I have some time tonight, though I think I'll need to finish much of this tomorrow.
Enhancer could work as well. That would be a good way of delaying it a bit if we found it was too punishing really early on but otherwise balanced.
This is about End of Illusion.
I'm not sure, does the mechanic "feel" like an Enhancer? I'm a bit unsure. I do feel like from a balance perspective it might work better that way - it is later in the game than a Founder, while at the same time doesn't feel as much like a "wasted custom" for the founder since Enhancers feel to me to be less splashy than Founders, at least in perception - but I do feel like the Enhancers all have some mechanical similarities that may not necessarily make this one a good fit. What do you think?
Totally agree - we want each era to have something that the player shoots for, that unlocking it changes how they are able to act within the game in a way that keeps things fresh, since games of CiV take so long!
Regarding flight, I think there's a specific discussion we could have about that which could affect our choices here. What do we think of making raken and their variants something that's available to everyone and having them take a similar-but-not-as-strong role as aircraft?
I see a few ups and downs to that approach. One is that we get to use the aircraft mechanics from CiV, which are a part of continuing the unit mechanical strength progression throughout the game. 3-range siege units is a major coup because they now outrange cities, which is usually what does a lot of damage to siege units. (We could separate range 3 and indirect fire to eke more progression out of the system though!) But delaying them to all the way at the end of the tree risks the player becoming bored with sieging being the same for 80% of the game. Aircraft provides another level of siege and offense/defense flexibility that allows the game to progress past that 3 range siege unit.
The downside is that raken are definitively Seanchan flavor, and nobody else. I can definitely see players feeling like we're cheapening that flavor and just twisting it because it semi fits into the CiV aircraft role that we wanted to fill, rather than coming up with a wholly different way of addressing that progression problem that's more consistent with WoT. I imagine there's probably some way to have channelers change mid-game so that they could fulfill that role somehow. (Something like a new ability on a specific tech could do it.)
Alternatively, it may be possible to make that flavor dissonance more palatable if we can source usage of raken-like creatures from Aviendha's visions of the future and any other post-LB warfare. If we make those creatures generally available, then the raken can be available for just the Seanchan, and at an earlier point in the tree. That makes the flavor situation more palatable, but I still feel like we could do something quite different here.
It's worth noting that a common complaint from players is that late game wars take forever because planes fly unspeakably slowly. You could say that this is a simple matter of speeding up those animations (though I quite enjoy the cinematic affect of the slowness), but we wouldn't necessarily be buried under negative feedback if we took out aircraft, as long as there's something appropriate to replace them.
ok, lots to talk about here. First of all, mechanics.
I can't comment on the flight animations because... about halfway through my first game of CiV I turned off combat animations, as I found them (and movement!) far too slow for my liking. So I may not be a great authority on that. That said, I do find late game warfare in CiV (and previous versions of civ) a bit too time-consuming.
However, I do think that we should probably include some kind of version of this mechanic, if only for the reason that it does serve to build on the boosts to seige warfare in the industrial era - in fact, in many ways flight is the first great counter to artillery. That said, I think I'd be in favor of a simplified version.
Flight seems to be rather unit-intensive, in a way that feels somewhat incongruous to WoT. There's fighters and bombers, of various levels, who can attack, intercept, and do air sweeps and such. Then there are also carriers. Then there are AA guns. I can't really imagine us creating "anti-
raken" units, and such. It feels a bit much. I feel like the late-game channeling mechanics give us enough cool stuff to work with. So I could imagine doing without the "anti" stuff, perhaps reduce the numbers of upgrades on these units (or else eliminate them completely) and theoretically even doing without the discrepancy between fighters and bombers, or at least do away with some of the complexity of it.
Regarding eras and such, I think we can keep the same rough unlock era of range-3 siege tech (though we may not call it dragons or make it gunpowder related). I do like the idea of splitting the range-3 and indirect fire components, in order to, at least somewhat, slow the massacre. Flight, in its somewhat reduced capacity, could potentially unlock at a similar point to when it does in CiV.
As far as flavor, as you've noted, there are some challenges. It looks to me like we have a few options:
1) use
raken for only the Seanchan, and use some other kind of flying creature/device for everybody else
2) use
raken for everybody. If we need them for the Seanchan, use a different version of
raken
3) use some completely distinct, non-flight mechanic to create the same gameplay effect.
regarding
1), I'm not sure what else this could be. You mention Aviendha's visions showing some non-
raken flying creature. Are you sure? I don't recall that. Looking through a brief description on the wotwiki, I see the mention of
raken, but not anything else. Care to remind me?
