving Sealbearers should be quite difficult, so most Seals will tend to stay in one place. (Especially if there are 0 opposing spies.)

We just want to make sure that if the Shadowspawn "wins" by killing loads of Light players, or helps a lone Shadow civ win, that a Shadow player is still able to win the game. So the circumstances that lead to this mattering indicate that the Shadowspawn will have captured a lot of cities in the process. They don't have unhappiness or any such hindrances for their war effort either.

So it seems plausible. It's on the unlikely end of plausible, but it's something we should have because otherwise when we get into this state, only the Neutral/Light can win the game, and all of the contenders may be eliminated.

Also, to clarify, if the seal is "real," but still not verified, it still counts, right?

Yes!

Same exact thoughts on this as above with Threads!

Right, Forsaken Quests! So, these exist in a much smaller part of the game than Alignment Decisions. They're available only to Shadow leaning players and intended to be particularly useful for Shadow-declared civs during the Last Battle.

I'll quickly recap what we know about Forsaken Quests. Correct me on anything I've got wrong.

They first pop up as a one-off thing that happens to some Shadow-y players during the Trolloc Wars. Then they go dark again for a significant portion of the game.

When the world era enters the Era of Encroaching Blight, Forsaken quests begin to quietly appear for the Shadow-iest players. When the Last Battle starts, they become much more frequent and are used to make the most powerful Shadow players targetedly useful against the Light.

We liked the flavor of these quests requiring the civilizations to take self-destructive actions (pillaging their own improvements, disbanding units, paying money) for limited visible gain for that player. It also makes them quite mechanically distinct from Decisions and Tower Quests.

We also discussed the rewards scaling with how Shadow the player was, so more Shadow players get more benefit from the Quests.

The flavor of these quests was in the context of one of the Forsaken asking the civilization to do something for them.

So, I'm thinking that one major effect of players completing these quests should make the Shadowspawn civilization stronger somehow. That's something that helps deal with the Light in general, but doesn't give the player completing the quest any great direct benefit. It also makes flavor sense since that's who controls the Forsaken.

Do we want to tell the player that that's happening, or just leave them in the dark? On one hand, leaving them in the dark seems like what the Forsaken would do. On the other, it's difficult to see players going along with something like this on the pure faith that it is mechanically doing something helpful.

So, in terms of actual effects, we could spawn Shadowspawn units when these quests are completed. Not every quest, but it could be one of several possible "rewards". (These are Shadowspawn civ controlled Shadowspawn units, not the player who completed the quest. They may even spawn very far away, so the player sees no great personal benefit from them.)

We could make Thakan'dar stronger for some amount of time. (Probably in small increments of strength, so that multiple players completing these doesn't make it unassailable.)

We could boost the strength of certain Shadowspawn unit types.

The Shadowspawn civ does seem to be quite military focused. Most bonuses to it are related to that. We could specifically undermine the Light, to add more variety? Things like:

• Intra-Light yield trade routes become less effective for X turns
• Light-wide Projects become less effective or are even shut off for X turns
• The Tower loses some Aes Sedai (assuming Light Tower)
• Ajah influence fluctuations (possibly useful for a Shadow Tower too)

The other thing most of these quests should probably result in is some yield bonus for the player completing it. Not as big a bonus as the effort expended to complete it, but something to show for it anyway.

Anything else we should include?

In terms of the actual things the Forsaken could ask players to do, I believe we discussed this before? Things I remember:

• Declaring war on specific players
• Denouncing specific players
• Pillaging your own improvements
• Giving away resources/money to specific players
• Disbanding units

I can't seem to find the older post about this.

When I first read this, I was thinking.... "he can't *possibly* want to call them these names..." Turns out I was right.

OK, I think I'm fine with this. I think we don't *need* it to have the four options, but I think it's fine and probably more fun that way. I do think coupling it with a number is best ("Corrupted +3") or whatever.

As far as the specific names, I do think the "Not ____ Enough" options need to be more negative. Consider that this word will be used not only when a Light city is a little less Light, but also when it is TOTALLY SHADOW. So the word should be stronger, IMO. So, maybe I'd go with:

2S4S: Corrupted could work, but that feels kinda good, as you say. Chaotic? Hysterical? Contemptible? Ruined? Spoiled? Rotten?
NSE4S: Uncommitted is ok, but I think I like Weak or Cowardly or Hesitant better
2L4L: Fanatical. I think this is a little better than Overzealous, so that one's my #2.
NLE4L: Uncommitted is again fine, but also Cowardly, Impure
Stable: Balanced

The other thing, I know you don't want to label a city as "shadow or light," but we could have 7 varieties instead of 5.
2Shadow4Shadow
NotShadowEnough:
WayNotShadowEnough (so that it's essentially "Light", probably some Darkfriend # Threshold crossed)
2Light4Light
NotLightEnough
WayNotLightEnough (such that it's essentially "Shadow")
Stable

This would certainly let us come up with names that "fit" a little better. For example:

2S4S: Rotten
NSE: Cowardly
WNSE: Prudish
2L4L: Fanatical
NLE: Uncommitted
WNLE: Corrupted
Stable: Balanced

Yeah, 7 options makes a lot of sense. We basically have 4 valid states for any city on each side. Balanced is common between the two. Then there's too far toward your Alignment, not far enough, and actually toward the opposing Alignment.

I'm liking your names, the only two I'd change are 2S4S and WNSE. WNSE feels like it should be accusatory, something along the lines of Traitorous or Sanctimonious.

2S4S is hard! I think I like Ruined better than Rotten, but Ruined makes it sound like the city is physically damaged. Chaotic sounds pretty cool. Anarchistic is another possible?

ok, in the summary!

BOOM! Wrapping up most of these topics!

Phew, who knew there was so much discussion left in the LB stuff!



Also, while writing this post I remembered something. We discussed briefly how MP interacts with GW trading before and we weren't sure how it did. I remembered to check this out in my MP game that ended in a draw and found that it doesn't really change at all. Human players have to put stuff up for trade and then the person browsing gets to make the useful decisions, just like with the AI. In reality, this meant that GWs never got traded.

It seems strange to me that GWs aren't part of a diplomacy/deals system, the same as money, resources, wars, congress votes, etc. I suppose it saved Firaxis needing to make the deal AI properly understand when it shouldn't trade GWs to the human player who is doing well at culture.

 

[S3rgeus]

We've been discussing this a bit in the background, and agree that for the most part, we're going to leave the Domination Victory unchanged.

However, I did want to take a moment to examine it closely, just to be absolutely certain. I think once we dug into the Science and Culture victories, we realized that in fact there was some stuff worth changing.

So, here I simply bring up the various components of the dom victory, and introduce some paths we *could* take. I should say that I'm not necessarily *suggesting* any of these.

1) Last Player in Possession of Capital
We theoretically could return it to where it was before BNW (so the legends say), enabling victory when you are simply the last player in possession of their original capital. This, to me, makes the victory condition a bit too easy.

I agree here, I think just being the last player who controls their original capital is too easy.

2) Control all Original Capitals
This is probably where we can leave it, but I can imagine us making it slightly different, for instance, rephrasing it so you must hold all original capitals for X number of turns (5, let's say). This would prevent those suicidal victories where your last unit rolls in before the reinforcements arrive. Again, just a thought of what we *could* do, not necessarily a suggestion.

I think controlling them all simultaneously is enough. If it's a big map, the player with all the capitals was almost assuredly going to win anyway. If it's a small one I can see the idea, but the defending player should've had that in mind really.

3) Effects for controlling capitals
Could we/should we make something happen when you control multiple capitals? Like diplo ramifications, bonus (or penalties) to yields, or something. I'm not sure what exactly, but in any case, this is where we have a chance to adjust the difficulty curve of the Dom victory.
The domination victory, along with the Diplo victory, are such that as you start winning them, it makes you more able to successfully complete them (The Culture and Science I don't think are like this - completing one innovation doesn't in and of itself help you). This is probably fine, but we *could* set things up so holding capitals somehow makes things slightly harder for you - they are an extra drain on happiness (more than any old city), for example. Or we could do the opposite, and make the curve easier. In any case, this is an element we *could* manipulate if we wished

This is an interesting one. "You captured their original capital" is already a specific diplo modifier for the AI. And the player who captured it will necessarily have obtained some warmonger reputation on the way to doing so, which modifies other AIs' opinions accordingly.

In terms of happiness and such, since capitals tend to be big, they tend to create a lot of unhappiness when captured anyway. Given that happiness is already a warmonger's main hindrance, I don't think we need to hit them harder on that front.

4) Nods to Flavor
It doesn't appear to me that there's anything specifically WoT we could do with the Dom victory. We don't want to tie it to Alignment, as with all victories. The only "domination" parts of the lore concern the Seanchan and Hawkwing, I'd say, which will already be represented as civs.
Is there any way to make this victory have a WoT-esque element? Succession? Puppeted Capitals (being somehow different from normal capitals)? Could governors tie in somehow?

Succession is an interesting one, though that does seem to come into play more with diplomatic events (Elayne's claim to the Sun Throne didn't involve an Andoran invasion of Cairhien) or a civil war (the Andoran Succession Wars were all internal to Andor).

Governors could also be very cool here. Are Governors significantly more effective when placed in original capitals? That could make them particularly valuable, if the bonus was significant. Do they interact with unrest/annexed-ness in some way? I think these are more effects of Governors in general rather than feeding into the domination victory directly. Unless we wanted to make the domination victory "place a Governor in every original capital" or something to that effect? Seems like an odd trade off since domination civs are usually wide and wide civs have fewer GPs (and GPs are the source of Governors).

The other thing to consider is that any changes we make will necessarily change the LB as well, since, for the Neutral and Shadow civs, Domination remains a possible path to their victory. Some of the suggestions above (especially the "last guy with his capital" thing) significantly effect how things might work during the LB.

The answer is probably to leave it all alone, but those are some of the possibilities I see.

Thoughts?

Good point, we should considering the Last Battle in any changes we make here!

I think in general the Domination victory can stay quite close to the same. It'll be interesting see what we decide from the above!

 

[counterpoint]

That probably depends on how we want the False Dragons to act. I was thinking a False Dragon spawned by a civ's accumulation of FD points would spawn near their borders and try to harass them. It would make sense to use that player's technological progress to decide the False Dragon's strength so that it could compete with (and wouldn't outclass) their units.

Then again, we may be thinking of False Dragons being a more international thing. Thinking about it, this is probably our intention. We want there to be a couple of civilizations involved in the capture of most False Dragons. This would make a more Barbarian-like technological progress make sense. (Also makes sense since the Dragonsworn are the Barbarians.) Barbarian tech advances partially with the whole world, but is majorly affected by continents, as far as I know.

A consequence of more globally-influenced False Dragon strength is that civs who are far ahead will find it easier to deal with them, since they have better teched units. Players who have fallen behind will also find it quite difficult, for the inverted reason. These may not inherently be problems though - those players are doing well or badly and the game in general is reflecting that.

Are players notified when a False Dragon spawns? (Other than the person who invisibly accrued enough points, I assume they are?) We could notify everyone who's met the player that spawned the FD (not suggesting we reveal the source that way though, we could just use it under the hood to choose which players).

To me it seems like what we've been aiming towards is really a combination of both a "domestic" and "foreign" problem. True, FDs harass a particular nation each time, but they are significant enough - and provide rewards - to draw attention from the international crowd.

I'd say let's make it closer to the barbarians in civ, where their strength is based on the world as a whole or continents, or something liek that. I'd be fine with either.

I'd say it's fine if far-behind players struggle with them... maybe they shoudl take Fear or some other policies that lower their spawning rate, then? Or else choose Tolerance and build more channelers to fight them...

And yeah, I'd say notify players when an FD has spawned near a civ they've met. Maybe say [some flavorful version of] "An FD has appeared near Whitebridge!"

Is there more to the actual tohers discussion? This is about embarking Shadowspawn, right?

nah. tohers happened when I misspelled "others," hombre

Man, that's dedication. I've only read through the books once - book 12 came out about 6 months after I finished book 11, which was my first time through, I'd started reading them earlier that year. I read 13 and 14 when they came out.

Well, one thing to consider is that I was 13 or 14 when I read it the first time. So while that one counts, I didn't remember much once I was an adult.

I reread the whole series before I got to 11-14 because, well, I like it, and wanted to "get all of it" by the time I got to the new ones (which I had heard were awesome). Also, compounding the issue is that I had previously found 7-10 not particularly memorable, which meant I had totally forgotten the latest in the plot. Totally had no memory of characters like Cadsuane (she is quite memorable, but was a casualty of this phenomenon nonetheless).

Plus, how useful would I be to this mod if I *hadn't* started over?

I'll try again sometime, currently I'm playing through Dragon Age: Inquisition. Nice one on your next emperor game! Culture is definitely super stressful because the AI gets so many crazy bonuses that make them good at building wonders. Especially early, since they start with a ton of free techs, it's difficult to catch up with that lead!

Did you play DA2? I played DA1, and very much enjoyed it, and am hearing awesome things about DA:I... but not as many good things about DA2. Do I need to/should I play DA2, or should I just skip it? If this were a 10 hour game, I'd play it, but... these ain't ten hour games.

This is happening via unhappiness only, so a Light civ that chose Shadow and became more Shadow post-start-of-LB would have their unhappiness penalties lowered when they change tier. So a civ could prevent further rebellions by becoming Shadow-er, in this case. This is analogous to building tons of culture buildings to fight off the unhappiness from foreign Ideologies, which I think makes sense.

Sorry, let me be clear. You mentioned before that the "insta-rebellions" took place immediately at the start of the LB. If your alignment were to "worsen" (for your side" DURING the LB to one of the Tiers that should inspire an "insta-rebellion," does one occur, or not (since it's no longer the start of the LB)?

Re Forsaken thing in red, I was thinking we could spawn a Forsaken near the player at the start of the Last Battle. Originally I was thinking that unit would specifically harry them, but given how unusual this circumstance is and how specific that AI would be, I'm thinking that's probably a bad idea. We could just spawn the Forsaken near/in the player's civ, or just scrap it.

Good, I like that.

As for bonuses for tier 8 Light civs, I think we should do something to reward the player for getting that far. We could make the intra-Light trade routes more effective for them? (Or should that scale as a part of this system too?) Tier 8 Light civs could have one sided defensive-pact-like relationships with other Light civs? So any civ that wants to attack the most devoted of the Light has to deal with all of the others. That sounds a bit flavorfully questionable though, and only really affects Neutral civs.

Eh... I actually don't love those ideas. They don't really seem to have to do with any of the other bonuses. The Shadow ones kind of "ramp up" to the good stuff at level 8 (Dreadlords). I'd rather this just be a great version of earlier stuff.

What about simply having the happiness bonus spike somewhat ridiculously, like +25 for 7, and +40 for 8 or something?

In any case, I've put these current versions in the LB summary.

Cool. I was thinking that we would want to have an even higher-level approach to start with. Like we could decide on what kinds of bonuses Threads would ever give out. Yield bonuses have been the thing we've talked about so far, so that's one category. Alignment is given out by all Threads, so it's relatively separate. We can of course mix and match reward categories within a single thread (one result gives you a unit, the other a yield).

Another thing I'm not sure if we've discussed is costs? The Hawkwing suggestion involved some decisions requiring the player to pay some cost, which seems like it adds a lot of flexibility to what we can do with Threads. Otherwise it's more difficult to balance the outcomes against one another when the player always has the option to choose the "best" one.

OK, I like your approach... you may recall I'm kind of into structuring things and such.... So, yeah, approaching it from these directions feels right. Way before we actually go and make anything.

I'm fine with some having costs. As you said, it definitely lets us balance things easier.

So, one thing I think would help us in building these easily and efficiently - and keeping them balanced - is to "grade" the various bonuses/penalties, and balance them according to that. Let me explain what I mean, since I know that isn't clear at all.

Essentially I want to standardize the values for these bonuses/costs into various levels, and vary which level we are employing in a given Thread, instead of having to come up with specific numbers each time. Ideally, we can set them up in a way such that - if we choose the right values - the two choices will always be equally "good." So, for example:

Say We have seven levels for each reward/cost. They are:
- Windfall - Huge Bonus - 7 points
- Boon - Large Bonus - 5 points
- Gift - Moderate Bonus - 3 points
- Token - Small Bonus - 1 point
- Tax - Small Cost - -1 point
- Sacrifice - Moderate Cost - 3 point
- Tragedy - Huge Cost - -5 point
- Catastophe - Large Cost - -7 point

The names are just there for color, we'd probably speak in terms of letters usually (H, L, M, and S for Huge, Large, etc....).

So the result of a Thread would be "Worth" a certain amount of Points. For example, you make a Choice that provides you with a Moderate bonus (3) and a small Alignment yield (1), which has a total "worth" of 4 Points. This can be balanced against the other choice in the Thread, which could, for instance, be a Large Bonus (5), no alignment yield, and a small cost (-1 point), also ended up "worth" 4 points. Of course, the points I specified above are just rough and need not be like this.

We would then specify relationships between each Level. Like, for example, each level is "twice as good" as the level below it. Note, that doesn't necessarily mean the values would literally be 2x or anything, but the "effect" is twice as good or something. For example:

Gold:
Windfall - +1000 gold
Boon - +600 gold
Gift - +250 gold
Token - +100 gold
Tax - -100 gold
Sacrifice - -250 gold
Tragedy - -600 gold
Catastophe - -1000

Of course, the scale of these could be way off. I could imagine the "Huge" ones being huger.

I would imagine we would create a "worth" that we decided was appropriate for our threads, and perhaps this scales by era. So, in the beginning, your threads payoff a "net" of only 1 point, but by the end they could get higher. This could be somewhat randomized, also, so that you could sometimes be given a thread with a net 0 gain, or even a cost (theoretically). The key component is that the two CHOICES are balanced against one another.

Of course, the challenge of course is in figuring out the numbers and balance of all of it. It would take some time, for sure. But this allows us to generate a LOT of Threads - all we have to come up with is the flavor - without having to agonize over individual numbers each and every time. If we find a balance problem that is systemic, we simply change that one number (or set of numbers, or whatever).

Also, it would let us scale things easily by map size, era, etc. We could have threads pop up in any era we wanted, simply adjusting the yields they'd pay out in a systematic way.

One thing that's a little wonky is the Alignment points. In some cases Shadow points are a gift and in others they're a curse - how do we deal with that?

I should clarify that this isn't a system that would be working in-game, necessarily. It's a way for us to make it easy to generate content for the game. Certain things (scaling by era, for instance), could actually be calculated by the mod in real-time, but essentially this idea is intended to simply help us create a billion Threads without a huge amount of effort (except for on the front-end!). If it looks like this system will not serve that end, we shouldn't proceed with it.

Thoughts?

So, categories ideas, for things the player could receive from Threads (and questions concerning each in brackets):

• Yields (are these permanent or timed? Permanent happiness is uber powerful.)
• Military Units (Seems appropriate to just receive these, not only be "loaned" them for a certain time?)
• Aes Sedai Quota/Tower Influence (since this isn't affecting another player, I don't see it as disruptively external as, say, reducing yields for foreign hexes)
• GPs (would probably need to be quite rare, probably skew towards WoT GPs?)
• Civilian Units (Settlers, workers.)
• Combat bonuses (Either global or against specific foes, i.e. Dragonsworn/Shadowspawn/specific civ? We could make these occur only when useful, say during a war for a player, or when an FD spawns for the Dragonsworn?)
• Technologies (Goody huts give us a precedent for giving these out, we'd probably want to go with the goody-hut-random approach, rather than a player-selected one. Only available if it will take them very short amount of time to finish/research that tech. Say like 2-3 turns left, or a 2-3 turn total time if they've beelined on and left some old techs lounging.)
• Buildings (An unusual one, but potentially quite cool, getting a specific new building in a specific city. Not too powerful since it's only that one building in that one city and I don't think we should include national wonders or anything, just stuff like Granaries, Libraries, Workshops (their equivalents).)
• Golden Age (Or possibly just points toward it?)
• Great Works (Good source for foreign works that you wouldn't otherwise have been able to find.)
• False Dragon points (would have to be flavor-splained rather than have a number quoted)
• Male channeler points (if that's how we're spawning them too?)

Anything else? What (if any) of the above is too much?

OK, OK. Looks good! As far as whether they're "too much".... it's hard to say. I mean, I think we could be fine with Threads only affecting a few things, maybe half this number, in order to keep the balancing easier. But having them be far reaching is more fun. I'm not sure on this point.

As far as your specifics, yes, I'd say some yields can be timed and not permanent - probably a case-by-case basis.

I'm struck by something - we should renamed Golden Ages, huh? I mean, there HAS to be a way to bring some flavor in there, right? What if it has to do with the Pattern or the Wheel or the "Fabric of the Age" or something?

I've been looking through the channeling summary while doing the Warders stuff and I don't think we'll have nearly as much on a second pass there as we did for the LB. That's understandable since the LB was the first summary and we hadn't quite gotten into the swing of how we wanted all of this to work yet! Glad we've gone through and nailed a load of stuff down, it's looking good!

Actually, I think the content in the channeling summary is mostly fine, but there's a lot of stuff left vague because it hadn't been discussed, as well as outdated terms (spies, etc.). I'll fix this stuff when I get some time to do so.

I'm thinking the channeling summary itself will probably not be looked at/accessed in development nearly as much as the others, since it doesn't have as many "rules" and is more of a treatise on how things work (which we all have mostly memorized by now). Because of that, I think it might be fine to simply refer to other summaries from there for some of the details. For example, I'm thinking maybe to simply refer to the diplo summary for the Ajah abilities, since the Diplo summary is more likely to be up to date (case in point, I have ajah abilities in the channeling summary, but don't know if they're as up to date as the ones in the diplo summary). I'd say we want to try to prevent the possibility of two disparate versions of the same mechanics spelled out in different summaries.

I've added the Cure for Gentling edict to the list.

I think there should be a more generally accessible way for this to occur, but not on such a widespread scale. I think it's something the player should have to do on a per-unit basis. A technology seems like a good unlocking mechanism, but then we need the actual action that causes an individual unit to lose a madness tier.

I think we're talking about different things, right? Cure for Gentling isn't the same thing as "Cure for Madness" right? I think they both are currently in existence as Yellow Edicts.

Just having a new custom mission that costs money to do it seems lame, but would be easy.

Making it Tower-related would be quite flavorful, but it would be a complex per-unit relationship. Same problem with unlocking an ability on the Yellow Sisters or something like that - it feels like it should be part of the Tower's unlocking scheme if we do it that way. And making it part of the diplo bonuses with the Tower doesn't make sense because it's only useful in some relatively particular circumstances.

This could be a part of Aes Sedai upgrading over time though? Sister units gain the ability once you reach a certain endgame tech?

I'm fine with any of these, but honestly don't love the idea of adding yet another sister ability. I think I'd rather it be a "global" thing, where you just select a unit, or one automatically is "cured," instead of doing it through a unit.

This is to cover for the case where the Shadowspawn does most of the killing in a game, because there are few if any Shadow civs. I don't think they need to be able to find the Seals - the Shadowspawn will necessarily capture cities if they're doing well. Given that they spawn all over the place, moving Sealbearers should be quite difficult, so most Seals will tend to stay in one place. (Especially if there are 0 opposing spies.)

We just want to make sure that if the Shadowspawn "wins" by killing loads of Light players, or helps a lone Shadow civ win, that a Shadow player is still able to win the game. So the circumstances that lead to this mattering indicate that the Shadowspawn will have captured a lot of cities in the process. They don't have unhappiness or any such hindrances for their war effort either.

So it seems plausible. It's on the unlikely end of plausible, but it's something we should have because otherwise when we get into this state, only the Neutral/Light can win the game, and all of the contenders may be eliminated.

