S3rgeus's Wheel of Time Mod

[counterpoint]

Cool, I've put in a placeholder post for that below.

I'm glad you understood what I was asking. For some reason, my previous post had a LOT of weird nonsense phrases...

Generic 9
Flavor: The wealth from this place must be... redirected.
Objective: Sell a <market equivalent>
Restriction: Must have at least one <market equivalent>

Too harsh for stage 1? We could always go for a straight GPT cost, but I'm not sure what mechanism we'd use to allow the player to impose that on themselves.

Ah.... I think it's fine for stage one. We have a "sell walls" one at stage one, right? Since a market is more expensive and stuff than walls (right?), maybe make this one happen within 10 turns, and not 5.

Maybe there's an additional requirement that the civ must have net-positve gold flow?

They do, they provide +2 of a yield to a Governor within 3 hexes of them. It could be relatively long term if the player camps out the Sister by/in a city with a Governor and leaves them there for the whole game. Helpfully, the Blue and Brown Ajah abilities are map-dependent, so there's an opportunity cost in camping them, in that you don't get to use their other abilities.

The White Ajah's other ability prevents enemies from stealing technologies, so it's actually camping encouraging too. Though given the frequency of technology-steals, an ability that makes technology stealing harder for your enemy would be really frustrating to combine with a second ability that constantly moves the Sister around.

hmm.... are we still ok with that bonus? +2 / turn seems pretty good, don't it?

WoT GPs as a source, dropped then?

dropped!

Sorry, I see now that my wording wasn't clear! Yes, advocating for the GP selection method. I agree, it's a more complex balancing task than population, but I think it makes the system much more enjoyable for the player. And as you've said, I think we can still keep it focused and within our ability to rein in!

Also totally agree on "soft enforcement" - more details on the specifics of these elsewhere, but it looks like we're in the same place on how we can stop Governors from becoming an every-city thing.

ok, right.

Definitely, balancing Governor against the other actions available to GPs definitely gives us a much more targeted design space to work within. The fact that they also provide unhappiness and should therefore be marginally better is also a very good one. I've been thinking primarily in the context of Alignment yields, but for the others (Culture, Gold, Science, Production, Food, Faith), we can probably afford to go a bit higher than +3 per turn for a specialized Governor, considering the corresponding GP improvement produces between +4 and +9 of their respective yield, and are available immediately.

Well, the one thing about GP improvements is that they need to be worked by a citizen, whereas these don't. more than +3 might be fine, though. Hard to say definitively now.

That means that if the Governors start of worse than the improvement in terms of sheer yield, they'll need to (taking into account the bonus of the "special ability") be better than the improvements when fully upgraded, in order to be a comparable choice.

This way of viewing this relative balance, I definitely like!

I thought I built a lot of farms! I would expect a Wide empire's capital to cap out around 20 pop, if it even gets that far. Tall has more room to grow, but I am super impressed when I get a city up to 40 pop (I think 52 is my all time record).

This is all related to spawning Governors based on population though - based on our discussions below, I think we'll go for the GP-based approach. I like the concept, but I think if the minimum population requirement for spawning a Governor via GP changed with each spawn, it would be a bit confusing for the player.

15 sounds like a good population minimum.

Good.

As far as my city sizes... I may be totally misremembering. Maybe high 30s is the typical for my tall civs?

Most buildings that produce happiness produce local happiness (bar a few wonders). Each of your cities generates X net happiness for your empire - each citizen produces +1 local Unhappiness from crowding (though that can change based on some policy choices and UAs). The maximum global happiness a city can contribute is equal to its population. So if you've got a 4 pop city producing 6 local happiness (it has a colosseum and a stadium or something), then it's only producing a total of 4 global happiness, because the city is capped.

I only really got a firm grasp of this after diving into the code to change it, it's a bit confusing - particularly since there are a few wonders that completely ignore it.

Right! that makes sense.

Of course.... why that wasn't explained in-game, I don't know.

I'm not as sure anymore, but the source of my reluctance isn't really to do with Governors themselves - more with GPs in general. The God-King approach works well with upgrades for the Governors themselves - it allows the player to go through a specialization process and customize their Governor to target their city's needs. It also makes the upgrades more impactful.

However, it would allow players to repurpose arbitrary GPs into different game plans, which drastically alters the usages of those GPs. For example, when a Science player generates a Great Artist, they're likely to use it for a Golden Age or the GW (purely for the Culture on the defensive) since thei primary science gameplan isn't particularly affected by the GA's other abilities. However, now they could use the GA to create a God-King Governor and specialize that Governor into Science. This creates the strange situation where players don't want to use their "targeted" GPs for Governors, but instead the off-victory ones. (So Science players will never use their Great Scientists as Governors, because the Great Artists are just as good at it, but the Scientists are useful elsewhere - correspondingly with Great Merchants for Diplo, Great Generals with Domination, the three Culture types with Culture.)

I hadn't considered that previously, but I think that's a big problem with the God-King approach.

I see what you mean about not wanting "here's some more Culture because this a Culture GP" - but that's really what the system (GP system) is supposed to do. That this type of GP has been produced means it should contribute specifically toward a corresponding victory type (or overall strategy that tends toward that victory).

Yeah, so.... you've convinced me.

I was viewing things from the perspective of redundancy and how that's kind of annoying and I was putting aside the fact that that very redundancy is wholly core to the GP system. Disrupting that would be very bad, IMO.

About sub-types being complex with upgrades, I don't think they have to be. They can follow a relatively universal formula for what their upgrades are. Say we went for threshold 2 being the "special ability" threshold, here are a general set of options:

Threshold 1: +1 Light, +1 Shadow, +X of relevant sub-type yield, +10% build rate for sub-type buildings

Threshold 2: Remove local happiness cap decrease, sub-type specific bonus, +50% city attack and defense

Threshold 3: +2 Light, +2 Shadow, +Y of relevant sub-type yield (Y > X), +Z GP points for relevant GP

So we only need one sub-type-unique mechanic for each, for the middle option on threshold 2. (I'm also not sure if there's something more interesting for the third option on threshold 2 - that one might be a bit Martial - but it demonstrates a "generally applicable" ability. Actually threshold 2 option 3 could be the "God-King" option: +1 of everything?) Players will also become relatively quickly accustomed to the value of most of the choices since they'll be able to experiment with the majority of them on any Governor, it's just threshold 2 option 2 that presents a serious wildcard.

God-King would end up presenting the player with more options, rather than less, since there are upgrade choices for every yield category.

OK, I think these example bonuses are in the right ball park. I do like the God-king bonus popping up at tier two or 3 or something.

The combat bonus thing at tier 2... maybe that's a good on for GCaptains?

As far as the specific subtypes, and the bonuses they'd provide, that SEEMS like a logical "next task," but I'm struck by the fact that we really shouldn't do any of that until we know what the GPs are. The reasons are twofold: 1) duh, we don't know what GPs we have, 2) we don't know what GP improvements or other similar things we need to balance against.

So, weird as it feels, once we get the big picture down (which we may actually have done already), we probably need to move on the GPs proper. Then we come back to these. Agreed?

I don't think we should eliminate Great Generals, because there are definitely useful effects in there and it would be strange to exclude one GP type and not others. Great Prophets are also generated differently (not through GP points), but I think we still want to include them.

Sure. I'm sold.

Also I love the idea of adding descriptors to the Governor based on the chosen upgrades! (Regardless of what we decide in God-King vs sub-types) "Berelain the Smith of Terror" - that player-driven juxtaposition feels very CiV!

yeah. I think this would be a cool way to get some in-universe terms in there and such, also. "Woolheaded Sheepherder" (+Food) and the like.

Seems like the debate now is only really having sub-types at all or having God-King - so sub-type selection, if it does occur, is still determined by our choice of spawn mechanic, right? In this case, determined by the GP used, since GPs as the source seems decided above.

yep. NOW it's decided.

Right, I think I agree here. Let's just go with Governors die when a city is captured. (Gives the player all the more reason to defend it!) This potential for permanent loss is worse than the GP improvements actually, which will stick around unless the conqueror is a terrible person.

Well, GP improvements can be retaken, of course, but on the other hand, they can be used against you, which is bad if you have like 3 manufactories.

Buy yeah, govs die when captured.

Are govs visible by other civs? How about their bonuses (sans alignment)?

Also, related - can you move govs to a different city? I'm thinking no, out of simplicity.

If a city's population falls too low to support a gov... the gov should still stay, right?

I think it makes sense to scale the yields the Governor is giving out based on how upgraded they are, and we can scale that per-yield. (So Gold and Science will scale up more aggressively than Culture or Prestige.)

The scale of the Alignment tiers means that a lot of little +1s add up quite quickly. While a late-game +1 won't matter too much, an early-game +1 will make a fairly hefty contribution. Whereas the overall target for Alignment is to make 7100 reachable but not automatic between all sources by the end of the game, Science, by comparison, requires 8800 beakers for each tech in the last column of the tree.

So I don't think the yields need to scale by era, we can let the scale-by-upgrade act as the mechanism that Governors remain relevant throughout the game. I figure with a sub-type approach we'd add +2 to the relevant yield per upgrade threshold, regardless of what option the player chose, just as a part of the general "progression" of that Governor.

Right. on board with this.

One way to enable end-game Governors would be to have a building/wonder that did something along the lines of "Governors spawned in this city start at threshold 1".

Yeah, that could work, but it's a little odd dealing with the whole "what if the city already has one" thing.

Interesting, I've always felt things that pop-up screens are something that exists in a new context - a new tech, new era, new CS, etc. - where the offside buttons are more about modifying existing entities. (Though even Firaxis doesn't really keep to either - Religion pops up a new screen when you Enhance it.) It occurs to me that it may be to best to address upgrading a Governor from the city overview screen anyway, where the player can normally see the Governor.

truth be told, I don't feel strongly about this, either way. Also, it's hard to really know how it "feels" without seeing it in action.

Ends up with +3 total. So threshold 1 is worth +1, and threshold 3 provides an additional +2 (if you take it). I was thinking we would do the threshold Alignment upgrades instead of having an initial Alignment output - even with only +1 from the initial Nature, over the course of all of a player's Governors for the whole game, that produces a majority share (about ~800-ish) of the ~1200 we want.

I still feel like we're using different calibration.

You say "+3 total", but wouldn't it have a +1 at Governor creation? Or are you suggesting that "just born" governors have no alignment generation? I figured they would.

In terms of the actual number, though - whatever gets us to that ~1200 target!

Awesome, sounds like the progression is good! I've given an example of a "abilities on threshold 2" above, so we'll probably continue that discussion up there.

Also totally agreed, policies and wonders can be decided in the context of their systems, rather than the Governor system.

Cool, though, again, I'm thinking the abilities discussion needs to wait a little.

I agree, I don't think we'll use Governors for the Domination victory, but it's worth keeping around in case something does come up when we're "finished".

Yeah, domination quote-block!

OK, so that seemed... rather simple, really! Obviously we need to do the abilities and sub-types, but as stated above, I'd say we should at least figure out which GPs we have before then.

On that note, if I find the time tomorrow or Thursday, I may do an introductory post on GPs. I know we're trying to avoid two parallel quote-lines, but I'm thinking this one will wrap up rather shortly. I may not have the time anyways. We'll see.

 

[counterpoint]

Great People - Introductory Thoughts

As usual, this won't have much in the way of rules proposals or content. Rather, I seek to frame the discussion and give us a few key questions we need to answer before we actually develop that content. This discussion covers simpler content than much of the rest of this thread, so this post will be correspondingly simple.

This topic was last seriously discussed way back on page 3! It might be useful to reread some of that discussion before we tackle much content on this matter - though lots of it is now somewhat obsolete.

These posts (1http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13366352&postcount=57 2) presented some GP, and this was S3rgeus's response to that post.

Originality of GPs
We could consider our GPs to be either:

1. Renamed versions of the various GPs from CiV
2. Completely original, potentially including different abilities, more or fewer total GPs, etc.

We previously appeared to Agree on Option #2, but it should be confirmed here, if that is still the case.

Process
And in either case, what are the GPs we will be using? We can develop them following one of three processes:

1. Start with flavor. Pick which GPs feel "needed" and go from there.
2. Start with mechanics, and big-picture "roles" of each GP (e.g., "3 GW GPs, one production GP, etc.)
3. Start with mechanics, and a pool of abilities we want, distributed between GPs - with us not likely knowing how many/which GPs we will end up with until we are done.
   
   Which of these should we pursue?
   
   Balance Concerns with Ability Mixing and GP Roles
   Unless we do a literal "translation" (renaming) of existing GPs, we will have some decisions to make regarding abilities. One key decision is whether we should preserve the "roles" of the CiV GPs (even when creating wholly new abilities), or allow them to be reconceived.
   
   For example, an Ogier Builder GP (if one exists) likely feels like a production GP, and could deserve two production abilities. However, we could decide that it has one production ability and one that produces a Golden Age, or +Happiness, or even a Great Work or Culture - abilities that were obviously deliberately separated in CiV.
   
   Are we going to be ok with this sort of "blurring," or should we keep things "related" mechanically (or at least in terms of the "point" of a given GP)?
   
   If we choose to 'Blur," how does this interact with the GP-point grouping that exists in CiV (GS/GE/GM vs GA/GW/GM)?
   
   Channeling
   Some of the GPs we are likely to consider rely on channeling the One Power, such as Dreamers and Fortellers. Considering the fact that some civs may be explicitly anti-channeling, should we exclude them from being GP to prevent weird dissonance in a civ (from, say, a Culture-aimed Oppression civ)?
   
   What about "magical" but non-related GP-types, such as Viewers/Doomseers, Sniffers, Wolfbrothers, etc.?
   
   Sources
   In Civ, GPs are generated by either:
   
   • GP Points (most)
   • Faith accumulation (early Prophets)
   • Combat actions (GG and GAd)
   • Social Policies
   • Faith Purchases
   
   Are we going to consider any other sources? For example, could a Great Builder be gifted by a Stedding?
   
   Governors
   Which GP can turn into Governors?
   
   Is there one Governor Sub-Type for every eligible GP, or will some "double up" into the same sub-type?
   
