S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

[counterpoint]

A one-term trade route is a trade route that lasts for a normal time and then doesn't turn back into a trade unit? That's a very interesting ability. Would the player choose the city on their own side that the trade route links to? (The mission would then only be available if you have a city within range of the target city that doesn't already have a trade route with the target city.) I think the other player (the one who doesn't have the Merchant) would then get the normal bonus for being the recipient of a trade route.

I'd actually be quite ok with this approach - the same Gold bonus as BNW, but with a new trade route at the target.

Yeah, I think it'd be an interesting spin on the existing mechanic. I'm down to try it.

I quite like Estate Library from that list!

OK, I'd be fine with that.

Urk, this has a lot of etymological knock-ons. I think we're basically axing the word "Science" from the mod, since that's a more modern/Earth-like word than what we want for the mod.

I like the notion of rediscovering knowledge, also plays well into time being a wheel. It might be a bit narrow though - it prescribes a certain kind of thing to contribute toward "rediscovery" of knowledge (feels like it should be sourced from the AoL directly, rather than just being rediscovered (eh?) separately).

Well, how about simply "uncover knowledge" then? I am fine with rediscovery, but if you're worried it's too narrow, Uncover could be a good alternative.

Is it weird that we're renaming one yield and only one yield? Should we rename the others as well....?

Merchant Baron sounds good - was Baron ever used as a title in WoT? If not (I'm not seeing anything after some cursory searching) then Merchant Lord might be better.

I don't recall baron ever popping up. Maybe Merchant Lord is better?

Blargh, I don't know why I thought you were doing this summary! I should start editing things into it.

Sorry. Yeah, the GP and Gov's one was started a long while ago.

As you've noted in your edit, Doomseer is the Writer stand-in, so we can't disconnect her from the Culture-driven spawning mechanism.

Yeah, my mistake.

I do wonder whether or not being able to produce small amounts of off-focus GP points would actually be a problem. (Science vs Culture vs Production are all still Tall/Wide balancers.) I also don't think a culture-based output would be too complicated for players. It's another one of those mechanics that when we write out all of the edge specifications and justifications, it sounds complicated, but for players it's basically:

• If I produce more Culture, this Specialist gets better.
• She produces Scientist points in Science-y cities, Gleeman points in Culture-y cities, and so on for other yields

Also, your suggestion later on of combining this ability with the Culture dump one is very good - I think, regardless of what we decide about which GP points the Specialist produces and how, having a Culture dump at the same time would be totally fine. That brings us back to having 3 Culture GP types.

I'm reluctant to go straight in on making the Specialist just produce Culture GP points, because I feel like that misses the key part of the flavor that makes Min the source for this GP type. We risk falling too close to effectively reskinning BNW (though we do still inherit a need to rebalance in this case, since we've changed the delivery mechanism for those additional points), and I think we could be better off creating something quite different.

+1 to all GP types or +1 to the top 3 has the same crossover potential as the "top GP type" method above, which I think will stand out more for players, so out of the 3 we should go for that one.

Ok. tricky tricky. I think I agree that we can probably afford to allow this culture GP to produce Science and other such things - though only Tall/Wide balanced things - and not have it be a problem. We just have to balance her spawning appropriately.

I think I'm fine with her producing some lump sum of culture (though less than in BNW), as well as creating the specialist. I'm somewhat sad to lose the flavor of the ogier writing the history, though. this is acceptable, I suppose. Though, I'd also be happy if we found another way to make it work.

As far as her Viewing mechanic, I think I prefer her Specialist to simply give +1 GP points of the top three types (regardless of what kind they are, as long as they are Tall/Wide balanced, which per-city ones all appear to be) instead of having it based on culture output. As long as you don't think this can be easily exploited by people, I think this is the best way to go. I also think this fits the flavor well, and feels unique.

I think, probably, the way it should work is that it adds an additional (special) specialist slot to whatever culture building is attached to Doomseers.

That said, here's a weird issue. What do we do for her "normal specialist"? The main culture buildings (library, opera house, etc.) have normal specialist slots (artist, writer, etc.), yes? So, presumably, there's specialists that would need to exist to simply produce culture and Doomseer GP points, right? What the heck would we *call* these? They can't be Doomseers or anything, right - that's reserved for the GP specialist?

Or do we change up the mechanic a bit, having there be NO specialists for her buildings - the buildings themselves perhaps just produce more GP points - and think of this as a balancing fact against her unusual GP abilities? I dunno, seems like that'd have weird knock on consequences.

Thoughts

Side note: I should say, actually, that looking back on my previous suggestions and the culture summary, there may have been some wires crossed.

Master Artisan - Create Craft and Start Golden Age (thus a GAr equivalent)
Gleeman - Create Legend and Perform (thus a GMu equivalent).

This makes intuitive sense, but when looking over the Culture summary, I noticed that we had previously stated that the Legends would be the GWoA equivalent (I think this was due to the fact that Gleemen were more high profile in the series, and produced cooler GWs). This matters somewhat, in part because it was the Legends we had decided Relics would be "attached to", and because of the order in which they are tech unlocked (and relative numbers of GW buildings, etc.).

Do we need to go back to the drawing board on which GP is which, or are we ok simply saying Crafts are the "GWoA" equivalent?

What if the structure were called a "Fortress" but the ability was simply called "Claim Land"? The player is staking their claim over a certain territory and planting their armies there, disregarding other civs' claims.

Sure. Totally fine with that idea! Is "Claim Territory" more fun? Wish there was a more ta'vereny way to phrase it.

Don't we have to rename Great Works anyway - or were we thinking we could leave that the same?

Um, not sure. GW could still work, but obviously seems like we might wanna rename them.... any ideas?

I think I agree about dropping the Great prefix from all of them bar the Great Captain, and not use Great People as the name of the system. Luminaries it is then?

Yeah, I'm ok with Luminaries. But I'm also kind of having second thoughts on it. Doesn't feel super in universe. Is there a way we can make it _____ People, so it feels more in keeping with how things are in CiV? Like Legendary People? Fabled? Mythic People, something like that? And then we can simply name the GWs _______ Works? Right?

Yeah, it should be very rare that this actually occurs, given the number of votes the Tower will probably have. I don't think it gives away much about your enemies, since you only really know that a large number of Ambassadors have been used, rather than anything about who used them. (The biggest piece of info it gives you is probably that the current vote is very important to many players - which you probably already knew if that was the case.)

ok. that's fine, then!

The CS influence boost ability is the proposed second ability for this GP, which should be relevant throughout the game.

right. that should be fine then.

No worries. I'm always happy to have time to build more elaborate spaceships!

good. well I'm doing a 3000-mile move soon, so there may be more spaceship time than usual in the next month....

You can always edit your old posts.

DAMN YOU AND YOUR LOGICAL IDEAS[/quote]

While I agree that Dreamwalker does seem like great flavor for a GP type (I suggested it after all, based on your use of the word!), I worry here that we're trying to fit an extra GP ability in in order to allow us to use that flavor, which I think will end up creating a less mechanically useful GP type. (Unless we come up with a whole new GP ability?) I think that Plant a Dreamspike and Create Dragonsworn stack up well against Wolfbrother in terms of utility, and Slayer is a good example of being able to put those two abilities together flavorfully.

Is there more we can do to generalize Slayer into a GP type? Can he be a Two-Souled Warrior or something to that effect? I think we can evoke the Slayer flavor without creating something inherently "evil" (like you've said, we don't want a GP that's a "dark creature").

Ack...

I do think we want to try to use Dreamwalker. It's a very in-universe word, and we don't have anywhere else to put it...

So, what if we simply rebrand Create Dragonsworn... which is sort of silly anyways. What if we go in one of two directions:

1) Rip Nightmare from the Dream - creates Lawless units - some shadowspawn, some dudes at the spot in the real layer. Looks like a dragonsworn/lawless attack, but flavored differently. Of course, there isn't flavor justification for this in the books, necessarily.

2) Corrupt Dreams - creates lawless units - all dudes. The flavor here is that your inciting people to revolt by Effing with their dreams and poisoning their minds, maybe not unlike what Graendal did tot he Captains. This was is more flavor justified, but is also a bit more of a "stretch", and would need a better name.

Thoughts? This would have the added effect of keeping the nastiness in the GP.

Also, is this ability done from the main layer or from T'a'r?

Also, just considering here, should Plant a Dreamspike be a multi-use ability? Twice?

sure!

What about the Dragonsworn one?

Flavor tells us that Slayer would be stronger than Wolfbrothers or wolves individually, but could be weaker than a couple of them acting in concert. (This makes sense mechanically as well, since a single Wolfbrother can create multiple wolves.) He would have the ability to attack, like Wolfbrothers and Wolves (which is different from projections).

Is Slayer necessarily stronger than the WBrs? I don't remember. Obviously he owns Perrin for most of the books, but once Perrin learns his skills, I felt they were evenly matched.

I think we should be careful making him more powerful than WBr, and not sure we want him even able to easily kill one wolf (should be close)- don't want to limit the usefulness of wolves. Maybe he's slightly stronger than than the WBr, but has even worse movement, or something? (the WBr having worse movement than the wolves). I suppose I'm concerned, since the Dreamwalker abilities are more rarely of obvious use, that we'd be encouraging people to just make an army of slayers, which isn't really what we have in mind, I think.

The flavor for Wise-One-style Dreamwalkers would be a bit different - they're arguably less powerful than wolves/Wolfbrothers (Egwene noted how powerful Perrin was despite being self-taught in T'a'r usage).

I think the results here depend on the decision above.

Yeah, who knows what we do with WOs.... gonna have to deal with it way in the future.

Ogier Stonemason sounds good to me! It's in-universe and fits with the flavor of what the GP does.

sure.

Right, further to what I mentioned with the Doomseer above, I think we may be looking at dropping the fourth Culture GP type here? So we wouldn't use the Reclassify Relic ability (unless it's used below, we may drop Advise a Governor in such a case). What do you think?

I was wondering, actually. Could we include Reclassify as a 3rd ability for the Gleeman? It's quite minor, of course, and both it and concert tour are very, very specific in their usefulness. It might not be too weird to do that, right? Does that make the GMu-equivalent more useful?

I don't think the Stedding Vote ability is redundant with the Ambassador's influence ability (were it to work on Stedding) because of the way the Stedding votes work. Even being the Stedding's ally, you only have 2 votes to pit against the Stedding's own 2. A bonus of 1 vote would allow a single ally to override the Stedding for a single Stump (only thwarted by another player voting in tandem with the Stedding, or several in concert, etc.). On the other hand, an influence boost when you're already the Stedding's ally doesn't actually help you, which makes this ability even more useful when it exists separately from a generic CS influence boost ability. (It's always useful for any Stedding, whereas an Influence boost ability is only useful for Stedding that it would take you from Neutral -> Friend or Friend -> Ally.)

I would be happy to use Reclassify Relic in the place of Advise a Governor on this Ogier GP type, if we prefer that ability.

I think adding Reclassify Relic to this guy creates the issue with tall/wide balance crossing over to system specific, blah blah blah...

I see your point on the distinct-ness of Stedding vote.

I think both Stedding Vote and Advise Gov are minor enough that they could be axed without much loss. That said, if you feel like we really want this kind of thing as a second diplo GP, and think it's worth it, then I'm ok with having it. Is there a way to throw hurry eyes and ears into it too?

 

[S3rgeus]

great!

I hope you've been enjoying the regular "Threadbackup.txt has been updated" messages from DropBox. It's reassuring when I see that on another computer!