I think one thing we're forgetting is that no-one wins when Time expires (well, perhaps the ShadowSPAWN civ wins). So the Light can also lose by simply failing to win after a certain amount of time.

Right, Forsaken Quests! So, these exist in a much smaller part of the game than Alignment Decisions. They're available only to Shadow leaning players and intended to be particularly useful for Shadow-declared civs during the Last Battle.

I'll quickly recap what we know about Forsaken Quests. Correct me on anything I've got wrong.

They first pop up as a one-off thing that happens to some Shadow-y players during the Trolloc Wars. Then they go dark again for a significant portion of the game.

When the world era enters the Era of Encroaching Blight, Forsaken quests begin to quietly appear for the Shadow-iest players. When the Last Battle starts, they become much more frequent and are used to make the most powerful Shadow players targetedly useful against the Light.

We liked the flavor of these quests requiring the civilizations to take self-destructive actions (pillaging their own improvements, disbanding units, paying money) for limited visible gain for that player. It also makes them quite mechanically distinct from Decisions and Tower Quests.

We also discussed the rewards scaling with how Shadow the player was, so more Shadow players get more benefit from the Quests.

The flavor of these quests was in the context of one of the Forsaken asking the civilization to do something for them.

OK, this all looks good. Do we also want more-shadowey civs to get them more often, or is better rewards enough?

At what Shadow tier do they unlock?

So, I'm thinking that one major effect of players completing these quests should make the Shadowspawn civilization stronger somehow. That's something that helps deal with the Light in general, but doesn't give the player completing the quest any great direct benefit. It also makes flavor sense since that's who controls the Forsaken.

I like this idea a lot, but it isn't without issue. By making the primary benefactor the Shadowspawn civ, what's the point in somebody doing on during the TWars, or otherwise earlier in the game? Making the SSpawn civ stronger at this point in the game is not worth it, as you won't join forces with them until way, way later - or are the shadow points or other rewards sufficiently worth it?

In short, I just wonder as pre-LB use of these. During the LB, improving the SSpawn civ is totally self-serving - less so before then. You might not even choose shadow!

Do we want to tell the player that that's happening, or just leave them in the dark? On one hand, leaving them in the dark seems like what the Forsaken would do. On the other, it's difficult to see players going along with something like this on the pure faith that it is mechanically doing something helpful.

Interesting. This ties in to what I said above. I'd say give them info about what's happening, but maybe not specifics.

So, in terms of actual effects, we could spawn Shadowspawn units when these quests are completed. Not every quest, but it could be one of several possible "rewards". (These are Shadowspawn civ controlled Shadowspawn units, not the player who completed the quest. They may even spawn very far away, so the player sees no great personal benefit from them.)

We could make Thakan'dar stronger for some amount of time. (Probably in small increments of strength, so that multiple players completing these doesn't make it unassailable.)

We could boost the strength of certain Shadowspawn unit types.

All of these sound great. But again, they're weird pre-LB.

The Shadowspawn civ does seem to be quite military focused. Most bonuses to it are related to that. We could specifically undermine the Light, to add more variety? Things like:

• Intra-Light yield trade routes become less effective for X turns
• Light-wide Projects become less effective or are even shut off for X turns
• The Tower loses some Aes Sedai (assuming Light Tower)
• Ajah influence fluctuations (possibly useful for a Shadow Tower too)

same as above. Looks good.

The other thing most of these quests should probably result in is some yield bonus for the player completing it. Not as big a bonus as the effort expended to complete it, but something to show for it anyway.

Anything else we should include?

In terms of the actual things the Forsaken could ask players to do, I believe we discussed this before? Things I remember:

• Declaring war on specific players
• Denouncing specific players
• Pillaging your own improvements
• Giving away resources/money to specific players
• Disbanding units

I can't seem to find the older post about this.

These look good. I'll think more on what kinds of sacrifice there could be. Maybe gifting units to other players? selling buildings? Wish you could raze your own cities.

Essentially, my concerns above boil down to struggling to make this all work pre-LB. It sounds great during the LB, but do we need to tweak it beforehand?

Yeah, 7 options makes a lot of sense. We basically have 4 valid states for any city on each side. Balanced is common between the two. Then there's too far toward your Alignment, not far enough, and actually toward the opposing Alignment.

I'm liking your names, the only two I'd change are 2S4S and WNSE. WNSE feels like it should be accusatory, something along the lines of Traitorous or Sanctimonious.

2S4S is hard! I think I like Ruined better than Rotten, but Ruined makes it sound like the city is physically damaged. Chaotic sounds pretty cool. Anarchistic is another possible?

OK, let's go with Sanctimonious for WNSE - Traitorious isn't quite clear enough. I don't like how big-wordy it is, though. Oh well.
For 2S4S, I think what I like about rotten is that rotten implies that its just bad. Like, too bad to be of use. Ruined does this too, but implies the structural damage. The problem I have with anarchistic is that its very civil-disorder/government seeming. Chaotic is somewhat like that too.

I like Rotten, but could go with Chaotic or Ruined. Hmmm?

I've added these to the summary, tentative.

So neutral civs should be only balanced, Rotten/ruined/chaotic, and Fanatical? Do those words then seem too extreme?

Also, while writing this post I remembered something. We discussed briefly how MP interacts with GW trading before and we weren't sure how it did. I remembered to check this out in my MP game that ended in a draw and found that it doesn't really change at all. Human players have to put stuff up for trade and then the person browsing gets to make the useful decisions, just like with the AI. In reality, this meant that GWs never got traded.

It seems strange to me that GWs aren't part of a diplomacy/deals system, the same as money, resources, wars, congress votes, etc. I suppose it saved Firaxis needing to make the deal AI properly understand when it shouldn't trade GWs to the human player who is doing well at culture.

That is weird, and kind of lame. But, we're going to leave it alone, probably?

 

[counterpoint]

Shortest reply ever!

This is an interesting one. "You captured their original capital" is already a specific diplo modifier for the AI. And the player who captured it will necessarily have obtained some warmonger reputation on the way to doing so, which modifies other AIs' opinions accordingly.

In terms of happiness and such, since capitals tend to be big, they tend to create a lot of unhappiness when captured anyway. Given that happiness is already a warmonger's main hindrance, I don't think we need to hit them harder on that front.

This does make me think we should probably eliminate such diplo penalties during the LB. Right? Well, for your side, I mean. No Light civ should get mad if a light civ takes a shadow civ. Neutral probably yes, though.

Succession is an interesting one, though that does seem to come into play more with diplomatic events (Elayne's claim to the Sun Throne didn't involve an Andoran invasion of Cairhien) or a civil war (the Andoran Succession Wars were all internal to Andor).

Yeah, while we're on the topic, though...... succession is a sizeable piece of flavor. work it in to the Compacts with a wink and a nod? The Threads? Is it going to be like the Aes Sedai Rebellion and kind of get lost in the shuffle?

Governors could also be very cool here. Are Governors significantly more effective when placed in original capitals? That could make them particularly valuable, if the bonus was significant. Do they interact with unrest/annexed-ness in some way? I think these are more effects of Governors in general rather than feeding into the domination victory directly. Unless we wanted to make the domination victory "place a Governor in every original capital" or something to that effect? Seems like an odd trade off since domination civs are usually wide and wide civs have fewer GPs (and GPs are the source of Governors).

I'd say we probably shouldn't do the "place a gov in every capital" IF they are GP, for the reasons you've mentioned. But if they aren't GP - I know we're planning on that, but we've barely discussed them - this system could be fine. Not necessary though.

As far as the Govs mattering to the Dom victory (indirectly, I mean), I think you have an interesting idea here. But I don't think I like looking in the direction of making the Dom victory easier. If anything, I'd say it should be the opposite - a capital might hold you back a little bit or something. I think Governor's could factor in somehow, where a Capital remains in disorder longer (or indefinitely) until a governor is pu there. I think this could be true with any city, but it seems like it would be cool with a capital.

Or maybe if it's just that the govs have bonus effects for being in capitals, it sort of "requires" you to have them in your capitals?

Of course, this brings us back to the whole GP thing.... In any case, I'd say Govs are our only path worth taking here. Otherwise, I'd say leave the Dom victory alone.

 

[S3rgeus]

To me it seems like what we've been aiming towards is really a combination of both a "domestic" and "foreign" problem. True, FDs harass a particular nation each time, but they are significant enough - and provide rewards - to draw attention from the international crowd.

I'd say let's make it closer to the barbarians in civ, where their strength is based on the world as a whole or continents, or something liek that. I'd be fine with either.

I'd say it's fine if far-behind players struggle with them... maybe they shoudl take Fear or some other policies that lower their spawning rate, then? Or else choose Tolerance and build more channelers to fight them...

And yeah, I'd say notify players when an FD has spawned near a civ they've met. Maybe say [some flavorful version of] "An FD has appeared near Whitebridge!"

Cool, this all sounds good. I've gone through and edited the False Dragon section of the misc summary. A few new red things popped up there while I was writing that, mostly for us to make decisions on specific values (at least ballpark them).

nah. tohers happened when I misspelled "others," hombre

You're a terrible person.

Well, one thing to consider is that I was 13 or 14 when I read it the first time. So while that one counts, I didn't remember much once I was an adult.

I reread the whole series before I got to 11-14 because, well, I like it, and wanted to "get all of it" by the time I got to the new ones (which I had heard were awesome). Also, compounding the issue is that I had previously found 7-10 not particularly memorable, which meant I had totally forgotten the latest in the plot. Totally had no memory of characters like Cadsuane (she is quite memorable, but was a casualty of this phenomenon nonetheless).

Plus, how useful would I be to this mod if I *hadn't* started over?

Still quite useful, probably! There'd certainly be a lot more surprises in the wiki though. I was 17 when I started reading the series, so thankfully most of it stayed with me for the mod!

That's serious business, forgetting someone like Cadsuane and the city of Tanchico. I did read Lord of the Rings at a similar age and I don't remember that with any of the same detail as WoT, the movies reinforced a lot of those memories later. (Though I still miss the uprising and Saruman in the Shire.)

Did you play DA2? I played DA1, and very much enjoyed it, and am hearing awesome things about DA:I... but not as many good things about DA2. Do I need to/should I play DA2, or should I just skip it? If this were a 10 hour game, I'd play it, but... these ain't ten hour games.

I don't think you need to play DA2, you can get the gist of the story through the DragonAgeKeep website when you set up your world state to import it (if you choose to do that).

I will say though that DA2 gets a really bad rap, I loved that game. I didn't finish DA:O but I played through DA2 twice, mainly because the conversation system was awesome. It was much more Mass Effect-y than DA:O was, which I really liked. There's less player customization choice for your character, but I find that can be ok because it means the character you do play has much more focused writing (and he's fully voice acted), since the guys at BioWare can know more about who he is.

DA:I has been really impressive - given the breadth of choice and that there's still tons of player character voice acting. The dragons are pretty sweet too.

Sorry, let me be clear. You mentioned before that the "insta-rebellions" took place immediately at the start of the LB. If your alignment were to "worsen" (for your side" DURING the LB to one of the Tiers that should inspire an "insta-rebellion," does one occur, or not (since it's no longer the start of the LB)?

Oh, right! No, I don't think any later changes affect the insta-rebellions - those are things that take place when a civ declares for one side or the other, not an ongoing thing. Any rebellions that occur later will either be Prestige or Happiness driven.

Eh... I actually don't love those ideas. They don't really seem to have to do with any of the other bonuses. The Shadow ones kind of "ramp up" to the good stuff at level 8 (Dreadlords). I'd rather this just be a great version of earlier stuff.

What about simply having the happiness bonus spike somewhat ridiculously, like +25 for 7, and +40 for 8 or something?

In any case, I've put these current versions in the LB summary.

Yeah, a spike in happiness sounds good to me. +40 works.

OK, I like your approach... you may recall I'm kind of into structuring things and such.... So, yeah, approaching it from these directions feels right. Way before we actually go and make anything.

I'm fine with some having costs. As you said, it definitely lets us balance things easier.

So, one thing I think would help us in building these easily and efficiently - and keeping them balanced - is to "grade" the various bonuses/penalties, and balance them according to that. Let me explain what I mean, since I know that isn't clear at all.

Essentially I want to standardize the values for these bonuses/costs into various levels, and vary which level we are employing in a given Thread, instead of having to come up with specific numbers each time. Ideally, we can set them up in a way such that - if we choose the right values - the two choices will always be equally "good." So, for example:

Say We have seven levels for each reward/cost. They are:
- Windfall - Huge Bonus - 7 points
- Boon - Large Bonus - 5 points
- Gift - Moderate Bonus - 3 points
- Token - Small Bonus - 1 point
- Tax - Small Cost - -1 point
- Sacrifice - Moderate Cost - 3 point
- Tragedy - Huge Cost - -5 point
- Catastophe - Large Cost - -7 point

The names are just there for color, we'd probably speak in terms of letters usually (H, L, M, and S for Huge, Large, etc....).

So the result of a Thread would be "Worth" a certain amount of Points. For example, you make a Choice that provides you with a Moderate bonus (3) and a small Alignment yield (1), which has a total "worth" of 4 Points. This can be balanced against the other choice in the Thread, which could, for instance, be a Large Bonus (5), no alignment yield, and a small cost (-1 point), also ended up "worth" 4 points. Of course, the points I specified above are just rough and need not be like this.

We would then specify relationships between each Level. Like, for example, each level is "twice as good" as the level below it. Note, that doesn't necessarily mean the values would literally be 2x or anything, but the "effect" is twice as good or something. For example:

Gold:
Windfall - +1000 gold
Boon - +600 gold
Gift - +250 gold
Token - +100 gold
Tax - -100 gold
Sacrifice - -250 gold
Tragedy - -600 gold
Catastophe - -1000

Of course, the scale of these could be way off. I could imagine the "Huge" ones being huger.

I would imagine we would create a "worth" that we decided was appropriate for our threads, and perhaps this scales by era. So, in the beginning, your threads payoff a "net" of only 1 point, but by the end they could get higher. This could be somewhat randomized, also, so that you could sometimes be given a thread with a net 0 gain, or even a cost (theoretically). The key component is that the two CHOICES are balanced against one another.

Of course, the challenge of course is in figuring out the numbers and balance of all of it. It would take some time, for sure. But this allows us to generate a LOT of Threads - all we have to come up with is the flavor - without having to agonize over individual numbers each and every time. If we find a balance problem that is systemic, we simply change that one number (or set of numbers, or whatever).

Also, it would let us scale things easily by map size, era, etc. We could have threads pop up in any era we wanted, simply adjusting the yields they'd pay out in a systematic way.

I should clarify that this isn't a system that would be working in-game, necessarily. It's a way for us to make it easy to generate content for the game. Certain things (scaling by era, for instance), could actually be calculated by the mod in real-time, but essentially this idea is intended to simply help us create a billion Threads without a huge amount of effort (except for on the front-end!). If it looks like this system will not serve that end, we shouldn't proceed with it.

Thoughts?

I can definitely see the value in being able to slot these bonuses and costs onto a given Decision using this point system, it would make actually choosing which things should cost what (if anything) relatively straightforward and make sure we don't go too far with any one result.

We are kind of front-loading the balancing of this though, and I'm not sure if all assessments of the value of a given set of yields/action will be the same in every context. We still need to decide if getting 1000 Gold is +7 or +6. And in some cases, for example, gold may be more useful than others. (Some yields can be efficiently turned into other ones, so some combinations of costs and benefits wouldn't measure up the same despite their value being the same in isolation - because some external transaction exists that allows the player to offset the cost in this situation.)

An example would be a Decision that costs you units and gives you Gold. If the Gold the player gets back is greater than the purchase cost of the units they gave up, they can effectively overcome the cost immediately for a more incremental gold gain. If we tweak the valuation of gold in this case, then we'd need to tweak it across the board, which upsets other already decided Decisions. (If we don't tweak it across the board, then we're getting limited value from the across-the-board valuations.)

Unless the intention is for these values to only ballpark where we should start at with the choices for each Decision? And then every one would be tweaked on a case-by-case basis? Since these are all concrete numbers, they'll obviously be modified post-playtesting too.

One thing that's a little wonky is the Alignment points. In some cases Shadow points are a gift and in others they're a curse - how do we deal with that?

I don't think we necessarily need to consider Alignment points when balancing up the value of the choices in each Decision. Alignment points are a goal unto themselves - they can't be spent elsewhere for bonuses or anything like that, they are a long-term investment in the Last Battle, basically. So I think the Alignment points payout should be more determined by a game-long trend (Decisions near the end of the game pay out way more Alignment points) and by the flavor of what those choices represent. (Actions that plunge nations into war generate lots of Shadow, simple acts of kindness generate small amounts of Light, and other combinations like that.) That would also mesh nicely with the player's perception of how good or evil certain choices are.

OK, OK. Looks good! As far as whether they're "too much".... it's hard to say. I mean, I think we could be fine with Threads only affecting a few things, maybe half this number, in order to keep the balancing easier. But having them be far reaching is more fun. I'm not sure on this point.

As far as your specifics, yes, I'd say some yields can be timed and not permanent - probably a case-by-case basis.

I'm in favor of the "more fun" approach here! We'll have a lot of variables in play for balancing, but as long as the categories are sensible, I'm hoping tweaking via playtesting (and tweaking will likely be significant) will bring us a long way toward true balanced-ness.

I'm struck by something - we should renamed Golden Ages, huh? I mean, there HAS to be a way to bring some flavor in there, right? What if it has to do with the Pattern or the Wheel or the "Fabric of the Age" or something?

Definitely. I've added a "Miscellaneous Flavor" section to the misc summary for simple renames and stuff like this. I'm not sure what to suggest for a new name for this though. More research is needed! I'll go read the WoT wiki for a while and see if anything pops out.

Actually, I think the content in the channeling summary is mostly fine, but there's a lot of stuff left vague because it hadn't been discussed, as well as outdated terms (spies, etc.). I'll fix this stuff when I get some time to do so.

Awesome, thanks in advance for the fix-ups!

I'm thinking the channeling summary itself will probably not be looked at/accessed in development nearly as much as the others, since it doesn't have as many "rules" and is more of a treatise on how things work (which we all have mostly memorized by now). Because of that, I think it might be fine to simply refer to other summaries from there for some of the details. For example, I'm thinking maybe to simply refer to the diplo summary for the Ajah abilities, since the Diplo summary is more likely to be up to date (case in point, I have ajah abilities in the channeling summary, but don't know if they're as up to date as the ones in the diplo summary). I'd say we want to try to prevent the possibility of two disparate versions of the same mechanics spelled out in different summaries.

I think there's a decent amount of actual gameplay specification in the Channeling summary. I've been using it to do all of the Warders stuff so far.

As for the Aes Sedai abilities I completely agree, I'd say just link to the Diplo summary so we don't have to worry about keeping the lists in sync.

I think we're talking about different things, right? Cure for Gentling isn't the same thing as "Cure for Madness" right? I think they both are currently in existence as Yellow Edicts.

You know, when I wrote this section I'd originally been thinking it was a "Cure for Madness" thing too. But I followed it back a couple of posts and found the "Cure for Gentling" edict was the root of this particular quote block. Is there pending discussion on the Cure for Madness stuff? If so, let's use this quote block for Cure for Madness, and the one below for Gentling.

I'm fine with any of these, but honestly don't love the idea of adding yet another sister ability. I think I'd rather it be a "global" thing, where you just select a unit, or one automatically is "cured," instead of doing it through a unit.

I should say here (this is probably part of the above quote block in truth, but this is the Gentling section now) that I put Cure for Gentling in the Generic Edicts section of the Diplo summary. One reason for that is the Edicts list is already balanced by Ajah. Another is any Aes Sedai seemed to be able to perform the weave after Nynaeve showed them (right?). I can see the connection with the Yellow though - we could bump all Ajahs up to 10? Or find a Yellow one to swap out? (I'm not a big fan of removing Edicts we already liked though!)

Re the additional Sister ability: I know what you mean, Aes Sedai already have a lot of abilities. How do we manage the flavor of other more per-civ Cure for Gentling approaches though? I can't think of a justification for a building healing being Gentled for just a few units, or how we would pick which unit(s) to heal. (Maybe something like it's a Healers' guild or something to that effect, somewhere Sisters would work to heal Gentled men, but it's a bit tenuous.)

A once-off cure for some of them via a tech is possible and explicable. But we clearly don't want to heal all of the civ's Gentled channelers (right?). And since a given civ only researches a tech once per game, the remaining Gentled channelers are dead weight once they finish it, which is quite weird and un-CiV-like. We could make this a repeatable tech that cures one each time? That's a bit odd, because I don't think we'd want it to be a side effect of our Future Tech equivalent (too close to the end of the game) so we'd need a repeatable tech part of the way (most of the way) through the tree.

I think one thing we're forgetting is that no-one wins when Time expires (well, perhaps the ShadowSPAWN civ wins). So the Light can also lose by simply failing to win after a certain amount of time.

I had considered the relationship with our everybody loses endgame, and I think this effect works in addition to that. It lets the Shadowspawn civ actually help the Shadow civs (if there are any) break the Seals, which can be quite cool. It also means the Shadowspawn civ doesn't need to have any complex handling of what to do when it does capture a Seal. (Either shuffling it off to a Shadow player - but what if there isn't one? Or having its own set of spies and Sealbearers, which leads down a whole other rabbit hole.)

OK, this all looks good. Do we also want more-shadowey civs to get them more often, or is better rewards enough?

I think it makes sense from a flavor perspective to have more often and better rewards. Do we think that risks snowballing too much? It should be possible to have both.

At what Shadow tier do they unlock?

Two? Three? Specific quests probably only unlock at certain tiers? So the earliest, TW-time potential quests may unlock at 2 (maybe even at 1?), but only the tier 8 civs see the darkest and most evil ones?

I like this idea a lot, but it isn't without issue. By making the primary benefactor the Shadowspawn civ, what's the point in somebody doing on during the TWars, or otherwise earlier in the game? Making the SSpawn civ stronger at this point in the game is not worth it, as you won't join forces with them until way, way later - or are the shadow points or other rewards sufficiently worth it?

In short, I just wonder as pre-LB use of these. During the LB, improving the SSpawn civ is totally self-serving - less so before then. You might not even choose shadow!

I think when we originally approached Forsaken quests, the idea was to make them different from Alignment Decisions in some ways and I think one of the key ones is the form of the payoff here. Completing a Forsaken Quest gives you a serious chunk of Shadow points (right?) and players who go out of their way to complete these are the ones that are dedicated to the Shadow.

Shadow-y Alignment Decision choices should be balanced with the whole short term benefit is Shadow, long term, wider world benefit is Light (loosely). But the Forsaken Quests seem to me like they shouldn't significantly reward the player in a way beyond making them more Shadow, unless they're already on the darkest end of the scale (so the incidental bonuses they would usually get have scaled up to be competitive with the costs).

If a player isn't going to choose Shadow, then they shouldn't do Forsaken Quests. (They're literally working for the Forsaken.) If they do complete some and decide to backpedal later, they've already done the damage, which makes a lot of flavor sense.

Otherwise if we try to balance the Forsaken Quests' results earlier in the game with the costs of completing them (say the early-unlocked Quests mentioned above have more competitive payoff for less Shadow-y players than the later ones, which would make the pre-LB Quests more directly useful to the player) then the Quests are very similar to the Decisions, which I don't think is what we intended.

Interesting. This ties in to what I said above. I'd say give them info about what's happening, but maybe not specifics.

Cool, something along the lines of "Trollocs ravage far away lands."

These look good. I'll think more on what kinds of sacrifice there could be. Maybe gifting units to other players? selling buildings? Wish you could raze your own cities.