   List of CiV GPs and their abilities
   For our reference, here are the GPs used in CiV, as of BNW:
   
   • Great Artist - Golden Age, Create GWA
   • Great Musician - Concert Tour (+Tourism), Create GWM
   • Great Writer - Political Treatise (+Culture), Create GWW
   • Great Engineer - Build Manufactory, Hurry Production
   • Great Merchant - Build Customs House, Trade Mission (gold dump and CS influence)
   • Great Scientist - Build Academy, Hurry Research
   • Great General - Build Citadel (Super-fort and Land Steal), Combat bonus to nearby units,
   • Great Admiral - Combat bonus to nearby units, Repair fleet
   • Great Prophet - Found Religion, Enhance Religion, Spread Religion/Inquisition 4x
   • Khan (Mongolia) - faster than GG, Heals units.
   • Merchant of Venice (Venice) - Super Trade Mission, Puppet CS
   
   Anything I've forgotten to bring up?

 

[S3rgeus]

I'm glad you understood what I was asking. For some reason, my previous post had a LOT of weird nonsense phrases...

We're on the same wavelength, man!

I've updated the summary with our decisions thus far on Governors.

Ah.... I think it's fine for stage one. We have a "sell walls" one at stage one, right? Since a market is more expensive and stuff than walls (right?), maybe make this one happen within 10 turns, and not 5.

Maybe there's an additional requirement that the civ must have net-positve gold flow?

All sounds good - edited in!

hmm.... are we still ok with that bonus? +2 / turn seems pretty good, don't it?

It's not too bad for these yields. The White are likely to generate the most since their abilities synergize with being camped out at home, but helpfully Science is one of the most aggressively scaling yields. A single White Ajah Sister camped by a city with a Governor for the whole game (which is impossible, since you'd need a Governor on turn 1) would generate ~700 Science - less than 1/8 of a single tech by the end of the game, but a good incremental advantage as you go along.

For the Brown Ajah and Culture, that's less than 2 turns of Culture output for most Culture focused civs near the end of the game - but again a good incremental gain. They'd be unlikely to remain camped though, since grabbing a single GW from an Mythic Site equals their Culture output and doesn't require a Governor.

For Blue and Faith, that's less than 1 GP (even at starting price) but it would definitely be good for early Path/Enhancement.

None too imbalancing, I think.

As far as my city sizes... I may be totally misremembering. Maybe high 30s is the typical for my tall civs?

Possibly. We can easily tweak the population minimums if we find they don't work out.

Right! that makes sense.

Of course.... why that wasn't explained in-game, I don't know.

They make gestures towards explaining it, but never really elaborate beyond "you can't produce more happiness than you have citizens" - though I don't know if I read that in the game or on the internet.

Yeah, so.... you've convinced me.

I was viewing things from the perspective of redundancy and how that's kind of annoying and I was putting aside the fact that that very redundancy is wholly core to the GP system. Disrupting that would be very bad, IMO.

Cool, sub-types it is!

OK, I think these example bonuses are in the right ball park. I do like the God-king bonus popping up at tier two or 3 or something.

Coolio, yes, the God-King bonus at threshold 2, replacing the city strength one, sounds much better.

The combat bonus thing at tier 2... maybe that's a good on for GCaptains?

Definitely possible! A unit EXP bonus could also be cool. As you say later, we can go into more detail on picking these after we go through GPs.

As far as the specific subtypes, and the bonuses they'd provide, that SEEMS like a logical "next task," but I'm struck by the fact that we really shouldn't do any of that until we know what the GPs are. The reasons are twofold: 1) duh, we don't know what GPs we have, 2) we don't know what GP improvements or other similar things we need to balance against.

So, weird as it feels, once we get the big picture down (which we may actually have done already), we probably need to move on the GPs proper. Then we come back to these. Agreed?

Totally agreed, this sounds like a good plan.

yeah. I think this would be a cool way to get some in-universe terms in there and such, also. "Woolheaded Sheepherder" (+Food) and the like.

Yeah, that sounds great!

Well, GP improvements can be retaken, of course, but on the other hand, they can be used against you, which is bad if you have like 3 manufactories.

Buy yeah, govs die when captured.

Are govs visible by other civs? How about their bonuses (sans alignment)?

I think Governors should be invisible by default, but become visible to players that have a spy in the city. The extent of that visibility could vary though: can they see all the upgrades? Or can they just see "there is a Governor here"?

Also, related - can you move govs to a different city? I'm thinking no, out of simplicity.

Agreed, I'm thinking the same way, Governors must remain in the city they are spawned in.

If a city's population falls too low to support a gov... the gov should still stay, right?

Yeah, they should stick around then.

Yeah, that could work, but it's a little odd dealing with the whole "what if the city already has one" thing.

Then it could bump them up a threshold!

I still feel like we're using different calibration.

You say "+3 total", but wouldn't it have a +1 at Governor creation? Or are you suggesting that "just born" governors have no alignment generation? I figured they would.

In terms of the actual number, though - whatever gets us to that ~1200 target!

I was thinking we would have Governors generate no Alignment after they're first created. Mainly for the reasons I mentioned before - an initial +1 across all Governors already contributes about ~800 Alignment, so we'd have to drop the +2s on threshold 3 to stay within ~1200. I think having them just on the upgrades makes it splashier but still within the ~1200 we want.

Yeah, domination quote-block!

Domination quote block!

OK, so that seemed... rather simple, really! Obviously we need to do the abilities and sub-types, but as stated above, I'd say we should at least figure out which GPs we have before then.

Yeah, we seem to be wrapped up on that now! Awesome! I've edited all of our decisions into the GP and Governors summary and I'll head on to your GP intro next!

 

[S3rgeus]

Great People - Introductory Thoughts

As usual, this won't have much in the way of rules proposals or content. Rather, I seek to frame the discussion and give us a few key questions we need to answer before we actually develop that content. This discussion covers simpler content than much of the rest of this thread, so this post will be correspondingly simple.

This topic was last seriously discussed way back on page 3! It might be useful to reread some of that discussion before we tackle much content on this matter - though lots of it is now somewhat obsolete.

These posts (1http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13366352&postcount=57 2) presented some GP, and this was S3rgeus's response to that post.

Woah, that was so long ago! We hadn't even sorted out this whole quote-blocking approach to posting yet - though we were clearly getting there. As you've said, these posts are a good refresher on our previous discussions about the topic. I think most of the details from the previous posts can't be used as they are, since so much has changed, as you've mentioned, and we have a much better handle on our design process and the mod in general.

Originality of GPs
We could consider our GPs to be either:

1. Renamed versions of the various GPs from CiV
2. Completely original, potentially including different abilities, more or fewer total GPs, etc.

We previously appeared to Agree on Option #2, but it should be confirmed here, if that is still the case.

Yes, I think #2 is the way to go. It's a much bigger balancing task, but I think option #1 will feel way too much like we've just reskinned BNW for us to consider it. More details on balancing shenanigans below.

Process
And in either case, what are the GPs we will be using? We can develop them following one of three processes:

1. Start with flavor. Pick which GPs feel "needed" and go from there.
2. Start with mechanics, and big-picture "roles" of each GP (e.g., "3 GW GPs, one production GP, etc.)
3. Start with mechanics, and a pool of abilities we want, distributed between GPs - with us not likely knowing how many/which GPs we will end up with until we are done.

Which of these should we pursue?

I'm going to be super difficult and say we should use elements from all 3 approaches. I think we want to follow a framework that's quite like #3 - pooling together all of the abilities that we want any GP to have. To create that pool, we use the GP abilities present in BNW plus the flavor explorations from #1 - we ask ourselves "which WoT concepts/actions make the most sense as GP abilities?"

Then we want to divvy up the mechanics in such a way that the different approaches to the game (Culture, Diplo, Domination, Science, ~Production) have at least one relevant GP (like in #2), and individual GPs don't suffer from either end of the abilities-spectrum difficulties. Those difficulties being: "all of a certain GP types' abilities are not useful to most players so they are underpowered/unuseful" (looking at you, Great Admiral), and at the other end we have "all of a certain GP types' abilities are useful to everyone and using one to the exclusion of the other is frustrating/self-defeating". Some GPs may fall outside the five major pillars of the desired victory types. Some victory types may have multiple GP types associated with them.

Balance Concerns with Ability Mixing and GP Roles
Unless we do a literal "translation" (renaming) of existing GPs, we will have some decisions to make regarding abilities. One key decision is whether we should preserve the "roles" of the CiV GPs (even when creating wholly new abilities), or allow them to be reconceived.

For example, an Ogier Builder GP (if one exists) likely feels like a production GP, and could deserve two production abilities. However, we could decide that it has one production ability and one that produces a Golden Age, or +Happiness, or even a Great Work or Culture - abilities that were obviously deliberately separated in CiV.

Are we going to be ok with this sort of "blurring," or should we keep things "related" mechanically (or at least in terms of the "point" of a given GP)?

Right, this is a big and very important discussion! While considering this, I think I've realized why GP generation is sliced up the way it is in BNW. The GP types generated through GP points are the ones that are explicitly used to manage Tall vs Wide. There are relevant GP-point-generated GP types for each major yield in order to help Tall players remain competitive against Wide players' higher city count and numerous on-map yield sources.

So, Scientists and Engineers are direct boosters for Tall players' Science and Production output. The entire Culture Victory is geared towards Tall - defending yourself from foreign Tourism and generating more GPs through policies to generate Tourism yourself is inherently easier when you have fewer cities because of the scaling of policy cost with city count. Pre-BNW, Culture was even more Tall-focused, since you needed to reach a specific (high) number of policies to win via Culture. Merchants help Tall players offset Wide's GPT advantage - and a primary use for GPT is CS-alliance-purchasing - which the Merchant helps with on a double-whammy level.

The other GP types are Tall/Wide independent because the mechanics they enhance aren't affected by Tallness/Wideness. Prophets establish religions at a point in the game where Tall/Wide is indistinguishable. Later on they're for spreading religion - which is equally useful regardless of Tall/Wide. Great Generals and Admirals (sort of, Admirals) are useful based on how militant a civ is - hence their spawning via EXP.

I think the primary takeaway here is that some GP types are explicitly focused on keeping Tall/Wide balanced, and they should be generated by GP points.

Others are feedback for their own separate systems - so doing things that help you become "more" of something, should generate GPs that are appropriate to being better at that something.

This makes me think we will likely want some new GP type(s) related to the Last Battle, something that makes players more effective at LB-ing in some specific way, and are generated by being effective at LB-related stuff. For the majority of the game, that would be in relation to the Alignment system. (I'm not suggesting we have any GPs specifically generate Alignment, we've had enough of tweaking Alignment sources, I think.)

So, blurring. Yes, I think we should blur roles, but not across the boundaries discussed above. If we have two GPs that each have a production-boost and a science-boost ability, then that's fine. But if we have one GP with a production boost and a military boost, they become infinitely more retargetable into other gameplans (and also will tend to "default" into a role for a given player more often - where only one of the GP's abilities is even advantageous to the player at all).

If we choose to 'Blur," how does this interact with the GP-point grouping that exists in CiV (GS/GE/GM vs GA/GW/GM)?

The groupings for point-cost-increases only apply to Tall balancing GP types (since they're generated by GP points) so I think we can group them sensibly. Also, GA/GW/GM all increase in cost independently (not grouped) - so Firaxis have demonstrated that we can split up the "core roles" into multiple independent GP types without destroying the game's balance. (There were no GW or GMs before BNW, only GAs.) As long as two separate GP types aren't just doing the same kind of thing, it should remain sensible.

Channeling
Some of the GPs we are likely to consider rely on channeling the One Power, such as Dreamers and Fortellers. Considering the fact that some civs may be explicitly anti-channeling, should we exclude them from being GP to prevent weird dissonance in a civ (from, say, a Culture-aimed Oppression civ)?

This is a good point and may pave the way for a "Channeler" GP types that makes other channelers better - generated by a civ's tendency to use channelers - in a similar feedback loop described for Generals and Prophets above. (So Channeler-hating civs will only generate a tiny number/none of this GP type(s) due to "modifiers to the way this GP type(s) are produced", that are created by the choices that indicate Channeler-hatred, as well as the fact that the things that produce Channeler GPs are things this type of civ will not tend to do.) Whether we have the abilities that make that useful remains to be seen, but it's certainly an option, and it looks like some of the flavorful abilities we'll consider will lead us down this path.

It's also worth considering that GPs can achieve any arbitrary goal we want - the label "GP" doesn't have to mean that they're tied into the existing/other GPs in any way, or even interact with them, beyond not being able to stack on the map (which is also negotiable). It doesn't affect the balance of Great Scientists or Great Musicians if we introduce a Great Channeler generated by the number of times a civ attacks with a channeling unit, and have that Great Channeler make all other channelers cost less Spark (or something). As long as the existence of a unit that does such a thing is balanced, then it is balanced, without having to tip the whole GP system one way or another.

What about "magical" but non-related GP-types, such as Viewers/Doomseers, Sniffers, Wolfbrothers, etc.?

I think this becomes a simpler question with what I've mentioned elsewhere in mind. These GP types should be spawned by actions that indicate the player is effectively targeting the system(s) which the GP makes the player better at.

In terms of flavor, I think we'll want to keep these separate from One Power driven ability-heavy GP types since they will not appear often in Channeler-hating civs, and those civs shouldn't have an absence of unrelated/specific victory GP types. (Unless we decide to balance Channeler hatred in such a way that certain victory types are more difficult for them, much like Ideologies do in BNW.)

Sources
In Civ, GPs are generated by either:

• GP Points (most)
• Faith accumulation (early Prophets)
• Combat actions (GG and GAd)
• Social Policies
• Faith Purchases

Are we going to consider any other sources? For example, could a Great Builder be gifted by a Stedding?

Yes, I think we should definitely consider other sources. Given our new gameplay systems, I think we have quite a few new roles to fill for GPs that didn't exist in BNW. Things that help with the Tower, Stedding, the Last Battle, Governors explicitly (rather than just a general implicit usefulness of GPs as Governors). It's also worth noting that there are no GPs that have a direct effect on the World Congress in BNW (merchant is the closest, getting you votes via trade mission) - we could change that for the Compact, though I'm not yet sure how.