Yeah, I think the visual flavor (and different spawning mechanic) may be enough. It still seems more unique than it was in BNW, though, which is good. Also, the fact that more will become available as you uncover glimmers will make it feel more fun, i think.

Ok, sounds like we're decided on this then!

Quick clarification, though: are these guys revealed immediately once the civ has the requisite glimmers, or do you need to see them on the t'a'r layer via scouting as well? I'm assuming they just "pop in" once you grab enough glimmers.

I think they're visible to that player in the same way resources are when that player researches the tech that unlocks them. They are notified of any in their current territory and can see the Reflections on plots they have previously explored, but it doesn't reveal the unexplored fog.

Also, do Reflections get revealed in the same order for all civs, or is it random? Like, if Andor and the Aiel have each revealed 5, is it possible that those are not the same glimmers? I suppose the larger question is whether these Reflections are "created" by gathering glimmers, or simply revealed.

We spoke before about creating Reflections by expending T'a'r GP types, which I think still makes sense.

As for the order they are revealed to each player, I think random is safest. We don't need to keep track of the order then (so different Reflections being excavated doesn't alter the order later civs reveal them in).

I've updated the Culture Summary.

Awesome! I've updated the Reflections of Power section in the misc summary.


If the above is all ok, are we done with T'a'r?

 

[S3rgeus]

Yeah, I think it'd be an interesting spin on the existing mechanic. I'm down to try it.

Awesome, let's do that!

OK, I'd be fine with that.

And it is decided!

Well, how about simply "uncover knowledge" then? I am fine with rediscovery, but if you're worried it's too narrow, Uncover could be a good alternative.

Is it weird that we're renaming one yield and only one yield? Should we rename the others as well....?

We've renamed Tourism, though that isn't technically a yield, it is one conceptually. That one stood out as clearly in conflict with the WoT flavor though. I don't think we'll want to rename the others because they're way too generic to do so without looking very contrarian. Food in particular. (Perhaps surprisingly, Gold is easily rename-able to one of the WoT currencies.)

This does make we wary of renaming Science so quickly though. We're presumably going to keep the BNW Beaker icon, which is more Science-y, even when it's representing the beginning of time techs. I could see us renaming to "Knowledge" but keeping "Research", since that does still make sense.

Unsure, I feel like we don't have a huge driver to changing it over and while I think Knowledge could work, this kind of foundational flavor change could have knock-ons we don't like. Shall we reserve judgement until we get to doing techs and buildings, and see if the BNW "Science" classification is too narrow/doesn't describe WoT appropriately?

I don't recall baron ever popping up. Maybe Merchant Lord is better?

Done

Sorry. Yeah, the GP and Gov's one was started a long while ago.

No worries, I'll update it with the stuff we've discussed thus far this weekend.

Ok. tricky tricky. I think I agree that we can probably afford to allow this culture GP to produce Science and other such things - though only Tall/Wide balanced things - and not have it be a problem. We just have to balance her spawning appropriately.

I think I'm fine with her producing some lump sum of culture (though less than in BNW), as well as creating the specialist. I'm somewhat sad to lose the flavor of the ogier writing the history, though. this is acceptable, I suppose. Though, I'd also be happy if we found another way to make it work.

As far as her Viewing mechanic, I think I prefer her Specialist to simply give +1 GP points of the top three types (regardless of what kind they are, as long as they are Tall/Wide balanced, which per-city ones all appear to be) instead of having it based on culture output. As long as you don't think this can be easily exploited by people, I think this is the best way to go. I also think this fits the flavor well, and feels unique.

I think, probably, the way it should work is that it adds an additional (special) specialist slot to whatever culture building is attached to Doomseers.

This approach sounds like a good one to me.

That said, here's a weird issue. What do we do for her "normal specialist"? The main culture buildings (library, opera house, etc.) have normal specialist slots (artist, writer, etc.), yes? So, presumably, there's specialists that would need to exist to simply produce culture and Doomseer GP points, right? What the heck would we *call* these? They can't be Doomseers or anything, right - that's reserved for the GP specialist?

I think we actually have this issue with the other GP types as well, rather than it being isolated to Doomseers. The Specialist slots are usually named after the GP type but without the "Great" prefix (so Scientist, Artist, Musician, Engineer, etc. in BNW). At first I was thinking we'd probably need to name the Specialists individually, but now I think it's less friction to have all of the GP-point-producing Specialists named the same as their GP type.

This brings up your question of what to call the Specialist spawned by the Doomseer's ability. We could take the name of the GP that spawned them (there must be other Doomseers aside from Min, otherwise the Seanchan wouldn't have a word for it, I hope?).

Or do we change up the mechanic a bit, having there be NO specialists for her buildings - the buildings themselves perhaps just produce more GP points - and think of this as a balancing fact against her unusual GP abilities? I dunno, seems like that'd have weird knock on consequences.

Thoughts

This would mess with the Tall/Wide balance aspect of it, because the necessity for the city to have enough population to fill the Specialist slot (or otherwise sacrifice working valuable plots, if it has a low population) is what makes Tall civs better at generating GPs. If the building always generated GP points, Wide civs would have the advantage in producing this GP type.

Side note: I should say, actually, that looking back on my previous suggestions and the culture summary, there may have been some wires crossed.

Master Artisan - Create Craft and Start Golden Age (thus a GAr equivalent)
Gleeman - Create Legend and Perform (thus a GMu equivalent).

This makes intuitive sense, but when looking over the Culture summary, I noticed that we had previously stated that the Legends would be the GWoA equivalent (I think this was due to the fact that Gleemen were more high profile in the series, and produced cooler GWs). This matters somewhat, in part because it was the Legends we had decided Relics would be "attached to", and because of the order in which they are tech unlocked (and relative numbers of GW buildings, etc.).

Do we need to go back to the drawing board on which GP is which, or are we ok simply saying Crafts are the "GWoA" equivalent?

Looking at it now, it strikes me that Crafts and Relics probably go together better than Legends and Relics, right? (If any two should be "attached" it feels like it should probably be Prophecies and Legends?) Shall we just swap Crafts to be our GWoA equivalent then?

Sure. Totally fine with that idea! Is "Claim Territory" more fun? Wish there was a more ta'vereny way to phrase it.

Claim Territory sounds like a plan! I can't think of any ta'veren-y description, unfortunately. Easy to change later if we do, though!

Um, not sure. GW could still work, but obviously seems like we might wanna rename them.... any ideas?

Discussion on this below - if we go with ____ People, then they should probably also be ____ Works!

Yeah, I'm ok with Luminaries. But I'm also kind of having second thoughts on it. Doesn't feel super in universe. Is there a way we can make it _____ People, so it feels more in keeping with how things are in CiV? Like Legendary People? Fabled? Mythic People, something like that? And then we can simply name the GWs _______ Works? Right?

Legendary strikes me as the most fantasy-esque and Legendary Works also makes sense. I do agree that there's definitely value in the consistency of them being _____ People.

good. well I'm doing a 3000-mile move soon, so there may be more spaceship time than usual in the next month....

I'll be able to complete my massive carrier ship, which is going to consume all of the resources in the universe. Should be fun!

Ack...

I do think we want to try to use Dreamwalker. It's a very in-universe word, and we don't have anywhere else to put it...

So, what if we simply rebrand Create Dragonsworn... which is sort of silly anyways. What if we go in one of two directions:

1) Rip Nightmare from the Dream - creates Lawless units - some shadowspawn, some dudes at the spot in the real layer. Looks like a dragonsworn/lawless attack, but flavored differently. Of course, there isn't flavor justification for this in the books, necessarily.

2) Corrupt Dreams - creates lawless units - all dudes. The flavor here is that your inciting people to revolt by Effing with their dreams and poisoning their minds, maybe not unlike what Graendal did tot he Captains. This was is more flavor justified, but is also a bit more of a "stretch", and would need a better name.

Thoughts? This would have the added effect of keeping the nastiness in the GP.

Sounds awesome, this looks like a good GP type! Reflavoring is great, Create Dragonsworn was only the "mechanical" name for the ability (so it was obvious what it did when we were iterating on them) - I don't think we ever decided on a flavor one?

Does option #2 need a new name? Corrupt Dreams sounds like it could be good, particularly if the ability could only be used next to a city?

In Lawless vs Dragonsworn, I prefer to use Dragonsworn where we can because they're the more flavorful "barbarian civ" but it doesn't really fit with this flavor.

Also, is this ability done from the main layer or from T'a'r?

Possibly related, can this unit move in-the-flesh back and forth between T'a'r and reality? Is that the defining feature of its "ongoing" existence? (External to its abilities.) It would also serve to differentiate it from the Wolfbrother, which could be good, but may have other implications?

sure!

What about the Dragonsworn one?

We could have a similar mechanical limit to the Wolfbrother - make it so the GP is expended once he's used his abilities twice - no matter which combination of them he uses?

Is Slayer necessarily stronger than the WBrs? I don't remember. Obviously he owns Perrin for most of the books, but once Perrin learns his skills, I felt they were evenly matched.

I think we should be careful making him more powerful than WBr, and not sure we want him even able to easily kill one wolf (should be close)- don't want to limit the usefulness of wolves. Maybe he's slightly stronger than than the WBr, but has even worse movement, or something? (the WBr having worse movement than the wolves). I suppose I'm concerned, since the Dreamwalker abilities are more rarely of obvious use, that we'd be encouraging people to just make an army of slayers, which isn't really what we have in mind, I think.

I think most Wolfbrothers would be of a similar strength to the Perrin when Slayer defeated him the first few times. The problem with making the Dreamwalker weaker than the wolf is that he will always lose to the Wolfbrother then, which isn't good. At best, he could be considered to be forcing a Wolfbrother to expend himself creating a second wolf, but that's not bad for the Wolfbrother civ except in very specific circumstances. If the Wolfbrother hasn't used either of his abilities yet, then he'll just win straight off - because then it's Wolfbrother + Wolf vs Dreamwalker. That's mainly why I would suggest making Dreamwalkers stronger than both - because you can make 2 wolves with a single GP, but only a single Dreamwalker. The flavor can go either way on this one, as you've demonstrated, so I think we should go with the flavor that lines up best with our mechanical needs.

At first I was thinking we wanted to avoid a Dreamwalker epidemic as well, but actually I'm not sure that's a problem. I think as long as a Dreamwalker vs two wolves is a relatively fair fight, probably favoring the wolves on average, (which would mean he'd need to be a good chunk stronger) then the two should remain viably competitive against each other. And I could definitely see a civ deciding to focus on Dreamwalkers in lieu of Wolfbrothers, in which case we would want them to have a few.

It's definitely a matter of striking that balance so that neither of them are supreme T'a'r killing machines, so players only ever pick one. I think we'll only really nail the specifics of that down through playtesting, but as long as we're happy with the concept of them being militarily equally matched overall, then that should be good for now. (The total gain for a player of a single Dreamwalker is different but of equal-ish value to the total gain of one Wolfbrother.)

I was wondering, actually. Could we include Reclassify as a 3rd ability for the Gleeman? It's quite minor, of course, and both it and concert tour are very, very specific in their usefulness. It might not be too weird to do that, right? Does that make the GMu-equivalent more useful?

They're both useful to the same type of player: someone who's trying to win the Culture victory. Culture dump is useful for everyone, as is Golden Age. but a Prestige dump only helps a Culture player. So I'd be fine with adding this ability, in the event that a Culture player might need it.

I think adding Reclassify Relic to this guy creates the issue with tall/wide balance crossing over to system specific, blah blah blah...

I see your point on the distinct-ness of Stedding vote.