Gifting units and especially selling buildings, both sound awesome! We also discussed liberating Shadow-leaning (or former-Shadow leaning, if the civ has been eliminated) cities last time, I think. That seems pretty cool, but it's going to be available less frequently.

OK, let's go with Sanctimonious for WNSE - Traitorious isn't quite clear enough. I don't like how big-wordy it is, though. Oh well.
For 2S4S, I think what I like about rotten is that rotten implies that its just bad. Like, too bad to be of use. Ruined does this too, but implies the structural damage. The problem I have with anarchistic is that its very civil-disorder/government seeming. Chaotic is somewhat like that too.

I like Rotten, but could go with Chaotic or Ruined. Hmmm?

I've added these to the summary, tentative.

I'm in favor of Chaotic for 2S4S then. I think Rotten sounds a bit lax, if anything, I'm associating it more with rotten fruit and such rather than rotten morality. Agreed about Anarchistic and the civil disorder association - I think Chaotic has less of a problem with that though.

So neutral civs should be only balanced, Rotten/ruined/chaotic, and Fanatical? Do those words then seem too extreme?

They do seem a bit extreme. What if we swapped over to the "more severe" description when the city is +4 or higher in the wrong direction? We could make that across the board, or just for Neutral civs. I'd normally go straight for the across the board approach, but describing a city whose population mimicks a tier 1 Shadow progression in a tier 8 Shadow civ as "Sanctimonious" seems a bit strange.

That is weird, and kind of lame. But, we're going to leave it alone, probably?

Definitely not on the top of our priorities for changing, but it would be nice to make it better eventually. Definitely a post-release thing, if at all.

 

[counterpoint]

Cool, this all sounds good. I've gone through and edited the False Dragon section of the misc summary. A few new red things popped up there while I was writing that, mostly for us to make decisions on specific values (at least ballpark them).

ok, comments on red bits:

Yes, FD points should be linked to general population as well.

We could just make Authority be neutral to FD generation, as well, but I can see the logic in making it notch you lower slightly. That said, assuming a typical distribution of civs between the Philosophies (i.e. a few of each), the net effect will be that FD presence would overall drop in the later stages of the game (pre-LB, of course).

Also, should note that aren't we calling them Philosophies now?

Also, I'm struck that we might be skipping a step here, with this FD points, thing. What about "Saidin Channeler points"? (i.e. generating male channelers). Are those separate lines (that obviously share a lot of the same mechanism behind them) or are FD actually just a function *of* the male channeler points? How are they different?

Hmmm..... not sure about female channeling use affecting FD rate. How are you thinking it would?

As far as how many points needed... I have zero idea at this stage.

That's serious business, forgetting someone like Cadsuane and the city of Tanchico. I did read Lord of the Rings at a similar age and I don't remember that with any of the same detail as WoT, the movies reinforced a lot of those memories later. (Though I still miss the uprising and Saruman in the Shire.)

don't forget Tom Bombadil! But, as complex as WoT is, it's nothing in terms of the insanity of LotR

I will say though that DA2 gets a really bad rap, I loved that game. I didn't finish DA:O but I played through DA2 twice, mainly because the conversation system was awesome. It was much more Mass Effect-y than DA:O was, which I really liked. There's less player customization choice for your character, but I find that can be ok because it means the character you do play has much more focused writing (and he's fully voice acted), since the guys at BioWare can know more about who he is.

very good to hear. It sort of sounds like the age-old debate between Western and JRPGS, which now has new life rebors as PC RPGs vs Console ones.... In any case, I'm with you on Mass Effect, so that sounds like a good thing. I liked DA:O, but I hated the blank look of my mute character.

Oh, right! No, I don't think any later changes affect the insta-rebellions - those are things that take place when a civ declares for one side or the other, not an ongoing thing. Any rebellions that occur later will either be Prestige or Happiness driven.

k, got it.

Yeah, a spike in happiness sounds good to me. +40 works.

k!

I can definitely see the value in being able to slot these bonuses and costs onto a given Decision using this point system, it would make actually choosing which things should cost what (if anything) relatively straightforward and make sure we don't go too far with any one result.

We are kind of front-loading the balancing of this though, and I'm not sure if all assessments of the value of a given set of yields/action will be the same in every context. We still need to decide if getting 1000 Gold is +7 or +6. And in some cases, for example, gold may be more useful than others. (Some yields can be efficiently turned into other ones, so some combinations of costs and benefits wouldn't measure up the same despite their value being the same in isolation - because some external transaction exists that allows the player to offset the cost in this situation.)

An example would be a Decision that costs you units and gives you Gold. If the Gold the player gets back is greater than the purchase cost of the units they gave up, they can effectively overcome the cost immediately for a more incremental gold gain. If we tweak the valuation of gold in this case, then we'd need to tweak it across the board, which upsets other already decided Decisions. (If we don't tweak it across the board, then we're getting limited value from the across-the-board valuations.)

Unless the intention is for these values to only ballpark where we should start at with the choices for each Decision? And then every one would be tweaked on a case-by-case basis? Since these are all concrete numbers, they'll obviously be modified post-playtesting too.

Well, any "rule" we create absolutely needs to be broken by us whenever we need to do so. I'm looking at systematizing this as a way to make it easier to scale and rebalance things in huge single strokes... but maybe that's not necessary?

I think also part of this idea comes from the expectation that there will be a very large amount of these, so as to keep the player experience fresh. Making 100 of these will get annoying if we don't have something balancing them systematically. How many were you thinking?

But, then again, maybe all that matters is that they are internally balanced (i.e. each choice is balanced against each other).

OK, so how do you want to proceed with this, then?

I don't think we necessarily need to consider Alignment points when balancing up the value of the choices in each Decision. Alignment points are a goal unto themselves - they can't be spent elsewhere for bonuses or anything like that, they are a long-term investment in the Last Battle, basically. So I think the Alignment points payout should be more determined by a game-long trend (Decisions near the end of the game pay out way more Alignment points) and by the flavor of what those choices represent. (Actions that plunge nations into war generate lots of Shadow, simple acts of kindness generate small amounts of Light, and other combinations like that.) That would also mesh nicely with the player's perception of how good or evil certain choices are.

I understand what you're saying here, and I think I half agree and half disagree that we should present the Alignment Points as the "goal." We mostly want people responding "in character," right? So we probably don't want the AP to draw too much attention to themselves, do we? It isn't too "distracting" to have two "balanced" options but one having +1000 something and the other having +50 something?

I think the main difficulty I have with this - and I'm not sure how to handle it - is the aforementioned notion that Light choices will often get you less tangible reward. To me, that implies a relationship between the rewards and the Alignment Points. That the more light points you get, the less reward you'll be getting, or at least the less immediate rewards. This element definitely suggests a "systematic" approach will be really problematic, and that we need to consider everything on a case by case basis. Ugh...

ok, how do you want to handle it?

I'm in favor of the "more fun" approach here! We'll have a lot of variables in play for balancing, but as long as the categories are sensible, I'm hoping tweaking via playtesting (and tweaking will likely be significant) will bring us a long way toward true balanced-ness.

ok, bring it on! This is why we're here, right?

Definitely. I've added a "Miscellaneous Flavor" section to the misc summary for simple renames and stuff like this. I'm not sure what to suggest for a new name for this though. More research is needed! I'll go read the WoT wiki for a while and see if anything pops out.

suggested EDIT:

I'll go read the WoT in its entirety and see if anything pops out.

but seriously, I do think Chapter titles will eventually come in handy for stuff like this.

You know, when I wrote this section I'd originally been thinking it was a "Cure for Madness" thing too. But I followed it back a couple of posts and found the "Cure for Gentling" edict was the root of this particular quote block. Is there pending discussion on the Cure for Madness stuff? If so, let's use this quote block for Cure for Madness, and the one below for Gentling.

Well, I think the Cure for Madness thing should probably stay rooted in the Cleansing Saidin. I'm fine with there being an edict or something that pops up periodically that lowers people's madness levels, but I think if we want the Cleansing to be significant and worth doing, it should be mechanically unique.

I should say here (this is probably part of the above quote block in truth, but this is the Gentling section now) that I put Cure for Gentling in the Generic Edicts section of the Diplo summary. One reason for that is the Edicts list is already balanced by Ajah. Another is any Aes Sedai seemed to be able to perform the weave after Nynaeve showed them (right?). I can see the connection with the Yellow though - we could bump all Ajahs up to 10? Or find a Yellow one to swap out? (I'm not a big fan of removing Edicts we already liked though!)

OK, I only see the Cure for Madness one in there, not the Cure for Gentling one.

As far as the ajah abilities.... I'd say given we have "A Cure for Stilling" in there already, it does make sense that "A Cure for Gentling" should be there as well. I don't know about A Cure for Madness though... that sort of doesn't exist in universe anyways.

I do like our Yellow Edicts, though, and don't like the idea of killing one. Maybe one can be made Generic? maybe one of the food ones?

Re the additional Sister ability: I know what you mean, Aes Sedai already have a lot of abilities. How do we manage the flavor of other more per-civ Cure for Gentling approaches though? I can't think of a justification for a building healing being Gentled for just a few units, or how we would pick which unit(s) to heal. (Maybe something like it's a Healers' guild or something to that effect, somewhere Sisters would work to heal Gentled men, but it's a bit tenuous.)

A once-off cure for some of them via a tech is possible and explicable. But we clearly don't want to heal all of the civ's Gentled channelers (right?). And since a given civ only researches a tech once per game, the remaining Gentled channelers are dead weight once they finish it, which is quite weird and un-CiV-like. We could make this a repeatable tech that cures one each time? That's a bit odd, because I don't think we'd want it to be a side effect of our Future Tech equivalent (too close to the end of the game) so we'd need a repeatable tech part of the way (most of the way) through the tree.

Eh... don't like the idea of the tech anymore, I don't think. Seems too complicated for such a minor thing.

It seems to me that the Tower might realistically be the only way to go, here. Either that Yellow sisters get it as a one-time ability? Or that replaces a current Yellow Ability?

I don't know, I'm happy with it being rare, and kidn of random (in terms of which unit it effects).

(this is also making me wonder if this is worth it, and we shouldn't just go back to them becoming workers)

I had considered the relationship with our everybody loses endgame, and I think this effect works in addition to that. It lets the Shadowspawn civ actually help the Shadow civs (if there are any) break the Seals, which can be quite cool. It also means the Shadowspawn civ doesn't need to have any complex handling of what to do when it does capture a Seal. (Either shuffling it off to a Shadow player - but what if there isn't one? Or having its own set of spies and Sealbearers, which leads down a whole other rabbit hole.)

Right. I actually meant that I thought it was a *good* thing, the time-defeat thing.

I'm wondering, say there ARE shadow players - we're sure a shadowspawn-captured seal wouldn't be automatically destroyed, right? That would be too cheap, right (players would set it up so some lone AI-trolloc would capture cities, right?)?

I think it makes sense from a flavor perspective to have more often and better rewards. Do we think that risks snowballing too much? It should be possible to have both.

ok, agreed. It could snowball a bit, but we can try to hit a balance.

Two? Three? Specific quests probably only unlock at certain tiers? So the earliest, TW-time potential quests may unlock at 2 (maybe even at 1?), but only the tier 8 civs see the darkest and most evil ones?

I can see us "gating" certain quests for higher levels, but at the same time, I can imagine, from a flavor perspective, the forsaken making the low level guys do the truly heinous stuff. So maybe anything should be available to everybody, but the quality of rewards should be different. On the other hand, that makes the Shadow Point thing impossible - we can't have a low-shadow player earn 800 shadow in one blast, whereas that wouldn't be as huge for a level 7'er.

I think when we originally approached Forsaken quests, the idea was to make them different from Alignment Decisions in some ways and I think one of the key ones is the form of the payoff here. Completing a Forsaken Quest gives you a serious chunk of Shadow points (right?) and players who go out of their way to complete these are the ones that are dedicated to the Shadow.

Shadow-y Alignment Decision choices should be balanced with the whole short term benefit is Shadow, long term, wider world benefit is Light (loosely). But the Forsaken Quests seem to me like they shouldn't significantly reward the player in a way beyond making them more Shadow, unless they're already on the darkest end of the scale (so the incidental bonuses they would usually get have scaled up to be competitive with the costs).

If a player isn't going to choose Shadow, then they shouldn't do Forsaken Quests. (They're literally working for the Forsaken.) If they do complete some and decide to backpedal later, they've already done the damage, which makes a lot of flavor sense.

Otherwise if we try to balance the Forsaken Quests' results earlier in the game with the costs of completing them (say the early-unlocked Quests mentioned above have more competitive payoff for less Shadow-y players than the later ones, which would make the pre-LB Quests more directly useful to the player) then the Quests are very similar to the Decisions, which I don't think is what we intended.

OK. I'm totally convinced. We'll have to make sure there's ample opportunities for light points as well (for other players), otherwise we might be creating situations where there's tons of Level 8 shadow civs and the lights are all much less... unless we sort of like the poetry of that.

Cool, something along the lines of "Trollocs ravage far away lands."

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a Trolloc appeared near Taren Ferry. The Trolloc was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time... except for Taren Ferry. Taren Ferry is gonna burn.

Gifting units and especially selling buildings, both sound awesome! We also discussed liberating Shadow-leaning (or former-Shadow leaning, if the civ has been eliminated) cities last time, I think. That seems pretty cool, but it's going to be available less frequently.

Yes, those sound good, for sure. Also, we could have the civ send units into the blight. Like, march 2 Aes Sedai successfully to Thakan'dar or something.

I'm in favor of Chaotic for 2S4S then. I think Rotten sounds a bit lax, if anything, I'm associating it more with rotten fruit and such rather than rotten morality. Agreed about Anarchistic and the civil disorder association - I think Chaotic has less of a problem with that though.

They do seem a bit extreme. What if we swapped over to the "more severe" description when the city is +4 or higher in the wrong direction? We could make that across the board, or just for Neutral civs. I'd normally go straight for the across the board approach, but describing a city whose population mimicks a tier 1 Shadow progression in a tier 8 Shadow civ as "Sanctimonious" seems a bit strange.

the +4 designation could work, though are we ok with that meaning a city of less than 5 or 6 population is essentially impossible to achieve that status? Crunching numbers... Just FYi, in a small city (5 pop), Light 8 has 0 DFCs, while Shadow 8has 3. At 10 pop, that goes to 1 vs 5. At size 40, though, it's 5 vs 20.

I'm was a little confused as to your final point, but now I think I get it - you're suggesting that that Shadow 1 city should be Cowardly instead, right, even though its more than 4 away? I should point out, though, that in a city of size 20, Shadow 1 and 8 would only be 4 points away, exactly. Of size 21, they'd actually only be 3 points away! Of course this difference is larger with bigger cities, but it's also quite smaller with small cities. My point is that it's only in pretty rare scenarious that a Shadow 1 city will even be labeled Sanctimonious at all.


Cool, well that's that. I can't help but feel like my responses aren't all that helpful this time around!

 

[S3rgeus]

This does make me think we should probably eliminate such diplo penalties during the LB. Right? Well, for your side, I mean. No Light civ should get mad if a light civ takes a shadow civ. Neutral probably yes, though.

Yes, we'll want to change the way warmonger diplo penalties accumulate between Light civs. Basically, capturing a Shadow city doesn't cause other Light civs to dislike you. Should capturing a Neutral city? Light civs can't win in isolation (only as a team) so capturing Neutral cities is either preventing someone from winning (good for the Light team) or making way to reach the Shadow (also good for the team). One civ getting "better" than its Light allies by pulling ahead with aggressive conquests isn't actually gaining on other Light civs. So we could drop intra-Light warmongering diplo penalties entirely. (Even erase past penalties, because we want Light civs to like each other.)

Yeah, while we're on the topic, though...... succession is a sizeable piece of flavor. work it in to the Compacts with a wink and a nod? The Threads? Is it going to be like the Aes Sedai Rebellion and kind of get lost in the shuffle?

The Succession War in Andor would be another great scenario.

But anyway, main game for the moment. We could make it part of the Policies and Philosophies stuff - though we'd have to paint it in a "positive" light so it could provide some kind of bonus in that case.

Definitely room for it to come up in the Threads. How would we work it into Compact resolutions? Seems like Succession wars are internal things.

I'd say we probably shouldn't do the "place a gov in every capital" IF they are GP, for the reasons you've mentioned. But if they aren't GP - I know we're planning on that, but we've barely discussed them - this system could be fine. Not necessary though.

As far as the Govs mattering to the Dom victory (indirectly, I mean), I think you have an interesting idea here. But I don't think I like looking in the direction of making the Dom victory easier. If anything, I'd say it should be the opposite - a capital might hold you back a little bit or something. I think Governor's could factor in somehow, where a Capital remains in disorder longer (or indefinitely) until a governor is pu there. I think this could be true with any city, but it seems like it would be cool with a capital.

Or maybe if it's just that the govs have bonus effects for being in capitals, it sort of "requires" you to have them in your capitals?

Of course, this brings us back to the whole GP thing.... In any case, I'd say Govs are our only path worth taking here. Otherwise, I'd say leave the Dom victory alone.

Right, sounds like we won't be able to make a decision here until we go into more detail on Governors. I don't think we should move onto that (or anything else) until we wrap up the Forsaken Quests and Threads discussions, just so we can avoid having an LB-level discussion parallelization again. (I enjoy the current length of our posts, only takes just shy of two hours to reply, most times! Gives us time to do other things on a given evening.)

Just so we do have a direction when we finish there, what's our next topic after Forsaken Quests and Threads?

Would you like to write the shortest summary ever on the Domination victory? (Primarily consisting of, like, one point of red text for us to revisit post-Governors.)

 

[S3rgeus]

ok, comments on red bits:

Yes, FD points should be linked to general population as well.

Awesome sauce, no longer red.

We could just make Authority be neutral to FD generation, as well, but I can see the logic in making it notch you lower slightly. That said, assuming a typical distribution of civs between the Philosophies (i.e. a few of each), the net effect will be that FD presence would overall drop in the later stages of the game (pre-LB, of course).

I figured since the books explicitly call out Gentling via the Tower's influence as something that was slowly culling the ability to Channel out of the population (or at least strongly suggesting that was the case) that there should be a nod to that here. However, this does have mechanical concerns, as you've noted. And related to what we'll cover below, this is actually much more appropriate as a modifier for channeler spawn rate, rather than False Dragon spawn rate. So Authority being Neutral FD spawn rate (maybe even slight raise?) sounds good to me. A slight raise would mean Philosophies would (on average) contribute to a ramp-up in FD rate toward the end of the game. There are other factors meaning there may not be a ramp up, but this is a small piece of pushing us in that direction.

What do we want to happen overall? Ramp up of FDs heading towards the LB seems sensible to me.

Also, should note that aren't we calling them Philosophies now?

Very true! Changed.

Also, I'm struck that we might be skipping a step here, with this FD points, thing. What about "Saidin Channeler points"? (i.e. generating male channelers). Are those separate lines (that obviously share a lot of the same mechanism behind them) or are FD actually just a function *of* the male channeler points? How are they different?

I was thinking False Dragon rate operated quite separately from male channeler rate, on a mechanical level. That it was civilization's use of channelers that caused False Dragons to spawn more often. It's a representation of the channelers being more important in that civ's culture (compared to somewhere they are shunned), inflating the chances of one of the civ's male channelers to take it upon himself to declare himself the Dragon.

Obviously having more male channelers will contribute toward a civ using more channelers overall. So the male channeler rate has knock-on effects in the False Dragon spawn rate, but how male channelers are actually spawned, what we use to determine how quickly that happens etc., doesn't directly factor into the False Dragon rate. Only the resulting frequency does.

"Use" would be measured by how often the player attacks (or defends) with channeling units, how many are spawned (so between training channelers and male channelers spawning), and any channeling-related buildings they build.

We should totally decide on what the contributing factors are to male channeler spawn rate as well though!

Hmmm..... not sure about female channeling use affecting FD rate. How are you thinking it would?

For the flavor of it, I'm thinking the more numerous and important channelers are in the civ, the more likely one of the male ones will declare himself a False Dragon. I'd say use of female channeling units could contribute to False Dragon rate (where "use" is defined above) but with a modifier when compared to male channelers. Using more male channelers clearly elevates them within a civ and it should make intuitive sense for the player that more male channeler use = more False Dragons.

Having very few channelers overall (not just male channelers) feels like it should also affect the incidence of False Dragons. That would mean that female channelers also contributing to False Dragon generation makes sense.

As far as how many points needed... I have zero idea at this stage.

We're probably thinking something like GP-range though, right? Like our previous comparison for Alignment points of Gold vs Happiness, I'm thinking FD points is more like GP points than Happiness. Except FD points are accumulated civ-wide instead of per city (GP points being per city).

don't forget Tom Bombadil! But, as complex as WoT is, it's nothing in terms of the insanity of LotR

I'm more ok with skipping Tom Bombadil than the Shire uprising. Still, I can see why they cut it - the big trilogy climax had already finished up (Sauron defeated) and they'd need to go off on a whole new adventure.

LotR would definitely have a lot of great sources for a CiV mod. There's a whole bunch of secondary literature with the kind of historical info we need! Still, as much as I love LotR, I'd go for WoTMod any day!

very good to hear. It sort of sounds like the age-old debate between Western and JRPGS, which now has new life rebors as PC RPGs vs Console ones.... In any case, I'm with you on Mass Effect, so that sounds like a good thing. I liked DA:O, but I hated the blank look of my mute character.

Exactly the same sentiment from me, my character's lack of investment in the conversations, when all of the other characters were so animated, was a big drawback to me. Enjoy DA2 then!

Well, any "rule" we create absolutely needs to be broken by us whenever we need to do so. I'm looking at systematizing this as a way to make it easier to scale and rebalance things in huge single strokes... but maybe that's not necessary?

I think also part of this idea comes from the expectation that there will be a very large amount of these, so as to keep the player experience fresh. Making 100 of these will get annoying if we don't have something balancing them systematically. How many were you thinking?

But, then again, maybe all that matters is that they are internally balanced (i.e. each choice is balanced against each other).

OK, so how do you want to proceed with this, then?

100 sounds like a good objective for Threads. Maybe even more than that. Our idea generation for the Edicts is probably a good comparative example here. I think Threads can afford to have a lot more mechanical similarity between them than Edicts can between each other. (So we have a ton of Edicts that just give yields, whereas each Edict had its own flavorful twist to it, particularly when we were working to fit things in with the objectives of the Ajahs.) So, for comparison, we came up with a total of 85 Edicts (go team! 22 Generic and 9 for Each Ajah).

We built up to that 85 over time, over several pages and weeks of discussion, but we were working on a lot of other stuff at the same time. And the bulk of them seemed to come from 4 primary dumps where one of us sat down and made up a whole bunch all at once, then we tweaked those.

I don't know if we're going to want to (or necessarily be able) to rebalance in broad strokes across all of the Threads at once. (We've decided bonus X is too powerful, let's reduce it across the board - I think we'd look at each place it was used and see if it's too strong when compared to the other options on the same Thread.)

So I think I'm leaning towards a case-by-case basis for balancing. We'll observe some patterns as we go and be able to apply them to later Threads ("this value worked for Faith, so we can give the player marginally more gold for an equivalent-ish reward" and other such truisms), which should give us some efficiency gains over time.

However, I don't think we should necessarily just start making them up out of the blue. Once we decide on what we want the categories of rewards to be (though we'll inevitably think of new ones to add later) we've got the kind of focus we need to actually make new Threads. As I see it, there are two ways to approach creating a single new Thread: start with the mechanics or start with the flavor.