Related to the above, I think if Stedding were to be a primary source of a certain GP type - that GP type should aid the player in relationships with Stedding (either directly via Stedding relationship, or some help in the Stumps, or something like that) - rather than be a production-hurry source, like the Engineer's ability - since that will tend to favor Wide civs more than it should for such a boost.

Governors
Which GP can turn into Governors?

Is there one Governor Sub-Type for every eligible GP, or will some "double up" into the same sub-type?

I think all GPs can turn into Governors and some will double up. I think our "exotic" new GP types that are quite WoT-y, as well as potentially "blurred" GP types from BNW, introduce the possibility to have Governor types that aren't "dedicated" to a single yield. So, for instance, say we had a Channeling Governor - they might focus on Culture and Faith, starting off by providing +2 of one and +1 of the other.

I do think we'll definitely want primarily focused ones as well - Governors that are production/science/gold/faith/culture all the way. But we've also got prestige, food, and possibly happiness as potential other yields/focuses that could be useful.

List of CiV GPs and their abilities
For our reference, here are the GPs used in CiV, as of BNW:

• Great Artist - Golden Age, Create GWA
• Great Musician - Concert Tour (+Tourism), Create GWM
• Great Writer - Political Treatise (+Culture), Create GWW
• Great Engineer - Build Manufactory, Hurry Production
• Great Merchant - Build Customs House, Trade Mission (gold dump and CS influence)
• Great Scientist - Build Academy, Hurry Research
• Great General - Build Citadel (Super-fort and Land Steal), Combat bonus to nearby units,
• Great Admiral - Combat bonus to nearby units, Repair fleet
• Great Prophet - Found Religion, Enhance Religion, Spread Religion/Inquisition 4x
• Khan (Mongolia) - faster than GG, Heals units.
• Merchant of Venice (Venice) - Super Trade Mission, Puppet CS

Anything I've forgotten to bring up?

I think you've started off the discussion for most of the topics! Once we've had a short while more for discussing above (possibly only 1 or 2 posts) we could create a pool of GP abilities that we'd like to use and see if we can divide them into Tall/Wide balancing and system-specific classifications, and then derive some flavorful groupings that gives us good GP types from there.

One last topic though: "Great People". Do we like the name? Is there a more in-universe alternative? "Ta'veren" certainly pops to mind, are there any problems with it? Seems quite appropriate to me.

 

[Zalminen]

Whoa, took me half a week but I've finally read through the whole thread. Somewhat fitting that a WoT mod thread has this much text in it

You've certainly done an excellent job so far, usually whenever I noted some problem when reading a later post already addressed and provided a nice solution for it. Plus this mod finally game me a reason to actually register instead of just lurking.

There's one older topic I think I need to bring up, even though it feels a tad silly digging up stuff all the way from pages 14/15.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13573386&postcount=286
Specifically about the Sul'dam/Damane movement problem:

Since you solved the AS linking/movement issue by just allowing the units to move separately and handling the linking after that doesn't the same approach also work with sul'dam/damane pairs?
I.e. the player can just move both separately but the damane can only attack when her sul'dam is close enough.
This doesn't strictly speaking force the pair to keep next to each other but the player will take care of it anyway in order to actually use the damane.
And this way there's no need for any special movement code.
Or is there something else that I'm missing here?

But now I really need to get some sleep after all this reading, will comment on GPs later.

Ta'veren sounds like a good name though.

EDIT:
Ok, about GPs then.

First the naming. Should there be a unifying name theme or not?

1) The CiV way:
Great Painters, Great Scholars, Great Captains are obviously all Great Persons. It's easy to recognize them as part of the GP system
and so it's easy to remember how go get them - you just need enough GP points of the correct type.
On the other hand something like Great Wolfbrother just sounds dumb.

And if all the names are Great Something then using the top level title Ta'veren feels a little like renaming for renaming's sake.

Not that Ta'veren Captain and Ta'veren Scholar sound any better though.

2) No common theme:
Great Captain, Wolfbrother, Gleeman, Famed Scholar. This allows for a greater freedom when choosing names but the player won't immediately
recognize them as part of the same GP system.
On the other hand grouping them all as Ta'veren feels more natural this way.

Or of course it's possible to keep most of the names as Great Something (or Famous Something) and let the exceptions be exceptions.

Anyway, continuing to the list of CiV GPs for possible renames if you decide to add some of them to the game:

Great Artist - Great Painter? Great Artisan?
Great Musician - Great Gleeman? Court Bard? Gleeman?
Great Writer - ?
Great Engineer - Great Builder? Great Architect? Great Mason?
Great Merchant - Probably sounds good as it is.
Great Scientist - Great Scholar? Great Inventor?
Great General - Great Captain is good, probably no need to think of alternatives for this.
(Great Admiral - IIRC you already decided to combine this with the Great Captain)
Great Prophet - Great Missionary? Great Pathfinder?

Other ones that were considered earlier:
Wolfbrother
Viewer

These ones were considered but were tentatively turned down:
Sniffer
Slayer
Probability Man

There were probably others that I've missed.

Ah yes, another point that popped into my head when reading through this thread earlier, this time about Trolloc Wars:
Since the Ogiers' fame as fierce warriors came supposedly from the Trolloc Wars, maybe this should be noted in the gameplay?
E.g. the Ogiers will gift each friendly civ a few ogier units at the start of the Trolloc Wars and these will return home at the end of it?

 

[counterpoint]

Whoa, took me half a week but I've finally read through the whole thread. Somewhat fitting that a WoT mod thread has this much text in it

Fitting indeed! I did a search of the word count on the thread a few months back and I think we were already around the length of a WoT book....

Welcome to the thread! I am amazed that you took the time to read through the entire thread.... that seems like a rather daunting task.

As you've certainly seen written on previous pages: all suggestions are welcome, so feel free to chime in when you want, at whatever level of depth you want.

You've certainly done an excellent job so far, usually whenever I noted some problem when reading a later post already addressed and provided a nice solution for it. Plus this mod finally game me a reason to actually register instead of just lurking.

It's very encouraging for you to have read through the thread and only have this one suggestion to make. I'm sure you have more, but it's reassuring that you haven't emerged with a laundry list of Reasons this Mod is Doomed.

There's one older topic I think I need to bring up, even though it feels a tad silly digging up stuff all the way from pages 14/15.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13573386&postcount=286
Specifically about the Sul'dam/Damane movement problem:

Since you solved the AS linking/movement issue by just allowing the units to move separately and handling the linking after that doesn't the same approach also work with sul'dam/damane pairs?
I.e. the player can just move both separately but the damane can only attack when her sul'dam is close enough.
This doesn't strictly speaking force the pair to keep next to each other but the player will take care of it anyway in order to actually use the damane.
And this way there's no need for any special movement code.
Or is there something else that I'm missing here?

Right.... THIS topic. Feels like forever ago. I had forgotten that we'd never solved that problem, since we never really tackled the damane again after that introductory discussion.

In any case - that's a very good idea, limiting their actions based on their position, rather than their movement themselves. I think we might be doing that with Warders, too, though I don't remember.

Either way, sounds good to me!

But now I really need to get some sleep after all this reading, will comment on GPs later.

Ta'veren sounds like a good name though.

Yeah, not bad. I'll share some comments on it when I respond to S3rgeus's longer post later today.

EDIT:
Ok, about GPs then.

First the naming. Should there be a unifying name theme or not?

1) The CiV way:
Great Painters, Great Scholars, Great Captains are obviously all Great Persons. It's easy to recognize them as part of the GP system
and so it's easy to remember how go get them - you just need enough GP points of the correct type.
On the other hand something like Great Wolfbrother just sounds dumb.

And if all the names are Great Something then using the top level title Ta'veren feels a little like renaming for renaming's sake.

Not that Ta'veren Captain and Ta'veren Scholar sound any better though.

I think this disconnect is a very real issue, aesthetically. You're right that something like "Great Scholar" sounds great, but "Great Sniffer" is stupid, as sniffer should simply suffice.

I'm not sure yet, but I might be tempted to go "all or nothing" and either make them ALL "Great X" or something, or have none of them be Great anything "Scholar, Builder, Trader, Sniffer," whatever.

2) No common theme:
Great Captain, Wolfbrother, Gleeman, Famed Scholar. This allows for a greater freedom when choosing names but the player won't immediately
recognize them as part of the same GP system.
On the other hand grouping them all as Ta'veren feels more natural this way.

Or of course it's possible to keep most of the names as Great Something (or Famous Something) and let the exceptions be exceptions.

Right, this is tricky. I'm thinking if we go for the "freedom" approach, it might behoove us to avoid the word "Great," specifically, so as not to create weird CiV-based cognitive dissonance, causing the player to think" wait, is there only ONE Great Person"?

I see that this is unfortunately likely, though, since "Great Captain" is a very in-universe term"

Anyway, continuing to the list of CiV GPs for possible renames if you decide to add some of them to the game:

Great Artist - Great Painter? Great Artisan?
Great Musician - Great Gleeman? Court Bard? Gleeman?
Great Writer - ?
Great Engineer - Great Builder? Great Architect? Great Mason?
Great Merchant - Probably sounds good as it is.
Great Scientist - Great Scholar? Great Inventor?
Great General - Great Captain is good, probably no need to think of alternatives for this.
(Great Admiral - IIRC you already decided to combine this with the Great Captain)
Great Prophet - Great Missionary? Great Pathfinder?

I think this is a little ahead of where we're at now, so it's tricky to say anything with any finality, as we don't know which one's we'll need yet. But a lot of these feel like they would work well, and I think some of them have already probably seeped into our brains as likely solutions.

Other ones that were considered earlier:
Wolfbrother
Viewer

These ones were considered but were tentatively turned down:
Sniffer
Slayer
Probability Man

Yeah, I think all of these are going to simply depend on where the game mechanics take us. If we have our "WoT GPs" - the "weird ones" - then they'll probably show up. Otherwise, probably not.

Ah yes, another point that popped into my head when reading through this thread earlier, this time about Trolloc Wars:
Since the Ogiers' fame as fierce warriors came supposedly from the Trolloc Wars, maybe this should be noted in the gameplay?
E.g. the Ogiers will gift each friendly civ a few ogier units at the start of the Trolloc Wars and these will return home at the end of it?

I like that idea! Especially since the TW will be hell for some civs. Might be cool if the ogier unit is way "ahead of its time" or something. S3rgeus, do we like this?

Alright! Thanks for the thoughts. I return, hopefully tonight, to respond to the larger S3rg post!

 

[counterpoint]

We're on the same wavelength, man!

I've updated the summary with our decisions thus far on Governors.

The summary looks good to me .

So a fully-upgraded, say, Production Gov, who spent both yield upgrades (threshold 1 and 3) would provide a total of +7, right? (or it's equivalent in other yields)? We're ok with that value, then?

Or... does a unit of sub-type X get +2 to that ability per threshold regardless of which abilitiy they choose? I was under the understanding that you only received the upgrade you choose, that there wasn't an "automatic" sub-type related bonus.

Thanks for doing this.

It's not too bad for these yields. The White are likely to generate the most since their abilities synergize with being camped out at home, but helpfully Science is one of the most aggressively scaling yields. A single White Ajah Sister camped by a city with a Governor for the whole game (which is impossible, since you'd need a Governor on turn 1) would generate ~700 Science - less than 1/8 of a single tech by the end of the game, but a good incremental advantage as you go along.

For the Brown Ajah and Culture, that's less than 2 turns of Culture output for most Culture focused civs near the end of the game - but again a good incremental gain. They'd be unlikely to remain camped though, since grabbing a single GW from an Mythic Site equals their Culture output and doesn't require a Governor.

For Blue and Faith, that's less than 1 GP (even at starting price) but it would definitely be good for early Path/Enhancement.

None too imbalancing, I think.

alright. I'm down with that, then.

Possibly. We can easily tweak the population minimums if we find they don't work out.

yes. let's.

Coolio, yes, the God-King bonus at threshold 2, replacing the city strength one, sounds much better.

good. we can hammer out more specifics a bit later (post- GP).

I think Governors should be invisible by default, but become visible to players that have a spy in the city. The extent of that visibility could vary though: can they see all the upgrades? Or can they just see "there is a Governor here"?

I would be fine with either "There is a Governor here" or "There is a Governor [of Sub-type X] here." I wouldn't want to make any specific upgrades visible - especially Alignment - but the sub-type could be fine. It seems like it's actually strategically valid information, whereas "there is a gov here" might not be, since in many cases it might be pretty obvious (late-game capital, for instance).

Then it could bump them up a threshold!

fair enough.

I was thinking we would have Governors generate no Alignment after they're first created. Mainly for the reasons I mentioned before - an initial +1 across all Governors already contributes about ~800 Alignment, so we'd have to drop the +2s on threshold 3 to stay within ~1200. I think having them just on the upgrades makes it splashier but still within the ~1200 we want.

OK, let me say first that if the math works in order to get the values we've designed with, as it seems to, then I'm fine with this.

But "feel"-wise... I'm still not totally in love with them not getting alignment at birth. I'm fine with it, but not in love. I liked the idea of a Gov's "nature" being some independent thing that existed at creation. Yeah, there's no opportunity cost, but, the flipside is that the opportunity cost of choosing Alignment at Thresholds 1 and 3 is really quite high (at the expense of a permanent +2 o some other yield), while other alignment situations are less punishing then that, to me.

But, again, if that makes them generate too much, then sure.

Domination quote block!

I'm ready to kill this quote block.

Go away, Domination Victory-use of Governors. Nobody wants to play with you.... leave the football, though.

 

[counterpoint]

Woah, that was so long ago! We hadn't even sorted out this whole quote-blocking approach to posting yet - though we were clearly getting there. As you've said, these posts are a good refresher on our previous discussions about the topic. I think most of the details from the previous posts can't be used as they are, since so much has changed, as you've mentioned, and we have a much better handle on our design process and the mod in general.

when you say "hadn't even sorted our the whole quote-blocking approach" what you should say is, "counterpoint hadn't remembered the small amount of bbcode he knew yet".

Yes, I think #2 is the way to go. It's a much bigger balancing task, but I think option #1 will feel way too much like we've just reskinned BNW for us to consider it. More details on balancing shenanigans below.

agreed. I figured this was the case.

And no, we can't just reskin BNW! We can't let them think we're LAZY or something.