I think both Stedding Vote and Advise Gov are minor enough that they could be axed without much loss. That said, if you feel like we really want this kind of thing as a second diplo GP, and think it's worth it, then I'm ok with having it. Is there a way to throw hurry eyes and ears into it too?

Bargh, another GP lost to lack of a second ability! Well, in theory, this is meaning we're paring it down to our best!

While I'd like to be able to support a second GP type with the Stedding vote ability, I don't think we've got the mechanics to give it a useful second ability. Should the Stedding vote be added to the Ambassador's ability then?

Unless, one last-ditch GP ability proposal that could go on an Ogier GP type, along with the Stedding vote ability:

Call a Stump
Expend this GP to cause a Stump to occur immediately.

 

[counterpoint]

I hope you've been enjoying the regular "Threadbackup.txt has been updated" messages from DropBox. It's reassuring when I see that on another computer!

very reassuring!

I think they're visible to that player in the same way resources are when that player researches the tech that unlocks them. They are notified of any in their current territory and can see the Reflections on plots they have previously explored, but it doesn't reveal the unexplored fog.

right. sounds good!

We spoke before about creating Reflections by expending T'a'r GP types, which I think still makes sense.

Right. so *expending* the GP, right? Not simply using an ability (since they each can use abilities twice)? And also not randomly choosing one of those uses to create the Reflection (as we're doing with Glimmer creation and multi-use GP abilities)?

Oh, and do these abilities create Glimmers? No, right?

As for the order they are revealed to each player, I think random is safest. We don't need to keep track of the order then (so different Reflections being excavated doesn't alter the order later civs reveal them in).

I agree.

If the above is all ok, are we done with T'a'r?

well, still a few things pending, but yes. Well, we're still discussing Dreamwalkers below, so not entirely done with t'ar.

 

[counterpoint]

And it is decided!

then we are decided

We've renamed Tourism, though that isn't technically a yield, it is one conceptually. That one stood out as clearly in conflict with the WoT flavor though. I don't think we'll want to rename the others because they're way too generic to do so without looking very contrarian. Food in particular. (Perhaps surprisingly, Gold is easily rename-able to one of the WoT currencies.)

This does make we wary of renaming Science so quickly though. We're presumably going to keep the BNW Beaker icon, which is more Science-y, even when it's representing the beginning of time techs. I could see us renaming to "Knowledge" but keeping "Research", since that does still make sense.

Unsure, I feel like we don't have a huge driver to changing it over and while I think Knowledge could work, this kind of foundational flavor change could have knock-ons we don't like. Shall we reserve judgement until we get to doing techs and buildings, and see if the BNW "Science" classification is too narrow/doesn't describe WoT appropriately?

I think we definitely should leave this on the table for now. Definitely not worth rewiring everything yet.

Maybe make a note of it in the "Misc Flavor" part of the misc summary for further recollection of this?

But yes, Research as a term is fine, even if it's Knowledge.

But yeah, money would be easy - Marks or Crowns.

I think we actually have this issue with the other GP types as well, rather than it being isolated to Doomseers. The Specialist slots are usually named after the GP type but without the "Great" prefix (so Scientist, Artist, Musician, Engineer, etc. in BNW). At first I was thinking we'd probably need to name the Specialists individually, but now I think it's less friction to have all of the GP-point-producing Specialists named the same as their GP type.

This brings up your question of what to call the Specialist spawned by the Doomseer's ability. We could take the name of the GP that spawned them (there must be other Doomseers aside from Min, otherwise the Seanchan wouldn't have a word for it, I hope?).

OK, so you and I chatted a little on Steam about this, but essentially I wanted to point out that the Doomseer is unique in that it will actually have two specialists associated with it - one "normal" one that generates its GP points, and hangs out in its building, and the other that is created by the GP ability. This messes things up, IMO.

So, here's what I think we should do: come up with unique names for the specialists. I think that "feels" better anyways. So, how about something like:

Master Artisan (Artist) - Craftsman or Journeyman
Gleeman (Musician) - Bard or Singer or Musician (Bard is in-universe, but is somewhat odd since it may actually be more prestigious than Gleeman - we could flip it so the gleeman is the specialist, but the Bard is unfortunately less WoT-special)
Doomseer (Writer) - Wisdom (see below)
Ogier Stonemason (Engineer) - Smith or Builder (I like Smith, but this does bleed with the artisan ones somewhat)
Merchant Lord (Merchant) - Trader or Shopkeep or Innkeeper or Peddler (the last is probably best saved for the caravan units
Scholar (Scientist) - Scribe or Inventor or Librarian
Doomseer GP Ability - Doomseer or Viewer (either could work)

I think Wisdoms are a good choice for the Doomseer. The truth is, we were going to run up against a problem when it came time to coming up with buildings for the doomseer. The Wisdom will make that easier. Of course, Wisdoms creating culture is a little sketchy, but... eh. I can't think of a better use for them, nor can I think of a better specialist for the Doomseer.

I should note that the Channeling summary states the following:

Wisdoms will serve as specialists that will generate Faith and points towards "unusual" GPs. They shall be “housed” in a building with a common and stable use.

So, we've obviously changed that, since the "WoT GPs," inasmuch as they exist, are most definitely not being created through specialists. So I shall axe this once we settle on above.

This would mess with the Tall/Wide balance aspect of it, because the necessity for the city to have enough population to fill the Specialist slot (or otherwise sacrifice working valuable plots, if it has a low population) is what makes Tall civs better at generating GPs. If the building always generated GP points, Wide civs would have the advantage in producing this GP type.

right. that wouldn't be good.

Looking at it now, it strikes me that Crafts and Relics probably go together better than Legends and Relics, right? (If any two should be "attached" it feels like it should probably be Prophecies and Legends?) Shall we just swap Crafts to be our GWoA equivalent then?

wait, your parenthetical is super confusing. Crafts and Relics should be attached, I think. I don't think we can really attach Prophesies and Legends, nor should we. But I think I see what you mean about the flavor at least.

Legends and Prophesies are thematically quite similar... more on that below.

Claim Territory sounds like a plan! I can't think of any ta'veren-y description, unfortunately. Easy to change later if we do, though!

righto

Discussion on this below - if we go with ____ People, then they should probably also be ____ Works!

Legendary strikes me as the most fantasy-esque and Legendary Works also makes sense. I do agree that there's definitely value in the consistency of them being _____ People.

ok. Right.

So Legendary People and Legendary Works. I like both of these. So LP points and such, then.... and LWoC and LWoL and LWoP.

But that brings me to the LW-type Legends. I find it lacking, considering the now abundant use of the work Legends, and also the sort of flavor similarity already noted to Prophesy (though of course one is the past and one is the future).

Now that Gleemen are a little more musician-ey (no longer the Artist stand-in), might we want to rename their LW? Maybe only to not overuse the word Legend, but also perhaps to distance it from Prophesies. Some ideas:

Stories (simple, I know)
Myths
Song Cycles
Cycles
Epics
Tales
Tellings

thoughts? Stories, Cycles, and Epics are certainly used to describe such things in the book. Myth occurs in the famous "legend fades to myth" line. And tellings is a common chapter title thingy (Tellings of the Wheel). I think any of these could work.

I'll be able to complete my massive carrier ship, which is going to consume all of the resources in the universe. Should be fun!

pics or it didn't happen.

Sounds awesome, this looks like a good GP type! Reflavoring is great, Create Dragonsworn was only the "mechanical" name for the ability (so it was obvious what it did when we were iterating on them) - I don't think we ever decided on a flavor one?

Does option #2 need a new name? Corrupt Dreams sounds like it could be good, particularly if the ability could only be used next to a city?

the reason I thought it might need a new name is because I worry that people won't see the cause and affect. Yes, we're corrupting their dreams and making them revolt, but I'm not sure that's obvious. I wish there was a way to say "Corrupt Dreams and Cause an Insurrection" without using so many words. The flavor works, but I don't know if people will see that flavor. do we just rely on the description?

In Lawless vs Dragonsworn, I prefer to use Dragonsworn where we can because they're the more flavorful "barbarian civ" but it doesn't really fit with this flavor.

yeah, doesn't quite fit. It would need to be more like "Convert to Fanatics" or something, and that one I don't quite like as much.

Possibly related, can this unit move in-the-flesh back and forth between T'a'r and reality? Is that the defining feature of its "ongoing" existence? (External to its abilities.) It would also serve to differentiate it from the Wolfbrother, which could be good, but may have other implications?

Well, I don't think there's any reason to have it go back and forth, because I don't think there's any purpose it serves in the real world whatsoever. Both of his abilities are T'a'r abilities (should be, I think), so I don't see the mechanical need. I mean, he could appear already in T'a'r, even.

EDIT: though, if he is chosen to advise a governor, I could imagine why he'd want to be in the real world. Also, sitting around the map is somewhat safer, in that he could only be attacked via DoW that way. So probably he starts in real world.... but probably stays in T'a'r once he zaps in.

We could have a similar mechanical limit to the Wolfbrother - make it so the GP is expended once he's used his abilities twice - no matter which combination of them he uses?

Yeah. I think we already decided on that, actually.

I think most Wolfbrothers would be of a similar strength to the Perrin when Slayer defeated him the first few times. The problem with making the Dreamwalker weaker than the wolf is that he will always lose to the Wolfbrother then, which isn't good. At best, he could be considered to be forcing a Wolfbrother to expend himself creating a second wolf, but that's not bad for the Wolfbrother civ except in very specific circumstances. If the Wolfbrother hasn't used either of his abilities yet, then he'll just win straight off - because then it's Wolfbrother + Wolf vs Dreamwalker. That's mainly why I would suggest making Dreamwalkers stronger than both - because you can make 2 wolves with a single GP, but only a single Dreamwalker. The flavor can go either way on this one, as you've demonstrated, so I think we should go with the flavor that lines up best with our mechanical needs.

At first I was thinking we wanted to avoid a Dreamwalker epidemic as well, but actually I'm not sure that's a problem. I think as long as a Dreamwalker vs two wolves is a relatively fair fight, probably favoring the wolves on average, (which would mean he'd need to be a good chunk stronger) then the two should remain viably competitive against each other. And I could definitely see a civ deciding to focus on Dreamwalkers in lieu of Wolfbrothers, in which case we would want them to have a few.

It's definitely a matter of striking that balance so that neither of them are supreme T'a'r killing machines, so players only ever pick one. I think we'll only really nail the specifics of that down through playtesting, but as long as we're happy with the concept of them being militarily equally matched overall, then that should be good for now. (The total gain for a player of a single Dreamwalker is different but of equal-ish value to the total gain of one Wolfbrother.)

OK, you're going to hate this, but I'm going to keep debating you here, because I think I can convince you.

OK, basically, I have issues with the Dreamwalker being particularly good at combat. I'd be fine with him being equal to the Wolfbrother. I'd also be fine with him being slightly better, but slower (or some other drawback that makes it a "wash" in the end).

The reason for this is simply balance and math. When you said "striking that balance so that neither of them are supreme T'a'r killing machines," I found myself wondering: Isn't that the whole point of the wolf? The WBr has to expend his abilities to create combat units. It doesn't seem fair that the Dreamwalker gets that kind of facility without spending anything.

Wolfbrother has these abilities: Pull of the Pattern (i.e. totally unrelated to T'a'r),Destroy Dreamspike and Call Wolves. He can also destroy Dreamwards, I think

Dreamwalker has two abilities: Create Dreamspike and Corrupt Dreams. Can he also destroy Dreamwards? I figure he can, but we could elect, theoretically, that he can't. Can he destroy DS's as well? I could see that being unique to WBr, but could also see it being there for both of them.