Both approaches have drawbacks. Starting with the mechanics would be something like (purely demonstrative example, all thin air numbers):

Stuff happens
Option A: +50 Science, -10 Gold
Option B: +50 Gold
Option C: +40 Faith, -20 Gold

And then thinking "What flavor situation could explain the above results being the options?"

The alternative, starting with flavor, would be more like my Hawkwing suggestion from a few posts ago. That's not to say that we're making the writing nice or deciding on final wording, but just that there's some WoT concept we'd like to see in a Thread. So I knew the results (or at least one of them) I wanted would allow a player to gain control of a ripped-from-Dreamworld Hero of the Horn, and needed to decide how to make that mechanically viable afterwards.

Mechanical first means we'll have all of our technical bases covered - we won't fall into traps where we've over-rewarded a certain yield or left out certain components of CiV, because that's the source of our ideas: "What haven't we done yet?" But it means we can miss out on elements of flavor that are important to readers/players because they might not fit neatly or immediately obviously into the mechanical results we want to make.

Flavor first has the corresponding opposite problem - we cover the parts of the books and flavor that players will care about, but WoT flavor may tend to create situations that reward certain CiV playstyles more than others.

So, many words later! I'd propose we swap back and forth on the above. One of us does flavor first and the other mechanical first. We present the "first step" of each in a post. So flavor-first-guy will post a series of WoT-like situations. Mechanical-first-guy will post a series of balanced-ish results that cover the kinds of bonuses we want to give out (probably saying when in the calendar system it would happen).

And then we swap. The person who posted all of the flavor stuff goes through all of the mechanical ideas and attributes flavor to them. The mechanical guy goes through all of the flavor ideas and attributes balanced-ish results to them.

And then swap roles and repeat the process until we reach the sun.

What do you think of that?

Might it be a total drag for mechanical-man who's just making loads of number-based value judgements? An alternate approach would be to start the same way - post the two sets of ideas - but then both go through and make suggestions for what the "other half" of each proposed Thread could be. That way we're both involved in flavor and mechanics in each loop of the whole process.

Completely alternatively, we could just start making them up.

When we were coming up with the Edicts, I think having incremental numerical targets was quite helpful. We started off just making them up. Then I remember targeting at-least-6 per Ajah, which was an achievable goal after our first round of ideas. Then we decided to balance it up per Ajah (and go for an across-the-board increase, so every Ajah had as many as our most Edictful from the at-least-6 process), which was also an achievable immediate goal.

So regardless which of the 3 systems above for coming up with new Threads we use, an objective like "10 each for a total of 20 this iteration" could be a good starting point.

Also, before we make up any Threads, there are probably some other general-Thread-restrictions we should have in mind. I'm assuming some Threads are only available after a certain era? (Since threads are per-player, we can use each player's era individually in most cases, though some might be gated on World Era - stuff that hinges on Events: Trolloc Wars, High King, Last Battle.)

Also, some Threads will "obsolete" right? So they stop cropping up after a certain time. (Probably the same era and world era mechanism as above.)

Will some have specific tech prerequisites? Resource prerequisites? Seems like some might also have unit prerequisites (never appears unless the civ has at least one of X unit type).

Worth noting that all of these prerequisites are invisible to the player. They just see Threads popping up (at an interval which I have forgotten, but we have defined, right?). This is for us to place Threads that only make sense in certain circumstances. (A Thread that involves a Trolloc Wars memorial shouldn't pop up before the Trolloc Wars. Things like that.)

I understand what you're saying here, and I think I half agree and half disagree that we should present the Alignment Points as the "goal." We mostly want people responding "in character," right? So we probably don't want the AP to draw too much attention to themselves, do we? It isn't too "distracting" to have two "balanced" options but one having +1000 something and the other having +50 something?

I think the main difficulty I have with this - and I'm not sure how to handle it - is the aforementioned notion that Light choices will often get you less tangible reward. To me, that implies a relationship between the rewards and the Alignment Points. That the more light points you get, the less reward you'll be getting, or at least the less immediate rewards. This element definitely suggests a "systematic" approach will be really problematic, and that we need to consider everything on a case by case basis. Ugh...

ok, how do you want to handle it?

Right, I knew you'd mentioned case by case somewhere and I couldn't find it again when writing the above! Here it is.

I think Alignment will have to be case by case, because the Alignment payoff is intertwined between both the mechanical reward and the flavorful aspects of the situation. As you've said, we want to avoid situations where one result pays out 1000 Light and the other only 50, for comparable yield payouts (or whatever else the player is getting from each choice). Because that is effectively an unbalanced Thread - if you're Shadow then the 50 payout is an almost automatic choice. If you're Light, the 1000 one is almost always objectively better.

ok, bring it on! This is why we're here, right?

Yeah, at the end of it all, the fun is why we do this!

suggested EDIT:

I'll go read the WoT in its entirety and see if anything pops out.

but seriously, I do think Chapter titles will eventually come in handy for stuff like this.

*dies of old age before finishing CiV mod*

Good call with the chapter titles! So here's a list of all of the chapters (except AMoL). A lot of them are surprisingly direct, I haven't seen a good "Golden Age" name replacement from a quick scan through.

Well, I think the Cure for Madness thing should probably stay rooted in the Cleansing Saidin. I'm fine with there being an edict or something that pops up periodically that lowers people's madness levels, but I think if we want the Cleansing to be significant and worth doing, it should be mechanically unique.

Ok, cool. Just to clarify, Cleansing Saidin doesn't affect the madness of existing units, only stops anyone from accumulating more madness. This is both accurate and quite cool mechanically, I think.

so a single Edict that reduces global madness levels by 1 seems really cool. But otherwise madness reduction cannot happen in any way.

OK, I only see the Cure for Madness one in there, not the Cure for Gentling one.

As far as the ajah abilities.... I'd say given we have "A Cure for Stilling" in there already, it does make sense that "A Cure for Gentling" should be there as well. I don't know about A Cure for Madness though... that sort of doesn't exist in universe anyways.

I do like our Yellow Edicts, though, and don't like the idea of killing one. Maybe one can be made Generic? maybe one of the food ones?

Very good point, I have clearly been severely mixed up. I didn't put the "Cure for Gentling" Edict into the list at all.

And you make a very good point about Cure for Stilling vs Gentling. Mechanically the effects are very different, but flavor wise they are the same process. The only possible flavor-splanation I can see is the whole "healed by other gender gives you full strength" and classifying that as the "cure." So a Cure of Stilling is gathering up male channelers to heal women who've been Stilled. A Cure for Gentling is dispatching Aes Sedai to heal Gentled men. Is that a distinction we want to make?

Eh... don't like the idea of the tech anymore, I don't think. Seems too complicated for such a minor thing.

It seems to me that the Tower might realistically be the only way to go, here. Either that Yellow sisters get it as a one-time ability? Or that replaces a current Yellow Ability?

I don't know, I'm happy with it being rare, and kidn of random (in terms of which unit it effects).

(this is also making me wonder if this is worth it, and we shouldn't just go back to them becoming workers)

Cool, so even if we solve the Edict stuff above, we need another way to access Gentling-healing, otherwise I don't think it's worth having the distinct Gentled Channeler units (because there's only a chance, determined by an external entity, to determine if they will ever be useful/important). It's a significant piece of flavor though.

Is this something we could put in a Thread as well? (One choice can cause one of your Gentled channelers to be healed.) It gives us more uses for the Gentled Channelers, but still doesn't give us our general use-case.

Right. I actually meant that I thought it was a *good* thing, the time-defeat thing.

Awesome! I thought you mean it was a conflict, but sounds like we agree then!

I'm wondering, say there ARE shadow players - we're sure a shadowspawn-captured seal wouldn't be automatically destroyed, right? That would be too cheap, right (players would set it up so some lone AI-trolloc would capture cities, right?)?

I think Shadowspawn always auto-destroy is fine. If the player can corral a Shadowspawn unit (this is a unit controlled by the Shadowspawn civ, not a Trolloc controlled by anybody) into making the final blow on a weakened city that contains a Seal then having it be broken immediately is a good reward.

I don't think that strategy would ever be reliable, because you need to end your turn and hope the Shadowspawn unit does what you want it to. That's particularly difficult if the defending player's turn is in between yours and the Shadowspawn civ, which will always be the case for the human player in non-multiplayer games, and even in multiplayer games, only players who are at the end of the turn order won't have an "enemy turn" in between those two. Aside from the obvious potential for the Shadowspawn unit to be killed during that enemy player's turn, the enemy city will also heal before the Shadowspawn can move. (So it won't be at 0 even if you brought it all the way down to 0 on your turn, meaning the Shadowspawn civ would probably need to hit the city with multiple units.)

Given how hard all of that is to do, if a Shadow player can pull it off, they've demonstrated that they're already winning to such an extent that they could have broken it the old fashioned way.

ok, agreed. It could snowball a bit, but we can try to hit a balance.

Cool, Forsaken Quests appear more often and give better rewards to more Shadow-y folk!

I can see us "gating" certain quests for higher levels, but at the same time, I can imagine, from a flavor perspective, the forsaken making the low level guys do the truly heinous stuff. So maybe anything should be available to everybody, but the quality of rewards should be different. On the other hand, that makes the Shadow Point thing impossible - we can't have a low-shadow player earn 800 shadow in one blast, whereas that wouldn't be as huge for a level 7'er.

I think flavor heinous is a bit different from Shadow-rewardable evil. I agree that the Forsaken would have lesser Darkfriends do more hands-dirty kind of tasks (killing villages full of innocent people, clearly a very evil thing to do, and worth some Shadow points). But only the higher-ups are trusted with missions that inflict true, world-spanning damage. One of Taim's objectives is a good example here - he's clearly one of the higher-ups (analogous to being part of a higher Shadow tier civ) because he gets promoted to be a Forsaken. He steals the Seals of the Dark One's prison and gives them to the other Forsaken. That's not a particularly violent action, in and of itself. (He took some stuff, nobody got hurt on hand.) But if the plan had gone as it was intended, his actions would have doomed all of Creation to eternal darkness. Serious Shadow points for something like that.

That seems like a good flavor-splanation (this has become one of my new favorite not-words) for "more evil" tasks that are worth more Shadow points being reserved for the higher tier civs.

OK. I'm totally convinced. We'll have to make sure there's ample opportunities for light points as well (for other players), otherwise we might be creating situations where there's tons of Level 8 shadow civs and the lights are all much less... unless we sort of like the poetry of that.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age, called the Third Age by some, an Age yet to come, an Age long past, a Trolloc appeared near Taren Ferry. The Trolloc was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time... except for Taren Ferry. Taren Ferry is gonna burn.

We could just paste this into the Quest result description, as is.

Definitely agree that we need opportunities for generating Light points to offset this. Part of it is probably Threads paying out more Light points for Light choices than the Shadow choices do.

Yes, those sound good, for sure. Also, we could have the civ send units into the blight. Like, march 2 Aes Sedai successfully to Thakan'dar or something.

Yes, also good ones!

the +4 designation could work, though are we ok with that meaning a city of less than 5 or 6 population is essentially impossible to achieve that status? Crunching numbers... Just FYi, in a small city (5 pop), Light 8 has 0 DFCs, while Shadow 8has 3. At 10 pop, that goes to 1 vs 5. At size 40, though, it's 5 vs 20.

I'm was a little confused as to your final point, but now I think I get it - you're suggesting that that Shadow 1 city should be Cowardly instead, right, even though its more than 4 away? I should point out, though, that in a city of size 20, Shadow 1 and 8 would only be 4 points away, exactly. Of size 21, they'd actually only be 3 points away! Of course this difference is larger with bigger cities, but it's also quite smaller with small cities. My point is that it's only in pretty rare scenarious that a Shadow 1 city will even be labeled Sanctimonious at all.

Yep, you've got it with the Shadow 1 city owned by a tier 8 Shadow civ - it would be "Cowardly". However, see below!

I think it's fine that it's difficult for small cities to ever be labelled with the "more extreme" of the two descriptions for the "direction" they're leaning in, compared to the player. Our descriptors are quite forceful, so the circumstances that cause them shouldn't be very ordinary.

Looking at your math, I see what you mean about it being very difficult for a net Shadow city (pop follows a tier 1 progression) owned by a tier 8 Shadow civ to be labelled "Sanctimonious," even if we use a "difference of 4" rule across the board. For the sake of consistency, let's go with +/-4 as our limitation on the "more extreme" description. (Cowardly vs Sanctimonious)

Cool, well that's that. I can't help but feel like my responses aren't all that helpful this time around!

No worries, sometimes when I post I feel like I'm only raising a bunch more questions, rather than suggesting solutions. It's just the way the discussion goes sometimes!

 

[counterpoint]

Last Updated: 4/9/2015
Domination Victory Summary

• The Domination Victory will remain essentially the same as it is in base CiV.
  [*]It has been brought forward as an idea that Governors could potentially play a role in making the Domination Victory either harder or easier. Some mechanics that could exist:
  
  • Governors could need to be present in all capitals for the Domination Victory to occur
  • Governors could help reduce unhappiness due to occupation, or the time it takes for a city to become ordered.
  • Governors could be required to end civil disorder in a capital city.

 

[counterpoint]

Stuff about warmonger penalties

totally agree! No intra-Light hate!

The Succession War in Andor would be another great scenario.

But anyway, main game for the moment. We could make it part of the Policies and Philosophies stuff - though we'd have to paint it in a "positive" light so it could provide some kind of bonus in that case.

Definitely room for it to come up in the Threads. How would we work it into Compact resolutions? Seems like Succession wars are internal things.

OK, I'm thinking policies, philosophies, and Threads. Compact resolutions does seem pretty fishy.

One other idea: "Rebels have appeared." You know, at -10+ happiness. We could re-brand it as "An unruly House has attempted to seize the throne!" or something like that. Yeah?

Right, sounds like we won't be able to make a decision here until we go into more detail on Governors. I don't think we should move onto that (or anything else) until we wrap up the Forsaken Quests and Threads discussions, just so we can avoid having an LB-level discussion parallelization again. (I enjoy the current length of our posts, only takes just shy of two hours to reply, most times! Gives us time to do other things on a given evening.)

Yeah, govs can be later. And yes, yes, much better that the posts are smaller now!

Just so we do have a direction when we finish there, what's our next topic after Forsaken Quests and Threads?

Would you like to write the shortest summary ever on the Domination victory? (Primarily consisting of, like, one point of red text for us to revisit post-Governors.)

Dom summary written!

Next topics.... Maybe GP and guvnuhs? I think that essentially must happen before we do policies, and probably beliefs/customs as well.

I figured since the books explicitly call out Gentling via the Tower's influence as something that was slowly culling the ability to Channel out of the population (or at least strongly suggesting that was the case) that there should be a nod to that here. However, this does have mechanical concerns, as you've noted. And related to what we'll cover below, this is actually much more appropriate as a modifier for channeler spawn rate, rather than False Dragon spawn rate. So Authority being Neutral FD spawn rate (maybe even slight raise?) sounds good to me. A slight raise would mean Philosophies would (on average) contribute to a ramp-up in FD rate toward the end of the game. There are other factors meaning there may not be a ramp up, but this is a small piece of pushing us in that direction.

What do we want to happen overall? Ramp up of FDs heading towards the LB seems sensible to me.

I like this plan. Keep FD spawn rate (though not male spawn rate) neutral for Authority. But yes, I'd say FD rate should overall be increased in the late stages of the game. And then it would presumably cease completely one the LB starts.

I was thinking False Dragon rate operated quite separately from male channeler rate, on a mechanical level. That it was civilization's use of channelers that caused False Dragons to spawn more often. It's a representation of the channelers being more important in that civ's culture (compared to somewhere they are shunned), inflating the chances of one of the civ's male channelers to take it upon himself to declare himself the Dragon.

Obviously having more male channelers will contribute toward a civ using more channelers overall. So the male channeler rate has knock-on effects in the False Dragon spawn rate, but how male channelers are actually spawned, what we use to determine how quickly that happens etc., doesn't directly factor into the False Dragon rate. Only the resulting frequency does.

"Use" would be measured by how often the player attacks (or defends) with channeling units, how many are spawned (so between training channelers and male channelers spawning), and any channeling-related buildings they build.

We should totally decide on what the contributing factors are to male channeler spawn rate as well though!

OK, I'm mostly with you here, I think. I think we might be going in the direction of making it too needlessly complex. To me, the things that really matter here are:

Male Channeling rate:
- Population
- Policy: Fear (-) vs Tolerance (+)
- Philosophy: Oppression (--) vs Authority (-) vs Liberation (+ or ++)
- Whether you gentle your male channeler units when they appear.
- incidental buildings and wonders and such - possibly (not necessarily, though, as some civs would want more of these, some less)
- female channeler use?

False Dragon rate
- Population
- Policy: Fear (-) vs Tolerance (+)
- Philosophy: Oppression (-) vs Authority (neutral?) vs Liberation (+)
- Whether you gentle your male channeler units when they appear
- incidental buildings and wonders and such - most definitely. FDs are bad for everybody, so it seems normal to have buildings and wonders that would lower their rate.
- female channeler use?

What I note about the above is that these two lists are almost identical. This makes me think that it's unnecessary to separate them. I mean, obviously they're not the *same* (you don't spawn an FD every time you spawn a saidin unit), but I don't see why it isn't simplest just to make FDs a function of Male Channeler rate, and then just apply extra modifiers to it on top of that. Seems simpler to me.

The whole "using" the channeler thing is part of what seems weird to me. I feel like not gentling them is enough. What you do with them is irrelevant, I'd say. If they're alive and kicking, they "count." Otherwise, we're essentially causing warlike civs to necessarily have a higher incidence of male channelers and FDs, which seems like an unintended effect.

The question, then, is how would this work? What's the difference between gentling him immediately, and gentling him 100 turns later? Perhaps saidin units keep coming regardless of your actions, but every time you gentle a saidin unit, a big chunk of FD points is taken away (or it applies a modifier for some amount of turns).

I'm not totally sold on the building channeling units creates more male channelers thing. It's hard to articulate why. I *could* see it that way, but I also could be convinced of the opposite. Authority civs seem to me to be very heavy on the female-use... but then we're supposed to be "culling" the spark out of the populace. Also, I can imagine that a bunch of females hanging around would *discourage* FDs - Red sisters be scary! So these things don't quite add up for me. Also, I think that's mechanically problematic - it's not totallyintuitive to the player, so I'd rather players not have to worry that if they use their female units, they'll get more males.

We're probably thinking something like GP-range though, right? Like our previous comparison for Alignment points of Gold vs Happiness, I'm thinking FD points is more like GP points than Happiness. Except FD points are accumulated civ-wide instead of per city (GP points being per city).

agree with this.

100 sounds like a good objective for Threads. Maybe even more than that. Our idea generation for the Edicts is probably a good comparative example here. I think Threads can afford to have a lot more mechanical similarity between them than Edicts can between each other. (So we have a ton of Edicts that just give yields, whereas each Edict had its own flavorful twist to it, particularly when we were working to fit things in with the objectives of the Ajahs.) So, for comparison, we came up with a total of 85 Edicts (go team! 22 Generic and 9 for Each Ajah).

I'd say 100 sounds like a good number, but we'll see how many we end up with.

I don't know if we're going to want to (or necessarily be able) to rebalance in broad strokes across all of the Threads at once. (We've decided bonus X is too powerful, let's reduce it across the board - I think we'd look at each place it was used and see if it's too strong when compared to the other options on the same Thread.)

So I think I'm leaning towards a case-by-case basis for balancing. We'll observe some patterns as we go and be able to apply them to later Threads ("this value worked for Faith, so we can give the player marginally more gold for an equivalent-ish reward" and other such truisms), which should give us some efficiency gains over time.

I am convinced! We need to do them one at a time.

epic blurb about the different methods of coming up with Threads

OK! Well done! Here are my thoughts:

Given the choice between mechanical first and flavor first, I would think flavor-first would be the most successful. The reason being is that we could then just spew out everything we want in there, figure out the mechanics associated with the ones we like, and then see where it leaves us? No science ones? OK, let's brainstorm for some of those. Need some epic shadow ones? OK, crunch the numbers for them and come up with the flavor later. I think this would be much quicker than doing a lot of mechanics first.

That said, I'm fine doing it the way you suggest, where we take turns going Flavor-Mechanic-Flavor-Mechanic, etc. But I'm not sure I like the division of labor. I know I certainly would prefer to do flavor ones at first (incidentally, I'm taking a long flight this weekend, I might be able to take a notebook and do a great deal of brainstorming on the trip).

So, adjustment to your proposal (which you actually mentioned yourself near the end there:

1) We *both* start with Flavor. Each spewing out as many as we can think of.
2) We attach mechanics to those.
3) We'll certainly still be shy of 100. Now we start "phase two," which is "Mechanics First." We enter in the mechanics we *need* or want.
4) We attach flavor to those.
5) Rinse-repeat.
6) Profit.

To me the division of labor just thinks a little odd. Obviously things don't have to go in this order, but as far as "broad strokes" go, this makes sense to me.

What do you think?

When we were coming up with the Edicts, I think having incremental numerical targets was quite helpful. We started off just making them up. Then I remember targeting at-least-6 per Ajah, which was an achievable goal after our first round of ideas. Then we decided to balance it up per Ajah (and go for an across-the-board increase, so every Ajah had as many as our most Edictful from the at-least-6 process), which was also an achievable immediate goal.

So regardless which of the 3 systems above for coming up with new Threads we use, an objective like "10 each for a total of 20 this iteration" could be a good starting point.

totally fine with this, but I also feel like we could just puke em all up and see how far that takes us.

What we *don't * want is us duplicating each other's work - that's perhaps the big advantage of the "division of labor" method. I do think necessarily breaking it up into phases that are smaller will help prevent that - I won't go on some three hour vision quest where I'm coming up with all sorts of Shaido-related Threads, only to fine you post the same thing 20 minutes before.

But honestly, I'm fine either way.

Also, before we make up any Threads, there are probably some other general-Thread-restrictions we should have in mind. I'm assuming some Threads are only available after a certain era? (Since threads are per-player, we can use each player's era individually in most cases, though some might be gated on World Era - stuff that hinges on Events: Trolloc Wars, High King, Last Battle.)

Also, some Threads will "obsolete" right? So they stop cropping up after a certain time. (Probably the same era and world era mechanism as above.)

Will some have specific tech prerequisites? Resource prerequisites? Seems like some might also have unit prerequisites (never appears unless the civ has at least one of X unit type).

Worth noting that all of these prerequisites are invisible to the player. They just see Threads popping up (at an interval which I have forgotten, but we have defined, right?). This is for us to place Threads that only make sense in certain circumstances. (A Thread that involves a Trolloc Wars memorial shouldn't pop up before the Trolloc Wars. Things like that.)

Good thinking, bringing this stuff up. My thoughts:

I'd say some, but not all of them, are era-locked. Random jurisprudence stuff is probably eternal. Usually player-era should be fine.

I'd say, yes, some of them will obsolete.

Question - do Threads duplicate between players? Or, once one player gets one, nobody else will ever see it?

I think tech/resource prerequisites could be possible, but I'd think they'd be on a case-by-case basic. I think player-era may adequately stand in for tech prereqs. Resources and units... I guess that depends if we get ideas that seem to demand that.

yes! totally invisible to the players (mechanism, I mean)

I think Alignment will have to be case by case, because the Alignment payoff is intertwined between both the mechanical reward and the flavorful aspects of the situation. As you've said, we want to avoid situations where one result pays out 1000 Light and the other only 50, for comparable yield payouts (or whatever else the player is getting from each choice). Because that is effectively an unbalanced Thread - if you're Shadow then the 50 payout is an almost automatic choice. If you're Light, the 1000 one is almost always objectively better.