On that note, looking back, our Pantheons ARE reskins. We may find we'll tweak some of them, or at least add some that fit with our new systems.

I'm going to be super difficult and say we should use elements from all 3 approaches. I think we want to follow a framework that's quite like #3 - pooling together all of the abilities that we want any GP to have. To create that pool, we use the GP abilities present in BNW plus the flavor explorations from #1 - we ask ourselves "which WoT concepts/actions make the most sense as GP abilities?"

Right. I think this mostly feels like "Option 3, and then everything else." I agree with this method.

I hope this goes well, it could end up a big mindf*@$ though...

Then we want to divvy up the mechanics in such a way that the different approaches to the game (Culture, Diplo, Domination, Science, ~Production) have at least one relevant GP (like in #2), and individual GPs don't suffer from either end of the abilities-spectrum difficulties. Those difficulties being: "all of a certain GP types' abilities are not useful to most players so they are underpowered/unuseful" (looking at you, Great Admiral), and at the other end we have "all of a certain GP types' abilities are useful to everyone and using one to the exclusion of the other is frustrating/self-defeating". Some GPs may fall outside the five major pillars of the desired victory types. Some victory types may have multiple GP types associated with them.

Yeah, this is going to be a challenge. I do think that, even though we're sort of starting from scratch, we're going to need to use the BNW GPs as a kind of signpost. We may even find that some of them need to stay nearly the same as they are now.

Right, this is a big and very important discussion! While considering this, I think I've realized why GP generation is sliced up the way it is in BNW. The GP types generated through GP points are the ones that are explicitly used to manage Tall vs Wide. There are relevant GP-point-generated GP types for each major yield in order to help Tall players remain competitive against Wide players' higher city count and numerous on-map yield sources.

So, Scientists and Engineers are direct boosters for Tall players' Science and Production output. The entire Culture Victory is geared towards Tall - defending yourself from foreign Tourism and generating more GPs through policies to generate Tourism yourself is inherently easier when you have fewer cities because of the scaling of policy cost with city count. Pre-BNW, Culture was even more Tall-focused, since you needed to reach a specific (high) number of policies to win via Culture. Merchants help Tall players offset Wide's GPT advantage - and a primary use for GPT is CS-alliance-purchasing - which the Merchant helps with on a double-whammy level.

The other GP types are Tall/Wide independent because the mechanics they enhance aren't affected by Tallness/Wideness. Prophets establish religions at a point in the game where Tall/Wide is indistinguishable. Later on they're for spreading religion - which is equally useful regardless of Tall/Wide. Great Generals and Admirals (sort of, Admirals) are useful based on how militant a civ is - hence their spawning via EXP.

I think the primary takeaway here is that some GP types are explicitly focused on keeping Tall/Wide balanced, and they should be generated by GP points.

Others are feedback for their own separate systems - so doing things that help you become "more" of something, should generate GPs that are appropriate to being better at that something.

This is very, very helpful. It seems so obvious, when you put it like that. But of course it's really not obvious, when you're playing the game.

It seems that we do need to preserve this aspect in most cases (at least the Tall/Wide balance vs "feedback on own systems" thing). This will help us keep things grounded when we're coming up with these guys.

This makes me think we will likely want some new GP type(s) related to the Last Battle, something that makes players more effective at LB-ing in some specific way, and are generated by being effective at LB-related stuff. For the majority of the game, that would be in relation to the Alignment system. (I'm not suggesting we have any GPs specifically generate Alignment, we've had enough of tweaking Alignment sources, I think.)

I don't know. While I can see why theoretically this would be a good idea, I can't think what this would actually be. As far as the LB itself, it's really just a sort of Domination-victory + Seals stuff. I'm not sure what we'd do. "Great Sealbearer"? Seems pretty stupid. Something to do with the dragon?

And as far as Alignment in general... I don't think we need a Great Herald to exist, much like a GPr is a "Great Missionary."

I get the idea, but I can't see how we make it work.

So, blurring. Yes, I think we should blur roles, but not across the boundaries discussed above. If we have two GPs that each have a production-boost and a science-boost ability, then that's fine. But if we have one GP with a production boost and a military boost, they become infinitely more retargetable into other gameplans (and also will tend to "default" into a role for a given player more often - where only one of the GP's abilities is even advantageous to the player at all).

Yes, this makes a lot of sense.

Question, though: does that mean we could theoretically blur, say, Production, and Culture? In BNW, the Engineers and Scientists and Merchants are held apart as a unit from the culture ones, as you describe below, *but* they are still all Tall-Wide balancing agents. Could we, then, theoretically, have a production unit create GWs? Or is that crossing the boundaries here? I'm thinking "no" in the Big Picture, but perhaps yes on some less-clear cut situations (Golden Ages don't *need* to be tied to a culture unit, for example).

The groupings for point-cost-increases only apply to Tall balancing GP types (since they're generated by GP points) so I think we can group them sensibly. Also, GA/GW/GM all increase in cost independently (not grouped) - so Firaxis have demonstrated that we can split up the "core roles" into multiple independent GP types without destroying the game's balance. (There were no GW or GMs before BNW, only GAs.) As long as two separate GP types aren't just doing the same kind of thing, it should remain sensible.

OK, I definitely did not know that GAr/GWr/GMu grouped separately... but, again, I never *really* understood how GP points worked.

So, you think just build our GPs and group them later, or work the groupings in as we design them?

This is a good point and may pave the way for a "Channeler" GP types that makes other channelers better - generated by a civ's tendency to use channelers - in a similar feedback loop described for Generals and Prophets above. (So Channeler-hating civs will only generate a tiny number/none of this GP type(s) due to "modifiers to the way this GP type(s) are produced", that are created by the choices that indicate Channeler-hatred, as well as the fact that the things that produce Channeler GPs are things this type of civ will not tend to do.) Whether we have the abilities that make that useful remains to be seen, but it's certainly an option, and it looks like some of the flavorful abilities we'll consider will lead us down this path.

This makes sense as a GP type, but it's also hard to imagine what it does beyond being a Great General for Channelers. It may be that it's other abilities are sort of "random", and should probably not strictly tie in to specific victory types.

It's also worth considering that GPs can achieve any arbitrary goal we want - the label "GP" doesn't have to mean that they're tied into the existing/other GPs in any way, or even interact with them, beyond not being able to stack on the map (which is also negotiable). It doesn't affect the balance of Great Scientists or Great Musicians if we introduce a Great Channeler generated by the number of times a civ attacks with a channeling unit, and have that Great Channeler make all other channelers cost less Spark (or something). As long as the existence of a unit that does such a thing is balanced, then it is balanced, without having to tip the whole GP system one way or another.

I think you're correct in most cases. However, there exist scenarios the GPs *are* held up against each other - Faith buying, "get a free GP" policies and Wonders. So, I would argue that, while the *existence* of a Great Channeler doesn't effect the Great Scientists, the *strength*/*usefulness* of that GCh most definitely is relevant to the GS.

Also, consider that any of these units can be turned into governors (presumably). So we need to make sure 1) there isn't a "useless GP" that becomes the go-to for governors (true, that then you'd be stuck with sub-types you may not want, but if your aim, say, is generating Alignment, this wouldn't matter much) and 2) it's corollary, that there aren't GP that just "hurt too much" to sacrifice into a governor.

In short, they need to be broadly equivalent. I think the fact that GPr are impossible to create for civs with no religion, regardless of faith and social policies and such, is a good model to follow. Perhaps we should do similar "locking" for systems a player is obviously ignoring/failing at - if you aren't using channelers, we don't want you to ever get a GCh and consequently a "free Governor" (with no sacrifice).

I think this becomes a simpler question with what I've mentioned elsewhere in mind. These GP types should be spawned by actions that indicate the player is effectively targeting the system(s) which the GP makes the player better at.

In terms of flavor, I think we'll want to keep these separate from One Power driven ability-heavy GP types since they will not appear often in Channeler-hating civs, and those civs shouldn't have an absence of unrelated/specific victory GP types. (Unless we decide to balance Channeler hatred in such a way that certain victory types are more difficult for them, much like Ideologies do in BNW.)

Right. Flavor-wise, I can see both ways. True, Sniffers aren't Power-related. But at the same time, you just *know* the Whitecloaks wouldn't be cool with Sniffers....

As far as balancing Philosophies, I suppose there will be a certain amount of discouraging victory types (like Domination for Freedom), since that system does seem to work OK in BNW.

Yes, I think we should definitely consider other sources. Given our new gameplay systems, I think we have quite a few new roles to fill for GPs that didn't exist in BNW. Things that help with the Tower, Stedding, the Last Battle, Governors explicitly (rather than just a general implicit usefulness of GPs as Governors). It's also worth noting that there are no GPs that have a direct effect on the World Congress in BNW (merchant is the closest, getting you votes via trade mission) - we could change that for the Compact, though I'm not yet sure how.

Hmmmm.... I'll caution us here not to go overboard, though. I don't think every little corner of the game needs a GP for it. There is no "CS GP" in BNW - just the GMe, who does garner some influence, and of course helps with the Diplo Victory, but he's fundamentally the "GOLD GP," not the "Diplo GP", which is much more useful to other victory types.

I'd say we could add a couple more, but I don't think more than that is going to be needed or even a good idea. As far as the specifics you mention:

Tower - hmmmm... I'm tempted to say no, but instead what I will say is that if we decide on a GChanneler who is a sort of GG for channelers, one of her abilities could very well improve influence with the Tower or something.

Stedding - similarly, I'd say this system is too minor to have its own GP. If we do have a Production-based GP that is flavored as an Ogier (see below), we *could* simply make one aspect of its abilities affect Stedding influence, or had one ability do that in addition to its normal function (Hurry Production + Stedding bonus or something).

LB - Again, no idea here.

Governors - This one I actually think may very well be a bad idea. I'm not sure we could create a proper feedback system as you say - people are only going to use govs in small numbers over the course of a game. Also, it feels... sort of weird.

Compact - This one is interesting. I think, again, the problem may be the difficulty in creating the feedback loop. Do you get a GP point for Compact every turn you have an alliance with a CS? What does it do? "Snipe" allies? Expend for +1 vote on next election. I'm ok with this is theory, but I'm not sure how it would work.

Related to the above, I think if Stedding were to be a primary source of a certain GP type - that GP type should aid the player in relationships with Stedding (either directly via Stedding relationship, or some help in the Stumps, or something like that) - rather than be a production-hurry source, like the Engineer's ability - since that will tend to favor Wide civs more than it should for such a boost.

I agree. The production unit shouldn't literally be spawning because of your friendship with a Stedding. That said, the ogier mason IS a good piece of flavor. It might be totally fine to simply flavor it that way. "A Great Builder has arrived in your civilization". Fine, even if you'd been at war with steddings and such.

But again, a dedicated Stedding GP is probably a bit "too much."

I think all GPs can turn into Governors and some will double up. I think our "exotic" new GP types that are quite WoT-y, as well as potentially "blurred" GP types from BNW, introduce the possibility to have Governor types that aren't "dedicated" to a single yield. So, for instance, say we had a Channeling Governor - they might focus on Culture and Faith, starting off by providing +2 of one and +1 of the other.

I do think we'll definitely want primarily focused ones as well - Governors that are production/science/gold/faith/culture all the way. But we've also got prestige, food, and possibly happiness as potential other yields/focuses that could be useful.

Hmmm.... I think we should stick to one yield. Otherwise it's just "too much" (again with that...). We offer the player customization through upgrades - to me, that's enough. I'd be happy with, say, 6-8 types and leave it at that. Something like:

Culture
Production
Gold
Science
Faith
(maybe) Food
(maybe) Prestige
(probably not) Happiness
(probably not) Alignment

I think you've started off the discussion for most of the topics! Once we've had a short while more for discussing above (possibly only 1 or 2 posts) we could create a pool of GP abilities that we'd like to use and see if we can divide them into Tall/Wide balancing and system-specific classifications, and then derive some flavorful groupings that gives us good GP types from there.

Yes, good process. I think dividing them into system-specific vs Tall/Wide is an important new step you've suggested - resist the temptation to ruin things. Though, perhaps some things can be in an "either-or" category, yes?

One last topic though: "Great People". Do we like the name? Is there a more in-universe alternative? "Ta'veren" certainly pops to mind, are there any problems with it? Seems quite appropriate to me.

There *are* some problems with it, but I think those problems may be worth ignoring.

Namely, there are Ta'veren that we know about that don't fall into these categories. Rand, for instance. Mat (unless we do "probability Man"), though he could probably be a GG.

More significantly, there are a whole lot of GP in the WoT universe that are super Great and all, but just simply not Ta'veren. T'V appears to be way rarer than Greatness. Egwene, Nynaeve, Gareth Bryne, Min, Elyas, Thom, Hurin, Cadsuane, Slayer, Padan Fain... these guys are all likely to be GP in some form or another. But none of them are Ta'veren, it would seem.

So, I do worry that the purists will hate us for it. However, on the other hand.... it is a nifty piece of flavor that it would be nice to use.

My suggestion: wait til we have our list of GP first, then see what feels right with it.

 

[Zalminen]

I am amazed that you took the time to read through the entire thread.... that seems like a rather daunting task.

It certainly took some time but this way I wouldn't end up making that many suggestions you've already discussed and decided against.

As you've certainly seen written on previous pages: all suggestions are welcome, so feel free to chime in when you want, at whatever level of depth you want.

Yeah, I'm definitely interested in taking part in these design discussions. I've also done some programming but currently have no experience with CiV mod stuff. But we'll see.

I would be fine with either "There is a Governor here" or "There is a Governor [of Sub-type X] here." I wouldn't want to make any specific upgrades visible - especially Alignment - but the sub-type could be fine. It seems like it's actually strategically valid information, whereas "there is a gov here" might not be, since in many cases it might be pretty obvious (late-game capital, for instance).

Well, flavorwise the subtype revealing alternative is probably better. It probably wouldn't take much spying to hear the local people discuss the local governor's strengths - just sitting at the local tavern for a while would be enough.
Hiding the alignment is probably fine though. Doesn't really matter if the governor is a saint or a tyrant, there'd still be locals both praising and complaining...

That said, the ogier mason IS a good piece of flavor. It might be totally fine to simply flavor it that way. "A Great Builder has arrived in your civilization".