Getting rid of PotP from the conversation (since it has nothing to do with T'a'r), leaves the WBr with one main purpose: kill things in T'a'r and occasionally pull up a DS. I feel like by having the DW be any good in T'a'r majorly intrudes on the value of the WBr.

I don't want people to be calculating between the two GPs (since they may, apparently, be given the choice between them) based on who will be more useful for their combat approach. I'd much prefer it be clear - you want combat? You need wolves. That's the point of the wolves, and thus, the point of the WBr's T'a'r presence.

As cool as Slayer-v-Young Bull 2013 was, I don't think WBr vs DWa battles are what we should be aiming for or balancing around. I'd say the combat prowess of both these units should be, essentially, serving the purpose of keeping them alive to do their other things. Engaging in real attacks and GP-duels with them feels somewhat uncivlike to me.

In the interest of that, I propose both of the units be actually relatively weak in terms of outright combat strength. However, they have the following properties:

1) They may be immune to projection aura, or suffer less from it
2) They may have defensive boosts against nightmares
3) They may have defensive boosts against other T'a'r LPs
3) They are NOT resistant to Wolves

I think we could adopt all of these principles for each of them, or else split them up among them. Similarly, we could say only one of them can kill Dreamwards (though it probably should be both) and only one of them can kill Dreamspikes

To summarize, I just feel like we should keep these units pretty light as far as combat goes. They are fine to wander around and bother projections, and then can defend themselves against Nightmares, perhaps, but a wolf? A wolf is a dedicated combat unit - it's primary purpose should possibly be to hunt *these* guys, right?

And besides, from a balance perspective, how is a Dreamwalker vs 2 wolves being a fair fight anything but a bad balance move? The WBr had to expend BOTH of his LP abilities to create those wolves - who's sole purpose is to fight - why should the Dreamwalker be able to do fight comparably without even spending a SINGLE ability?

What do you think?

They're both useful to the same type of player: someone who's trying to win the Culture victory. Culture dump is useful for everyone, as is Golden Age. but a Prestige dump only helps a Culture player. So I'd be fine with adding this ability, in the event that a Culture player might need it.

OK, cool. So, if this is flavored to go as a third Gleeman ability... what could we call it? Reclassify Relic is more clinical, more like a scholar ability (or the aforementioned ogier). Inspire Derivative Work? (but not such a dumb modern way of saying it)

Bargh, another GP lost to lack of a second ability! Well, in theory, this is meaning we're paring it down to our best!

While I'd like to be able to support a second GP type with the Stedding vote ability, I don't think we've got the mechanics to give it a useful second ability. Should the Stedding vote be added to the Ambassador's ability then?

Unless, one last-ditch GP ability proposal that could go on an Ogier GP type, along with the Stedding vote ability:

Call a Stump
Expend this GP to cause a Stump to occur immediately.

ehh.... I think we should axe it. I think there are probably a lot of weird possible effects if we let a stump get called whenever... Not worth it, IMO.

I'd be fine with adding that to the ambassador, I suppose.

And, if I'm recalling correctly, we've added three wholly new GPs. Seems like we've:

- Added two new T'a'r LPs
- Added a Diplo LP
- Added some new abilities to the Culture LPs
- Mostly kept the Gold/Production/Science LPs the way they are, with some tweaks

I think that's probably enough!

Cool! So... settle these matters, and then 1)Work through their LP point spawning mechanics while we 2) work through the kinds of governors they create

 

[S3rgeus]

Apologies for the delay, this weekend turned out to be a lot busier than I'd originally expected! Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow night! (I'll edit this post to reply to the T'a'r one.)

 

[counterpoint]

Apologies for the delay, this weekend turned out to be a lot busier than I'd originally expected! Regularly scheduled programming will resume tomorrow night! (I'll edit this post to reply to the T'a'r one.)

no problem. Heads up, though, the last time I'll likely be able to post anything for a while is Wednesday, and i'm not 100% sure i'll be able to that day.

 

[S3rgeus]

I wasn't sure if you'd post yesterday, hence the edit comment, but I think it's less confusing if I post this as its own post after yours!

Right. so *expending* the GP, right? Not simply using an ability (since they each can use abilities twice)? And also not randomly choosing one of those uses to create the Reflection (as we're doing with Glimmer creation and multi-use GP abilities)?

Actually, on use of one of the abilities at random is probably a good idea for the same reason as it is for Glimmers: so players can't decide 100% where the Reflection will end up. Both T'a'r GP types are relatively flexible about where their abilities can be used, so an assurance that the Reflection is placed when the GP is expended might lead to an odd metagame. (It would also allow players to accurately predict Reflection locations, which they shouldn't be able to do.)

Oh, and do these abilities create Glimmers? No, right?

Agreed, they don't create Glimmers.

I agree.

well, still a few things pending, but yes. Well, we're still discussing Dreamwalkers below, so not entirely done with t'ar.

Cool, all looking good!

 

[S3rgeus]

I think we definitely should leave this on the table for now. Definitely not worth rewiring everything yet.

Maybe make a note of it in the "Misc Flavor" part of the misc summary for further recollection of this?

But yes, Research as a term is fine, even if it's Knowledge.

But yeah, money would be easy - Marks or Crowns.

Note in the misc summary made!

OK, so you and I chatted a little on Steam about this, but essentially I wanted to point out that the Doomseer is unique in that it will actually have two specialists associated with it - one "normal" one that generates its GP points, and hangs out in its building, and the other that is created by the GP ability. This messes things up, IMO.

So, here's what I think we should do: come up with unique names for the specialists. I think that "feels" better anyways. So, how about something like:

Master Artisan (Artist) - Craftsman or Journeyman
Gleeman (Musician) - Bard or Singer or Musician (Bard is in-universe, but is somewhat odd since it may actually be more prestigious than Gleeman - we could flip it so the gleeman is the specialist, but the Bard is unfortunately less WoT-special)
Doomseer (Writer) - Wisdom (see below)
Ogier Stonemason (Engineer) - Smith or Builder (I like Smith, but this does bleed with the artisan ones somewhat)
Merchant Lord (Merchant) - Trader or Shopkeep or Innkeeper or Peddler (the last is probably best saved for the caravan units
Scholar (Scientist) - Scribe or Inventor or Librarian
Doomseer GP Ability - Doomseer or Viewer (either could work)

I think Wisdoms are a good choice for the Doomseer. The truth is, we were going to run up against a problem when it came time to coming up with buildings for the doomseer. The Wisdom will make that easier. Of course, Wisdoms creating culture is a little sketchy, but... eh. I can't think of a better use for them, nor can I think of a better specialist for the Doomseer.

My preferences highlighted in yellow, because I remember how much you loved that color last time.

I avoided this approach initially because I figured we wouldn't want to come up with new names for all of the Specialists, but it seems you've done so quite handily, so that's good! My only concern with this approach is that we might be making the association harder for the players: Builder becomes a Stonemason, Wisdom becomes a Doomseer, Scribe becomes a Scholar, etc. They all make sense, but it's more connections for the player to make than Scientist -> Great Scientist, etc. Still, I don't think this is a big problem, just thought it worth mentioning. I think most people's understanding of the Specialist/GP relationship is a bit fuzzy, so this might end up making it a bit clearer, if it's explained as a part of the mod.

Re the Bard being more prestigious than Gleeman, I think we could flavor-splain it away because the Gleeman is the one that tends to travel a lot, and is hence better represented by a unit, where a Bard is usually contracted to an individual noble or monarch, who stays relatively stationary by comparison.

I should note that the Channeling summary states the following:

So, we've obviously changed that, since the "WoT GPs," inasmuch as they exist, are most definitely not being created through specialists. So I shall axe this once we settle on above.

Yes, let's take that out and have Wisdoms fulfill this Culture role instead.

wait, your parenthetical is super confusing. Crafts and Relics should be attached, I think. I don't think we can really attach Prophesies and Legends, nor should we. But I think I see what you mean about the flavor at least.

Legends and Prophesies are thematically quite similar... more on that below.

The parenthetical was intended to be purely about flavor, though I see I failed to mention that last time! Mechanically I'm not sure if it could work, but flavor wise, it feels like Prophecies and Legends would go together well. I have no particular problem with Crafts and Relics being attached.

ok. Right.

So Legendary People and Legendary Works. I like both of these. So LP points and such, then.... and LWoC and LWoL and LWoP.

But that brings me to the LW-type Legends. I find it lacking, considering the now abundant use of the work Legends, and also the sort of flavor similarity already noted to Prophesy (though of course one is the past and one is the future).

Now that Gleemen are a little more musician-ey (no longer the Artist stand-in), might we want to rename their LW? Maybe only to not overuse the word Legend, but also perhaps to distance it from Prophesies. Some ideas:

Stories (simple, I know)
Myths
Song Cycles
Cycles
Epics
Tales
Tellings

thoughts? Stories, Cycles, and Epics are certainly used to describe such things in the book. Myth occurs in the famous "legend fades to myth" line. And tellings is a common chapter title thingy (Tellings of the Wheel). I think any of these could work.

I seem to vaguely remember Thom mentioning something about certain stories eventually becoming Epics once they had sort of escaped the scope of the original teller (something like the Jain Farstrider tales). That seems like good flavor to evoke with this, so I'd be cool with changing this LW type (woah, new abbreviation is weird) to Epics, instead of Legends.

pics or it didn't happen.

The very beginning, a bit more internals, and a closer look at the lowest of 5 hangars. A bit of progress was made since I took those, but it's pretty much almost all still wireframe, I've only put all of the components into a few blocks toward the bottom.

the reason I thought it might need a new name is because I worry that people won't see the cause and affect. Yes, we're corrupting their dreams and making them revolt, but I'm not sure that's obvious. I wish there was a way to say "Corrupt Dreams and Cause an Insurrection" without using so many words. The flavor works, but I don't know if people will see that flavor. do we just rely on the description?

Yeah, I think we can make it more clear with the description. Even without one, I think people will make a rough connection when it's restricted to next to a city that the unit is doing something to the city in order to create the rebels.

yeah, doesn't quite fit. It would need to be more like "Convert to Fanatics" or something, and that one I don't quite like as much.

Yep, Lawless it is!

Well, I don't think there's any reason to have it go back and forth, because I don't think there's any purpose it serves in the real world whatsoever. Both of his abilities are T'a'r abilities (should be, I think), so I don't see the mechanical need. I mean, he could appear already in T'a'r, even.

EDIT: though, if he is chosen to advise a governor, I could imagine why he'd want to be in the real world. Also, sitting around the map is somewhat safer, in that he could only be attacked via DoW that way. So probably he starts in real world.... but probably stays in T'a'r once he zaps in.

Do you mean appoint/become a Governor in this edit? Advising Governors is something Aes Sedai units do, I think.

I'm fine with his transporting into T'a'r being one-way - it makes him more mechanically similar to the Wolfbrother and therefore easier for players to understand correctly. Depending on where we go with the discussion below though, this may present us an alternative route where we could approach the balancing of Dreamwalker vs Wolfbrother entirely differently.

OK, you're going to hate this, but I'm going to keep debating you here, because I think I can convince you.

I don't hate it when you debate topics - it's good for the mod!

OK, basically, I have issues with the Dreamwalker being particularly good at combat. I'd be fine with him being equal to the Wolfbrother. I'd also be fine with him being slightly better, but slower (or some other drawback that makes it a "wash" in the end).