Right. I'm with you on this, now.

Good call with the chapter titles! So here's a list of all of the chapters (except AMoL). A lot of them are surprisingly direct, I haven't seen a good "Golden Age" name replacement from a quick scan through.

ok, I'm going to make a pass through the chapter names for flavor mining purposes, and post it in a stand-alone thread. I'll be simply making a point of listing the ones that feel "cool" enough to potentially pop up later. Feel free to put them in that "Flavor" thread you made.

Ok, cool. Just to clarify, Cleansing Saidin doesn't affect the madness of existing units, only stops anyone from accumulating more madness. This is both accurate and quite cool mechanically, I think.

so a single Edict that reduces global madness levels by 1 seems really cool. But otherwise madness reduction cannot happen in any way.

good. agreed.

Very good point, I have clearly been severely mixed up. I didn't put the "Cure for Gentling" Edict into the list at all.

And you make a very good point about Cure for Stilling vs Gentling. Mechanically the effects are very different, but flavor wise they are the same process. The only possible flavor-splanation I can see is the whole "healed by other gender gives you full strength" and classifying that as the "cure." So a Cure of Stilling is gathering up male channelers to heal women who've been Stilled. A Cure for Gentling is dispatching Aes Sedai to heal Gentled men. Is that a distinction we want to make?

Cool, so even if we solve the Edict stuff above, we need another way to access Gentling-healing, otherwise I don't think it's worth having the distinct Gentled Channeler units (because there's only a chance, determined by an external entity, to determine if they will ever be useful/important). It's a significant piece of flavor though.

Is this something we could put in a Thread as well? (One choice can cause one of your Gentled channelers to be healed.) It gives us more uses for the Gentled Channelers, but still doesn't give us our general use-case.

I see you walking down the aisle, Gentling-Cure-Mechanics, and you're so beautiful, I love you so much, but still, I'm getting cold feet. Is this marriage right? Have I "lived" enough? Am I ready to settle?

This is all dragging be back down into the "this is too complex to be worth it" abyss....

If we really do really want to have this mechanic (beyond just flavor like the "Cure of Stilling" Edict).... I could see unifying them into one edict. But I think having them stand separate could work as well. But... I'm still coming up on empty as to what else would make this happen. Compact Resolution "Healing Mission"?

I think Shadowspawn always auto-destroy is fine. If the player can corral a Shadowspawn unit (this is a unit controlled by the Shadowspawn civ, not a Trolloc controlled by anybody) into making the final blow on a weakened city that contains a Seal then having it be broken immediately is a good reward.

...

Given how hard all of that is to do, if a Shadow player can pull it off, they've demonstrated that they're already winning to such an extent that they could have broken it the old fashioned way.

again. Agreed!

I think flavor heinous is a bit different from Shadow-rewardable evil. I agree that the Forsaken would have lesser Darkfriends do more hands-dirty kind of tasks (killing villages full of innocent people, clearly a very evil thing to do, and worth some Shadow points). But only the higher-ups are trusted with missions that inflict true, world-spanning damage. One of Taim's objectives is a good example here - he's clearly one of the higher-ups (analogous to being part of a higher Shadow tier civ) because he gets promoted to be a Forsaken. He steals the Seals of the Dark One's prison and gives them to the other Forsaken. That's not a particularly violent action, in and of itself. (He took some stuff, nobody got hurt on hand.) But if the plan had gone as it was intended, his actions would have doomed all of Creation to eternal darkness. Serious Shadow points for something like that.

OK, sure. Some can be gated by Tier!

Yep, you've got it with the Shadow 1 city owned by a tier 8 Shadow civ - it would be "Cowardly". However, see below!

I think it's fine that it's difficult for small cities to ever be labelled with the "more extreme" of the two descriptions for the "direction" they're leaning in, compared to the player. Our descriptors are quite forceful, so the circumstances that cause them shouldn't be very ordinary.

Looking at your math, I see what you mean about it being very difficult for a net Shadow city (pop follows a tier 1 progression) owned by a tier 8 Shadow civ to be labelled "Sanctimonious," even if we use a "difference of 4" rule across the board. For the sake of consistency, let's go with +/-4 as our limitation on the "more extreme" description. (Cowardly vs Sanctimonious)

OK, this stuff is in the summary. I'm still a little unsure on how Neutral Civs work. They're obviously only Balanced if they're at the exact right spot. What is the full spread:?

4+ DFCs - Chaotic (2S4S) or Corrupted (WNLE)?
1-3 DFCs - Corrupted (2S4S) or Corrupted (WNLE) or Cowardly (NSE)?
0 (relative to ideal cycle) - Balanced
-1-3 DFCs - Fanatical (2L4L) or Sanctimonious (WNSE) or Uncommitted (NLE)?
-4 DFCs - Fanatical (2L4L) or Sanctimonious (WNSE)?

So which is it?

 

[counterpoint]

Here are the chapter Titles that popped out to me as being ripe for inclusion somewhere in the mod (Beliefs, Tenets, Policies, UA names, Threads, etc.). I am not, at this time, commenting on how we might use such things.

tEotW
An Empty Road
Tellings of the Wheel
Shadow's Waiting
Listen to the Wind
Eyes without Pity
Play for your Supper
The Web Tightens
The Dark One Stirs

tGR
The Flame of Tar Valon
Blood Calls Blood
Glimmers of the Pattern
Five Will Ride Forth
The Grave is No Bar to My Call

tDR
The Bite of Thorns
A Trap to Spring
The First Toss
Within the Weave
A Different Dance
Daughter of the Night
What is Written in Prophesy
People of the Dragon

tSR
Seeds of Shadow
The Road to the Spear
He Who Comes with the Dawn
A Missing Leaf
The Tinker's Sword
Goldeneyes

tFoH
Fanning the Sparks
Pale Shadows
The Far Snows
The Threads Burn
Glowing Embers

LoC
Lion on the Hill
The Storm Gathers
A Saying in the Borderlands

aCoS
Hill of the Golden Dawn
A Broken Crown
Sealed to the Flame

tPoD
Fog of War, Storm of Battle
A Time for Iron
Crimsonthorn

WH
The Scent of Madness
Questions of Treason
Out of Thin Air
What the Aelfinn Said

CoT
A Fan of Colors
The Scent of a Dream
Blacksmith's Puzzle
Something Flickers

KoD
Embers Falling on Dry Grass
The Dark One's Touch
The Golden Crane
As if the World Were Fog
Prince of the Ravens

tGS
Tears from Steel
The Ways of Honor
Embers and Ash
A Halo of Blackness
To Be Forged Again
The One He Lost
Bathed in Light

ToM
Questions of Leadership
The Pattern Groans
Lighter than a Feather
Blood in the Air
Into the Void
Court of the Sun
The Light of the World

aMoL
By Grace and Banners Fallen
To Require a Boon
A Silence Like Screaming
Those Who Fight
A Field of Glass
Tendrils of Mist

New Spring
A Wish Fulfilled
Shreds of Serenity

 

[S3rgeus]

totally agree! No intra-Light hate!

Cool, edited this into the diplo summary.

OK, I'm thinking policies, philosophies, and Threads. Compact resolutions does seem pretty fishy.

Ok, this is for us to keep in mind when we're making those then!

One other idea: "Rebels have appeared." You know, at -10+ happiness. We could re-brand it as "An unruly House has attempted to seize the throne!" or something like that. Yeah?

This sounds great in theory, but the units created by rebellions will be Dragonsworn. Unless we want to get into a whole rebellion system (where new civs can rise up and such), I think it might be strange to describe them as belonging to a house that's a part of your own civilization.

Dom summary written!

Next topics.... Maybe GP and guvnuhs? I think that essentially must happen before we do policies, and probably beliefs/customs as well.

Awesome, thanks! I've linked to the Domination summary from the first post.

GPs and Governors sounds like a good next topic.

I like this plan. Keep FD spawn rate (though not male spawn rate) neutral for Authority. But yes, I'd say FD rate should overall be increased in the late stages of the game. And then it would presumably cease completely one the LB starts.

Cool, I've updated the misc summary.

OK, I'm mostly with you here, I think. I think we might be going in the direction of making it too needlessly complex. To me, the things that really matter here are:

Male Channeling rate:
- Population
- Policy: Fear (-) vs Tolerance (+)
- Philosophy: Oppression (--) vs Authority (-) vs Liberation (+ or ++)
- Whether you gentle your male channeler units when they appear.
- incidental buildings and wonders and such - possibly (not necessarily, though, as some civs would want more of these, some less)
- female channeler use?

False Dragon rate
- Population
- Policy: Fear (-) vs Tolerance (+)
- Philosophy: Oppression (-) vs Authority (neutral?) vs Liberation (+)
- Whether you gentle your male channeler units when they appear
- incidental buildings and wonders and such - most definitely. FDs are bad for everybody, so it seems normal to have buildings and wonders that would lower their rate.
- female channeler use?

What I note about the above is that these two lists are almost identical. This makes me think that it's unnecessary to separate them. I mean, obviously they're not the *same* (you don't spawn an FD every time you spawn a saidin unit), but I don't see why it isn't simplest just to make FDs a function of Male Channeler rate, and then just apply extra modifiers to it on top of that. Seems simpler to me.

The player won't be tracking either of these though, so we don't need to worry about complexity of presentation to the player. They'll just see False Dragons and male channelers appearing over time and have some descriptive text which says what actions will affect the rate of each one. ("Adopting this policy will reduce your False Dragon spawn rate by 30%") I agree that those two lists are quite similar, but the differences are subsets of the overall whole - so we'd want to be applying partial modifiers for some of the yield sources for male channelers when working out a False Dragon rate.

We only need one mechanic to want to modify one without modifying the other for the whole system to break down, which seems like a strange dependency to me. Anything that adds a flat change to FD rate effectively means we're tracking them separately anyway, except the association between the two values makes it harder to follow it back to individual sources. Anything that modifies male channeler rate will always modify FD rate in the same way (though not always in the exact same proportion). If FD rate is purely a modified male channeler rate, then modifying male channeler rate will always produce a more pronounced effect for FDs.

Say your male channeler rate is +5, which makes your FD rate +7. (It's ~40% positive modifier for this civ at the moment.) Some new effect drops your male channeler rate to +2, which pulls your FD rate to +3. With larger numbers the effect would be more exaggerated, and I'm not sure we want to commit to permanently tying those two values together. I think it would be good for us to have the freedom to modify them in isolation. So most things that modify male channeler rate and FD rate will affect both of them, but they're able to affect them differently if that is appropriate to the mechanic at hand.

It also may be that we want to adjust the relative incidence of male channelers in general vs False Dragons. Keeping the underlying numbers locked together makes that more difficult.

The whole "using" the channeler thing is part of what seems weird to me. I feel like not gentling them is enough. What you do with them is irrelevant, I'd say. If they're alive and kicking, they "count." Otherwise, we're essentially causing warlike civs to necessarily have a higher incidence of male channelers and FDs, which seems like an unintended effect.

The question, then, is how would this work? What's the difference between gentling him immediately, and gentling him 100 turns later? Perhaps saidin units keep coming regardless of your actions, but every time you gentle a saidin unit, a big chunk of FD points is taken away (or it applies a modifier for some amount of turns).

I like the idea of that not Gentling your male channelers makes False Dragons appear more often. A very straightforward way to do that is to have male channeler units produce False Dragon points. If the player leaves them alive for 100 turns, they will be accruing points faster for that time. But if they Gentle them right away, their False Dragon incidence is the same as any baseline civ with their current population.

In my first read through of this post, I figured I would agree that warlike civs having more False Dragons would be an unintended consequence. But then again, defending civs that use channelers are also increasing their False Dragon rate. In both cases, the civ is raising channelers up as something to be aspired to (as war heroes, saviors, or last hopes, in either attacker or defender case, depending on how the war is going). This seems like something that would cause more False Dragons to show up.

I'm not totally sold on the building channeling units creates more male channelers thing. It's hard to articulate why. I *could* see it that way, but I also could be convinced of the opposite. Authority civs seem to me to be very heavy on the female-use... but then we're supposed to be "culling" the spark out of the populace. Also, I can imagine that a bunch of females hanging around would *discourage* FDs - Red sisters be scary! So these things don't quite add up for me. Also, I think that's mechanically problematic - it's not totallyintuitive to the player, so I'd rather players not have to worry that if they use their female units, they'll get more males.

I don't think I'd characterize Authority civs as being heavy on female channeling use. The Tower emphasizes a lot of other aspects of their existence (diplomacy, history) for a city-state run by people who can use magic. I would think Manetheren or Shara and even the Seanchan demonstrate more "use" of female channeling. Aes Sedai don't seem to use their magic that much in the everyday humdrum of what they do. What they are is quite heavy on not having male channeling use - as you've said, Red Sisters are specifically dedicated to rooting it out.

The whole culling thing, I figured was a nod to channeling being a genetic trait, but no one in the WoT-verse understood enough to articulate that. Since most male channelers die or are Gentled and most Aes Sedai don't have children (and most female channelers are Aes Sedai), the channeling trait dwindles over time.

This seems to me like non-Aes Sedai female channelers would be a better source for male channeler points. We could take a similar approach to male channelers contributing False Dragon points above - make non-Aes Sedai female channelers generate male channeler points. (Male channelers would obviously do so as well.)

In terms of intuition for the player, it's easier to explain if we do include Aes Sedai in the generation of male channeler points. Then it's relatively simply "doing more channeling-favoring things cause more male channelers to appear among your people." We could still explain it to players even if Aes Sedai didn't contribute though: "channeling activities not policed by the Tower tend to cause more male channelers to be born among your people."

That's a general guideline for the player to work from, and then they'll see specific policies/buildings/philosophical tenets call out that they cause more or less male channelers to be born.

I'd say 100 sounds like a good number, but we'll see how many we end up with.

It's a good starting point then!

OK! Well done! Here are my thoughts:

Given the choice between mechanical first and flavor first, I would think flavor-first would be the most successful. The reason being is that we could then just spew out everything we want in there, figure out the mechanics associated with the ones we like, and then see where it leaves us? No science ones? OK, let's brainstorm for some of those. Need some epic shadow ones? OK, crunch the numbers for them and come up with the flavor later. I think this would be much quicker than doing a lot of mechanics first.

That said, I'm fine doing it the way you suggest, where we take turns going Flavor-Mechanic-Flavor-Mechanic, etc. But I'm not sure I like the division of labor. I know I certainly would prefer to do flavor ones at first (incidentally, I'm taking a long flight this weekend, I might be able to take a notebook and do a great deal of brainstorming on the trip).

So, adjustment to your proposal (which you actually mentioned yourself near the end there:

1) We *both* start with Flavor. Each spewing out as many as we can think of.
2) We attach mechanics to those.
3) We'll certainly still be shy of 100. Now we start "phase two," which is "Mechanics First." We enter in the mechanics we *need* or want.
4) We attach flavor to those.
5) Rinse-repeat.
6) Profit.

To me the division of labor just thinks a little odd. Obviously things don't have to go in this order, but as far as "broad strokes" go, this makes sense to me.

What do you think?

Awesome, this sounds good to me. Just to be sure, we're definitely not doing any final wording at this stage, right?

It also makes sense to me that there are some threads that are mechanically the same, but swap out a single element. Like a unit type or yield type. Their flavor may vary, but they accomplish exactly the same thing mechanically. Perhaps some Threads even have exactly the same results (or at least some results are exactly the same as others present on other Threads), but are distinct because they're differently flavored.

So, in the spirit of getting us up and running, from the Flavor-first approach! Threads:

Format:
Thread Name
Flavor: What's does the player need to address?
Choice A: the first of their available choices
Choice B: the second, and so on
Restrictions: Any era, instancing, unit, Alignment, tech, or other restrictions

Unrest in your Lands
Flavor: Dragonsworn are troubling your farmers and villagers. Do something about it.
Choice A: Drive them off
Choice B: Let them fend for themselves
Choice C: Encourage the Dragonsworn zealots

Accused Darkfriend
Flavor: A man has been accused of being a Darkfriend and brought to your court for judgement.
Choice A: Execute him
Choice B: Let a jury decide
Choice C: Free him

Falsely Accused?
Flavor: An alleged Darkfriend claims he has been wrongfully accused and beseeches you for aid, fleeing from death at the hands of his former friends.
Choice A: Execute him
Choice B: Finance a further investigation
Choice C: Drive off the peasants chasing him
Choice D: Help him escape the country

Commissioned Artwork
Flavor: A famous artist wishes for you to consider his work to adorn your courtrooms and palace.
Choice A: Turn him away
Choice B: Purchase his artwork
Choice C: Arrange for his work to go "missing"

Famine Near <city you own here>
Flavor: People are starving in the outlying villages near <city>
Choice A: Send aid
Choice B: Ignore them
Choice C: Incentivize merchants to trade there, in lieu of aid from the crown
Choice D: Smugglers near <city> can be convinced to spare some supplies in exchange for leniency

Looming Threat
Flavor: The Blight never sleeps and its borders must be constantly policed. You are asked to send soldiers to help keep the Shadow at bay.
Choice A: Refuse
Choice B: Send soldiers
Choice C: Hire mercenaries to go instead of your national army
Restriction: must have revealed at least one hex of Blight (or, must have met a civ with lands bordering the Blight?)

Emissary from the Tower
Flavor: An emissary from the White Tower has arrived at your capital. She expects to have an audience with you.
Choice A: Occupy yourself elsewhere
Choice B: Greet the Sister with a grand ceremony
Choice C: Meet with her at a formal dinner
Restriction: must have met the Tower

A Tower Divided
Flavor: A Sister from the White Tower has been residing in your capital for some time. Your spies report she has been associating with a suspected Darkfriend.
Choice A: Confront the Sister
Choice B: Alert the Tower
Choice C: "Silence" your men who have knowledge of these events
Choice D: Have her arrested
Restriction: must have met the Tower

Cost of Progress
Flavor: Two inventors both claim to have made improvements to the simple horse-drawn carriage, allowing more goods to be transported by fewer horses. They have petitioned for sponsorship to continue this research further. One of the two is suspiciously more affordable than the other.
Choice A: Cheaper one (you know what they say about gift horses)
Choice B: More expensive one
Choice C: Our carriages work just fine as they are, thank you

Imported Luxury
Flavor: Your people clamor for <insert resource you don't have>. A merchants' guild have offered to supply it for significantly less than market price, though their practices have been suspect in the past. Foreign governments are willing to trade for a fair price.
Choice A: Propaganda campaign claiming <resource> is immoral, to convince people they're better off
Choice B: Purchase trading rights from foreign diplomat
Choice C: Purchase from shady merchants
Choice D: Ignore your people's demands - let them learn who is in charge

Conscription
Flavor: Your advisers have recommended you conscript more soldiers for the war effort.
Choice A: Conscript far and wide - we need the men!
Choice B: Conscript villagers from border towns in nearby civilizations
Choice C: Tempt the Dragonsworn to your cause with coin
Choice D: We are a volunteer only army in this here kingdom
Restriction: must be at war with a major civ

I'm also going to totally cheat and suggest the Hawkwing Thread from a few posts back:

Artur Hawkwing has been ripped from the World of Dreams and now exists in the Pattern, isolated in Shadowspawn territory.

Option A: Send soldiers to help him
Cost: -100 Gold, select X combined military strength of units to be destroyed
Result: Receive a melee Hero unit named Artur Hawkwing
(You could swap for Gaidal Cain or any other melee Hero via pure text. Other hero types (like Birgitte ranged) would only involve a unit type change for the reward.)

Option B: Abandon him to the Shadow
Cost: Nothing
Result: 400 Shadow points, (do we want any Decisions to have different results for differently aligned players? This result calls out for: Shadow players receive 2 Trolloc units, Light players have X fewer Shadowspawn spawn in their territory for 5 turns (they are busy killing Hawkwing instead of you).)

Option C: Rescue and Elevate Hawkwing in your Government
Cost: -400 Gold, select X combined military strength of units to be destroyed
Result: +100 Light, +5 Prestige per turn (culture players like this)

It even comes with some free additional Threads. Swap out Hawkwing for Birgitte, Gaidal Cain, Jain Farstrider, etc. and you've got a brand new Thread.

Also, restrictions: EotD or EoEB era, Only one instance per game

Is this the kind of starting point we want? The right kind of scenarios for Threads? Looking back at the kinds of bonuses we liked, I've still left out a lot (and a lot of other interesting combinations for the kinds of rewards that make most sense with the above). I've got some ideas about what the actual mechanical rewards could be for some of the choices above - should I just include that in the suggestions from here on?

Also, it's very easy to fall into the trap of Shadow choices = cheap version of same Light choice. It makes sense that some of them are like that, but I've tried to avoid that direct comparison when flavorful alternatives popped up.

totally fine with this, but I also feel like we could just puke em all up and see how far that takes us.

What we *don't * want is us duplicating each other's work - that's perhaps the big advantage of the "division of labor" method. I do think necessarily breaking it up into phases that are smaller will help prevent that - I won't go on some three hour vision quest where I'm coming up with all sorts of Shaido-related Threads, only to fine you post the same thing 20 minutes before.

But honestly, I'm fine either way.

I was looking forward to that Shaido-related vision quest. Had it all planned out and everything.

More seriously, totally agree, we don't want to double up. I suppose the best way to do that is to make sure our ideas are posted up as soon as possible after we come up with them, so the other person has less time to work on a duplicate concept.

Good thinking, bringing this stuff up. My thoughts:

I'd say some, but not all of them, are era-locked. Random jurisprudence stuff is probably eternal. Usually player-era should be fine.

I'd say, yes, some of them will obsolete.

Awesome, yep, I agree.

Question - do Threads duplicate between players? Or, once one player gets one, nobody else will ever see it?

I think most Threads should just remain unique per player. No player can see what Threads another player has completed anyway, so duplication across players isn't a problem.

I only say most because we might want to avoid doubling up on Threads like the Hawkwing one. Unless we don't mind multiple players having an Artur Hawkwing unit simultaneously?

I think tech/resource prerequisites could be possible, but I'd think they'd be on a case-by-case basic. I think player-era may adequately stand in for tech prereqs. Resources and units... I guess that depends if we get ideas that seem to demand that.

Cool, I think we'll probably have some that require things like this. But it also means that we'll probably want to come back to Threads after we do the tech tree so that we can assess if any of them should address specific technologies that we've introduced.

yes! totally invisible to the players (mechanism, I mean)

Awesome sauce. I've been meaning to ask, which summary do Threads go into? We'll need a master list post too, I assume. Should the Threads-wide concepts (like the one from this quote block) go under a heading in the misc summary and then link to that master list from there?

ok, I'm going to make a pass through the chapter names for flavor mining purposes, and post it in a stand-alone thread. I'll be simply making a point of listing the ones that feel "cool" enough to potentially pop up later. Feel free to put them in that "Flavor" thread you made.

Looks good, thanks! The "Misc Flavor" section in the misc summary was more intended to describe flavor elements we're changing in CiV (like renaming Golden Ages).

This is a good reference for Thread names, as you've said, so I think the Threads that we decide to keep in the end will end up with these names in the relevant summary.

good. agreed.

Cool, looks good! We should mention that capturing a Sealbearer also destroys the Seal.

I see you walking down the aisle, Gentling-Cure-Mechanics, and you're so beautiful, I love you so much, but still, I'm getting cold feet. Is this marriage right? Have I "lived" enough? Am I ready to settle?

This is all dragging be back down into the "this is too complex to be worth it" abyss....

If we really do really want to have this mechanic (beyond just flavor like the "Cure of Stilling" Edict).... I could see unifying them into one edict. But I think having them stand separate could work as well. But... I'm still coming up on empty as to what else would make this happen. Compact Resolution "Healing Mission"?