Yeah, I'd definitely like to see some kind of a ogier GP. Either an ogier mason or possibly an ogier treesinger (for crafts GW).

 

[S3rgeus]

Whoa, took me half a week but I've finally read through the whole thread. Somewhat fitting that a WoT mod thread has this much text in it

Welcome to the thread! That's a ton of reading, I'm very impressed! And in just half a week is very fast!

You've certainly done an excellent job so far, usually whenever I noted some problem when reading a later post already addressed and provided a nice solution for it. Plus this mod finally game me a reason to actually register instead of just lurking.

Thanks! Glad you like the look of the stuff we've done so far! And I know it's a big jump from lurker to poster, so it's awesome that we inspired you to make that.

And thank you for the suggestions! Very well thought out, I'll go through them below!

There's one older topic I think I need to bring up, even though it feels a tad silly digging up stuff all the way from pages 14/15.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=13573386&postcount=286
Specifically about the Sul'dam/Damane movement problem:

Since you solved the AS linking/movement issue by just allowing the units to move separately and handling the linking after that doesn't the same approach also work with sul'dam/damane pairs?
I.e. the player can just move both separately but the damane can only attack when her sul'dam is close enough.
This doesn't strictly speaking force the pair to keep next to each other but the player will take care of it anyway in order to actually use the damane.
And this way there's no need for any special movement code.
Or is there something else that I'm missing here?

This is totally better, yes. No additional pathfinding shenanigans, no new UI elements to track moving both units at once, while still achieving the same design objective, it's a slam dunk.

But now I really need to get some sleep after all this reading, will comment on GPs later.

Ta'veren sounds like a good name though.

More thoughts on the ta'veren name below, in response to counterpoint's stuff.

EDIT:
Ok, about GPs then.

First the naming. Should there be a unifying name theme or not?

1) The CiV way:
Great Painters, Great Scholars, Great Captains are obviously all Great Persons. It's easy to recognize them as part of the GP system
and so it's easy to remember how go get them - you just need enough GP points of the correct type.
On the other hand something like Great Wolfbrother just sounds dumb.

And if all the names are Great Something then using the top level title Ta'veren feels a little like renaming for renaming's sake.

Not that Ta'veren Captain and Ta'veren Scholar sound any better though.

Unified naming is a very good point and something that brings together the GP "system" as part of one whole for the player, rather than a series of disconnected units. I do agree with yours and counterpoint's points that a lot of the "GP" types we've considered that are WoT specific don't work well with the prefix "Great" or "Ta'veren" - mostly because they are fulfilling specific roles in the WoT mythos, rather than being representing individuals who are pioneers/savants in existing other fields, like BNW GP types.

2) No common theme:
Great Captain, Wolfbrother, Gleeman, Famed Scholar. This allows for a greater freedom when choosing names but the player won't immediately
recognize them as part of the same GP system.
On the other hand grouping them all as Ta'veren feels more natural this way.

Or of course it's possible to keep most of the names as Great Something (or Famous Something) and let the exceptions be exceptions.

Anyway, continuing to the list of CiV GPs for possible renames if you decide to add some of them to the game:

Great Artist - Great Painter? Great Artisan?
Great Musician - Great Gleeman? Court Bard? Gleeman?
Great Writer - ?
Great Engineer - Great Builder? Great Architect? Great Mason?
Great Merchant - Probably sounds good as it is.
Great Scientist - Great Scholar? Great Inventor?
Great General - Great Captain is good, probably no need to think of alternatives for this.
(Great Admiral - IIRC you already decided to combine this with the Great Captain)
Great Prophet - Great Missionary? Great Pathfinder?

Other ones that were considered earlier:
Wolfbrother
Viewer

These ones were considered but were tentatively turned down:
Sniffer
Slayer
Probability Man

There were probably others that I've missed.

I think "no common theme" is the approach we'll end up going with, mostly because I don't see a good way to make unified naming take hold without making the more WoT-specific (and therefore flavorfully important) roles sound strange.

As counterpoint said, I think renaming the BNW GPs is a bit ahead of where we are at the moment - our current objective is to enumerate all of the abilities that we want any of the GPs to have and see how those abilities can be pooled into reasonable WoT-verse-inspired GP types where possible. I think the above point on "no common theme" will need to be reassessed at that time - when we know more about what GP types we actually want to build and whether there are good unifying descriptors of the kinds of people that make them up!

We might be able to use "character" or something literary due to WoT being a book rather than CiV's real history translation, but we'll have to see when we get there!

Ah yes, another point that popped into my head when reading through this thread earlier, this time about Trolloc Wars:
Since the Ogiers' fame as fierce warriors came supposedly from the Trolloc Wars, maybe this should be noted in the gameplay?
E.g. the Ogiers will gift each friendly civ a few ogier units at the start of the Trolloc Wars and these will return home at the end of it?

This is very interesting and could potentially be one solution for our still-possibly-a-problem of Borderlander civs being overwhelmed during the Trolloc Wars. I'd say we could have Stedding gift units to civs that are closer to the Blight(s) (or maybe just adjacent) - this makes those civs more likely to be able to defend themselves, particularly if they're advanced units as counterpoint suggested in his response. Gifting only to Borderlander civs also means that the gifted Ogier units are less likely to be used for warring against other civs, since the Borderlanders are unlikely to be able to split their focus between a war with another civ and the imminent Trolloc threat.

Returning these units to the Stedding at the end of the TW also sounds good - we don't want them to stick around to be useful killing other civs in the aftermath.

One difficulty here is that the TW happens relatively early game, when a lot of the map will still be unrevealed. There will be many players that haven't met any Stedding by this time - would we gift them these players units as well (assuming they otherwise qualified)? We could "reveal" a Stedding to those players and gift from there, or just give them to them without having a specific source Stedding, though that is a bit odd. What about the possibility of there being no Stedding left? It's unlikely but certainly possible for some very enterprising warmongers to have separately wiped out the Stedding around the world.

The summary looks good to me .

So a fully-upgraded, say, Production Gov, who spent both yield upgrades (threshold 1 and 3) would provide a total of +7, right? (or it's equivalent in other yields)? We're ok with that value, then?

Or... does a unit of sub-type X get +2 to that ability per threshold regardless of which abilitiy they choose? I was under the understanding that you only received the upgrade you choose, that there wasn't an "automatic" sub-type related bonus.

Thanks for doing this.

Having an "automatic" Governor type related bonus was a separate quote block we ran alongside the upgrade one, but one I was quite worried would be easy to mix-up with the upgrades! That was intended to be what this bit was about:

I think it makes sense to scale the yields the Governor is giving out based on how upgraded they are, and we can scale that per-yield. (So Gold and Science will scale up more aggressively than Culture or Prestige.)

...

So I don't think the yields need to scale by era, we can let the scale-by-upgrade act as the mechanism that Governors remain relevant throughout the game. I figure with a sub-type approach we'd add +2 to the relevant yield per upgrade threshold, regardless of what option the player chose, just as a part of the general "progression" of that Governor.

Along with subsequent quotes about it.

For comparison of the specific numbers - the Academy provides +8 Science, Customs House +4 Gold (seems low), Manufactory +4 Production, and Holy site +6 Faith. I think this represents the difference in scale for the different yields, so we'll probably want to calibrate the yield output of the Governor on a per-yield basis. I think a general rule of thumb for balancing them is that the Governor should start with producing less than the improvement. A fully upgraded Governor that hasn't picked any yield upgrades should produce about the same as the improvement. (So whatever other things they are getting are offset against the value of the improvement's extra yield for the first 150 turns before the Governor was upgraded fully.) And a Governor who picks all of the yield upgrades should produce more than the improvement - otherwise the Governor's yield upgrades are straight up worse since the improvement gets more yield sooner.

So for Gold and Production we'd probably want to start on +2, Faith on +3, and Science on +4 and increase to the improvement values with "automatic" bonuses (+4, +6, and +8 respectively) as the Governor upgrades.

I would be fine with either "There is a Governor here" or "There is a Governor [of Sub-type X] here." I wouldn't want to make any specific upgrades visible - especially Alignment - but the sub-type could be fine. It seems like it's actually strategically valid information, whereas "there is a gov here" might not be, since in many cases it might be pretty obvious (late-game capital, for instance).

I agree with both you and Zalminen that revealing just the Governor type sounds like a good idea. It being tactically relevant information is a great point, and wanting to avoid exposing the Governor's Alignment choice is also definitely true.

I've edited the summary.

OK, let me say first that if the math works in order to get the values we've designed with, as it seems to, then I'm fine with this.

But "feel"-wise... I'm still not totally in love with them not getting alignment at birth. I'm fine with it, but not in love. I liked the idea of a Gov's "nature" being some independent thing that existed at creation. Yeah, there's no opportunity cost, but, the flipside is that the opportunity cost of choosing Alignment at Thresholds 1 and 3 is really quite high (at the expense of a permanent +2 o some other yield), while other alignment situations are less punishing then that, to me.

But, again, if that makes them generate too much, then sure.

Yeah, I think math-wise if we want to have the two upgrade values then we'd need it to be just them available, not an initial one.

Feel wise I do see what you mean, but I think it can still work this way too. This interpretation means that a Governor's leadership style is more determined by things they learn as they work with a city - whether they come to hate its people or wish to teach them to be something better, or something to that effect.

I don't think the opportunity cost is too high - partially because the Alignment is added onto the value discussed above when comparing to improvements. the other sources also often deal in Alignment dumps rather than generating it over time (main exception there is Citizens). +1 and +2 don't feel like much, but they add up to be equivalent to some of the larger point dumps over a whole game.

I'm ready to kill this quote block.

Go away, Domination Victory-use of Governors. Nobody wants to play with you.... leave the football, though.

Agreed, no Domination victory use for Governors!


I'm afraid I haven't had much time to write my response today, so I'm out of time for the night! I'll be back tomorrow evening with continued thoughts on GPs!

 

[S3rgeus]

agreed. I figured this was the case.

And no, we can't just reskin BNW! We can't let them think we're LAZY or something.

I know, right!

On that note, looking back, our Pantheons ARE reskins. We may find we'll tweak some of them, or at least add some that fit with our new systems.

Yes, we'll probably want to tweak pantheons later.

Right. I think this mostly feels like "Option 3, and then everything else." I agree with this method.

I hope this goes well, it could end up a big mindf*@$ though...

Coolio, list of abilities incoming!

Yeah, this is going to be a challenge. I do think that, even though we're sort of starting from scratch, we're going to need to use the BNW GPs as a kind of signpost. We may even find that some of them need to stay nearly the same as they are now.

Definitely, because a lot of the roles they fulfill are still applicable to WoTMod. We'll still need ways of enhancing Science, Production, and Culture output, etc.

This is very, very helpful. It seems so obvious, when you put it like that. But of course it's really not obvious, when you're playing the game.

It seems that we do need to preserve this aspect in most cases (at least the Tall/Wide balance vs "feedback on own systems" thing). This will help us keep things grounded when we're coming up with these guys.

Yeah, it's very opaque to the player, but then it's sort of working correctly that way - it's a balancing mechanism that the player doesn't even realize is doing the balancing!

I don't know. While I can see why theoretically this would be a good idea, I can't think what this would actually be. As far as the LB itself, it's really just a sort of Domination-victory + Seals stuff. I'm not sure what we'd do. "Great Sealbearer"? Seems pretty stupid. Something to do with the dragon?

And as far as Alignment in general... I don't think we need a Great Herald to exist, much like a GPr is a "Great Missionary."

I get the idea, but I can't see how we make it work.

I've got a few ideas for how we might do this - all below in the list of possible/inspiration-source GP abilities! "Great Herald" is there (the ability anyway), even if we decide against it. It doesn't seem like it would be an inherently bad idea and would make our DFC system a bit more CiV-y.

Yes, this makes a lot of sense.

Question, though: does that mean we could theoretically blur, say, Production, and Culture? In BNW, the Engineers and Scientists and Merchants are held apart as a unit from the culture ones, as you describe below, *but* they are still all Tall-Wide balancing agents. Could we, then, theoretically, have a production unit create GWs? Or is that crossing the boundaries here? I'm thinking "no" in the Big Picture, but perhaps yes on some less-clear cut situations (Golden Ages don't *need* to be tied to a culture unit, for example).

I think the less clear cut ones are where we could mix and match more aggressively. It might be interesting to try out some "combo" GP types that have both an economic and a scientific ability though. Particularly if the two's costs are related like GE/GMe.

OK, I definitely did not know that GAr/GWr/GMu grouped separately... but, again, I never *really* understood how GP points worked.

So, you think just build our GPs and group them later, or work the groupings in as we design them?

A little of both - I think we'll primarily do the groupings after, but it's something for us to keep in mind.

This makes sense as a GP type, but it's also hard to imagine what it does beyond being a Great General for Channelers. It may be that it's other abilities are sort of "random", and should probably not strictly tie in to specific victory types.

The abilities I quoted from your post are good candidates: Foretelling and Dreaming. Given our discussion of how the World of Dreams works via the Wise Ones many pages ago, I think we definitely want to have another unit that's available to all civs that can access the World of Dreams mechanics - it's a very large mechanic to restrict to just one civ.

I think you're correct in most cases. However, there exist scenarios the GPs *are* held up against each other - Faith buying, "get a free GP" policies and Wonders. So, I would argue that, while the *existence* of a Great Channeler doesn't effect the Great Scientists, the *strength*/*usefulness* of that GCh most definitely is relevant to the GS.

Also, consider that any of these units can be turned into governors (presumably). So we need to make sure 1) there isn't a "useless GP" that becomes the go-to for governors (true, that then you'd be stuck with sub-types you may not want, but if your aim, say, is generating Alignment, this wouldn't matter much) and 2) it's corollary, that there aren't GP that just "hurt too much" to sacrifice into a governor.

In short, they need to be broadly equivalent. I think the fact that GPr are impossible to create for civs with no religion, regardless of faith and social policies and such, is a good model to follow. Perhaps we should do similar "locking" for systems a player is obviously ignoring/failing at - if you aren't using channelers, we don't want you to ever get a GCh and consequently a "free Governor" (with no sacrifice).