The reason for this is simply balance and math. When you said "striking that balance so that neither of them are supreme T'a'r killing machines," I found myself wondering: Isn't that the whole point of the wolf? The WBr has to expend his abilities to create combat units. It doesn't seem fair that the Dreamwalker gets that kind of facility without spending anything.

Wolfbrother has these abilities: Pull of the Pattern (i.e. totally unrelated to T'a'r),Destroy Dreamspike and Call Wolves. He can also destroy Dreamwards, I think

Dreamwalker has two abilities: Create Dreamspike and Corrupt Dreams. Can he also destroy Dreamwards? I figure he can, but we could elect, theoretically, that he can't. Can he destroy DS's as well? I could see that being unique to WBr, but could also see it being there for both of them.

Getting rid of PotP from the conversation (since it has nothing to do with T'a'r), leaves the WBr with one main purpose: kill things in T'a'r and occasionally pull up a DS. I feel like by having the DW be any good in T'a'r majorly intrudes on the value of the WBr.

I don't want people to be calculating between the two GPs (since they may, apparently, be given the choice between them) based on who will be more useful for their combat approach. I'd much prefer it be clear - you want combat? You need wolves. That's the point of the wolves, and thus, the point of the WBr's T'a'r presence.

As cool as Slayer-v-Young Bull 2013 was, I don't think WBr vs DWa battles are what we should be aiming for or balancing around. I'd say the combat prowess of both these units should be, essentially, serving the purpose of keeping them alive to do their other things. Engaging in real attacks and GP-duels with them feels somewhat uncivlike to me.

In the interest of that, I propose both of the units be actually relatively weak in terms of outright combat strength. However, they have the following properties:

1) They may be immune to projection aura, or suffer less from it
2) They may have defensive boosts against nightmares
3) They may have defensive boosts against other T'a'r LPs
3) They are NOT resistant to Wolves

I think we could adopt all of these principles for each of them, or else split them up among them. Similarly, we could say only one of them can kill Dreamwards (though it probably should be both) and only one of them can kill Dreamspikes

To summarize, I just feel like we should keep these units pretty light as far as combat goes. They are fine to wander around and bother projections, and then can defend themselves against Nightmares, perhaps, but a wolf? A wolf is a dedicated combat unit - it's primary purpose should possibly be to hunt *these* guys, right?

And besides, from a balance perspective, how is a Dreamwalker vs 2 wolves being a fair fight anything but a bad balance move? The WBr had to expend BOTH of his LP abilities to create those wolves - who's sole purpose is to fight - why should the Dreamwalker be able to do fight comparably without even spending a SINGLE ability?

What do you think?

The problem with the Dreamwalker being unable to stand up to at least one wolf is that it makes him completely useless by comparison to the Wolfbrother. Each Wolfbrother is two wolves worth of strength, because it will/can create two wolves. If a Dreamwalker is unable to fight off even one, then the Wolfbrother creates one wolf and kills any Dreamwalker he encounters, then uses the Wolfbrother unit to destroy the Dreamspike that Dreamwalker planted (if he even got a chance to do that). Now the Wolfbrother player has a wolf and the Dreamwalker player has nothing. (If the Dreamwalker hadn't planted a Dreamspike/Corrupted any Dreams yet, then the Wolfbrother player has just sniped a GP for free. Since we lack the other military units from the main layer for the defending player to use to prevent this, being able do this is a problem.)

If a Dreamwalker plants two Dreamspikes, then each opposing Wolfbrother can destroy both, which is an even trade - that part of it is basically self-balancing mechanically. But alternatively, the Wolfbrother player could destroy one Dreamspike and create one wolf - with which he could ensure other Dreamspikes don't get planted in the area. Then it's just a waiting game for his next Wolfbrother for a second wolf and destroying the second Dreamspike.

It all leads to the only way to deal with wolves being other wolves - so the player with the most wolves will win. So all players should always pick the Wolfbrother, which is a balance problem. It's quite analogous to a Magic card called Archangel of Strife, the two choices, War and Peace, look balanced, but in the context of the wider game, War is always better, and has been shown to be so. The "defensive" option of our balancing equation needs to have some kind of edge, otherwise it's always more effective to choose to kill your enemies (in this case, by picking the Wolfbrother).

So in a situation where 2 wolves are fighting a Dreamwalker, it shouldn't just be a slam dunk for the wolves. I would say the 2 wolves would still win, otherwise you're right, the Dreamwalker player is just 1 Dreamspike/Corrupted Dreams up (provided he used one ability elsewhere, before the fight), and we have the same, but opposite balance problem. (Why ever pick the Wolfbrother if he can't actually kill more value worth of enemies than he cost to make himself.) If the Dreamwalker can take a wolf with him in a 2-v-1 fight, then we've achieved a balance out of it. The Wolfbrother has lost half of his "value" because one of his wolves is dead. The Dreamwalker has lost half of his "value" because he didn't get to use his second ability. (By definition, otherwise a fight would not have happened, because he would've been expended.) And now a wolf remains for the Wolfbrother player - half of the value of that Wolfbrother. And any previously used abilities remain for the Dreamwalker - half of his value.

Also note that this allows positioning and tactics to play a major role in what part of the value of each GP persists beyond the time when they "meet". If the 2 wolves find the Dreamwalker before he uses any of his abilities, then the Wolfbrother player has gotten ahead. If the Dreamwalker player plants two Dreamspikes, then the Wolfbrother player would be unable to get rid of them both if he's already created a wolf. (Though that doesn't create an advantage for the Dreamwalker player, it actually is just a break even, which still demonstrates the Wolfbrother has an inherent advantage in this contest, even with Dreamwalker vs 2 wolves being an actual fight instead of insta-win for the wolves.) That advantage is likely offset by the Dreamwalker's ability to be strong independently though, which makes it a fairly good comparison between the two, I'd say.

In terms of players choosing based on combat prowess, I figured that was the way the whole T'a'r progression worked. Collecting Glimmers allows you to make WBrs or DWs, which therefore make you better at using T'a'r - you have a more dominant position over other players there. Particularly if we want Domination players to use these GPs (er, LPs) to supplement invasion forces via T'a'r ability trickery (so now there's got to be a defensive meta aspect to it as well - you need to be able to fend off enemy T'a'r presence in the same way you would a main layer invasion). The fact that we're evoking the Slayer vs Young Bull fight from the books is icing on the cake, from what I can see - that was a great moment in the books that lots of fans will remember, and we'll have a way of representing it mechanically in-game as well.

In terms of general utility, the wolves are still stronger individually than any other non-Dreamwalker T'a'r unit, and are therefore the most effective way of dealing with large numbers of opposing units (since you can create wolves in greater numbers), particularly if the enemies are spread out across the map. Wolves should probably have better movement than either of the GPs, as you've mentioned, which compounds well with all of the above. (A single Dreamwalker can't chase down and kill a wolf without help. A wolf is likely to be able to run to a fellow wolf's aid against a Dreamwalker more quickly, to turn the tide of a battle.) I don't think the Dreamwalkers necessarily need to have worse movement than the actual Wolfbrother unit - a direct fight with a Dreamwalker as a Wolfbrother should either lead to the Wolfbrother fleeing, or spawning two wolves on the spot (well, across two turns) to kill him. As above, the Wolfbrother has now broken even if the Dreamwalker had already used one ability, or come out on top if the Dreamwalker hadn't. If the Wolfbrother only has one wolf-spawn left, then this is the reversal of the "2 wolves vs Dreamwalker that hasn't used an ability" situation, where the Wolfbrother is at a disadvantage. But it's not nearly as clear a disadvantage - if a unit is trying to escape another unit and they have the same movement rate, the escaping unit will always get away (barring terrain hindrances, which T'a'r doesn't have), unless more units join the fray from other directions, which means this is no longer a representative situation of a direct balance between these two units, but a product of the strategic planning of the player who introduces more units. Worst case here for the Wolfbrother is he is forced to expend his second Call Wolves and create a wolf - which can definitely escape from the pursuing Dreamwalker.

In terms of the other abilities you've suggested - those sound quite sensible, though may be affected by the discussion above (primarily the part about the role of these GPs as dominant T'a'r presences themselves). Resistance to passive projection damage (reduced? eliminated? I'm thinking reduced) sounds good - prevents GPs from being wasted by random reusable units from other civs. (Do the GP units cause passive damage to non-GPs as well?)

Resistance to Nightmares also sounds reasonable in ensuring that the GPs don't get sniped by random units in T'a'r.

Boosts against other GPs/wolves is largely covered above.

For Dreamwards, I agree, I'd say both of them can destroy them without it counting towards their abilities that will cause them to be expended. Dreamwards are generated by units that can be produced via production, though circuitously, and even multiple Dreamwards can be created by the same source unit on the main layer, so much more common than any GP. For Dreamspikes, I agree here as well, let's keep that ability for just the Wolfbrother.

OK, cool. So, if this is flavored to go as a third Gleeman ability... what could we call it? Reclassify Relic is more clinical, more like a scholar ability (or the aforementioned ogier). Inspire Derivative Work? (but not such a dumb modern way of saying it)

A few options:

Retell a Tale
Spin a Story
Advise some Patchwork

It would be a bit easier to flavor if he always turned it into an Epic, but I don't think we want to limit the ability more.

ehh.... I think we should axe it. I think there are probably a lot of weird possible effects if we let a stump get called whenever... Not worth it, IMO.

I'd be fine with adding that to the ambassador, I suppose.

And, if I'm recalling correctly, we've added three wholly new GPs. Seems like we've:

- Added two new T'a'r LPs
- Added a Diplo LP
- Added some new abilities to the Culture LPs
- Mostly kept the Gold/Production/Science LPs the way they are, with some tweaks

I think that's probably enough!

The new abbreviation means our doctors have turned into vintage albums.

After all of the detail we've gone into on this, we've actually only added a relatively small amount! That's probably a good thing - it means that only the best of the ideas we put forward have actually made it through to the end (hopefully).

Cool! So... settle these matters, and then 1)Work through their LP point spawning mechanics while we 2) work through the kinds of governors they create

Yep, a couple more posts and we should be good to go on getting these started!

no problem. Heads up, though, the last time I'll likely be able to post anything for a while is Wednesday, and i'm not 100% sure i'll be able to that day.

Is this for the 3000 mile move? If it is, best of luck moving everything and hope to see you back here sometime soon! Packing + unpacking takes an unpredictably long time, but do you know approximately how long you'll be disconnected for? (Like, if you have no internet for 2 weeks at the destination, that's a fairly concrete minimum!)

 

[counterpoint]

Actually, on use of one of the abilities at random is probably a good idea for the same reason as it is for Glimmers: so players can't decide 100% where the Reflection will end up. Both T'a'r GP types are relatively flexible about where their abilities can be used, so an assurance that the Reflection is placed when the GP is expended might lead to an odd metagame. (It would also allow players to accurately predict Reflection locations, which they shouldn't be able to do.)

ok, agreed.

I'm wondering if there should be randomness factor to their placement, like we did with glimmers? You know, otherwise we'd have a lot of Sites be right next to cities and stuff.

 

[counterpoint]

My preferences highlighted in yellow, because I remember how much you loved that color last time.

it burns us!

I avoided this approach initially because I figured we wouldn't want to come up with new names for all of the Specialists, but it seems you've done so quite handily, so that's good! My only concern with this approach is that we might be making the association harder for the players: Builder becomes a Stonemason, Wisdom becomes a Doomseer, Scribe becomes a Scholar, etc. They all make sense, but it's more connections for the player to make than Scientist -> Great Scientist, etc. Still, I don't think this is a big problem, just thought it worth mentioning. I think most people's understanding of the Specialist/GP relationship is a bit fuzzy, so this might end up making it a bit clearer, if it's explained as a part of the mod.