I think the two effects - +2 Spark (Cure for Stilling) and healing a Gentled male channeler (Cure for Gentling) should remain as separate Edicts, mainly because combining them would make it a very powerful Edict.

An alternative approach that could stop these two Edicts from treading on each others' flavor toes would be to reflavor the +2 Spark Edict. What else could the Tower do that would cause a boost in the incidence of the channeling Spark abroad?

Alternatives:

• Channeling Tutelage (train people to get more use out of their powers, a la Andoran heiresses)
• Spark Awakening (seek out channelers whose Spark is dormant)

Stuff like that? Are we missing out on the flavor of a Cure for Stilling in the process though?

OK, sure. Some can be gated by Tier!

Cool, seems like we'll come back to Forsaken Quests when we're wrapping up Threads?

OK, this stuff is in the summary. I'm still a little unsure on how Neutral Civs work. They're obviously only Balanced if they're at the exact right spot. What is the full spread:?

4+ DFCs - Chaotic (2S4S) or Corrupted (WNLE)?
1-3 DFCs - Corrupted (2S4S) or Corrupted (WNLE) or Cowardly (NSE)?
0 (relative to ideal cycle) - Balanced
-1-3 DFCs - Fanatical (2L4L) or Sanctimonious (WNSE) or Uncommitted (NLE)?
-4 DFCs - Fanatical (2L4L) or Sanctimonious (WNSE)?

So which is it?

I don't know why I thought we already had two "too far" in both directions to use here, but we only actually one each way (Chaotic and Fanatical). Maybe this doesn't need to be so complicated:

Neutral just have Balanced, Corrupted, and Sanctimonious. (Shadow-progression cities are Corrupted, Light-progression are Sanctimonious.)

For Shadow civs we use Chaotic (too Shadow), Cowardly (not Shadow enough and Neutral), and Sanctimonious (Light-progression).

For Light civs we use Fanatical (too Light), Uncommitted (not Light enough and Neutral), and Corrupted (Shadow-progression)?

That way, in all cases, Corrupted means "Shadow-y when you're not Shadow-y". Sanctimonious means "Light when you're not Light". And the other words are all only used once, so they have one meaning.

 

[counterpoint]

This sounds great in theory, but the units created by rebellions will be Dragonsworn. Unless we want to get into a whole rebellion system (where new civs can rise up and such), I think it might be strange to describe them as belonging to a house that's a part of your own civilization.

Forgive me for being blunt, but does it matter that they're dragonsworn? With rare exception (beginning of game), Barbarian units are the same as player units, type-wise, right? I know we might be using civitar's Dragonsworn unit model and stuff, but couldn't we easily just spawn regular units under the control of the Dragonsworn in friendly territory? I don't see the problem here. If it works for a rebellion, it should work here. A house uprising IS a rebellion, essentially, right?

The player won't be tracking either of these though, so we don't need to worry about complexity of presentation to the player. They'll just see False Dragons and male channelers appearing over time and have some descriptive text which says what actions will affect the rate of each one. ("Adopting this policy will reduce your False Dragon spawn rate by 30%") I agree that those two lists are quite similar, but the differences are subsets of the overall whole - so we'd want to be applying partial modifiers for some of the yield sources for male channelers when working out a False Dragon rate.

We only need one mechanic to want to modify one without modifying the other for the whole system to break down, which seems like a strange dependency to me. Anything that adds a flat change to FD rate effectively means we're tracking them separately anyway, except the association between the two values makes it harder to follow it back to individual sources. Anything that modifies male channeler rate will always modify FD rate in the same way (though not always in the exact same proportion). If FD rate is purely a modified male channeler rate, then modifying male channeler rate will always produce a more pronounced effect for FDs.

Say your male channeler rate is +5, which makes your FD rate +7. (It's ~40% positive modifier for this civ at the moment.) Some new effect drops your male channeler rate to +2, which pulls your FD rate to +3. With larger numbers the effect would be more exaggerated, and I'm not sure we want to commit to permanently tying those two values together. I think it would be good for us to have the freedom to modify them in isolation. So most things that modify male channeler rate and FD rate will affect both of them, but they're able to affect them differently if that is appropriate to the mechanic at hand.

It also may be that we want to adjust the relative incidence of male channelers in general vs False Dragons. Keeping the underlying numbers locked together makes that more difficult.

ok ok OK. I'm convinced. They can be and should be separate! I will now go to my room to think about what I've done.

Seriously, though. Yeah, let's do it the way you say.

I like the idea of that not Gentling your male channelers makes False Dragons appear more often. A very straightforward way to do that is to have male channeler units produce False Dragon points. If the player leaves them alive for 100 turns, they will be accruing points faster for that time. But if they Gentle them right away, their False Dragon incidence is the same as any baseline civ with their current population.

You don't actually mean that a unit would produce a point every 100 turns do you? It seems like it should be way more often than that. But yes, by keeping them around, you will accrue points.

In my first read through of this post, I figured I would agree that warlike civs having more False Dragons would be an unintended consequence. But then again, defending civs that use channelers are also increasing their False Dragon rate. In both cases, the civ is raising channelers up as something to be aspired to (as war heroes, saviors, or last hopes, in either attacker or defender case, depending on how the war is going). This seems like something that would cause more False Dragons to show up.

OK, I see this logic. I also think you could argue the opposite could be true as well: Think Seanchan. They use them a lot, but *demonize* them instead of hold them up. So no extra FD rate. By your system, Damane would contribute to FD point generation. Doesn't quite make sense.

I dunno, I think it could be argued, what you're saying, but I'm not sure it's strong enough. Also, I don't see why, mechanically, we'd need this.

On the other hand, *discord* in your civ (perhaps caused by war!) would totally factor. I'd say unhappiness absolutely plays a role in FD point generation!

I don't think I'd characterize Authority civs as being heavy on female channeling use. The Tower emphasizes a lot of other aspects of their existence (diplomacy, history) for a city-state run by people who can use magic. I would think Manetheren or Shara and even the Seanchan demonstrate more "use" of female channeling. Aes Sedai don't seem to use their magic that much in the everyday humdrum of what they do. What they are is quite heavy on not having male channeling use - as you've said, Red Sisters are specifically dedicated to rooting it out.

The whole culling thing, I figured was a nod to channeling being a genetic trait, but no one in the WoT-verse understood enough to articulate that. Since most male channelers die or are Gentled and most Aes Sedai don't have children (and most female channelers are Aes Sedai), the channeling trait dwindles over time.

This seems to me like non-Aes Sedai female channelers would be a better source for male channeler points. We could take a similar approach to male channelers contributing False Dragon points above - make non-Aes Sedai female channelers generate male channeler points. (Male channelers would obviously do so as well.)

In terms of intuition for the player, it's easier to explain if we do include Aes Sedai in the generation of male channeler points. Then it's relatively simply "doing more channeling-favoring things cause more male channelers to appear among your people." We could still explain it to players even if Aes Sedai didn't contribute though: "channeling activities not policed by the Tower tend to cause more male channelers to be born among your people."

That's a general guideline for the player to work from, and then they'll see specific policies/buildings/philosophical tenets call out that they cause more or less male channelers to be born.

Yeah, again, one could argue that celebrating channelers, or making them commonplace, would increase "awareness" of male channelers and channeling in general, and "mainstream" them, making them *less* likely to go rogue. FDs, like Logain, for instance, seem to sometimes pop up out of confusion and misunderstanding for who they are and what exactly the Dragon is.

I can live with this if you insist, but I don't quite get why we need this.

Awesome, this sounds good to me. Just to be sure, we're definitely not doing any final wording at this stage, right?

correct!

It also makes sense to me that there are some threads that are mechanically the same, but swap out a single element. Like a unit type or yield type. Their flavor may vary, but they accomplish exactly the same thing mechanically. Perhaps some Threads even have exactly the same results (or at least some results are exactly the same as others present on other Threads), but are distinct because they're differently flavored.

for sure, agreed!

OK, nice job on the threads. I'll contribute some of my own below. I'll also comment on a *few* of yours - if I don't comment, it means I think it's fine!

Also, all of yours have 3 or 4 choices. Is there any room for some to have only 2?

Accused Darkfriend
Flavor: A man has been accused of being a Darkfriend and brought to your court for judgement.
Choice A: Execute him
Choice B: Let a jury decide
Choice C: Free him

This one is fine, but I can also understand a version of this that has somewhat "darker" choices. Like one where you torture him to get the truth, or something. Or "Extract" the name of his master... so you can talk to them yourself.

Commissioned Artwork
Flavor: A famous artist wishes for you to consider his work to adorn your courtrooms and palace.
Choice A: Turn him away
Choice B: Purchase his artwork
Choice C: Arrange for his work to go "missing"

I like this, but I wonder if it's too "small". Like, millions of things like this occur throughout the thousands of years of your civ, why mention this one?

I think if it were made bigger picture somehow - like a whole "arts program" or something, or else had a more obvious "Weird" component to it - like commissioning art dedicated to the great lord or something - it would feel appropriately "big" to me.

Emissary from the Tower
Flavor: An emissary from the White Tower has arrived at your capital. She expects to have an audience with you.
Choice A: Occupy yourself elsewhere
Choice B: Greet the Sister with a grand ceremony
Choice C: Meet with her at a formal dinner
Restriction: must have met the Tower

I like this one, flavor wise, but I'm not sure how it fits, alignment-wise. Which of these is "Shadow"? I can think of light-compatible reasons for any of these choices. But the truth is, none of them seem to really suggest generating even light points. Being nice to the tower generates niceness with the tower, not necessarily with the Creator.

I know some of them are supposed to be different from binary "good-evil" things, but this one seems sort of non-moral.

Obviously Shadow can just mean "Jerk," not necessarily "Evil," but ignoring the sisters could simply be an appropriate political move.

Cost of Progress
Flavor: Two inventors both claim to have made improvements to the simple horse-drawn carriage, allowing more goods to be transported by fewer horses. They have petitioned for sponsorship to continue this research further. One of the two is suspiciously more affordable than the other.
Choice A: Cheaper one (you know what they say about gift horses)
Choice B: More expensive one
Choice C: Our carriages work just fine as they are, thank you

same with this one - doesn't seem to have anything to do with Alignment. Actually this one also maybe feels a little "small" too. Maybe if there's more of an alignment component to it too, it'll feel "big enough." Cutting corners, ripping them off, something likethat.

Is this the kind of starting point we want? The right kind of scenarios for Threads? Looking back at the kinds of bonuses we liked, I've still left out a lot (and a lot of other interesting combinations for the kinds of rewards that make most sense with the above). I've got some ideas about what the actual mechanical rewards could be for some of the choices above - should I just include that in the suggestions from here on?

Also, it's very easy to fall into the trap of Shadow choices = cheap version of same Light choice. It makes sense that some of them are like that, but I've tried to avoid that direct comparison when flavorful alternatives popped up.

OK, in general I like where you're going, but I do think we should make a point of making these all at least Alignment-related in some key way - even if there isn't a clear evil path or good path, at least there should be choices of varying degrees of goodness. Some of these seem sort of non-moral (note, not *amoral*.) The Truth is, civ doesn't really go down to the low-level minutia of these kinds of decisions - we should only be doing so if it directly serves the "point" of these, which is, fundamentally, Alignment. I think.

Or am I being to boxed-in in my perspective?

Also, regarding whether we should put potential yields/results in with these "flavor only" ones, I say "maybe." Definitely, if we do, it should only be basic, like "+ Gold" or something. But even then... part of me wants to not do so, and tackle it later.

I think most Threads should just remain unique per player. No player can see what Threads another player has completed anyway, so duplication across players isn't a problem.

I only say most because we might want to avoid doubling up on Threads like the Hawkwing one. Unless we don't mind multiple players having an Artur Hawkwing unit simultaneously?

I'd say in some instances, limit it to once per game.

Awesome sauce. I've been meaning to ask, which summary do Threads go into? We'll need a master list post too, I assume. Should the Threads-wide concepts (like the one from this quote block) go under a heading in the misc summary and then link to that master list from there?

I think it should either go in the Misc, with a link to a static post that houses all of them, or it should get it's own Summary, which I don't think would be a problem.

I *do* think, for sure, the threads will need to be corralled into one post though. We don't want to be linking to several branching paths, I don't think.

Looks good, thanks! The "Misc Flavor" section in the misc summary was more intended to describe flavor elements we're changing in CiV (like renaming Golden Ages).

This is a good reference for Thread names, as you've said, so I think the Threads that we decide to keep in the end will end up with these names in the relevant summary.

yeah, we can just leave em here for when we need em.

Cool, looks good! We should mention that capturing a Sealbearer also destroys the Seal.

well, capturing a Sealbearer that has a legitimate seal, that is.

I think the two effects - +2 Spark (Cure for Stilling) and healing a Gentled male channeler (Cure for Gentling) should remain as separate Edicts, mainly because combining them would make it a very powerful Edict.

An alternative approach that could stop these two Edicts from treading on each others' flavor toes would be to reflavor the +2 Spark Edict. What else could the Tower do that would cause a boost in the incidence of the channeling Spark abroad?

Alternatives:

• Channeling Tutelage (train people to get more use out of their powers, a la Andoran heiresses)
• Spark Awakening (seek out channelers whose Spark is dormant)

Stuff like that? Are we missing out on the flavor of a Cure for Stilling in the process though?

I say just rebrand the Stilling one.

Why not use the flavor we'd been talking about for months? "Search for the Old Blood" or something like that?

Cool, seems like we'll come back to Forsaken Quests when we're wrapping up Threads?

yeah, sure!

I don't know why I thought we already had two "too far" in both directions to use here, but we only actually one each way (Chaotic and Fanatical). Maybe this doesn't need to be so complicated:

Neutral just have Balanced, Corrupted, and Sanctimonious. (Shadow-progression cities are Corrupted, Light-progression are Sanctimonious.)

For Shadow civs we use Chaotic (too Shadow), Cowardly (not Shadow enough and Neutral), and Sanctimonious (Light-progression).

For Light civs we use Fanatical (too Light), Uncommitted (not Light enough and Neutral), and Corrupted (Shadow-progression)?

That way, in all cases, Corrupted means "Shadow-y when you're not Shadow-y". Sanctimonious means "Light when you're not Light". And the other words are all only used once, so they have one meaning.

OK, I want to clarify yet again, then. For Shadow and Light civs, are you suggesting we scrap the "four DFCs too much" thing, in favor of simply "Light Progression." Keep in mind that the difference in some small-med sized cities between a light progression and a dark progression might only be ONE or TWO DFCs.... so a city might end up Sanctimonious pretty easily.

Agree with you on how to handle Neutral civ's cities.

OK, spending a few moments now on some Threads. Trying to make some of these directly inspired by events in the books. Let's see if I can stay true to some of the critiques I have of yours and not be a total hypocrite.

EDIT: potential yields included. Finding some of these difficult. I sort of wish there was "corruption" as well, so we could have you do terrible things in the short term, that root out DFs in the long term. Like killing the bad guys.... is that a light or shadow action?

Ter'Angreal Cache
Flavor: Your scholars have discovered an ancient hoard of Items of Power.
Choice A: Send them to the Tower (+ Tower influence, Minor + Light)
Choice B: Take them into your possession (+ Spark for some amount of turns?, - Tower Influence, Minor + Shadow)
Choice C: Sell them (+ Shadow, + Gold)
Choice D: Have them destroyed (- Tower Influence, Diplo Bonus with Oppression/Fear)

Rogue Coven
Flavor: Discovered a sizable group of unregulated female channelers living in your capital.
Choice A: Report them to the Tower (+ Tower Influence)
Choice B: Leave them alone (minor - Tower influence, + Light)
Choice C: Conscript them into your army (Minor + Shadow, - Tower Influence, gain Wilder units)

Class Warfare
Flavor: Reports indicate that the Nobility of your civilization are harassing and assaulting commoners.
Choice A: Legalize their conduct (- Happiness, + Gold, + Shadow)
Choice B: Criminalize their conduct (+ Happiness, + Light, - Gold)
Choice C: Do nothing (minor + Shadow)

Slave Trade
Flavor: Your patrols have found a merchant from another land transporting your smallfolk to be sold as slaves!
Choice A: Hang the merchant and free your people. Increase patrols in this area (+ Happiness, sacrifice one military unit, + Light))
Choice B: Demand a percentage of his profits (+ Gold, + Shadow)
Choice C: Let the merchant go, but free your people (minor + Light, minor + Happiness)
Choice D: Hang the merchant and sell your people yourself (major + Shadow, + Gold)

Four Kings in Shadow
Flavor: Discovered that an entire village is apparently full of Darkfriends
Choice A: Send your troops to burn the place down (major + Shadow, sacrifice one population point in one city, two free heralds)
Choice B: Order a Magistrate to investigate the matter (+ Light)
Choice C: Leave them alone (minor + Shadow)
Choice D: Begin funneling them money and weapons ( major + Shadow)

Unruly House
Flavor: A Rival house is plotting against you and undermining your authority
Choice A: Exile them, removing their lands and titles (minor - Gold)
Choice B: Offer them a position of leadership in your palace (minor + Light, free governor, - happiness)
Choice C: Publicly shame them (minor + shadow, + happiness, minor - Gold)
Choice D: Extend their lands and wealth to gain their loyalty (+ Shadow, - Gold)

Stasis Box
Flavor: Your scholars have uncovered a stasis box. Unsettling sounds are heard inside
Choice A: open it! (minor + shadow, minor - Gold, + culture)
Choice B: don't open it! Send it to the Tower (minor + Light, + Tower Influence)
Choice C: destroy it (+ Light)

Foreign Preacher
Flavor: A missionary of [Foreign Path] has been aggressively spreading his nonsense in your city.
Choice A: have him thrown in prison (minor + shadow, free "missionary")
Choice B: exile him (+ shadow, foreign path in one city decreased), diplo penalty with founder of that path)
Choice C: give him the funds to construct a shrine (major + Light, - gold, foreign path in once city increased)
Choice D: let him be (minor + Light)
Restriction: Must have founded a religion that still exists in your territory

Resources Discovered
Flavor: One of your Lords has discovered valuable ore on his estate.
Choice A: good for him! (minor + Light)
Choice B: take possession of the land, sell the ore (+ Shadow, + Gold, - happiness)
Choice C: demand a significant tax be paid to your treasury (minor + Gold)

Refugees
Flavor: Refugees from the wars in [Neighboring Civ] have come seeking asylum in your capitol
Choice A: allow them to stay, admit them into your city (, + Light,+1 population in one city, diplo penalty with neighboring civ, - food)
Choice B: send them back home (diplo bonus with neighboring civ, minor + shadow)
Choice C: kill them (major + Shadow, diplo penalty with neighboring civ, - happiness)
Choice D: allow them to stay, but provide them no provisions, and keep them out of the walls. (minor + Light, minor diplo penalty with neighboring civ, minor - Gold)
Restriction: A nearby civ must be at war with another civ (not you)

Retainer is a Noble
Flavor: You have discovered that one of your servants is actually a Noble from a foreign land in disguise!
Choice A: let them continue their deception (minor + Shadow, minor - gold, minor + culture)
Choice B: Come clean, and make them one of your advisers (minor + Light, free governor, - gold
Choice C: send them home, with apologies (diplo bonus with foreign civ)

Troubling Origins
Flavor: You have discovered shocking pieces of history of your people
Choice A: bury the truth (minor + Shadow)
Choice B: let everyone know their true heritage (+ Light, - happiness)
Choice C: claim these history belongs to a rival populace (+ Shadow, diplo penalty with random civ)

Shady Merchants
Flavor: You have learned that some merchants in your cities are breaking their contracts with foreign caravans.
Choice A: have them hanged (minor + Light, minor + happiness, minor - Gold)
Choice B: it's none of your business (minor + shadow)
Choice C: Force the Guild to terminate their membership (+ Light, minor + happiness), major - Gold)
Choice D: Demand a share of their profits (+ shadow, + gold, minor - happiness)

Shady Adviser
Flavor: A mysterious academic has arrived at your court. She is brilliant and offers her services. There is also something strangely unsettling about her.
Choice A: take her into your service (+ science, + shadow, - food)
Choice B: send her away (minor + Light)
Choice C: have her killed (+ shadow)

Guild Mistake
Flavor: A Craftsmen Guild has made a terrible mistake, and several workers have died.
Choice A: That's a sad story (+ Shadow)
Choice B: disband the guild (+ Light, - culture)
Choice C: Hire workers to help them complete the project more safely (+ Light, - Gold)

OK, that's all I got for tonight!

 

[counterpoint]

A few more.

EDIT: added possible yields

Darkfriends for Sale
A stranger has discovered the names of supposed darkfriends and will sell then to you for a high price.
A . pay up (minor + light, - Gold)
B . 'Question' him, warn the darkfriends (major + Shadow)
C . No way (no change)
D . Throw him in prison (+ happiness)

Future False Dragon
A young man is being declared the next dragon by a village, but hadn't personally made a claim.
A . Find him and Gentle him (minor + shadow, diplo penalty with Liberation civs)
B . Convince him he is the Dragon, send him to another civilization. (major + Shadow, - Gold, False Dragon appears near random civ)
C . Ignore him, he has done nothing yet. (+ Light, + FD points)
Restriction . Tolerance only

Abandoned Post
An entire company of troops abandoned their duty, and have been caught.
A . Grant them amnesty (+ Light, - happiness, gain one military unit)
B . They must hang (+ happiness)
C . To prison for them! (+ Light, sacrifice one military unit)

Channeler on the Run
A powerful Wilder has arrived at your palace, in the run for the crime of channeling.
A . Grant her asylum, upsetting your nobles (+ Light, - happiness)
B. Conscript her into your forces (gain one Wilder, - happiness, minor + Shadow)
C. Imprison her (minor + happiness, minor - gold)
D. Give her to her pursuers (+Shadow, minor + happiness)
Restriction. Fear only

Dangerous Foretelling
A channeler claims to have Foretold your downfall.
A . Invite her to your palace. Seek her counsel (minor + Light - gold)
B . Spread rumors, discrediting her (minor + Shadow, + happiness, - Gold)
C . Make her disappear (+ Shadow, minor + happiness)
Restriction . Tolerance only

Overworked Scholars
Your Science Minister claims that great progress may be made if your scholars are required to work through the festival season.
A . Great idea (+ Science, - happiness, minor - Shadow)
B . Fire your minister (minor + Light)
C . Do nothing (no change)

Tax on Belief
Maintenance at shrines is becoming high. Require those making dedications at shrines to pay a tax?
A . Yes (+ Gold, minor + Shadow)
B . Never (minor + Light, free "missionary," minor - Gold)
C . Close the shrines (minor + Gold, all Paths influence discreased

Ogier Writer
An Ogier scholar would like to write a history of your rule.
A . Embellish the truth (minor + Shadow, minor + Prestige)
B . Tell only the truth (+ Light, minor - happiness)
C . Bribe the Ogier to write as you direct (- Gold, + Shadow, + Prestige

Governor in Scandal
One of your Governors is embroiled in a corruption scandal.
A . Force her to resign and replace her ( minor - Gold)
B . Make the scandal go away, in exchange for some extra revenue (+Shadow, minor + Gold)
C . Imprison her and do not replace her, investigating the city's political situation (+ Light, lose one governor)

Nym Guardian
Your scholars have found a valuable cache of artifacts, guarded by one if the legendary Nym.
A . Send scholars to study the creature (minor + Shadow, minor - Gold, + Science)
B . Leave the construct in peace (+ Light)
C . Kill the creature and take its artifacts (+ Shadow, + culture)

 

[S3rgeus]

Sorry for the massive delay, super busy weekend! Being part of two D&D campaigns eats time. I would've had time to post on Saturday, but my computer gave up on me. Technical surgery ensued, RAM sticks were swapped out, various services disabled, but to no avail. I restored to a backup from the previous week and now all seems to be working normally again. Very strange! But now I'm very glad for weekly backups.