Otherwise, we could theoretically justify some sort of advanced tech, though it would be a bit of a flavor stretch. Jo-wings are probably out of the question, as they're super advanced, but there may be a kind of rickety flying machine that was being developed in the Academies or something that we could appropriate for these purposes. That said, we've previously decided that those kinds of techs are going to be the last-age techs, associated with Innovations and such, which doesn't really fit their appearance earlier in the game (I think it'd be in the Era of Encroaching Blight).
Regarding
2), the flavor of
raken most certainly
is associated with the 'chan essentially exclusively, and that
is kind of yucky. However, it's possible that that is acceptable.
First of all, it may be that we don't need the
raken for the Seanchan. Between the
sul'dam (which I imagine would include
damane), deathwatch guards, and theoretically any of the other exotics, we have plenty of options for UUs for the Seanchan. Heck, a "bug helmeted warrior" would be more iconic and inspired seeming that most of the UU's we'll find for the other civs.
That said, it's possible we'll "need" a Seanchan flyer UU because, essentially, they're the only civ that could have one. If we're trying for an even spread of Uniques across various unit types, modeled somewhat off of BNW, then a UU aircraft could be a part of that (a la the USA in BNW). I can't think of another civ that would have one. This issue (generalized) is addressed as a part of my Civs/Uniques framing post, that is waiting in the wings for when we finish this topic.
We don't need to get into this too much right now, though, aside from leaving open the
possibility of a Seanchan unique flyer, and not sticking us into a problematic corner at this stage in the design phase.
Essentially, I think we could be ok using
raken as a generic unit, because there is a rather large amount of Seanchan flavor to go around. We've already decided to go with this with
s'redit and
lopars as luxuries, despite those being linked only the the Seanchan in the books. They are simply animals that could exist in anybody's land (so the logic goes).
In any case, I can see us going a few ways with using
raken as a more generic unit:
A)
raken for the generic unit and
to'raken as the UU
B)
raken and
to'raken as the generic units (either fighter and bomber, respectively, or else as the latter being an upgrade of the former) with
morat'raken and
morat'to'raken being the UUs
C)
raken and
to'raken as the generic units, with
der'morat'raken and
der'morat'to'raken as the UUs.
'A' is the simplest, and perhaps cleanest, but prevents us from using
to'raken as a generic unit. I suppose we could use
morat or
der'morat for generic upgrades - though we'd have no bomber option.
'B' is clean enough, but doesn't make much sense, really. All
morat means is "one who handles" - so, then, the non-Seanchan exotics are working without handlers? Nonetheless, the vocab is there!
'C' may make the most flavorful sense, as the
der suffix implies a "master handler/trainer", which understandably the Seanchan might have. That said, it is, by far, the clunkiest sounding and most inelegant.
I'm going nuts with the italics here. I hope the people appreciate it.
Regarding option
3) above - the use of
raken for the Seanchan only, and going in a totally different direction (non-flight-related) for everybody else, we have some options. Of course, it should be noted that we also have the option of doing any of these and excluding
raken altogether (or else include them as minor flavor elsewhere) as a Seanchan UU (or unit at all).
A regular ol' channeler attack probably doesn't quite work, as we've previously decided that channelers cannot end their turns on cities (so as to prevent city defenses from getting too epic). And besides them, stacking them as planes are would be very, very bizarre. Other options?
Balefire: This could theoretically make some sense as a long-range missile. That said, I think we like it better as a kind of nuke, and I think it's best that way.
Flying: I don't think anybody really mastered that, did they? Certainly not by the eras we're imagining.
The Ways: not sure how exactly this would work, but theoretically you could assault another city via travel through its waygate
Traveling: this is perhaps the most flavorful and mechanically viable option, though it would, I think, require some changes to the air combat mechanics in CiV. We'ver previously imagined traveling as a map teleport - perhaps, combat wise, a kind of X-Com replacement is the most likely course. However, we could consider traveling as a kind of stand-in for air combat. If, say, a channeler is adjacent to a (friendly) city, they gain a "gateway assault" mission or something, and functions as a bombing run. These channelers also could theoretically work as AA in a similar manner.
This makes some decent flavor sense (in fact, having a Seanchan UU
raken replace this functionality [which
damane possibly wouldn't have] could be a decent flavor call-out to the assault on the Tower. Actually,
raken could theoretically serve as well as "generic" fighters to the bomber functionality of the channelers).
That said, it does make things way, way more complex, in that it's yet another pile of abilities channelers get. Not to mention, it makes traveling a much more complex game concept.