Yeah, normally I'd go for keeping things simple, but since it was causing problems, I think this way is better.

And yes, I think most people barely understand specialists anyways, so we might not lose out so much here.

Re the Bard being more prestigious than Gleeman, I think we could flavor-splain it away because the Gleeman is the one that tends to travel a lot, and is hence better represented by a unit, where a Bard is usually contracted to an individual noble or monarch, who stays relatively stationary by comparison.

Yeah that flavorsplanation works for me!

Yes, let's take that out and have Wisdoms fulfill this Culture role instead.

Wis-done!

The parenthetical was intended to be purely about flavor, though I see I failed to mention that last time! Mechanically I'm not sure if it could work, but flavor wise, it feels like Prophecies and Legends would go together well. I have no particular problem with Crafts and Relics being attached.

right. gotcha.

I seem to vaguely remember Thom mentioning something about certain stories eventually becoming Epics once they had sort of escaped the scope of the original teller (something like the Jain Farstrider tales). That seems like good flavor to evoke with this, so I'd be cool with changing this LW type (woah, new abbreviation is weird) to Epics, instead of Legends.

Ok, so changing it Epics, then? I think I'm down with it!

Yeah, I think we can make it more clear with the description. Even without one, I think people will make a rough connection when it's restricted to next to a city that the unit is doing something to the city in order to create the rebels.

Oh, so it has to be created next to a city, then? I hadn't figured that would have needed to be a requirement, though i can understand it from a flavor perspective. Could we just go with "in somebody's territory" instead? Seems a little limiting for no clear reason - plus, you have to get a GP reeeally close to the city, which is scary.... That assumes there isn't a Spike keeping you out.... or can DWa walk through spikespace like WBr?

and, once again, that'd just make all the Reflections clump near cities, which isn't awesome.

Do you mean appoint/become a Governor in this edit? Advising Governors is something Aes Sedai units do, I think.

totally do mean appoint/become. y bad. Advising Govs was also a potential GP ability a few posts back.

The problem with the Dreamwalker being unable to stand up to at least one wolf is that it makes him completely useless by comparison to the Wolfbrother. Each Wolfbrother is two wolves worth of strength, because it will/can create two wolves. If a Dreamwalker is unable to fight off even one, then the Wolfbrother creates one wolf and kills any Dreamwalker he encounters, then uses the Wolfbrother unit to destroy the Dreamspike that Dreamwalker planted (if he even got a chance to do that). Now the Wolfbrother player has a wolf and the Dreamwalker player has nothing. (If the Dreamwalker hadn't planted a Dreamspike/Corrupted any Dreams yet, then the Wolfbrother player has just sniped a GP for free. Since we lack the other military units from the main layer for the defending player to use to prevent this, being able do this is a problem.)

ok.Im with you.

If a Dreamwalker plants two Dreamspikes, then each opposing Wolfbrother can destroy both, which is an even trade - that part of it is basically self-balancing mechanically. But alternatively, the Wolfbrother player could destroy one Dreamspike and create one wolf - with which he could ensure other Dreamspikes don't get planted in the area. Then it's just a waiting game for his next Wolfbrother for a second wolf and destroying the second Dreamspike.

It all leads to the only way to deal with wolves being other wolves - so the player with the most wolves will win. So all players should always pick the Wolfbrother, which is a balance problem. It's quite analogous to a Magic card called Archangel of Strife, the two choices, War and Peace, look balanced, but in the context of the wider game, War is always better, and has been shown to be so. The "defensive" option of our balancing equation needs to have some kind of edge, otherwise it's always more effective to choose to kill your enemies (in this case, by picking the Wolfbrother).

still with you.

Never played M:tG. When it came out, when I was in middle school, I was deathly afraid of being outed as a nerd so avoided such things. And, unlike D&D and other such things, there was nobody to get me into it in college.....

love me some stand-alone deck building games though.

So in a situation where 2 wolves are fighting a Dreamwalker, it shouldn't just be a slam dunk for the wolves. I would say the 2 wolves would still win, otherwise you're right, the Dreamwalker player is just 1 Dreamspike/Corrupted Dreams up (provided he used one ability elsewhere, before the fight), and we have the same, but opposite balance problem. (Why ever pick the Wolfbrother if he can't actually kill more value worth of enemies than he cost to make himself.) If the Dreamwalker can take a wolf with him in a 2-v-1 fight, then we've achieved a balance out of it. The Wolfbrother has lost half of his "value" because one of his wolves is dead. The Dreamwalker has lost half of his "value" because he didn't get to use his second ability. (By definition, otherwise a fight would not have happened, because he would've been expended.) And now a wolf remains for the Wolfbrother player - half of the value of that Wolfbrother. And any previously used abilities remain for the Dreamwalker - half of his value.

ok.

Also note that this allows positioning and tactics to play a major role in what part of the value of each GP persists beyond the time when they "meet". If the 2 wolves find the Dreamwalker before he uses any of his abilities, then the Wolfbrother player has gotten ahead. If the Dreamwalker player plants two Dreamspikes, then the Wolfbrother player would be unable to get rid of them both if he's already created a wolf. (Though that doesn't create an advantage for the Dreamwalker player, it actually is just a break even, which still demonstrates the Wolfbrother has an inherent advantage in this contest, even with Dreamwalker vs 2 wolves being an actual fight instead of insta-win for the wolves.) That advantage is likely offset by the Dreamwalker's ability to be strong independently though, which makes it a fairly good comparison between the two, I'd say.

ok. i follow.

In terms of players choosing based on combat prowess, I figured that was the way the whole T'a'r progression worked. Collecting Glimmers allows you to make WBrs or DWs, which therefore make you better at using T'a'r - you have a more dominant position over other players there. Particularly if we want Domination players to use these GPs (er, LPs) to supplement invasion forces via T'a'r ability trickery (so now there's got to be a defensive meta aspect to it as well - you need to be able to fend off enemy T'a'r presence in the same way you would a main layer invasion). The fact that we're evoking the Slayer vs Young Bull fight from the books is icing on the cake, from what I can see - that was a great moment in the books that lots of fans will remember, and we'll have a way of representing it mechanically in-game as well.

well, I'll say here that I understand that players will choose which GP they want based on what will make them better at using T'a'r, but that doesn't mean it should always be a combat-based decision.

In terms of general utility, the wolves are still stronger individually than any other non-Dreamwalker T'a'r unit, and are therefore the most effective way of dealing with large numbers of opposing units (since you can create wolves in greater numbers), particularly if the enemies are spread out across the map. Wolves should probably have better movement than either of the GPs, as you've mentioned, which compounds well with all of the above. (A single Dreamwalker can't chase down and kill a wolf without help. A wolf is likely to be able to run to a fellow wolf's aid against a Dreamwalker more quickly, to turn the tide of a battle.) I don't think the Dreamwalkers necessarily need to have worse movement than the actual Wolfbrother unit - a direct fight with a Dreamwalker as a Wolfbrother should either lead to the Wolfbrother fleeing, or spawning two wolves on the spot (well, across two turns) to kill him. As above, the Wolfbrother has now broken even if the Dreamwalker had already used one ability, or come out on top if the Dreamwalker hadn't. If the Wolfbrother only has one wolf-spawn left, then this is the reversal of the "2 wolves vs Dreamwalker that hasn't used an ability" situation, where the Wolfbrother is at a disadvantage. But it's not nearly as clear a disadvantage - if a unit is trying to escape another unit and they have the same movement rate, the escaping unit will always get away (barring terrain hindrances, which T'a'r doesn't have), unless more units join the fray from other directions, which means this is no longer a representative situation of a direct balance between these two units, but a product of the strategic planning of the player who introduces more units. Worst case here for the Wolfbrother is he is forced to expend his second Call Wolves and create a wolf - which can definitely escape from the pursuing Dreamwalker.

ok. I'm saying so little because i'm mostly with you. mostly.

In terms of the other abilities you've suggested - those sound quite sensible, though may be affected by the discussion above (primarily the part about the role of these GPs as dominant T'a'r presences themselves). Resistance to passive projection damage (reduced? eliminated? I'm thinking reduced) sounds good - prevents GPs from being wasted by random reusable units from other civs. (Do the GP units cause passive damage to non-GPs as well?)

Hmm... I think probably not, right? you don't need a DoW to attack in T'a'r, so I'd say you need to make an attack action to do any damage as an LP.

Resistance to Nightmares also sounds reasonable in ensuring that the GPs don't get sniped by random units in T'a'r.

Boosts against other GPs/wolves is largely covered above.

For Dreamwards, I agree, I'd say both of them can destroy them without it counting towards their abilities that will cause them to be expended. Dreamwards are generated by units that can be produced via production, though circuitously, and even multiple Dreamwards can be created by the same source unit on the main layer, so much more common than any GP. For Dreamspikes, I agree here as well, let's keep that ability for just the Wolfbrother.

Ok, ok, time to talk. Forgive me for trivializing this by responding with such brevity.
In general, i think we are now in agreement. I think you make good points when juxtaposing the WBr and his abilities against the DWa and his abilities - when they face each other.

I think the thing I'm still not sold on is the DWa being that good in combat in general. I feel like the balance you are describing is solid, but I also thinkit intrudes a bit on the wolve's ability to serve as the T'a'r "police."

Proposal:
- DWas get a bonus against wolves (possibly also WBrs). This makes flavorful sense if the DWas are slayerific. This way, they can maintain the balance you've described, but don't necessarily turn in to projection/nightmare assassins (which an yunit capable of fending off a wolf would be) without having to consume a single LP ability.
OR
- Wolves get a bonus against Projections and maybe also nightmares. This way, the WBr can be balanced against the DWa however you want, but the wolves are superior in other facets.

The bonuses described above need not be combat strength. Could be something else.

So, that's what I'm thinking. Other than that, I think we can get rid of the other fancy bonuses I came up with - why make things more complicated than they need to be? So the movement rate and immunity to auras - I suppose that stuff isn't all that necessary.

What do you think? Are you on board with making the Wolves the dominant "crowd control" of "T'a'r" but the DW be quite good against wolves?

A few options:

Retell a Tale
Spin a Story
Advise some Patchwork

It would be a bit easier to flavor if he always turned it into an Epic, but I don't think we want to limit the ability more.

I don't know if I quite get the meaning of the patchwork one, though I like the cloak flavor.

Hmm.... what about "Spread new Legend"? smoething like that? Legend was already kind of blurry as previously described.

The new abbreviation means our doctors have turned into vintage albums.

are we ok with that? do we need another second word instead of Points?

\
Is this for the 3000 mile move? If it is, best of luck moving everything and hope to see you back here sometime soon! Packing + unpacking takes an unpredictably long time, but do you know approximately how long you'll be disconnected for? (Like, if you have no internet for 2 weeks at the destination, that's a fairly concrete minimum!)

yup. that's the one. I'll be out of commission, in general, until the 21st at the earliest, and the 24th at the latest. I'll probably be able to check posts on my phone when i'm sitting in a motel in one of the fly-over states, but it's pretty unlikely I'll feel up to doing an epic post in Tapatalk.... That said, if we get to a point where we're brainstorming or something, I might have time to.... think about stuff, and probably write some things down. But posting, not likely.

So, I leave Friday morning, but will pack up the computer either wednesday or thursday. So.... if you wanna get one more post in before then, it has to be before then!

 

[S3rgeus]

ok, agreed.