Anyway, to the topic!

Forgive me for being blunt, but does it matter that they're dragonsworn? With rare exception (beginning of game), Barbarian units are the same as player units, type-wise, right? I know we might be using civitar's Dragonsworn unit model and stuff, but couldn't we easily just spawn regular units under the control of the Dragonsworn in friendly territory? I don't see the problem here. If it works for a rebellion, it should work here. A house uprising IS a rebellion, essentially, right?

Oh, I wasn't concerned about the mechanical approach to it, it's easy to use "normal" units instead of the unique Dragonsworn ones. It was mainly about flavor, "Barbarian" is a wider term than Dragonsworn - describing a whole host of people in reality, some of whom could conceivably be used to describe rebels (though even that's a bit tenuous, IMO). Dragonsworn just seemed very different from a rebel house. But it's certainly the simplest approach, and if you don't think the player will think it's weird, I'm happy to use it.

You don't actually mean that a unit would produce a point every 100 turns do you? It seems like it should be way more often than that. But yes, by keeping them around, you will accrue points.

Awesome. No, I didn't mean produce it every 100 turns, every turn seems appropriate. I was just saying they will have accrued 100 turns of "extra" yield from leaving the male channeler around. (It was quite vague since we don't have any numbers.)

OK, I see this logic. I also think you could argue the opposite could be true as well: Think Seanchan. They use them a lot, but *demonize* them instead of hold them up. So no extra FD rate. By your system, Damane would contribute to FD point generation. Doesn't quite make sense.

I dunno, I think it could be argued, what you're saying, but I'm not sure it's strong enough. Also, I don't see why, mechanically, we'd need this.

...

Yeah, again, one could argue that celebrating channelers, or making them commonplace, would increase "awareness" of male channelers and channeling in general, and "mainstream" them, making them *less* likely to go rogue. FDs, like Logain, for instance, seem to sometimes pop up out of confusion and misunderstanding for who they are and what exactly the Dragon is.

I can live with this if you insist, but I don't quite get why we need this.

The mechanical purpose is so that we have more range in False Dragon spawn rates - so that there's a bigger variance between certain civs. It also gives us room for a player to intentionally clamp down on everything that generates False Dragons and for them to have a very low comparative False Dragon rate. The fewer sources of points we have, the more likely that the base population rate would serve as the overall guiding force for FD spawn rate, but I think the player actions should be the bigger impact. If we only have a few sources of FD points and make the player actions more important, those actions will end up counting for a lot - which I don't think players would expect.

I can see how demonizing or celebrating channelers could reduce FD rate. I could also see how it could increase it - rebellion against oppression or increased incidence of channelers overall respectively. I think the mechanical difference is what we really want to decide - I agree that we can make the flavor work both ways, so whichever is the most mechanically useful is what we should go for.

On the other hand, *discord* in your civ (perhaps caused by war!) would totally factor. I'd say unhappiness absolutely plays a role in FD point generation!

Yeah, unhappiness is definitely a good one! I can see us doubling the player's FD point generation while their empire is unhappy, and even quadrupling while very unhappy (-10 and below).

OK, nice job on the threads. I'll contribute some of my own below. I'll also comment on a *few* of yours - if I don't comment, it means I think it's fine!

Also, all of yours have 3 or 4 choices. Is there any room for some to have only 2?

Thanks! Yeah, we can definitely have some with 2 choices.

This one is fine, but I can also understand a version of this that has somewhat "darker" choices. Like one where you torture him to get the truth, or something. Or "Extract" the name of his master... so you can talk to them yourself.

Yeah, I think we can afford to have several Threads that are relatively similar to each other, but have different bends on them like your suggestion here. So in addition to the first one I put up (Accused Darkfriend) we could have:


Flavor: A man has been accused of being a darkfriend and brought to your court for judgement.
Choice A: Arrange his disappearance to safety abroad
Choice B: Torture him to learn of his masters
Choice C: Silence the accusers
Choice D: Hang him

So in this instance... either A or D are the least Shadow.

I like this, but I wonder if it's too "small". Like, millions of things like this occur throughout the thousands of years of your civ, why mention this one?

I think if it were made bigger picture somehow - like a whole "arts program" or something, or else had a more obvious "Weird" component to it - like commissioning art dedicated to the great lord or something - it would feel appropriately "big" to me.

I'll have more detail on this later, but I don't think the Threads necessarily need to be big empire-wide things. You're right that this is the least Alignment-relevant of the Threads I proposed though. When considering it, I figured each one would have a minimal yield in either direction, but we'd need to decide if we want any of the Threads to be like that. I'm happy to drop it if not.

I like this one, flavor wise, but I'm not sure how it fits, alignment-wise. Which of these is "Shadow"? I can think of light-compatible reasons for any of these choices. But the truth is, none of them seem to really suggest generating even light points. Being nice to the tower generates niceness with the tower, not necessarily with the Creator.

I know some of them are supposed to be different from binary "good-evil" things, but this one seems sort of non-moral.

Obviously Shadow can just mean "Jerk," not necessarily "Evil," but ignoring the sisters could simply be an appropriate political move.

I think which one is evil would be more clear with full summary text (this is about Emissary from the Tower), because it would all be justified by how it was written (making one option have a dark undercurrent to your actions). It's less Alignment relevant than some of the others though.

same with this one - doesn't seem to have anything to do with Alignment. Actually this one also maybe feels a little "small" too. Maybe if there's more of an alignment component to it too, it'll feel "big enough." Cutting corners, ripping them off, something likethat.

This is about Cost of Progress. I think this one is much more Alignment-y than the two above. The implication is that the cheaper of the two inventors is doing something shady, which is what makes it cheap. (Or he's deliberately underselling because there's some Shadow gain in his specific version of the invention becoming more widespread.)

OK, in general I like where you're going, but I do think we should make a point of making these all at least Alignment-related in some key way - even if there isn't a clear evil path or good path, at least there should be choices of varying degrees of goodness. Some of these seem sort of non-moral (note, not *amoral*.) The Truth is, civ doesn't really go down to the low-level minutia of these kinds of decisions - we should only be doing so if it directly serves the "point" of these, which is, fundamentally, Alignment. I think.

Or am I being to boxed-in in my perspective?

I'm inclined to think you're right, we want to avoid completely non-moral situations. Which is a bit of a shame, I think there's a lot of cool value and flavor in more Neutral choices. I don't think we need every Thread to be something civilization-spanning though, down to the nitty gritty of individuals making decisions that could somehow involve some government is where we could get some cool stories.

If all Threads are Alignment-y, are we ok with it that Neutral civs have to be constantly balancing, rather than not committing to either side? It seems to characterize them as a bit schizophrenic - sometimes evil, sometimes good. This is a reason to have non-Alignment-y Threads included.

A good reason to have only Alignment-y Threads is that we decided many moons ago (I think) that Threads were a major source of Alignment. Someone who wants to go one way or the other might be awash in Neutral Threads, unable to move their Alignment the way they choose. We could filter it, so a given civ is never starved for Alignment-y choices, but only if we think having Neutral ones are worth the added effort of doing so.

Also, regarding whether we should put potential yields/results in with these "flavor only" ones, I say "maybe." Definitely, if we do, it should only be basic, like "+ Gold" or something. But even then... part of me wants to not do so, and tackle it later.

Yeah, something basic like +Gold, -Culture (or whatever) will give us an anchor to the approach we were considering for that "outcome" when we come back to these later. Otherwise some might be quite opaque when we look back at them in several weeks' time. I'll post a Threads list post next and put reward category suggestions for my initially proposed Threads in there in red.

This is different to the approach we took to Edicts and Quests - there we did have specific yields and effects. Do we think this one will be more successful? We're leaving a fair amount of work to come back to. It could be said that we can't make proper decisions on actual numbers until more of the tech tree is done, but the same could be said for Edicts. They'll all probably change later, but it might be nice to have a "finished" set of things to work from?

I'd say in some instances, limit it to once per game.

Oh yeah, one per game for each player. Do we ever want the same player to see the same Thread twice in a single game? I can see some value in complete randomness, rather than once-per-game-per-player, in that some Threads probably make sense to happen more than once.

I think it should either go in the Misc, with a link to a static post that houses all of them, or it should get it's own Summary, which I don't think would be a problem.

I *do* think, for sure, the threads will need to be corralled into one post though. We don't want to be linking to several branching paths, I don't think.

Definitely, we'll want a Threads list post. I'll make one of those below!

I've edited a section on Threads into the Misc summary.

well, capturing a Sealbearer that has a legitimate seal, that is.

Yes, true. An unresearched fake Seal would just disappear on the spot.

I say just rebrand the Stilling one.

Why not use the flavor we'd been talking about for months? "Search for the Old Blood" or something like that?

Search for the Old Blood it is! I've edited the Edict list and added the Cure for Gentling.

We seem to have lost the quote block about the more general "cure a Gentled channeler." I think we can consider giving the ability to Aes Sedai (all Ajahs) after the player has researched a certain tech. I've been thinking about this one and each Sister unit type doesn't actually have tons more special missions. Across all Ajahs, there are a lot of new abilities, but most individual Sisters will only have one or two new abilities, and many of those will only be for players who have some tiers of influence with the Ajah. (Blues and Grays have only one extra mission ability, gained at tier 2. Whites and Reds add no new missions. Greens don't actually add any new missions, only modify the effects for an existing one. Yellows and Browns all have one extra ability, but gain none from influence. The rest of their bonuses are passive.) This could be a cool part of the Aes Sedai "upgrading" over time.

OK, I want to clarify yet again, then. For Shadow and Light civs, are you suggesting we scrap the "four DFCs too much" thing, in favor of simply "Light Progression." Keep in mind that the difference in some small-med sized cities between a light progression and a dark progression might only be ONE or TWO DFCs.... so a city might end up Sanctimonious pretty easily.

Argh, this makes it tough. I think we should handle cities of all Alignments the same way, because it's less confusing for the player. I'd say let's go with this way, even if a city can end up Sanctimonious relatively easily. Unless you have a preference for the other approach? I'd say you decide on this one, I can see both approaches working.


Moving on to your Thread proposals. As you've done, I'll skip over the ones I think are fine and don't need to be discussed. I'll add everything to the master list and update it as we discuss.

Future False Dragon
A young man is being declared the next dragon by a village, but hadn't personally made a claim.
A . Find him and Gentle him
B . Convince him he is the Dragon, send him to another civilization.
C . Ignore him, he has done nothing yet.
Restriction . Tolerance only

How come this one is restricted to Tolerance? Is it that Fear would never make any of these decisions? (They might choose B)

Dangerous Foretelling
A channeler claims to have Foretold your downfall.
A . Invite her to your palace. Seek her counsel
B . Spread rumors, discrediting her
C . Make her disappear
Restriction . Tolerance only

Same question here, why Tolerance only? A is very Tolerance, but B and possibly C could be fear. (Depends on the amount of foreboding intended by "disappear".)


And that's really all my notes on yours - I like them! I've put them in the master list without any resulting effects, since I figured you'd have ideas about what you intended with each option.

Quick question about effects that have -Gold. Do we want to have an implicit restriction that the player must have enough gold to afford any option, or do we want to allow some options to be "unselectable"?

I'll come up with some more Threads tomorrow, I'm afraid I've run out of time with all the edits elsewhere!

 

[S3rgeus]

Threads of the Pattern

Threads of the Pattern are Alignment-related decisions that are presented to the player as a series of actions they can take. Each results in the player gaining (and possibly also losing) something of value, in addition to some Alignment yield lump sum.

Anything that remains undecided is highlighted in red.


Format of a Thread specification:
Thread Name
Flavor: What's does the player need to address?
Choice A: the first of their available choices (mechanical consequences of choice A)
Choice B: the second, and so on (mechanical consequences of choice B)
Restrictions: Any era, instancing, unit, Alignment, tech, or other restrictions

Threads

Unrest in your Lands
Flavor: Dragonsworn are troubling your farmers and villagers. Do something about it.
Choice A: Drive them off (-Gold, +Happiness, +Light)
Choice B: Let them fend for themselves (+False Dragon points)
Choice C: Encourage the Dragonsworn zealots (-Happiness, +Shadow, X Dragonsworn appear near your border)

Accused Darkfriend
Flavor: A man has been accused of being a Darkfriend and brought to your court for judgement.
Choice A: Execute him (Minor +Light)
Choice B: Let a jury decide (Minor -Gold, +Light)
Choice C: Free him before his trial (+Shadow)

Darkfriend Escape
Flavor: A man has been accused of being a darkfriend and brought to your court for judgement.
Choice A: Arrange his disappearance to safety abroad (Minor -Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Torture him to learn of his masters (+Faith, +Shadow)
Choice C: Silence the accusers (-1 pop in <city you own>, +Shadow)
Choice D: Throw him in prison (Nothing)

Falsely Accused?
Flavor: An alleged Darkfriend claims he has been wrongfully accused and beseeches you for aid, fleeing from death at the hands of his former friends.
Choice A: Execute him (Minor +Shadow, +Happiness)
Choice B: Finance a further investigation (-Gold, +Light)
Choice C: Drive off the peasants chasing him (Sacrifice a military unit, Minor +Light)
Choice D: Help him escape the country (Diplo penalty with one neighbor)

Commissioned Artwork
Flavor: A famous artist wishes for you to consider his work to adorn your courtrooms and palace.
Choice A: Turn him away (Nothing)
Choice B: Purchase his artwork (-Gold, +Culture, Minor +Light)
Choice C: Arrange for his work to go "missing" (+Culture, Minor +Shadow)

Famine Near <city you own here>
Flavor: People are starving in the outlying villages near <city>
Choice A: Send aid (-Gold, +Food, +Light)
Choice B: Ignore them (-1 Pop in <city>, +Shadow)
Choice C: Incentivize merchants to trade there, in lieu of aid from the crown (Minor -Gold, +Food, Minor +Light)
Choice D: Smugglers near <city> can be convinced to spare some supplies in exchange for leniency (+Food, Minor +Shadow)

Looming Threat
Flavor: The Blight never sleeps and its borders must be constantly policed. You are asked to send soldiers to help keep the Shadow at bay.
Choice A: Refuse (+Shadow, +Happiness, diplo hit with Blightborder civ)
Choice B: Send soldiers (Sacrifice X power of military units, +Light)
Choice C: Hire mercenaries to go instead of your national army (-Gold, Minor +Light)
Restriction: must have met a civ with lands bordering the Blight

Emissary from the Tower
Flavor: An emissary from the White Tower has arrived at your capital. She expects to have an audience with you.
Choice A: Occupy yourself elsewhere (-Tower Influence, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Greet the Sister with a grand ceremony (-Gold, +Tower Influence, Minor +Light)
Choice C: Meet with her at a formal dinner (Minor -Gold, Minor +Tower influence)
Restriction: must have met the Tower

A Tower Divided
Flavor: A Sister from the White Tower has been residing in your capital for some time. She is working with a suspected Darkfriend scholar, apparently expecting you to stay your hand rather than risk retribution from Tar Valon if you move against her.
Choice A: Blackmail the Sister in exchange for her secrets (+Science, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Alert the Tower (+Tower Influence, Minor +Light)
Choice C: "Silence" your men who have knowledge of these events (-Gold, Minor +Science, +Shadow)
Choice D: Have her arrested (-Tower Influence, +Light)
Restriction: must have met the Tower

Cost of Progress
Flavor: Two inventors both claim to have made improvements to the simple horse-drawn carriage, allowing more goods to be transported by fewer horses. They have petitioned for sponsorship to continue this research further. One of the two is suspiciously more affordable than the other.
Choice A: Cheaper one (you know what they say about gift horses) (Minor -Gold, +Science, +Shadow)
Choice B: More expensive one (-Gold, +Science, Minor +Light)
Choice C: Our carriages work just fine as they are, thank you (Nothing)

Imported Luxury
Flavor: Your people clamor for <insert resource you don't have>. A merchants' guild have offered to supply it for significantly less than market price, though their practices have been suspect in the past. Foreign governments are willing to trade for a fair price.
Choice A: Propaganda campaign claiming <resource> is immoral and <other resource you have> is better, to convince people they're better off (Minor +Happiness, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Purchase trading rights from foreign diplomat (-Gold, +Happiness, Minor +Light)
Choice C: Purchase from shady merchants (Minor -Gold, +Happiness, +Shadow)
Choice D: Ignore your people's demands - let them learn who is in charge (Minor -Happiness, Minor +Gold)

Conscription
Flavor: Your advisers have recommended you conscript more soldiers for the war effort.
Choice A: Conscript far and wide - we need the men! (-Happiness, Gain military units, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Conscript villagers from border towns in nearby civilizations (Gain military units, +Shadow, Diplo hit with neighbors
Choice C: Tempt the Dragonsworn to your cause with coin (-Gold, Dragonsworn spawn near enemy, Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: We are a volunteer only army in this here kingdom (+Happiness, +Light)
Restriction: must be at war with a major civ

Hero in the Pattern
Artur Hawkwing has been ripped from the World of Dreams and now exists in the Pattern, isolated in Shadowspawn territory.
Option A: Send soldiers to help him (Sacrifice X strength of units, receive Hawkwing military unit, +Light)
Option B: Abandon him to the Shadow (Major +Shadow)
Option C: Rescue and Elevate Hawkwing in your Government (Minor -Gold and sacrifice X strength of units, gain <martial Governor type> Governor, +Prestige, Major +Light)
Restriction: one global instance, reach Era of Encroaching Blight

Variants of the above for other Heroes

Ter'Angreal Cache
Flavor: Your scholars have discovered an ancient hoard of Items of Power, potentially more powerful than any found since the Age of Legends. However, those who hold them exhibit increased aggression.
Choice A: Send them to the Tower (+Tower influence, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Take them into your possession (+Culture, +Prestige)
Choice C: Sell them (+Gold, +Shadow)
Choice D: Have them destroyed (Major +Light)

Rogue Coven
Flavor: Discovered a sizable group of unregulated female channelers living in your capital.
Choice A: Report them to the Tower (-1 Spark for X turns, +Tower influence, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Leave them alone (Gain Wilder/Kin units, -Tower Influence, +Light)
Choice C: Conscript them into your army (-Tower influence, +1 Spark, Minor +Shadow)

Class Warfare
Flavor: Reports indicate that the Nobility of your civilization are harassing and assaulting commoners.
Choice A: Legalize their conduct (-Happiness, +Gold, +Shadow)
Choice B: Criminalize their conduct (-GPT for X turns, +Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: Do nothing (Minor +Shadow)

Slave Trade
Flavor: Your patrols have found a merchant from another land transporting your smallfolk to be sold as slaves!
Choice A: Hang the merchant and free your people. Increase patrols in this area (-Gold and sacrifice X power of units, +1 Pop in <city>, +Happiness, +Light)
Choice B: Demand a percentage of his profits (+Gold, -Happiness, +Shadow)
Choice C: Let the merchant go, but free your people (+1 Pop in <city>, Minor +Light)
Choice D: Hang the merchant and sell your people yourself (+Gold, -Happiness, Major +Shadow)

Four Kings in Shadow
Flavor: Discovered that an entire village is apparently full of Darkfriends
Choice A: Send your troops to burn the place down (-1 Pop in <city>, Major +Shadow, Gain two missionaries)
Choice B: Order a Magistrate to investigate the matter (+Light)
Choice C: Leave them alone (+Shadow)
Choice D: Begin funneling them money and weapons (-Happiness, Gain military units, Major +Shadow)

Unruly House
Flavor: A Rival house is plotting against you and undermining your authority
Choice A: Exile them, seizing their lands and titles (+Gold, -Happiness, Very minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Offer them a position of leadership in your palace (Minor +Light, Free Governor)
Choice C: Publicly shame them (Minor -Gold, +Happiness, Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: Extend their lands and wealth to gain their loyalty (-Gold, +Culture, +Pop in <city>, Minor +Shadow)

Stasis Box
Flavor: Your scholars have uncovered a stasis box. Unsettling sounds are heard inside
Choice A: open it! (+Science, +Shadow)
Choice B: don't open it! Send it to the Tower (+Tower Influence, +Light)
Choice C: destroy it (Major +Light)

Foreign Preacher
Flavor: A missionary of <foreign path> has been aggressively spreading his nonsense in your city.
Choice A: have him thrown in prison (+Faith, -Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: exile him (-Diplo with <foreign path> founder, Minor +Faith, Minor +Shadow)
Choice C: give him the funds to construct a shrine (-Gold, Major +Light, +Pressure from [Foreign Path])
Choice D: let him be (Minor +Pressure from <foreign path>, Minor +Light)
Restriction: Must have founded a religion that still exists in your territory

Resources Discovered
Flavor: One of your Lords has discovered <relevant strategic resource> on his estate.
Choice A: good for him! (+Gold from international trade routes, +Light)
Choice B: take possession of the land, sell the excess <resource> (+Gold, +2 <resource>, -Happiness, Minor +Shadow)
Choice C: demand a significant tax be paid to your treasury (+Gold)

Refugees
Flavor: Refugees from the wars in [Neighboring Civ] have come seeking asylum in your capitol
Choice A: allow them to stay, admit them into your city (+1 Pop in <city>, +Light, -Gold)
Choice B: send them back home (Minor +Shadow)
Choice C: kill them (Major +Shadow)
Choice D: allow them to stay, but provide them no provisions, and keep them out of the walls. (+1 Pop in <city>, -Happiness, Very Minor +Light)
Restriction: A nearby civ must be at war with another civ (not you)

Retainer is a Monarch
Flavor: You have discovered that one of your servants is actually the former Monarch of <extinct civ>, serving you out of fear for their life.
Choice A: let them continue their deception (+Culture, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Come clean, and make them one of your advisers (Free Governor, +Light)
Choice C: send them home in exchange for a bounty, to be executed by their conquerors (+Gold, +Shadow)
Restriction: At least one civilization must have been eliminated

Troubling Origins
Flavor: You have discovered shocking pieces of history of your people
Choice A: bury the truth (+Shadow)
Choice B: let everyone know their true heritage (Minor +Culture, -Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: claim these history belongs to a rival populace (+Prestige, +Happiness, +Shadow)

Shady Merchants
Flavor: You have learned that some merchants in your cities are breaking their contracts with foreign caravans.
Choice A: have them hanged (-GPT for X turns, +Light)
Choice B: it's none of your business (Minor +Shadow)
Choice C: Force the Guild to terminate their membership (+Culture, +Light)
Choice D: Demand a share of their profits (+Gold, +Shadow)

Shady Adviser
Flavor: A mysterious academic has arrived at your court. She is brilliant and offers her services. There is also something strangely unsettling about her.
Choice A: take her into your service (-Faith, +Science, +Shadow)
Choice B: send her away (+Light)
Choice C: have her killed (Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: Expose her as a Darkfriend and force her to reveal her secrets (Minor +Science, Minor +Light)

Guild Mistake
Flavor: An Artisans' Guild has made a terrible mistake, and several workers have died.
Choice A: That's a sad story (-Happiness, +Shadow)
Choice B: disband the guild (-Culture, +Light)
Choice C: Hire workers to help them complete the project more safely (-Gold, +Light)

Darkfriends for Sale
A stranger has discovered the names of supposed darkfriends and will sell them to you for a high price.
A . Pay up (-Gold, +Light)
B . 'Question' him, warn the darkfriends (+Shadow)
C . No way (Minor +Light)
D . Throw him in prison (Minor +Light)