Definitely, they need to be broadly balanced - one GP shouldn't be loads better than any others (Great Engineer vs Great Admiral, argh!). My main point here was that we can diverge from CiV's spawning mechanics and GP roles where appropriate.

Locking some civs out of certain GP types based on very clear choices/missed opportunities from that player sounds like a good way of avoiding severe disconnections for situations like channeler hating civs and Great Channeler type GPs.

Right. Flavor-wise, I can see both ways. True, Sniffers aren't Power-related. But at the same time, you just *know* the Whitecloaks wouldn't be cool with Sniffers....

As far as balancing Philosophies, I suppose there will be a certain amount of discouraging victory types (like Domination for Freedom), since that system does seem to work OK in BNW.

Cool, this gives us another guiding axis to consider, where we want to make GPs of certain types less prevalent/effective for civs with certain attitudes towards channelers. Helps us narrow down the field a bit!

Hmmmm.... I'll caution us here not to go overboard, though. I don't think every little corner of the game needs a GP for it. There is no "CS GP" in BNW - just the GMe, who does garner some influence, and of course helps with the Diplo Victory, but he's fundamentally the "GOLD GP," not the "Diplo GP", which is much more useful to other victory types.

I see what you mean here and how my response could look like I was saying we should add a ton of new GP types for every system - we definitely don't want to do that. I'm saying that some individual abilities can be made relevant to our new systems, not necessarily have a dedicated GP type.

I'd say we could add a couple more, but I don't think more than that is going to be needed or even a good idea. As far as the specifics you mention:

Tower - hmmmm... I'm tempted to say no, but instead what I will say is that if we decide on a GChanneler who is a sort of GG for channelers, one of her abilities could very well improve influence with the Tower or something.

Stedding - similarly, I'd say this system is too minor to have its own GP. If we do have a Production-based GP that is flavored as an Ogier (see below), we *could* simply make one aspect of its abilities affect Stedding influence, or had one ability do that in addition to its normal function (Hurry Production + Stedding bonus or something).

LB - Again, no idea here.

Governors - This one I actually think may very well be a bad idea. I'm not sure we could create a proper feedback system as you say - people are only going to use govs in small numbers over the course of a game. Also, it feels... sort of weird.

Compact - This one is interesting. I think, again, the problem may be the difficulty in creating the feedback loop. Do you get a GP point for Compact every turn you have an alliance with a CS? What does it do? "Snipe" allies? Expend for +1 vote on next election. I'm ok with this is theory, but I'm not sure how it would work.

Your suggestion about having the possible Great Channeler have a Tower-related ability is exactly what I mean.

Same re Stedding - I'd actually say this is a relatively large system since it has internal voting, a new agency in the Compact, and new ramifications of war declarations (as well as some very unique flavor and units/buildings to go with it presumably). Making one or two abilities on some other GP types relevant to Stedding seems like it would be a good idea.

With the Compact we could be much broader - it doesn't necessarily need to be connected to CSes, it could be connected to the Compact directly. So like you've said, +1 votes in the next election (or just a permanent +1 vote), construct an improvement that gives you a vote when worked, expend on a foreign civ and cast X% of their votes for the next resolution - all kinds of possibilities like that.

I've got some ideas for how we might tie into the LB - I'll put them below in the list section!

I agree. The production unit shouldn't literally be spawning because of your friendship with a Stedding. That said, the ogier mason IS a good piece of flavor. It might be totally fine to simply flavor it that way. "A Great Builder has arrived in your civilization". Fine, even if you'd been at war with steddings and such.

But again, a dedicated Stedding GP is probably a bit "too much."

Totally, the Ogier stonemason is an instantly recognizable bit of flavor and we should be able to work them into the mod somehow! Again, we don't want a whole GP type dedicated to Stedding, but abilities/components of other GP types that are relevant to Stedding so that players who Stedding are particularly important to can make use of them.

Hmmm.... I think we should stick to one yield. Otherwise it's just "too much" (again with that...). We offer the player customization through upgrades - to me, that's enough. I'd be happy with, say, 6-8 types and leave it at that. Something like:

Culture
Production
Gold
Science
Faith
(maybe) Food
(maybe) Prestige
(probably not) Happiness
(probably not) Alignment

I'm not as sure we have to focus down on just single yields - particularly when the yield distribution as you've mentioned favors certain ones. The ones you've labeled as less important (which I agree are the secondary yields in many ways) would make good "secondar yields" for a Governor type that produces +2 of a primary and +1 of a secondary.

Anyway though - I think "hybrid" types will look better when we have concrete examples based on our GP types and their flavor considerations, so something to consider when we've got those in a couple of posts!

Yes, good process. I think dividing them into system-specific vs Tall/Wide is an important new step you've suggested - resist the temptation to ruin things. Though, perhaps some things can be in an "either-or" category, yes?

There probably are some things that can be in both/either category, let's see below!

There *are* some problems with it, but I think those problems may be worth ignoring.

Namely, there are Ta'veren that we know about that don't fall into these categories. Rand, for instance. Mat (unless we do "probability Man"), though he could probably be a GG.

More significantly, there are a whole lot of GP in the WoT universe that are super Great and all, but just simply not Ta'veren. T'V appears to be way rarer than Greatness. Egwene, Nynaeve, Gareth Bryne, Min, Elyas, Thom, Hurin, Cadsuane, Slayer, Padan Fain... these guys are all likely to be GP in some form or another. But none of them are Ta'veren, it would seem.

So, I do worry that the purists will hate us for it. However, on the other hand.... it is a nifty piece of flavor that it would be nice to use.

My suggestion: wait til we have our list of GP first, then see what feels right with it.

This is a very good point. I'd been thinking characters like the others you mentioned were Ta'veren but just much less so than the main three - but more research has shown that is not the case!

I agree with your conclusion - let's look at it when we've actually got GP types and see what makes sense.

It certainly took some time but this way I wouldn't end up making that many suggestions you've already discussed and decided against.

It definitely shows - you've made some very valuable suggestions already!

Yeah, I'm definitely interested in taking part in these design discussions. I've also done some programming but currently have no experience with CiV mod stuff. But we'll see.

Awesome, more eyes on the design should help us spot potential problems better and more sources of ideas are always welcome!

What kind of programming have you done before? CiV is mostly Lua for UI scripting and XML with some specific baked-in elements for UI layout/structure. It uses an SQL database to store a lot of game data (what the units/techs/policies are, what abilities they have/what they do) - which we can interact with either via XML or directly with SQL. The gameplay code itself that gives us the most flexibility is in C++. It's old-ish C++ now - locked into the VC++2008 runtime, which means we don't have the more modern language features.




So, a lot of the above depends on us coming up with some GP types! And GP types depend on us coming up with abilities! So, ability-list-time!

BNW GP abilities (with some obvious substitutions alongside):

Tall/Wide balance:

Start Golden Age
Hurry Science
Hurry Production
Create Manufactory
Create Academy
Trade Mission
Create Customs House
Create Great Work of Art -> Create Craft
Create Great Work of Music -> Create Legend
Create Great Work of Writing -> Create Prophecy
Concert Tour
Political Treatise

System specific:

Create Holy Site
Found Religion -> Found Path to the Light
Enhance Religion -> Enhance Path to the Light
Spread Religion -> Spread Path to the Light
Land Unit Combat Bonus
Naval Unit Combat Bonus
Create Citadel
Repair Ships

Are there any flavorful swap-outs of these abilities that we want to make, which achieve the same mechanical goal? Do we want to drop any altogether? Quite a few create improvements - do we want to rename those improvements to more WoT-y things? Do we want to consider the Khan's and the Merchant of Venice's abilities? (I don't think so - though they set a precedent for us to have civs with UUs that are GPs.)

Zalminen's suggestion of an Ogier that create a Crafts type GW makes sense - are there other non-Ogier crafts that we might want to capture with the same ability? Do we want to just have Ogier and non-Ogier variants of the Craft-producing GP? If so, are there any mechanical differences between the two?

So, new, flavorful GP abilities that are more WoT-y are in order. A lot of these are likely to evolve into quite a different ability inspired by the same flavor, but the overall objective is to focus in on key things from the WoT mythos that we can make into useful and cool abilities. No specific considerations for which GP types we might associate them with yet, this is pretty much a brain dump of abilities. There are a lot of possibilities-proposed-as-questions. There are probably too many, so we likely won't use them all!

Several have alternatives if I've thought of multiple ways of utilizing the same flavor.

General format:

Ability Name (<inspiration, if not obvious>)
What it does


Sniff out Darkfriends (Sniffer)
Drastically reduce DFC presence in a city (possibly multiple use available)

Alternative: Usable in foreign territory to Light-shift a foreign civilization

Treat with the Forsaken
Expend this GP to receive a Forsaken Quest of the appropriate stage right now.

Alternative: progress through the stages faster by expending the GP.

Pull of the Pattern (Ta'veren)
Expend this GP to encounter a Thread of the Pattern now.

Plant a Dreamspike
Expend this GP to block Traveling around this location? Create an improvement that blocks foreign Traveling? Prevent units you do not own (or any units) from Traveling in your lands? For X turns?

Alternative: "Aura" effect around the GP that prevents foreign/any Traveling within X hexes. (It doesn't really need a name then - but just "Dreamspike" would do for the Civilopedia.)

Alternative: Some kind of Culture-related bonus/foreign Prestige against you penalty - representing the protection afforded for your citizens' dreams.

Explore Tel'aran'rhiod
Create a Tel'aran'rhiod scout, similar to the mechanics discussed for Wise Ones before. Is this permanent? (Until the scout is killed at least) Does it expend the GP/have multiple uses, like spreading religion?

Treesing
Create a Grove (possibly multiple use?) - what is a Grove? Improvement - it could make Happiness or some other yield? Building - it could generate Culture or Prestige?

Alternative: Create forests in nearby valid tiles. Why would a player want to do this, can we incentivize it with Stedding? Growing forests in their hexes gives you influence?

Alternative: Give you extra vote(s) to influence your allied Stedding for the next Stump. (This one isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with the above two - could be reflavored into a separate ability.)

Create/Open a Waygate
Create a Waygate in a city. We discussed Waygates being constructable/national wonders before - does this supersede that? What should a Waygate do, beyond allow Shadowspawn through during the LB? Any fast-travel-with-dangers will be wholly superseded by Traveling by the end of the game and would need to be relatively early game to have a window of usability. Would be probably need to be able to move to waygates in other places (other civs, wilderness) to be useful.

Form a Compact
Expend this GP to gain additional vote(s) in the Compact. (Temporarily? For the next election? For the next resolution?)

Alternative: Expend this GP in foreign territory to gain control of some % of their votes for the next resolution/election.

Discover a Weave
Expend this GP to gain influence with the Tower/an Ajah (which works better?). Does the GP need to be expended in the Tower's territory? It could grant you an Aes Sedai as well - otherwise it seems a bit short on power.

Alternative: All channelers you control that wield the same type of One Power (Saidin or Saidar) have +X% combat strength (permanently? for X turns?).

Alternative: All Aes Sedai you control gain one tier of Ajah bonuses for X turns.

Gentle a Foe
Expend this GP to Gentle a single unit with 100% success rate. (Most players will likely target a False Dragon. Or particularly problematic enemy channeler if they're desperate.)

Treat with the Dragon
Expend this GP to gain extra time on your next turn controlling the Dragon.

Align with the <Alignment>
Expend the GP to receive a one-time Alignment yield dump. (We said we didn't want to rebalance Alignment sources, but it's worth bringing up, even if we just decide against it!)

Advise a Governor
Expend the GP to upgrade a Governor one/two upgrades.

Alternative: Expend the GP to enhance a Governor's yield, as appropriate for its Governor type.

Counsel a Migration
Expend the GP to move a Governor from one city to another. (We didn't want to make this generally available as just a thing that a player could do - but attached to a GP is much more limited scope. Might not be powerful enough though.)

Dice in my Head
"Aura" ability - all random chances within X hexes roll in maximum favor of the controller. (Combat damage is a primary source of randomness.)

Interpret a Viewing (Min)
Create an improvement/building that generates GP points/Faith?

<reference to Herid Fel>
Expend this GP to research a Seal and (dis)prove its authenticity instantly.

Run with Wolves
Expend the unit to move a full-vision combat unit into Tel'aran'rhiod for X turns?

Any more? What are your thoughts on the ones above?

 

[counterpoint]

Sorry to take so long to respond! These things have gotten epic again.

This is very interesting and could potentially be one solution for our still-possibly-a-problem of Borderlander civs being overwhelmed during the Trolloc Wars. I'd say we could have Stedding gift units to civs that are closer to the Blight(s) (or maybe just adjacent) - this makes those civs more likely to be able to defend themselves, particularly if they're advanced units as counterpoint suggested in his response. Gifting only to Borderlander civs also means that the gifted Ogier units are less likely to be used for warring against other civs, since the Borderlanders are unlikely to be able to split their focus between a war with another civ and the imminent Trolloc threat.

Returning these units to the Stedding at the end of the TW also sounds good - we don't want them to stick around to be useful killing other civs in the aftermath.

One difficulty here is that the TW happens relatively early game, when a lot of the map will still be unrevealed. There will be many players that haven't met any Stedding by this time - would we gift them these players units as well (assuming they otherwise qualified)? We could "reveal" a Stedding to those players and gift from there, or just give them to them without having a specific source Stedding, though that is a bit odd. What about the possibility of there being no Stedding left? It's unlikely but certainly possible for some very enterprising warmongers to have separately wiped out the Stedding around the world.

I'm now thinking that we're looking at this slightly wrong.

The Great Idea: Have Ogier totally wail on the Trollocs during the Trolloc Wars, as they did in the backstory to the books.

Our Solution: Gift Ogier to civs during the TW.

I think we've added an extra step here.

Proposed Solution: *steddings* shoudl send Ogier units to hunt down trollocs and stuff.

I think, actually, this is cooler. Instead of gifting, and such, have the unit count for steddings increase, perhaps temporarily, and have the AI go all "warmonger" against the shadowspawn.

If we do decide the gifting is better, I'd say we need to make it so the Ogier will refuse to attack any human unit.

Having an "automatic" Governor type related bonus was a separate quote block we ran alongside the upgrade one, but one I was quite worried would be easy to mix-up with the upgrades! That was intended to be what this bit was about:

Along with subsequent quotes about it.