I'm wondering if there should be randomness factor to their placement, like we did with glimmers? You know, otherwise we'd have a lot of Sites be right next to cities and stuff.

That also sounds like a good plan!

 

[S3rgeus]

Yeah, normally I'd go for keeping things simple, but since it was causing problems, I think this way is better.

And yes, I think most people barely understand specialists anyways, so we might not lose out so much here.

Cool, sounds good then!

Ok, so changing it Epics, then? I think I'm down with it!

Epics it is!

Oh, so it has to be created next to a city, then? I hadn't figured that would have needed to be a requirement, though i can understand it from a flavor perspective. Could we just go with "in somebody's territory" instead? Seems a little limiting for no clear reason - plus, you have to get a GP reeeally close to the city, which is scary.... That assumes there isn't a Spike keeping you out.... or can DWa walk through spikespace like WBr?

and, once again, that'd just make all the Reflections clump near cities, which isn't awesome.

Inside somebody's territory sounds good too. With the random scattering discussed in the post above, I think either approach will lead to a decently spread out distribution. Either restriction will mean that Reflections won't appear in unpopulated areas though (random islands and such) - is that a problem? Hunting down Antiquity Sites in this places is part of the meta. But, then again, we're not affecting all Antiquity Sites.

Never played M:tG. When it came out, when I was in middle school, I was deathly afraid of being outed as a nerd so avoided such things. And, unlike D&D and other such things, there was nobody to get me into it in college.....

love me some stand-alone deck building games though.

Magic Duels: Origins is free on Steam! In the style of Hearthstone, except it's a digital MtG, instead of a digital-only card game. It does a pretty good job with introductions and such. I play a ton of Magic myself, definitely my favorite card game, and I've got loads of decks running around for it.

well, I'll say here that I understand that players will choose which GP they want based on what will make them better at using T'a'r, but that doesn't mean it should always be a combat-based decision.

Yes, some players will definitely pick based on the utility of one or more of the abilities of the GPs and how applicable those abilities are to their current situation.

Hmm... I think probably not, right? you don't need a DoW to attack in T'a'r, so I'd say you need to make an attack action to do any damage as an LP.

I thought you did need a DoW to *attack* - just not for the passive damage aura? WBrs, wolves, Dreamwalkers, and Nightmares can attack in the traditional CiV sense, but projections can't, right? Does the "probably not" here refer to WBrs and DWs causing passive damage?

Ok, ok, time to talk. Forgive me for trivializing this by responding with such brevity.

No worries, it's not trivializing it to respond with brevity! As you've said, I think we're mostly on the same page now, which is good.

In general, i think we are now in agreement. I think you make good points when juxtaposing the WBr and his abilities against the DWa and his abilities - when they face each other.

I think the thing I'm still not sold on is the DWa being that good in combat in general. I feel like the balance you are describing is solid, but I also thinkit intrudes a bit on the wolve's ability to serve as the T'a'r "police."

Proposal:
- DWas get a bonus against wolves (possibly also WBrs). This makes flavorful sense if the DWas are slayerific. This way, they can maintain the balance you've described, but don't necessarily turn in to projection/nightmare assassins (which an yunit capable of fending off a wolf would be) without having to consume a single LP ability.
OR
- Wolves get a bonus against Projections and maybe also nightmares. This way, the WBr can be balanced against the DWa however you want, but the wolves are superior in other facets.

The bonuses described above need not be combat strength. Could be something else.

I like the idea of wolves having a bonus against Nightmares and projections - that further emphasizes their role as T'a'r dominators, without making them the only way of dealing with other wolves, which is a good result! Gives them a clear role that players can understand and work with, without making them the only approach. What kind of other bonuses would we consider aside from combat strength?

So, that's what I'm thinking. Other than that, I think we can get rid of the other fancy bonuses I came up with - why make things more complicated than they need to be? So the movement rate and immunity to auras - I suppose that stuff isn't all that necessary.

What do you think? Are you on board with making the Wolves the dominant "crowd control" of "T'a'r" but the DW be quite good against wolves?

Yep, that sounds good to me. I think one thing we want to keep about the different bonuses is the wolves having a higher movement range than the WBr or DW.

I don't know if I quite get the meaning of the patchwork one, though I like the cloak flavor.

Yeah, it didn't quite work the way I wanted it to. I wanted to evoke something about "patching up" an existing GW to make it something else, and use the Patchwork flavor from the Gleeman's cloak as a kind of callout, but it's not an easily followed logic.

Hmm.... what about "Spread new Legend"? smoething like that? Legend was already kind of blurry as previously described.

Yeah, now that Legend isn't a GW type, this could work.

are we ok with that? do we need another second word instead of Points?

We could rename Gold to Marks and Food to Grain. But then Grain could use the Wheat icon, and we'd need to introduce an Apples resource to use the Food icon. We can have a tech called Culture and a Policy called Technology.

Then we can rename Points to Carps and be done with it.

yup. that's the one. I'll be out of commission, in general, until the 21st at the earliest, and the 24th at the latest. I'll probably be able to check posts on my phone when i'm sitting in a motel in one of the fly-over states, but it's pretty unlikely I'll feel up to doing an epic post in Tapatalk.... That said, if we get to a point where we're brainstorming or something, I might have time to.... think about stuff, and probably write some things down. But posting, not likely.

So, I leave Friday morning, but will pack up the computer either wednesday or thursday. So.... if you wanna get one more post in before then, it has to be before then!

Cool, have fun with the move then! No worries about not posting while you're on mobile, typing into a phone for something like this would be a massive pain. (Though you've done it before, right?) I'll make sure that I update the GP and Governors summary while you're away!

 

[counterpoint]

had a few minutes!

Cool, sounds good then!
Epics it is!

Cool, I'll wait a bit to update the Culture summary, once we have settled 100% on the LP stuff.

Inside somebody's territory sounds good too. With the random scattering discussed in the post above, I think either approach will lead to a decently spread out distribution. Either restriction will mean that Reflections won't appear in unpopulated areas though (random islands and such) - is that a problem? Hunting down Antiquity Sites in this places is part of the meta. But, then again, we're not affecting all Antiquity Sites.

Well, antiquity sites pop up in CiV from certain battles, right, so how do they end up on random islands? Just from barb camp captures and stuff?

I definitely would like them to still be possible in remote locations, but in this case it's only realistically going to happen if the GP abilities are expended there, and I guess only the Wolves would be realistic in that case. Eh, not a big deal, I think.

I thought you did need a DoW to *attack* - just not for the passive damage aura? WBrs, wolves, Dreamwalkers, and Nightmares can attack in the traditional CiV sense, but projections can't, right? Does the "probably not" here refer to WBrs and DWs causing passive damage?

check out our previous conversation, read the beginning of this post. I made a case for why a DoW shouldn't be necessary. I'm not sure if you ever directly responded to it (we were also talking about historians at that point). In any case, I think it's worth considering that DoW WOULDNT be necessary.

But yes, my "probably not" was about aura damage from WBr and DWs

I like the idea of wolves having a bonus against Nightmares and projections - that further emphasizes their role as T'a'r dominators, without making them the only way of dealing with other wolves, which is a good result! Gives them a clear role that players can understand and work with, without making them the only approach. What kind of other bonuses would we consider aside from combat strength?

OK, so if we give the wolves extra damage to the proj/nightmares, then I take we DONT need to give the DWa any bonuses against hte wolves - the wolves will just *actually* have low enough stats such that the DWa will be formidable against them automatically.

As far as the bonus... eh, combat strength is probably the simplest. But it could be some weird stuff like them being able to move after attacking, or able to attack 2 projections in a turn, etc. whatever it is, it'd need to be something that wouldn't also give them an advantage over the GPs.


LPs!

Yep, that sounds good to me. I think one thing we want to keep about the different bonuses is the wolves having a higher movement range than the WBr or DW.

for sure.

Yeah, it didn't quite work the way I wanted it to. I wanted to evoke something about "patching up" an existing GW to make it something else, and use the Patchwork flavor from the Gleeman's cloak as a kind of callout, but it's not an easily followed logic.

Yeah, now that Legend isn't a GW type, this could work.

ok, should we tentatively go with "Spread a Legend." Oh, wait, what about "Revive a Legend" or something? Or "Adapt a Legend?" Eh.

We could rename Gold to Marks and Food to Grain. But then Grain could use the Wheat icon, and we'd need to introduce an Apples resource to use the Food icon. We can have a tech called Culture and a Policy called Technology.

Then we can rename Points to Carps and be done with it.

OK, I'm just a little confused here. I thought we were talking about the Legendary People thing, and how we could rename the second word if we really hated the LP acronym...

So, you're talking about renaming all the yields again? Marks or Crowns and Grain would all be great names, I think. I'm a little confused about what you mean about the icons - we do have an apples resource, IIRC.

And what would we rename Culture too? What that previously mentioned?

EDIT:

Also, wth are carps? like fish?

Cool, have fun with the move then! No worries about not posting while you're on mobile, typing into a phone for something like this would be a massive pain. (Though you've done it before, right?) I'll make sure that I update the GP and Governors summary while you're away!

Right, maybe you can do the Initial Framing Writeup about our next topics, then? Since that stuff often takes forever. I recall that they're social policies and Shadar Logoth, I think.

Oh, wait, we do also have to deal with which-GPs-turn-into-which-Governor, as well as figuring out spawning mechanics. So maybe we can't move on yet.

OR, you could take a break from it all and just play with the code whily you wait.

In any case, hopefully I get internet up sooner rather than later.

mp

 

[Zalminen]

I'm still keeping track of the discussions every now and then although I haven't had much to add.

ok, should we tentatively go with "Spread a Legend." Oh, wait, what about "Revive a Legend" or something? Or "Adapt a Legend?" Eh.

Or maybe flavor it as discovering the actual original relic, i.e. the current one is just the derivative / fake inspired by the original. Which would still kinda work with different kinds of GWs.
Find Original / True Relic / something like that?

 

[S3rgeus]

Well, antiquity sites pop up in CiV from certain battles, right, so how do they end up on random islands? Just from barb camp captures and stuff?

I definitely would like them to still be possible in remote locations, but in this case it's only realistically going to happen if the GP abilities are expended there, and I guess only the Wolves would be realistic in that case. Eh, not a big deal, I think.

Yeah, Barbarians are the source of (Hidden) Antiquity Sites in all of those remote locations. It's probably not a big problem, because we're only affecting Reflections, not general Sites of Power. Sites will still appear in more remote locations.

check out our previous conversation, read the beginning of this post. I made a case for why a DoW shouldn't be necessary. I'm not sure if you ever directly responded to it (we were also talking about historians at that point). In any case, I think it's worth considering that DoW WOULDNT be necessary.

Right, I see that I misread this way back when you initially posted it then! I thought the end of your section here was a direct conflict with the start, and that it represented the sequence of thoughts that led to you making that decision. (The bit at the end about needing the DoWs.) I see now that they're referring to the same thing but in different contexts - by having the Historian in the main layers we restore the DoW requirement to killing him, even if T'a'r battles don't require DoWs.

Worth considering, definitely, but I'm not sure if we should allow actual attacks in T'a'r without a DoW. It diverges a lot from how CiV handles units and I think is complicatedly different for the player. Passive damage not requiring a DoW is easy enough - the passive damage just happens - but an attack is something the player needs to specifically instigate. Even in T'a'r I think that should constitute an act of war.

From a mechanical perspective, I think not requiring a DoW risks pushing projections out of T'a'r almost permanently by the end of the game, since the strongest T'a'r players will tend to have a few wolves and/or Dreamwalkers. By restricting the combat to DoWs, we ensure that players are only really targeting enemy civs. It also means that we won't end up with Light civs fighting each other by proxy in T'a'r after the LB starts, which I don't think we really want to happen.