Future False Dragon
A young man is being declared the next dragon by a village, but hadn't personally made a claim.
A . Find him and Gentle him (-Happiness, +Tower influence)
B . Convince him he is the Dragon, send him to another civilization. (Major +Shadow, -Gold, False Dragon appears near random civ)
C . Ignore him, he has done nothing yet. (+Culture, +Light, +False Dragon points)
Restriction . Tolerance only

Abandoned Post
An entire company of troops abandoned their duty, and have been caught.
A . Grant them amnesty (Minor +Light, -Happiness, Gain one military unit)
B . They must hang (Sacrifice X power of units, Minor +Shadow)
C . To prison for them! (Minor +Light)

Channeler on the Run
A powerful Wilder has arrived at your palace, on the run from a mob for the crime of channeling.
A . Grant her asylum, upsetting your nobles (-Happiness, +Culture, +Light)
B. Conscript her into forces (-Tower influence, Gain Wilder unit, Minor +Shadow)
C. Imprison her (Minor -Gold, Minor +Happiness)
D. Give her to her pursuers (Minor +Happiness, +Shadow)
Restriction. Fear only

Dangerous Foretelling
A channeler claims to have Foretold your downfall.
A . Invite her to your palace. Seek her counsel (Minor -Happiness, +Culture, +Light)
B . Spread rumors, discrediting her (Minor +Shadow)
C . Make her disappear (-Gold, +Shadow)
Restriction . Tolerance only

Overworked Scholars
Your Science Minister claims that great progress may be made if your scholars are required to work through the festival season.
A . Great idea (+Science, -Happiness, Minor +Shadow)
B . Fire your minister (+Happiness, Minor +Light)
C . Do nothing (Nothing)

Tax on Belief
Shrines to the Creator are flush with donations from your people. One of your advisers has implied you could siphon gold off to fund your government.
A . Do it (Minor -Faith, Minor +Gold, +Shadow)
B . Fire your adviser (+Faith, +Light)
C . We have no need for these places, shutter them and let the people direct their wealth elsewhere (-Faith, +Gold, Minor +Shadow)

Ogier Writer
An Ogier scholar would like to write a history of your rule.
A . Embellish the truth (+Culture, Minor +Prestige, Minor +Shadow)
B . Tell only the truth (+Prestige, +Light)
C . Bribe the Ogier to write as you direct (-Gold, +Culture, +Prestige, +Shadow)

Governor in Scandal
One of your Governors is embroiled in a corruption scandal.
A . Force her to resign and replace her (+Happiness, +Light)
B . Make the scandal go away, in exchange for some extra revenue (+Gold, +Shadow)
C . Imprison her and do not replace her, investigating the city's political situation (Governor in <city> dies, Major +Light)

Nym Guardian
Your scholars have found a valuable cache of artifacts, guarded by one if the legendary Nym.
A . Send scholars to retrieve the creature for study (+Science, +Shadow)
B . Leave the construct in peace (Major +Light)
C . Kill the creature and take its artifacts (Minor +Science, +Culture, Major +Shadow)

Trapped in Time
Flavor: A village of formerly ordinary folk have been trapped in a Bubble of Evil, murdering one another in the night and reawakening in their beds the next morning.
Choice A: Fortify the border of the town and allow no one in or out (Minor -Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Unleash them on the Shadowspawn (+Light)
Choice C: Order your troops into the village to be killed, creating an immortal legion (-Happiness, Gain 4 military units, Major +Shadow)
Choice D: Put your scholars to work, there must be a way to free them from the curse. (-Science, Major +Light)
Restriction: World era has reached Era of the Dragon

Spoilage
Flavor: The Dark One's influence is spoiling your people's food and your farmers need aid to produce enough for everyone.
Choice A: We cannot help (-Food, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Send artisans to help till the fields (-Culture, +Food, +Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: Subsidize farming efforts to increase production (-Gold, +Food, +Light)
Choice D: Appeal to the Dark One's forces for aid. (+Food, Major +Shadow, Shadowspawn appear near your border)
Restriction: World era has reached Era of the Dragon

Inquisition
Flavor: One of your advisers has suggested that groups of sculptors are potentially harboring Darkfriends and should be put to the Question.
Choice A: Questions for everyone (-Culture, +Shadow)
Choice B: Only Question those you are certain are Darkfriends (+Culture, Minor +Light)
Choice C: Putting our people to the Question will only engender hatred in them. (+Happiness, +Light)

Pledged to the Shadow
Flavor: One of your eyes and ears believes the leader-elect of <city state> has pledged himself to the service of the Shadow, but he has no hard evidence. The new leader is to be crowned tomorrow, what should your agent do?
Choice A: Expose the alleged corruption before he is crowned, potentially sullying your reputation (-Influence with <city state>, +Light)
Choice B: Assassinate him (+Shadow)
Choice C: Send cordial greeting to <city state>, welcoming their new leader (+Influence with <city state>, Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: Continue surveillance and prepare to act against the crowned monarch if he is truly in service to the Dark One. (Minor +Light)

Volunteer Construction
Flavor: A group of volunteer citizens have begun to construct a <early faith building> in <city without that building>.
Choice A: It is wonderful to see these people working together. (Minor +Light, <early faith building> is constructed in <city>)
Choice B: Send workers to help with construction (-Production in <city>, <early faith building> is constructed in <city>, +Faith, +Light)
Choice C: Disband these commoners, we have no need of a shrine (-Faith, +Shadow)
Restriction: Must have a city without <building>

Alternates of the above could exist for any building type, just swap out all instances of the word "faith" for the appropriate yield for the building in question. We'd probably want to choose only a subset of buildings to allow this to spawn for.

Organized Cult
Flavor: Many of your citizens have been taken in by a cult that worships the Shadow, calling the Dark One a savior.
Choice A: They must be brought to see the error of their ways. Re-educate them (-Gold, +Light)
Choice B: Redirect their idolatry to see if they can find a way to emulate his powers (Minor +Science, Minor +Shadow)
Choice C: Encourage this cult (+Faith, +Shadow)

Source of Food
Flavor: Some of your forces ranging in the Blight have found that Trolloc meat can sustain a man as well as normal food, but your scholars caution longer term side effects of consuming Shadowspawn.
Choice A: Consume away, our men need their strength in the Blight! (Minor +Food, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Caution your soldiers to only consume Trolloc meat in the direst of circumstances (Gain 1 Military unit)
Choice C: That sounds like a good source of food for the winter. (+Food, +Shadow)
Choice D: Outlaw consumption of Trolloc meat. (Minor -Food, +Light)
Restriction: Must border on the Blight

Unethical Scholar
Flavor: A scholar has been denounced by his fellows for unethical conduct, but his research appears to be bearing fruit.
Choice A: Take what results he has so far, but prevent him from pursuing his research. (Minor +Science, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Throw out his research and exile him. (+Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: Protect him from this outrageous slander. (+Science, +Shadow)

A Chosen Portrait
Flavor: An artist has caused quite a stir auctioning off her take on portraits of the Forsaken from the War of Power. She has offered to donate a piece to your collection.
Choice A: Thank her profusely (Receive <craft GW>, +Shadow)
Choice B: Accept, but store the piece out of sight (+Prestige)
Choice C: Politely Refuse (+Light)
Choice D: Accept, but sell the piece on (+Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Restriction: must have a free craft GW slot somewhere

Honored General
Flavor: A local lord has used his military expertise as a former soldier to protect his village from a Lawless assault.
Choice A: Recognize his feat and give him greater authority (Free <martial Governor type>, +Light)
Choice B: He claims to have retired, but you can never truly leave my army. Conscript him. (Gain 1 Great Captain, +Shadow)

Endangering the Dragon
Flavor: The Dragon is due to visit your capital on the morrow. One of the Forsaken have approached you and offered you significant compensation to dictate the route his retinue will take through the city.
Choice A: Warn the Dragon (+Prestige, Major +Light)
Choice B: Do Nothing (+Shadow)
Choice C: Redirect the Dragon's retinue to the prescribed path (Major +Gold, Major +Shadow)
Restriction: the Dragon must have been born

Miscounted Revenue
Flavor: Your clerks have been recounting taxes and found a clerical error, you have collected more gold from your citizens than originally intended.
Choice A: Our coffers overfloweth, we must give it back (+Happiness, +Light)
Choice B: Donate the excess to scholarly endeavors (+Science)
Choice C: That's very fortunate, adjust our ledgers accordingly (+Gold, +Shadow)

A Curse or Gift?
Flavor:It has been discovered that a Lieutenant in the City Watch has the ability to sense violence, and track it, miraculously. He asserts that this ability has nothing to do with the Power.
Choice A: This is a creature of the Dark One! He must hang. (Sacrifice X strength of units, Minor +Happiness, Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: This Sniffer could be useful (Minor -Happiness, +Light)
Choice C: Let this man live, but he must leave your lands (no change)
Restriction: Fear only

Guild of Thief-Takers
Flavor: Your City Watch has failed to keep crime in check. A band of Thief-Takers has offered to help.
Choice A: Allow them to aid your city guard (+Happiness, +Light)
Choice B: They could aid in constructing a distraction instead (Receive <Happiness building> in <city that doesn't have one>, +Shadow)
Choice C: Instruct them to seize coin from lucrative thieves only (Minor +Gold, Minor +Happiness)
Restriction: must be unhappy

Training the Heirs
Flavor: The White Tower has requested that you send the sons and daughters of the royal family to train with their Aes Sedai and Warders.
Choice A: Their place is here, with our people (+Culture, Minor +Light)
Choice B: Very well (+Tower Influence)
Choice C: Certainly, but instruct the youth to actively spy on the Tower (+Tower Influence, +Shadow)
Restriction: must be Authority

A Part of No Nation
Flavor: A remote region of your empire has begun running their own government and neglecting their duties to the Crown. They are clear to state that they are not in open rebellion.
Choice A: They are doing little harm. Let them feel important (-Gold, Minor +Light, Minor +Happiness)
Choice B: They can't do this! Send the troops (-Happiness, Sacrifice X strength of units, +Shadow, +Prestige)
Choice C: Send a new governor and a fleet of tax collectors to put things in order (lose one governor, Gain Great Merchant [equivalent])
Restriction: Must have a city at least X tiles away from the capital

Luck of the Dark One
Flavor: One of your generals is winning battles due to preposterous luck. Your other leaders have become suspicious and worry about involvement from the Witches.
Choice A: Nonsense. This man is simply a genius. (+Prestige)
Choice B: He must be exiled - he could be a traitor! (sacrifice 1 Great Captain, + Faith, +minor shadow)
Choice C: It sounds like he would make a sound financial adviser (+Gold, Minor +Shadow)
Choice D: Reassign him so that he can co-ordinate attacks against the Shadowspawn, well away from the public eye (+Happiness, +Light)
Restriction: must have a Great Captain, must be Fear

Wilder's Block
Flavor: Several of your channelers are performing under expectations because they suffer from unfortunate Blocks.
Choice A: These women need to train in the Tower (Sacrifice 1 Wilder/Kin, +Tower Influence, Minor +Light)
Choice B: They will be fine - perhaps they need some rest? (Nothing)
Choice C: Perhaps your scholars can help (-Science, +EXP to X Wilder/Kin units)
Choice D: These women are simply getting weak. They must fight through their difficulties. (Minor +Shadow, Minor +EXP to X Wilder/Kin units)
Restriction: Must have met the Tower. Must have at least one Wilder/Kin unit

Stilled Aes Sedai
Flavor: You have learned that a trusted adviser is in fact a former Aes Sedai that was Stilled for misconduct. She has asked to have her Ability restored, and be allowed to leave your service.
Choice A: She is too valuable. She must stay (+Prestige, +Shadow)
Choice B: Of course, have one of your channelers Heal her (Sacrifice one Governor, +Light, Minor +Happiness, Gain 1 Sister unit)
Choice C: Have one of your channelers Heal her, but request she remain your adviser. (Minor +Light, +Culture)
Restriction: Must have discovered <tech that unlocks Gentling Cure>

Legendary Sister
Flavor: A sister of advanced age and mythic status has emerged in your capital city. She may offer your aid, but your advisers caution you that she answers to no one, not even the Tower.
Choice A: This woman will foster instability. Her meddling must be kept far away from your affairs ( -Tower Influence, Minor +Shadow, +Happiness)
Choice B: Whatever the risk, this Sister represents a source of power. We must learn what we can from her (+Culture, Minor +Science)
Restriction: Must be Authority

Dai'shan
Flavor: One of your soldiers claims to be a descendent of the royal line of [extinct civ]. He has been gathering troops to one day restore his homeland to its former glory.
Choice A: This is a noble errand. Allow him to take some soldiers as an honor guard (Sacrifice X strength of units, Minor +Culture, +Faith, +Light)
Choice B: This sounds a lot like rebellion. He must be imprisoned before something bad happens (Minor +Shadow)
Choice C: Bring him into your council, and declare your kingdom to be the heir apparent to his fallen land (+Prestige)
Restriction: A civ must have gone extinct, not because of the player

A Viewing
A young woman in your capital apparently has the ability to View people's fates and know their futures. Your advisers recommend you use her to help find those destined for greatness.
Choice A: Send her to the Academies (+ X Great Scientist [equivalent] Points)
Choice B: Send her to the Artisans (+ X Great Artist [equivalent] Points)
Choice C: Send her to the battlefields (+ X Great Captain Points)
Choice D: Do nothing. These people must be discovered by themselves (+Faith, Minor +Light)
Restriction: Not Fear

Esteemed Bard
Flavor: A Bard of legendary reputation has journeyed to your court. He apparently has a troubled history with one of your nobles.
Choice A: Appoint him your Bard, despite your noble's emotional protestations (-Gold, Gain a Great Musician [equivalent], Minor +Shadow)
Choice B: Your first duty is to your own people - the Bard must go (-Happiness, Minor +Light, Minor +Gold)
Choice C: Hire him for one elaborate celebration and send him on his way (Minor -Gold, +Culture)

The master Threads list continues in Part 2 of this post.

 

[counterpoint]

I'm insane. Attempting a reply on my phone while on a plane. Ok, Tapatalk, prove your worth.

Obviously, adjusting other posts and other complicated things won't be happening now. Won't be able to add + gold and such to my earlier post.

Sorry for the massive delay, super busy weekend! Being part of two D&D campaigns eats time. I would've had time to post on Saturday, but my computer gave up on me. Technical surgery ensued, RAM sticks were swapped out, various services disabled, but to no avail. I restored to a backup from the previous week and now all seems to be working normally again. Very strange! But now I'm very glad for weekly backups.

Anyway, to the topic!

TWO campaigns? Which version, v5?
I miss it. I was in the middle of GMing an epic scifi campaign last year, but it fizzled when a player had to leave the country. It was awesome though. I had awiki set up with the lore and everything .

Oh, and naturally,we were playing on a home made system, which should surprise you very little

Oh, I wasn't concerned about the mechanical approach to it, it's easy to use "normal" units instead of the unique Dragonsworn ones. It was mainly about flavor, "Barbarian" is a wider term than Dragonsworn - describing a whole host of people in reality, some of whom could conceivably be used to describe rebels (though even that's a bit tenuous, IMO). Dragonsworn just seemed very different from a rebel house. But it's certainly the simplest approach, and if you don't think the player will think it's weird, I'm happy to use it.

I don't view this as a problem. Rebels are exactly the same as rebel houses in my opinion. From the player perspective, their simply 'red units'.

I vote yes

Awesome. No, I didn't mean produce it every 100 turns, every turn seems appropriate. I was just saying they will have accrued 100 turns of "extra" yield from leaving the male channeler around. (It was quite vague since we don't have any numbers.)

Ok, well we have no point of calibration set, so why not use this one? Every Aaron unit generates one point per turn?

The mechanical purpose is so that we have more range in False Dragon spawn rates - so that there's a bigger variance between certain civs. It also gives us room for a player to intentionally clamp down on everything that generates False Dragons and for them to have a very low comparative False Dragon rate. The fewer sources of points we have, the more likely that the base population rate would serve as the overall guiding force for FD spawn rate, but I think the player actions should be the bigger impact. If we only have a few sources of FD points and make the player actions more important, those actions will end up counting for a lot - which I don't think players would expect.

I can see how demonizing or celebrating channelers could reduce FD rate. I could also see how it could increase it - rebellion against oppression or increased incidence of channelers overall respectively. I think the mechanical difference is what we really want to decide - I agree that we can make the flavor work both ways, so whichever is the most mechanically useful is what we should go for.

I'm still steadily out of love with this idea. I will acquiesce if you love it though.

Can it please be a very minor element of the equation, though?

Also, I should state I don't completely agree that fd spawn rate needs to vary tremendously. It can, but I don't view it as essential

Yeah, unhappiness is definitely a good one! I can see us doubling the player's FD point generation while their empire is unhappy, and even quadrupling while very unhappy (-10 and below).

well maybe instead we should be more fluid than this. Instead of big multiplier points, what if the changes were more gradual? Additionally, it seems fitting to also reward positive happiness, not just punish unhappiness

Yeah, I think we can afford to have several Threads that are relatively similar to each other, but have different bends on them like your suggestion here. So in addition to the first one I put up (Accused Darkfriend) we could have:


Flavor: A man has been accused of being a darkfriend and brought to your court for judgement.
Choice A: Arrange his disappearance to safety abroad
Choice B: Torture him to learn of his masters
Choice C: Silence the accusers
Choice D: Hang him

So in this instance... either A or D are the least Shadow.

Like it!

I'll have more detail on this later, but I don't think the Threads necessarily need to be big empire-wide things. You're right that this is the least Alignment-relevant of the Threads I proposed though. When considering it, I figured each one would have a minimal yield in either direction, but we'd need to decide if we want any of the Threads to be like that. I'm happy to drop it if not.

Some being minimal is fine with me. More on neutrality below.

I think which one is evil would be more clear with full summary text (this is about Emissary from the Tower), because it would all be justified by how it was written (making one option have a dark undercurrent to your actions). It's less Alignment relevant than some of the others though.

sure. If we flavor it well, I'm on board

This is about Cost of Progress. I think this one is much more Alignment-y than the two above. The implication is that the cheaper of the two inventors is doing something shady, which is what makes it cheap. (Or he's deliberately underselling because there's some Shadow gain in his specific version of the invention becoming more widespread.)

Good. I like it

I'm inclined to think you're right, we want to avoid completely non-moral situations. Which is a bit of a shame, I think there's a lot of cool value and flavor in more Neutral choices. I don't think we need every Thread to be something civilization-spanning though, down to the nitty gritty of individuals making decisions that could somehow involve some government is where we could get some cool stories.

If all Threads are Alignment-y, are we ok with it that Neutral civs have to be constantly balancing, rather than not committing to either side? It seems to characterize them as a bit schizophrenic - sometimes evil, sometimes good. This is a reason to have non-Alignment-y Threads included.

A good reason to have only Alignment-y Threads is that we decided many moons ago (I think) that Threads were a major source of Alignment. Someone who wants to go one way or the other might be awash in Neutral Threads, unable to move their Alignment the way they choose. We could filter it, so a given civ is never starved for Alignment-y choices, but only if we think having Neutral ones are worth the added effort of doing so.

ok, a lot here.

I am fine with some threads being minor, and low level in terms of the epic factor

I don't think neutral civs need to choose good, then bad, etc. just because the SITUATION is moral, there will usually be CHOICES that are neutral. I definitely think every thread should likely have one or two if the options that generate very little alignment yield, if any

Consequently, I don't think a really need truly neutral threads. Each one should probably have some opportunity for alignment relevance, even if it is small

Yeah, something basic like +Gold, -Culture (or whatever) will give us an anchor to the approach we were considering for that "outcome" when we come back to these later. Otherwise some might be quite opaque when we look back at them in several weeks' time. I'll post a Threads list post next and put reward category suggestions for my initially proposed Threads in there in red.

This is different to the approach we took to Edicts and Quests - there we did have specific yields and effects. Do we think this one will be more successful? We're leaving a fair amount of work to come back to. It could be said that we can't make proper decisions on actual numbers until more of the tech tree is done, but the same could be said for Edicts. They'll all probably change later, but it might be nice to have a "finished" set of things to work from?

I think this approach is fine. I empirically have to do this later, when on a computer, and evaluate yours as well at that time.

I don't see a problem with us doing out this way, saving the details for later. Though it likely won't be much later.. A few posts or something.

In some ways, we might benefit from doing all the number crunching in one tedious Swype later. That way, we can balance them with all of them in mind

This all said, there may be some wisdom to doing the merits number crunching further down the line. Several of our mechanics still don't have finalized numbers attached to them, so a case could be made that its best not to commit to three yields until we commit to those things

Oh yeah, one per game for each player. Do we ever want the same player to see the same Thread twice in a single game? I can see some value in complete randomness, rather than once-per-game-per-player, in that some Threads probably make sense to happen more than once.

ymmv. I think I like once per player

Definitely, we'll want a Threads list post. I'll make one of those below!

I've edited a section on Threads into the Misc summary.

nice, will check all this out soon.

Yes, true. An unresearched fake Seal would just disappear on the spot.

good

Search for the Old Blood it is! I've edited the Edict list and added the Cure for Gentling.

We seem to have lost the quote block about the more general "cure a Gentled channeler." I think we can consider giving the ability to Aes Sedai (all Ajahs) after the player has researched a certain tech. I've been thinking about this one and each Sister unit type doesn't actually have tons more special missions. Across all Ajahs, there are a lot of new abilities, but most individual Sisters will only have one or two new abilities, and many of those will only be for players who have some tiers of influence with the Ajah. (Blues and Grays have only one extra mission ability, gained at tier 2. Whites and Reds add no new missions. Greens don't actually add any new missions, only modify the effects for an existing one. Yellows and Browns all have one extra ability, but gain none from influence. The rest of their bonuses are passive.) This could be a cool part of the Aes Sedai "upgrading" over time.

I'm going to leave this decision to you. I've pretty much cone back to thinking this mechanic is to much trouble for a couple units in the game, so if you think you want it, I'm happy to go with whichever path you want to take

Argh, this makes it tough. I think we should handle cities of all Alignments the same way, because it's less confusing for the player. I'd say let's go with this way, even if a city can end up Sanctimonious relatively easily. Unless you have a preference for the other approach? I'd say you decide on this one, I can see both approaches working.

I think I prefer going with a hard fast dfc number variance triggering the text change. It could be for or maybe even three. The reason is then I feel like that feels clear to the player. If they see sanctimonious, they know in all cases its probably going to require multiple heralds to get back to balanced, for example

How come this one is restricted to Tolerance? Is it that Fear would never make any of these decisions? (They might choose B)

...

Same question here, why Tolerance only? A is very Tolerance, but B and possibly C could be fear. (Depends on the amount of foreboding intended by "disappear".)

Right, I think the reason I put these as tolerance only is because they are sort of non choices if you are fear. Of course you'd do the anti Channeler thing as a fear civ. I guys I thought it was kind of lame to sort of force fear civs to choose shadow options, simply because they are anti one power

And that's really all my notes on yours - I like them! I've put them in the master list without any resulting effects, since I figured you'd have ideas about what you intended with each option.

Cool. If be happy to let you do the yield suggestions if you wanted, but I will take care of it when at a pc

Quick question about effects that have -Gold. Do we want to have an implicit restriction that the player must have enough gold to afford any option, or do we want to allow some options to be "unselectable"?

I'll come up with some more Threads tomorrow, I'm afraid I've run out of time with all the edits elsewhere!

hmmm.... I think the greyed out option is a good way to handle this. Let people know what they could have done, if only they had money!

Ok. Wow. I got thorough it. Crossing my fingers as I click reply...

EDIT: went through and added some possible yields to my Threads proposed above.