And there are the knock-on effects of stacking of aircraft being non-existent (you'd be limited to how many can surround a city), which is both good and bad. It certainly makes flight more limited, especially considering the units themselves are vulnerable to attack in a much more direct way.
A big issue is also that this makes anti-channeling civs (i.e. Oppression) at a significant disadvantage in this form of combat (Seanchan excepted).
Also, I think we weren't going to have traveling become available until pretty far into the game - would the modern era equivalent (encroaching blight?) be sufficiently late? Perhaps we could unlock certain aspects of traveling at different times.
I'm not sure I can really think of other non-flight options, though. Maybe some sort of weird assault through T'a'r? Is there any way to make that work?
There's a thought that I'm trying to find somewhere to put, but can't quite find the right quote block, so I'll just drop it here.
Firaxis have done an excellent job of ensuring that the flavor from their techs and the things they unlock are well matched up. I've been inspecting the tech tree a lot in the last few days and I'm continually impressed by how well they've combined mechanics and flavor. (I love that Calendar unlocks Stonehenge and Plantations.) However, there are definitely some associations that require one or two logical steps from the tech to make sense (Refrigeration gives you a new trade route - presumably because refrigerated goods can be transported farther more effectively), so we can afford to have those kinds of associations that aren't necessarily immediate "this makes this unlockable thing" relationships. There are also a few where Firaxis have clearly needed somewhere to put something (Pottery unlocks Shrines, Civil Service unlocks Pikeman, Replaceable Parts unlocks the Statue of Liberty, Biology reveals Oil). So at a last gasp, we can drop things into places that are tenuous or even unrelated, if we've exhausted our other options.
Also, quite a few techs make sense when considered with the things they unlock, but when compared to one another, we only distinguish them mechanically. What's the real difference between Construction, Engineering, and Architecture? They have different connotations, but do describe very similar things and are in vastly different places on the tech tree.
All good points and I very much agree.
Do you mean that we should make sure we address all of these Era-defining topics here or only as a part of our discussions below? I think I've sort of started the Flight discussion a few quote blocks above this one, but otherwise we could split out the rest from here.
I simply meant that I was dumping a pile of concepts there to draw attention to them, but didn't need you to address them line-by-line or anything there.
Agreed, the mechanical way Strategics unlock seems sensible to keep to me too. I don't think the stretching will be too much of a problem - as long as everything flavorfully stretches appropriately but still fulfills the mechanical needs, we should be good.
great.
Yeah, I'm thinking the same. While we could make the Luxuries unlockable like the Strategics, it has a lot of knock-ons and there's no particular reason to make that change - nothing from the WoT canon really suggests Luxuries should be that way.
I think the flavor dissonance still exists if we leave the system alone, mainly because it exists in BNW. I'm fairly sure humanity was aware of Iron and its uses before some of those Luxuries, but the mechanics required that be ignored. So I don't think that dissonance is really a problem, since players will accept it on account of it being a Luxury, rather than necessarily needing it to be accurate. However, you're right that moving it to an unlockable situation would make this dissonance much more noticeable.
I say leave it, then!
Similar to Luxuries, while we could do this, I think it would create complications. Bonus resources provide a base yield boost even before they're improved that help a lot of first cities, the absence of which could slow down the early game. And there's no specific WoT flavor that spurs us to make them unlockable, right?
Yeah, I say leave it as is then. The only reason I presented Bonus resources as somehow more viable an option for reconsideration is, simply, because they are less important to the game overall (being mere yield bonuses), and thus might not ruin things as bad if we changed em a bunch. By no means is that a reason to change things, though!
Sounds good. I made an error here last time though - the Trading Post is unlocked way up at Guilds, so they're not all era 1-2! (And there's the Oil Well, but that's for a specific Strategic, so it makes more sense.) This is likely because Trading Posts are often used to fill in open space where other Improvements can't be built, since they're buildable on more hexes.
The larger point still stands, though - most Improvements are doled out early in the game.
Downgrading the flavor of the improvements could definitely work and was my gut reaction to this problem. Depending on what our replacements are, we might need new artwork, which is a bit challenging since new Improvements models are a rare thing. (They're possible - particularly reskins - but not many have been made.)
It's definitely possible for us to have some "next step" links between the earlier techs and Mines or Farms though. We could be super "these have something to do with each other" and put Farms on a Foraging tech, even though that sort of doesn't make sense.
For sure, the art will be a bit tricky. Hopefully it'll work out!
Actually don't 100% follow the last paragraph here, thouch it may end up moot.