But yes, my "probably not" was about aura damage from WBr and DWs

Cool, totally fine with WBrs and DWas not doing passive damage.

OK, so if we give the wolves extra damage to the proj/nightmares, then I take we DONT need to give the DWa any bonuses against hte wolves - the wolves will just *actually* have low enough stats such that the DWa will be formidable against them automatically.

Cool, yes, exactly what I was thinking.

As far as the bonus... eh, combat strength is probably the simplest. But it could be some weird stuff like them being able to move after attacking, or able to attack 2 projections in a turn, etc. whatever it is, it'd need to be something that wouldn't also give them an advantage over the GPs.


LPs!

Combat bonus sounds good to me.

ok, should we tentatively go with "Spread a Legend." Oh, wait, what about "Revive a Legend" or something? Or "Adapt a Legend?" Eh.

"Adapt a Legend" feels like it's the closest to capturing the flavor, still being a snappy phrase, and sounding cool enough.

EDIT: Woops, I'd left this window open long enough that I missed:

Or maybe flavor it as discovering the actual original relic, i.e. the current one is just the derivative / fake inspired by the original. Which would still kinda work with different kinds of GWs.
Find Original / True Relic / something like that?

I like the flavor of this, but it doesn't feel particularly attached to the Gleeman. I'd say you've got the best flavor for the process here, but it feels like it would live on the Historian or a similar unit.

Recount Original Tale (bleh, too wordy)
Reveal Original (revealing, like some kind of presentation, which is a bit Gleeman-y)
Unveil Source Work

OK, I'm just a little confused here. I thought we were talking about the Legendary People thing, and how we could rename the second word if we really hated the LP acronym...

So, you're talking about renaming all the yields again? Marks or Crowns and Grain would all be great names, I think. I'm a little confused about what you mean about the icons - we do have an apples resource, IIRC.

And what would we rename Culture too? What that previously mentioned?

EDIT:

Also, wth are carps? like fish?

Just to be clear, I was being facetious here. I thought this quote block had gone haywire (as we do on occasion) after it started on my: "The new abbreviation means our doctors have turned into vintage albums." - which was just a pun about GP (doctors, though "GP == General Practitioner" is a British-ism, I think.) and LP (vinyl records).

I'm totally fine with the LP acronym.

Also, yes, Carps like the fish.

Right, maybe you can do the Initial Framing Writeup about our next topics, then? Since that stuff often takes forever. I recall that they're social policies and Shadar Logoth, I think.

Oh, wait, we do also have to deal with which-GPs-turn-into-which-Governor, as well as figuring out spawning mechanics. So maybe we can't move on yet.

OR, you could take a break from it all and just play with the code whily you wait.

In any case, hopefully I get internet up sooner rather than later.

mp

Yeah, I can do initial treatments for those - GP spawning mechanics (particularly the Diplo GP, who introduces a new source of GP production) and GP-type-to-Governor-type relationships.

In writing up the GP summary, I'm sure some new points will come up needing clarification from that process as well.

Shadar Logoth is something we wanted to discuss after GPs, which sounds like the sensible "next topic" once we've finished the above GP stuff. It should be relatively small.

And time permitting I can get some code done! All the way back to Threads and implementing the different types of bonuses they give out.

 

[counterpoint]

last chance to post before disassembling the computer. Actually taking all the components out and everything for this stupid move.

In any case, hopefully I get internet up sooner rather than later.

mp

lol-ing so hard at me, in my haste, signing with my initials like this were an e-mail....

Right, I see that I misread this way back when you initially posted it then! I thought the end of your section here was a direct conflict with the start, and that it represented the sequence of thoughts that led to you making that decision. (The bit at the end about needing the DoWs.) I see now that they're referring to the same thing but in different contexts - by having the Historian in the main layers we restore the DoW requirement to killing him, even if T'a'r battles don't require DoWs.

Worth considering, definitely, but I'm not sure if we should allow actual attacks in T'a'r without a DoW. It diverges a lot from how CiV handles units and I think is complicatedly different for the player. Passive damage not requiring a DoW is easy enough - the passive damage just happens - but an attack is something the player needs to specifically instigate. Even in T'a'r I think that should constitute an act of war.

From a mechanical perspective, I think not requiring a DoW risks pushing projections out of T'a'r almost permanently by the end of the game, since the strongest T'a'r players will tend to have a few wolves and/or Dreamwalkers. By restricting the combat to DoWs, we ensure that players are only really targeting enemy civs. It also means that we won't end up with Light civs fighting each other by proxy in T'a'r after the LB starts, which I don't think we really want to happen.

yeah, I can see things going either way here. You're coming down on the side of making things require a DoW, which has its merits, and I'm find going with that. If ticky tack stuff in T'a'r becomes to easy to pull off, we can change it later. You make a good point about Light-on-Light nonsense.

Or maybe flavor it as discovering the actual original relic, i.e. the current one is just the derivative / fake inspired by the original. Which would still kinda work with different kinds of GWs.
Find Original / True Relic / something like that?

y

"Adapt a Legend" feels like it's the closest to capturing the flavor, still being a snappy phrase, and sounding cool enough.

[re zalminen's post]
I like the flavor of this, but it doesn't feel particularly attached to the Gleeman. I'd say you've got the best flavor for the process here, but it feels like it would live on the Historian or a similar unit.

Recount Original Tale (bleh, too wordy)
Reveal Original (revealing, like some kind of presentation, which is a bit Gleeman-y)
Unveil Source Work

First off, the term is gleemanic

first off I should make clear that we aren't necessarily talking about *relics*, right (i.e. artifacts)? This can be done to epics, crafts, relics, or prophecies, right?

I think many of these can work. So far, the one I like most is "Adapt a Legend". That said, I think Zalminen's on to something, which makes me think of a few things:

Uncover New Truths
Myth Behind the Legend
Myths of the First Age (this would rebrand it as something we'd necessarily tie to some earth legend, a la the things described here. could be cool.

Just to be clear, I was being facetious here. I thought this quote block had gone haywire (as we do on occasion) after it started on my: "The new abbreviation means our doctors have turned into vintage albums." - which was just a pun about GP (doctors, though "GP == General Practitioner" is a British-ism, I think.) and LP (vinyl records).

I'm totally fine with the LP acronym.

OH, I see.

btw, well aware of what GP and LP mean... typically, we here in the estados are plenty happy to waste the 3/10 of a second saying the term "doctor" though.

Also, yes, Carps like the fish.

now *that* one I was sure was a British-ism! "The Red Devils are up 3 carps to nil!"

Yeah, I can do initial treatments for those - GP spawning mechanics (particularly the Diplo GP, who introduces a new source of GP production) and GP-type-to-Governor-type relationships.

In writing up the GP summary, I'm sure some new points will come up needing clarification from that process as well.

Shadar Logoth is something we wanted to discuss after GPs, which sounds like the sensible "next topic" once we've finished the above GP stuff. It should be relatively small.

And time permitting I can get some code done! All the way back to Threads and implementing the different types of bonuses they give out.

looking forward to it!

 

[S3rgeus]

We've fallen off the front page! And now I'm finally here to fix that.

last chance to post before disassembling the computer. Actually taking all the components out and everything for this stupid move.

Good luck and I hope it's all going well!

yeah, I can see things going either way here. You're coming down on the side of making things require a DoW, which has its merits, and I'm find going with that. If ticky tack stuff in T'a'r becomes to easy to pull off, we can change it later. You make a good point about Light-on-Light nonsense.

Cool, attacking in T'a'r requires a DoW then.

First off, the term is gleemanic

It's all about gleemaniacal.

first off I should make clear that we aren't necessarily talking about *relics*, right (i.e. artifacts)? This can be done to epics, crafts, relics, or prophecies, right?

I think many of these can work. So far, the one I like most is "Adapt a Legend". That said, I think Zalminen's on to something, which makes me think of a few things:

Uncover New Truths
Myth Behind the Legend
Myths of the First Age (this would rebrand it as something we'd necessarily tie to some earth legend, a la the things described here. could be cool.

I love the flavor from the last one, but I feel like we could use it for the actual "Works" in the "Epics" (or possibly other) categories. (In the same way that "The Blue Danube" is a GW in BNW, we'll need a bunch of actual works for these.)

Yes, any GW type can be the target of this ability, which I think is what makes it difficult to give it a good name, because it's such a different process for each GW type.

Myth Behind the Legend hits closest for me, so I think we'll stick with that for now.

OH, I see.

btw, well aware of what GP and LP mean... typically, we here in the estados are plenty happy to waste the 3/10 of a second saying the term "doctor" though.

It's the same number of syllables (GP vs doctor) so I doubt there's much time wasted between the two!


I've also gone through and added a chunk of the GP content to the GP summary. There's still plenty more to add there, but I've run out of time for the night, so I'll be back tomorrow!

 

[counterpoint]

I love the flavor from the last one, but I feel like we could use it for the actual "Works" in the "Epics" (or possibly other) categories. (In the same way that "The Blue Danube" is a GW in BNW, we'll need a bunch of actual works for these.)

Yes, any GW type can be the target of this ability, which I think is what makes it difficult to give it a good name, because it's such a different process for each GW type.

Myth Behind the Legend hits closest for me, so I think we'll stick with that for now.

Checking in from that jewel of the Midwest, Cleveland!

This name is fine with me

I've also gone through and added a chunk of the GP content to the GP summary. There's still plenty more to add there, but I've run out of time for the night, so I'll be back tomorrow!

Looks good, so far. Can comment on red stuff later

One thing, though. The merchant lord ability, as described, appears to provide more gold AND give the trade route. Does it do both of those things? Also, as far as highest value route... Can this be pillaged as normal? If so, maybe the player needs to be able to choose the city, otherwise we could have situations where the city chosen belonged to a civ you were about to declare war on, which would be annoying. Thoughts?

 

[S3rgeus]

Checking in from that jewel of the Midwest, Cleveland!

I hope the move all went ok! You're back very early, which is hopefully a good sign!

This name is fine with me

Done!

One thing, though. The merchant lord ability, as described, appears to provide more gold AND give the trade route. Does it do both of those things? Also, as far as highest value route... Can this be pillaged as normal? If so, maybe the player needs to be able to choose the city, otherwise we could have situations where the city chosen belonged to a civ you were about to declare war on, which would be annoying. Thoughts?

The route can be pillaged as usual - its only difference from a normal trade route is it doesn't give you a unit back when it ends. The city we'd be choosing automatically is the one owned by the same player who owns the Merchant Lord though. (I've edited the description to make this a bit more clear.) The ability is activated adjacent to a foreign city - so the player has chosen the target of the trade route by moving the Merchant Lord unit across the map. I think choosing which of the player's cities is the "origin" of the trade route automatically will be fine.

I couldn't find a quote block where we nailed down if we wanted to do the trade route instead of the gold increase (we liked both in sequence, but didn't explicitly dismiss one in favor of the other). I think having both makes sense, because the value of 1 trade route is less than the value of the ~500Gold worth of influence you get from the BNW Trade Mission.



I've added more stuff to the GP summary, but I've unfortunately run out of time for tonight again. (Won't have much time any evening this week.) I think some red sections are things we have decided but I haven't been able to find our final decision quote block yet - more content to come tomorrow! I'll also be editing the Misc summary with our most recent decisions about Wolfbrothers and Dreamwalkers (and so that it syncs up with the content in the GP summary).