For comparison of the specific numbers - the Academy provides +8 Science, Customs House +4 Gold (seems low), Manufactory +4 Production, and Holy site +6 Faith. I think this represents the difference in scale for the different yields, so we'll probably want to calibrate the yield output of the Governor on a per-yield basis. I think a general rule of thumb for balancing them is that the Governor should start with producing less than the improvement. A fully upgraded Governor that hasn't picked any yield upgrades should produce about the same as the improvement. (So whatever other things they are getting are offset against the value of the improvement's extra yield for the first 150 turns before the Governor was upgraded fully.) And a Governor who picks all of the yield upgrades should produce more than the improvement - otherwise the Governor's yield upgrades are straight up worse since the improvement gets more yield sooner.

So for Gold and Production we'd probably want to start on +2, Faith on +3, and Science on +4 and increase to the improvement values with "automatic" bonuses (+4, +6, and +8 respectively) as the Governor upgrades.

ok, ok. Right. That makes sense. I was previously thinking of the Govs as more of a carte blanche,e xcept for a starting yield bonus based on type (and options at threshold 2). This method means a Production gov is always good at production, relative to all others, regardless of the options chosen.

Yeah, I think math-wise if we want to have the two upgrade values then we'd need it to be just them available, not an initial one.

Feel wise I do see what you mean, but I think it can still work this way too. This interpretation means that a Governor's leadership style is more determined by things they learn as they work with a city - whether they come to hate its people or wish to teach them to be something better, or something to that effect.

I don't think the opportunity cost is too high - partially because the Alignment is added onto the value discussed above when comparing to improvements. the other sources also often deal in Alignment dumps rather than generating it over time (main exception there is Citizens). +1 and +2 don't feel like much, but they add up to be equivalent to some of the larger point dumps over a whole game.

fair enough!

I've got a few ideas for how we might do this - all below in the list of possible/inspiration-source GP abilities! "Great Herald" is there (the ability anyway), even if we decide against it. It doesn't seem like it would be an inherently bad idea and would make our DFC system a bit more CiV-y.

right. I'll touch on this below when I address your abilities, and throw in a few of mine own.

I think the less clear cut ones are where we could mix and match more aggressively. It might be interesting to try out some "combo" GP types that have both an economic and a scientific ability though. Particularly if the two's costs are related like GE/GMe.

I agree. We'll see what shakes out.

I think we might run into problems potentially with spreading the "similar" mechanisms across separate GPs. For example, take the Tech Dump and Academy abilities. You obviously "target" building GS's in order to help your science - and choose, when the time comes, which ability to use. If you could get the Tech dump from a GS, and the Academy from a GMe, for instance, we might run into a problem where it was often more practical to simply focus on wonders/specialists that improve GMe production, and have weird Science-Heavy civs that never build GSs.

of course, maybe that's fine - especially if these GP are rebranded, and there *is* no GS or GMe, but it has the potential to be very significant in its knock-on effects, so we'd want to watch out and tread carefully.

Definitely, they need to be broadly balanced - one GP shouldn't be loads better than any others (Great Engineer vs Great Admiral, argh!). My main point here was that we can diverge from CiV's spawning mechanics and GP roles where appropriate.

Locking some civs out of certain GP types based on very clear choices/missed opportunities from that player sounds like a good way of avoiding severe disconnections for situations like channeler hating civs and Great Channeler type GPs.

good. we agree, then.

Totally, the Ogier stonemason is an instantly recognizable bit of flavor and we should be able to work them into the mod somehow! Again, we don't want a whole GP type dedicated to Stedding, but abilities/components of other GP types that are relevant to Stedding so that players who Stedding are particularly important to can make use of them.

I think we should, in general, fee free to think outside the box with our GPs and how they relate to the civs. Ogier need not be "from" the civ, and perhaps that sort of flavor will work for others as well.

But yes, mechanically, I'm with you, here.

I'm not as sure we have to focus down on just single yields - particularly when the yield distribution as you've mentioned favors certain ones. The ones you've labeled as less important (which I agree are the secondary yields in many ways) would make good "secondar yields" for a Governor type that produces +2 of a primary and +1 of a secondary.

Anyway though - I think "hybrid" types will look better when we have concrete examples based on our GP types and their flavor considerations, so something to consider when we've got those in a couple of posts!

I don't think we need it, I could be fine with this. For me it will probably come down to what feels elegant once we're paring things down into specifics later. If it turns out there's one such hybrid, it feels odd, but if it seems like we're doing it with some consistency or following some logical framework, then the idea has more merit, IMO.

 

[counterpoint]

So, a lot of the above depends on us coming up with some GP types! And GP types depend on us coming up with abilities! So, ability-list-time!

INSERT CiV's ABILITY LIST

Are there any flavorful swap-outs of these abilities that we want to make, which achieve the same mechanical goal? Do we want to drop any altogether? Quite a few create improvements - do we want to rename those improvements to more WoT-y things? Do we want to consider the Khan's and the Merchant of Venice's abilities? (I don't think so - though they set a precedent for us to have civs with UUs that are GPs.)

I think there will definitely be flavorful swap-outs for most, if not all, of these abilities that we choose to include, but I don't think now is the time to worry about them. For me, it'll depend on what GP they are attached to. A Concert Tour could become "spread the news" from a Great Peddler, or stay a tour if attached to a gleeman. The same goes for the Improvements - an academy attached to a Scholar or something may stay an Academy, but attached to a GChanneler it could be a Tower Library Annex or something. We have options, I think.

As far as the Khan and MoVenice.... I say "no." Those are just existing GP with special features. We should do the same - when the time comes, we may decide some civs will have Unique GP, and at that point, we'll design an ability (or revive one of the Mongol/Venice ones, theoretically).

Zalminen's suggestion of an Ogier that create a Crafts type GW makes sense - are there other non-Ogier crafts that we might want to capture with the same ability? Do we want to just have Ogier and non-Ogier variants of the Craft-producing GP? If so, are there any mechanical differences between the two?

Hmmm... I wasn't thinking the Ogier unit would really produce crafts. The reason being is that, as far as my recollection of the books go, there aren't a lot of famous ogier crafts. They do masonry and such, and are esteemed scholars, but artisans...? I don't think so, much. I think we can do better for the Craft generating GP, IMO. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

A far cooler (again, IMO) thing in a similar vein would be to use the Ogier writing. The GWoW analogue for us is Prophesy, which is of course not really something that would make sense with Ogier. But the "Write Political Treatise" ability WOULD translate well, IMO. "Write Historical Account" --> culture dump. Or something. Could be a cool ability for an ogier.

While we are maintaining two distinct lists here - the CiV lists and the new-to-our-mod list, it does bear mentioning that it's also possible for us to mix the two. We could have a Tech dump ability (a CiV ability) dump *less* tech that it does in BNW, but have it additionally, say, reveal some map or something (new ability). This way we could theoretically preserve some existing mechanics that are likely needed, without ending up recycling all the GP.

I suggest this because I do suspect it'll be a difficult thing to "cut" existing GP abilities. You really want to get rid of "Start Golden Age"? "Hurry production"? "

So, new, flavorful GP abilities that are more WoT-y are in order. A lot of these are likely to evolve into quite a different ability inspired by the same flavor, but the overall objective is to focus in on key things from the WoT mythos that we can make into useful and cool abilities. No specific considerations for which GP types we might associate them with yet, this is pretty much a brain dump of abilities. There are a lot of possibilities-proposed-as-questions. There are probably too many, so we likely won't use them all!

Several have alternatives if I've thought of multiple ways of utilizing the same flavor.

General format:

Ability Name (<inspiration, if not obvious>)
What it does

OK, good. A general note, though:

Shouldn't we group these abilities based on whether they affect Tall/Wide balance or are simply internal systems? It seems reasonable to expect that we might come up with some new T/W ones.

I mention this here because the regulating system might be worth mentioning under each ability.

As a point of example: Alignment. Are we totally pssitive that this is *not* tall/wide concerning? I know we tried to do so, but when conceiving of GP abilities that focus on DFCs, for instance, the number of cities vs total population a civ has might be *very* relevant - and so it's generation mechanism might need to reflect that, right?

I will comment on each one, and then perhaps throw in a few of mine own.

Sniff out Darkfriends (Sniffer)
Drastically reduce DFC presence in a city (possibly multiple use available)

Alternative: Usable in foreign territory to Light-shift a foreign civilization

When viewed flavor-wise, I'm totally sold as this for a sniffer, mainly because he doesn't sniff out DFs, he sniffs out violence.

If we're looking for a flavorful use of the sniffer, I think it should reflect that - i'll try to dig something up below. Of course, if we need somewhere to put this ability, a sniffer *could* work.

When viewed mechanically, the first ability here is of course simply a Great Herald. I find that relatively uninspiring, honestly. If you're using heralds enough to generate a super herald, you probably don't need a super drastic DFC shift, I'd guess - so this might be rewarding somebody in a pointless way.

As far as the alternate, I suppose that could be viewed as more useful, though the similar critique applies. hmmm...

Treat with the Forsaken
Expend this GP to receive a Forsaken Quest of the appropriate stage right now.

Alternative: progress through the stages faster by expending the GP.

very interesting, the first one. Are we ok with this, or does it mess up all our careful planning? Also, what mechanism would prompt this thing appearing?

I think the first ability feels more impactful than the second, which is both good and bad. The second feels a little disappointing - you might use it and not see effects until 20 turns later.

Pull of the Pattern (Ta'veren)
Expend this GP to encounter a Thread of the Pattern now.

I think this one may be alittle more viable than the FQuest one, because it's not directly shadow linked, and because Threads aren't as strictly limited in number as FQs. Again, how would a relevant GP get produced?

Plant a Dreamspike
Expend this GP to block Traveling around this location? Create an improvement that blocks foreign Traveling? Prevent units you do not own (or any units) from Traveling in your lands? For X turns?

Alternative: "Aura" effect around the GP that prevents foreign/any Traveling within X hexes. (It doesn't really need a name then - but just "Dreamspike" would do for the Civilopedia.)

Alternative: Some kind of Culture-related bonus/foreign Prestige against you penalty - representing the protection afforded for your citizens' dreams.

I like the inclusion of this from a flavor perspective, for sure.

As far as the Traveling ideas... I like them in theory. It makes sense flavorfully and seems useful, and a great ability for a Channeler GP. That said, it's also very "precious" and specific, and perhaps a bit annoying to keep track of, for opposing players AND "the player" - moving your traveling-shields around the map seems way more micro-managey than civ ever is. I like the improvement idea more because of this.

That said.... can't you only Travel to Traveling grounds anyways? You can't just blast into somebody's territory, I though. right?

The Culture idea seems cool, though.A little less splashy and unique, though. Probably shouldn't "add" it, since it's clearly relevant to the culture victory, right - would need to replace an existing culture ability, I'd guess (although, this doesn't *help* you, it hurts your opponent.

I could also imagine this as a GImprovement that boosted happiness or something.

Explore Tel'aran'rhiod
Create a Tel'aran'rhiod scout, similar to the mechanics discussed for Wise Ones before. Is this permanent? (Until the scout is killed at least) Does it expend the GP/have multiple uses, like spreading religion?

It's difficult to figure this one out without a larger discussion on how T'a'r works with Wise Ones.

I will say that due to it being a GP, this feels like it should be either a one-time thing or a multiple-use thing, but not a cooldown thing or unlimited use thing. Relative to Wise Ones, I'd suspect this should be somehow different - perhaps "better." Hard to say how at this point, though.

Could also be like a super instantaneous spy or something. Not sur that's useful enough, though.

Treesing
Create a Grove (possibly multiple use?) - what is a Grove? Improvement - it could make Happiness or some other yield? Building - it could generate Culture or Prestige?

Alternative: Create forests in nearby valid tiles. Why would a player want to do this, can we incentivize it with Stedding? Growing forests in their hexes gives you influence?

Alternative: Give you extra vote(s) to influence your allied Stedding for the next Stump. (This one isn't necessarily mutually exclusive with the above two - could be reflavored into a separate ability.)

Yeah, Groves could work for culture or prestige or happiness. Any could work.
a Grove could provide influence with nearby (all?) stedding, if we wanted a diplo aspect that was tied to the improvement/building.

I think the forest growing makes a lot of flavorful sense, but it seems highly circumstantial. We could definitely make Stedding love forest tiles and like civs who have them, but it's weird to imagine somebody really sculpting their civ around that - unless the UA was related to it as well (ie Celts).

The stump thing could work, though we haven't figured out how that works, or it could simply be aboost to influence. I do agree that this could be a tag-along ability. I could even imagine it tagging along with "hurry production" or something.

Create/Open a Waygate
Create a Waygate in a city. We discussed Waygates being constructable/national wonders before - does this supersede that? What should a Waygate do, beyond allow Shadowspawn through during the LB? Any fast-travel-with-dangers will be wholly superseded by Traveling by the end of the game and would need to be relatively early game to have a window of usability. Would be probably need to be able to move to waygates in other places (other civs, wilderness) to be useful.

I'm torn about waygates. I think probably it's best to have it be just a national wonder or something, or perhaps something that simply exists at the start of the game in every capital (though that's less interesting). It might provide some benefit, but also hurts you in the LB.

I would think "Close Waygate" might almost make more sense as a GP ability, though it's use is so crazy specific to the LB as to make it sort of pointless.

Form a Compact
Expend this GP to gain additional vote(s) in the Compact. (Temporarily? For the next election? For the next resolution?)

Alternative: Expend this GP in foreign territory to gain control of some % of their votes for the next resolution/election.

I'm torn on this too. It makes sense and could be good, but it also scares me a little bit to have something so blatantly intrusive on another mechanic, especially since votes are somewhat "finite" in the game.

Defintiely don't want it to be possible, for instance, to save up your Great Diplomats and do a dump in order to win the game

It feels a bit sketchy to seize somebody elses votes as well, since that could be used to sort of unfairly snipe somebody - in a way that can't really be retaliated against until the next compact. The only thing like that in CiV is the Citadel steal, but that can be immediately thrown right back at the civ. This seems like we're asking for people to save these suckers up and do crazy things with them.