Roads I think we can work with. Even if we downgrade Roads to Paths (no wait... Trails? Pathways? Tracks?) and Railroads to Roads (or Cobbles) - the WoT world definitely has dirt roads for traveling merchants and stone-laid roads within larger cities and such.
Agreed. I could see it being downgraded in that way. That said, even the dirt paths are still perhaps referred to as "roads" in the books... Perhaps a better way to do it is just have it be Roads which upgrades to Cobbled Roads or something. A Path linking a vast empire seems perhaps a bit too silly.
Farms and Mines could be downgraded, but the cool thing about those Improvements is that they continue to be relevant over time, even in Earth's Modern Era. Things like "Berry Gatherers" or such stop making sense even in WoT-verse by era 3 or 4.
Yeah, I agree. We could consider renaming them for flavor reasons (e.g. irrigation like old civ), but an actual downgrade is somewhat silly.
Agreed, the way units upgrade and such all looks good to me - we're just going to swap out the actual units.
Also agreed re eliminating dead ends, we have less fundamental shifts in warfare to deal with in WoT than humans did on Earth, so we don't have to join upgrade paths between mechanized units and their predecessors!
great.
Originally I had the Scout separate and I thought about calling out that it couldn't be upgraded by Gold, but I figured it made the diagram simpler. I completely agree, having a separate Scout tree (doesn't have to be very long, maybe 2 or 3 units, including the Scout itself) makes a lot more sense. I get the sense that the Archer is there just so that the "ruins upgrade" had something to do when a Scout explored it.
Right. I'd say, though, that the ruins upgrade would probably *still* upgrade a scout to an appropriate ranged unit, though. We certainly don't want an Ancient Scout upgrading four eras ahead to a super scout, and besides, turning your scout into a very mobile archer is super useful.
Totally agree, we're filling in all of the bland "normal" soldiers that existed in the WoT universe, so they may are unlikely to have been called out by name in the books. If some of the books' flavor lines up with specifics (Asha'man, Blademaster) then awesome, but Footman and the like will definitely have its place.
yeah. Doing all this will likely be a lot of fun mixed with a big pain in the rear. AKA I can't wait. That said, we will wait, as I think this is all "phase 3."
Agreed, like the units, this is all of the bland, everyday stuff that wouldn't necessarily be called out by name in the books. The important part is that it feels like a part of the WoT canon for the flavor.
And agreed, the way buildings work sounds good to keep.
agreed!
Agreed. Some of the Wonders will probably naturally slot with techs that we decide on elsewhere, others not as much.
right. I was just struck by how lame it's going to be when we're 80% done with the mod, and it's playable, but the graphics for the wonders will all be stand-ins from BNW, as in when you build the Toppless Towers, a Pyramids shows up next to your city...
I think these are a bit more flexible than the units/buildings stuff because they're abstract mechanical effects, so anything that we can use to justify the effects will be fine, even if it's unrelated to the original flavor.
totally.
I've always thought that Embassy is a very modern term given how early in the game this unlocks.
for sure. Let's consider a rename once we figure out the text.
I think the effects of Embarkation will be fine in the same kind of place as it is in BNW. We'll probably just want to change the word Embark to something a bit more fantasy - "Set Sail" or something of the like.
Yes, for sure. Once we settle the tech, we may have some better ideas for the specific term.
We could have a ferry-like thing like Taren Ferry?
a great idea! Then again, there's nothing to say that Bridges shouldn't exist in this world...
I think it's fine leaving Ocean Travel where it is, especially since it fits so well with the Luthair flavor. And otherwise we end up affecting when the Compact can be started (since that requires meeting all players, which means someone must cross the ocean, if the map has an ocean).
agreed!
The more I think about the "stretching" above, the more I think the tech tree should have more defining the One Power techs for the period of time that maps to Modern-Atomic. We can have big, splashy, WoT-y mechanics at this point. However, it sort of conflicts with the flavor of channeling's deterioration in the time leading up to the books.
Yeah, especially if Flight (and nukes) aren't as a big a part of it. There can/will be a lot of cool things that can occur in the late eras with regards to the Power.
As far as deterioration of the power, I don't think I agree that that's a problem. It's true that the power of channelers deteriorates over the course of the Age, but that is most definitely *not* the case in the final years of the Age. Tons of new things are rediscovered, to say nothing of the super powerful channelers that are born (I suppose this all starts with Cadsuane, who, I suppose, was born in the Era of Encroaching Blight).
Agreed (map reveal is presumably on Traveling or some such?). We'll probably want to rename Research Agreements, since that's quite a modern term.
perhaps yes to both. Probably can settle once the tech tree is more developed!
It's worth briefly considering Pazyryk's Éa mod and its changes that meant players weren't founding cities at the beginning of the game. I haven't played it, but it's my understanding that players start off as sort of proto-civilizations and only after achieving certain things do they become a civ like we would recognize them from BNW, with abilities and such.
This has the potential to be relatively complicated, and I don't think we'd want the "evolve from proto-civilizations into full civs in-game" approach, but the idea that early game "cities" aren't actually cities could be interesting and would let us have a more primitive set up period.
In terms of where we are flavor-wise, I'd agree that we're shortly after the Breaking has ended. So there are no powerful mad channelers ripping continents apart anymore, but the Breaking has destroyed civilization and people need to relearn everything from the very basics.
I do remember reading that about Ea. I haven't played it yet, but this makes me feel like I should. I've just read a bit about it, and yes, it sounds like you're right.
I don't think we need to do that, though. Not that it wouldn't make flavorful sense - in truth, it'd make flavorful sense for even base civ - but it's just simply a bit more "different" than we need to be for that portion of the game. That is to say, I don't see it being required by our flavor. It's also sort of Ea's "thing," and would be a bit lame to steal it, I think, especially for another fantasy mod.
This leads me to what will have to be my last points for the night (I'll take up the individual flavor comments next time):
First, on process: I think we don't want to dive too far into "random" flavor at this point. You ask later in your post if we should come up with flavor for the mid(and later)-game stuff at this point. I say no. I think the priority right now should be to stick the mechanics where they belong. Figure out where things unlock, and stick them there. Figure out the actual techs later. Of course, a big part of that, though, will involve detailed discussion on specific things (like flight, traveling, etc.) that may involve flavor. That's fine, but I think when I commended on your previous tech ideas (chain of command, etc.) I opened up a can of worms we probably should keep closed.
Then, once the mechanics are in place (at least mostly), I think I'd prefer to start at the beginning. Perhaps this is simply a matter of preference - when I write a piece of music, I often map out the whole thing, roughly, but when I actually start churning out music, I typically go from "left to right," i.e. write minute one, then minute two, etc. To me, the beginning often informs the end. So in this case, knowing what we called "Optics" will very much inform what we call "Compass." I feel like I could come up with a guess as to what tech would unlock traveling, but honestly I won't really have a good sense until we've arrived at that particular era. Thoughts?
Secondly, and lastly, I've been thinking about this whole "where do we start" thing (Agriculture vs. Fire) and I've begun to not like the idea of starting so stone-age. Simply, I don't think it really fits with our flavor.
Recall Rand's visions of the Aiel during the breaking. They're rolling around in wagons, trying not to die. People killing them presumably have "real" weapons. Presumably, these Aiel keep these wagons once the Breaking ends (and become the tinkers). My point is that these people didn't need to discover the Wheel. They didn't need to discover Fire. They didn't even really need to discover "Ironworking" in the same sense as Early Man did. They knew *about it*, they just didn't have the means to *do* it. I think, in general, mankind did not lose so much knowledge that they were essentially pre-historic. They just lost institutions and infrastructure.
So, I'm suggesting that instead of sending people back to the stone-age with our early techs, let's reframe the early techs as people rediscovering some lost aspects of their society. There's no flavor disconnect with Farms or "foraging" and such - they have already "discovered" farms, they just can't do them yet. So, techs more like:
Community
Working the Land
Division of Labor
Clanship
Bartering
Oral History
EDIT:
Another way to look at this that struck me, comes from character skills in role playing games, like D&D and such. I know those things are very individual-based, but still, they might work for this effect as "things your people are mastering," instead of truly things they are discovering for the first time. Things like:
Survival
Mountaineering
Tracking (perhaps a stand-in for Animal Husbandry... probably too close to trapping)
Orientation
Herbs (probably a bit better a little later)
History (a stand in for "writing" or something, if we assume that writing wasn't lost at all - though it could have been)
Appraisal (though that's perhaps better for Guilds or something a little later)
END EDIT
and so on. I could imagine some of those unlocking Farming, Mining, or trade routes. Of course, there's certainly room for some "technologies" as well - stoneworking, for instance - but these don't need to feel laughably primitive as Fire or Basketweaving might.
Then we can have the "real" CiV techs appear later and feel more natural. Mining (renamed?) could stand in for Bronze working or something, and Agriculture (which is, really, a pretty advanced concept) can appear later as well as a food upgrade.
What do you think?