If we do this, I'd say it should be sublte, like +1 vote or something, or localized in some fashion.

Discover a Weave
Expend this GP to gain influence with the Tower/an Ajah (which works better?). Does the GP need to be expended in the Tower's territory? It could grant you an Aes Sedai as well - otherwise it seems a bit short on power.

Alternative: All channelers you control that wield the same type of One Power (Saidin or Saidar) have +X% combat strength (permanently? for X turns?).

Alternative: All Aes Sedai you control gain one tier of Ajah bonuses for X turns.

Hmmm, I'd say Tower overall, since it helps you specifically, without messing up other people's ranking in the tower in a snipey way. As far as gifting an AS... hmmm, it's more likely to make sense as a way to immediately recover one or two lost AS, or something.

First Alternative seems to be better perhaps if it's just like the GG ability, except with channelers.

Second alternative seems to fall victim to the problem of sort of redundant rewards. A civ that is doing the channeler thing really well may already have high-tier Ajahs, right?

Gentle a Foe
Expend this GP to Gentle a single unit with 100% success rate. (Most players will likely target a False Dragon. Or particularly problematic enemy channeler if they're desperate.)

interesting. Seems sort of un-civlike, though. "Special Attack" and all that.

Treat with the Dragon
Expend this GP to gain extra time on your next turn controlling the Dragon.

Interesting. Very limited in its scope, though. Not sure its GP worthy... I'm still having trouble imagining how these LB-only GPs would really ever spawn and such, anyways.

Align with the <Alignment>
Expend the GP to receive a one-time Alignment yield dump. (We said we didn't want to rebalance Alignment sources, but it's worth bringing up, even if we just decide against it!)

Yeah, probably not the best idea.

Advise a Governor
Expend the GP to upgrade a Governor one/two upgrades.

Alternative: Expend the GP to enhance a Governor's yield, as appropriate for its Governor type.

Eh... this seems redundant to some wonders/policies or whatever, right? Or, perhaps, Ajah abilities, right?

Counsel a Migration
Expend the GP to move a Governor from one city to another. (We didn't want to make this generally available as just a thing that a player could do - but attached to a GP is much more limited scope. Might not be powerful enough though.)

No problems with this existing, but it is probably not powerful enough. Would need to be attached to some other ability, though I'm not sure which.

Dice in my Head
"Aura" ability - all random chances within X hexes roll in maximum favor of the controller. (Combat damage is a primary source of randomness.)

Yeah, always thought this one was cool. Probably less % than the GG bonus, but applying to everything.

Interpret a Viewing (Min)
Create an improvement/building that generates GP points/Faith?

Could work. Not very glamorous, though. As faith, it's "Create Landmark," which is included above.

GP points, though... that's definitely interesting. A GP that creates GP. It does fit Min, I think. So bizzare, though. Might be cool, somehow.

<reference to Herid Fel>
Expend this GP to research a Seal and (dis)prove its authenticity instantly.

Yeah, this is potentially cool, especially attached to a GS or equivalent. Problem is, what does that ability do for the first 250 turns of the game?

Run with Wolves
Expend the unit to move a full-vision combat unit into Tel'aran'rhiod for X turns?

Hmmm... this depends wholly on how T'a'r works. Would you simply be huinting Wise ones and GPs in T'a'r? If so, that's way too limited in scope. Or, is this basically a way to teleport/make invisible a unit?

Any more? What are your thoughts on the ones above?

Yeah, I was harsh on most of those above. Sorry. Probably for the better though, we only need a few of them.

OK, I don't have tons of these. Some are recycled from my earlier posts a million pages ago. Those are, I'm sure, terrible.

Legendary Monument (mason or something)
Balance - perhaps Tall/Wide
Enhance an existing building in a city to provide bonus yields, perhaps Prestige, Happiness, Culture, or Faith, in addition to its normal function.

Alternate: Corrupt or Sanctify a building - make it produce alignment points.

Recruit
Balance - Internal (military)
Convert civilian units in adjacent tiles into combat units.

Ancient Memories
Balance - Internal (military)
Provides +X EXP immediately to all adjacent units.

Call Wolves
Balance - Internal (military, or something weird)
Summons wolves to fight for a limited of time.

Discover Relic
Balance - Tall/Wide?
Creates a GW of Relic Type - weird, I know.

Many Roads
Balance - unsure
Raises the trade-route limit of the civ by one. too good?

Shrewd Negotiation
Balance - unsure
Provides the civ with extra goods they have traded for (maybe double strategic resources, etc.) for some amount of turns.

Alternate: allows the civ to trade away X resource without losing that resource.

Ta'veren Influence
Balance - unsure
Raises minimum influence with CSs/Stedding/Tower

Alternate: one-time boost of influence to one CS

Alternate: one-time boost of influence to all CSs.

Sniff out Violence
Balance - Internal (military)
Teleports units adjacent to the GP directly to the last unit that killed the player's own units.

Anger Dragonsworn
Balance - unsure
Spawns X Dragonsworn units (not controlled by the player) next to the expended unit.

In other words, a *&#^ you.


Any merit to having a GP ability that concerns the Horn? I couldn't think of one.

There were a couple others floating around in my head, but they're gone now...

 

[Zalminen]

Had a nasty flu, now feeling mostly normal again.

We could "reveal" a Stedding to those players and gift from there, or just give them to them without having a specific source Stedding, though that is a bit odd. What about the possibility of there being no Stedding left? It's unlikely but certainly possible for some very enterprising warmongers to have separately wiped out the Stedding around the world.

Well, if someone manages to take out all the steddings before the Trolloc Wars, then it should certainly mean something. So no ogier units to battle the trollocs in that case.

Although it would be nice to get an announcement of "All the Steddings have been wiped out!" if that happens so the other civs would at least know to prepare then.

What kind of programming have you done before?

I've used Java/XML/SQL at work but it's been 10 years since I last programmed with C++. Haven't touched LUA yet but that should be easy to pick up.

Treesing
Create a Grove (possibly multiple use?) - what is a Grove? Improvement - it could make Happiness or some other yield? Building - it could generate Culture or Prestige?

Yeah, a grove sounds good. Happiness would fit the flavor well so I'd probably go with that.

Proposed Solution: *steddings* shoudl send Ogier units to hunt down trollocs and stuff.

Yeah, that would also allow them to gain their fame as fierce warriors.

Hmm, I think I still prefer the unit gift to borderland civs idea since
a) that would help them survive better during the onslaught (especially if none of the steddings happen to be nearby) and
b) it wouldn't get in the way of the 'which civ can kill the most trollocs' contest like a stedding-led army might do.

But yeah, certainly agree on only allowing the gifted ogiers to attack shadowspawn.

Hmmm... I wasn't thinking the Ogier unit would really produce crafts. The reason being is that, as far as my recollection of the books go, there aren't a lot of famous ogier crafts. They do masonry and such, and are esteemed scholars, but artisans...? I don't think so, much. I think we can do better for the Craft generating GP, IMO. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

A far cooler (again, IMO) thing in a similar vein would be to use the Ogier writing. The GWoW analogue for us is Prophesy, which is of course not really something that would make sense with Ogier. But the "Write Political Treatise" ability WOULD translate well, IMO. "Write Historical Account" --> culture dump. Or something. Could be a cool ability for an ogier.

Sung wood was what I was mostly thinking. It's already in the resources list though and I can't remember straight away if the books even mention any famous items made out of sung wood. So I'm OK with dropping that one.

Write Historical Account sounds like a good option.

Many Roads
Balance - unsure
Raises the trade-route limit of the civ by one. too good?

Well, depends on how easy it is to get this type of GP.

Shrewd Negotiation
Balance - unsure
Provides the civ with extra goods they have traded for (maybe double strategic resources, etc.) for some amount of turns.

Alternate: allows the civ to trade away X resource without losing that resource.

I'd pick the first one.

Sniff out Violence
Balance - Internal (military)
Teleports units adjacent to the GP directly to the last unit that killed the player's own units.

Might be a bit tricky. What if the killer unit is already dead? What if was an enemy ship? What if the killer is now in another civ's territory and you don't have open borders with that civ?

At first I also wasn't sure how useful this ability would be in practice but after a bit of thought I realized this could be used for nice sneak attacks: just run a single scout near a weak enemy city, declare war, wait for an enemy unit to kill the scout and on your turn just teleport an army right next to the vulnerable city! Revenge, bwahahaaa.


Don't have much to add to the other suggestions right now.

 

[S3rgeus]

Sorry to take so long to respond! These things have gotten epic again.

Same here! Always a sign of something when I hit the character limit and need to break up the posts!

I'm now thinking that we're looking at this slightly wrong.

The Great Idea: Have Ogier totally wail on the Trollocs during the Trolloc Wars, as they did in the backstory to the books.

Our Solution: Gift Ogier to civs during the TW.

I think we've added an extra step here.

Proposed Solution: *steddings* shoudl send Ogier units to hunt down trollocs and stuff.

I think, actually, this is cooler. Instead of gifting, and such, have the unit count for steddings increase, perhaps temporarily, and have the AI go all "warmonger" against the shadowspawn.

If we do decide the gifting is better, I'd say we need to make it so the Ogier will refuse to attack any human unit.

And

Yeah, that would also allow them to gain their fame as fierce warriors.

Hmm, I think I still prefer the unit gift to borderland civs idea since
a) that would help them survive better during the onslaught (especially if none of the steddings happen to be nearby) and
b) it wouldn't get in the way of the 'which civ can kill the most trollocs' contest like a stedding-led army might do.

But yeah, certainly agree on only allowing the gifted ogiers to attack shadowspawn.

I like the sound of the idea of Stedding controlling the units that take part in the TW. But I think it's very variable based on the locations of Stedding on the map. Some (or all) of them might be isolated away from the Blight and unable to participate, so the amount of support the Ogier provide will vary a lot from one game to the next, which I don't think is the right idea.

It also creates some AI work for us specifically to deal with this situation - we'd need to make the Stedding use those units aggressively, otherwise they wouldn't provide the support we wanted even if the Stedding were well positioned to fight the Trollocs. The alternative approach of giving Ogier to the Borderlander civs mean we can leverage the existing AI (it just wants to defend itself and now has more stuff to do so). It also means that players will receive a consistent amount of support in each TW, and also prevents Stedding support from favoring some locations over others within a single game. (Areas near Stedding being better defended, those near the Blight and not a Stedding being bowled over.)

I think the flavor works fine for either approach, marginally favoring the Stedding-controlled one, and given the drawbacks of Stedding-controlled units, I think gifting them to players is the one we should go with.

This brings us on to several other questions: what are the units that they're gifting? How many of them do they gift? Is it at all related to friendship or not with Stedding? Or how many Stedding there are on the map?

Also, I don't think we should prevent the Ogier units from attacking other human units, if the controlling player wants to use them that way during the TW. This is the kind of thing where I think a "soft restriction" like we discussed for Governors makes more sense than an arbitrary absolute limitation. By gifting the Ogier units just to Borderlander civs, it should ensure that those civs have their hands full with Trollocs. If they're doing so amazingly well that they can multitask a war with another player at the same time, then I'd say let them go ahead. Having the Ogier units return to the Stedding (or just disappear) when the TW ends also makes an overall "aggressive Ogier army" tactic unlikely to work - which is generally what we're trying to avoid.

ok, ok. Right. That makes sense. I was previously thinking of the Govs as more of a carte blanche,e xcept for a starting yield bonus based on type (and options at threshold 2). This method means a Production gov is always good at production, relative to all others, regardless of the options chosen.

Yeah, I think we want the Governor types to be targeted towards their yield focus, so, as you've said, a Production Governor will always be better for production in a city.

I agree. We'll see what shakes out.

I think we might run into problems potentially with spreading the "similar" mechanisms across separate GPs. For example, take the Tech Dump and Academy abilities. You obviously "target" building GS's in order to help your science - and choose, when the time comes, which ability to use. If you could get the Tech dump from a GS, and the Academy from a GMe, for instance, we might run into a problem where it was often more practical to simply focus on wonders/specialists that improve GMe production, and have weird Science-Heavy civs that never build GSs.

of course, maybe that's fine - especially if these GP are rebranded, and there *is* no GS or GMe, but it has the potential to be very significant in its knock-on effects, so we'd want to watch out and tread carefully.

I totally agree with your last paragraph here - the problem you describe is a problem because of the mechanical-flavor dissonance caused by a Science civ not generating Great Scientists. If we brand a GP with flavor for a specific role that should, conceptually, help one of the victory types/civ focuses, then it should be one of the most effective ways of working towards that goal via GPs.

I think we should, in general, fee free to think outside the box with our GPs and how they relate to the civs. Ogier need not be "from" the civ, and perhaps that sort of flavor will work for others as well.

But yes, mechanically, I'm with you, here.

Cool, sounds good!

I don't think we need it, I could be fine with this. For me it will probably come down to what feels elegant once we're paring things down into specifics later. If it turns out there's one such hybrid, it feels odd, but if it seems like we're doing it with some consistency or following some logical framework, then the idea has more merit, IMO.

Definitely, we don't want one to stick out unless there is some particular flavor that makes that make sense.

I think there will definitely be flavorful swap-outs for most, if not all, of these abilities that we choose to include, but I don't think now is the time to worry about them. For me, it'll depend on what GP they are attached to. A Concert Tour could become "spread the news" from a Great Peddler, or stay a tour if attached to a gleeman. The same goes for the Improvements - an academy attached to a Scholar or something may stay an Academy, but attached to a GChanneler it could be a Tower Library Annex or something. We have options, I think.

As far as the Khan and MoVenice.... I say "no." Those are just existing GP with special features. We should do the same - when the time comes, we may decide some civs will have Unique GP, and at that point, we'll design an ability (or revive one of the Mongol/Venice ones, theoretically).

Awesome, yes, this sounds like a good way of approaching the reflavoring of the existing missions - something we don't need to worry about until we've solved the mechanical association for a certain GP, because that will affect what the flavor should represent!

Also totally agree on the Khan and Merchant of Venice.

Hmmm... I wasn't thinking the Ogier unit would really produce crafts. The reason being is that, as far as my recollection of the books go, there aren't a lot of famous ogier crafts. They do masonry and such, and are esteemed scholars, but artisans...? I don't think so, much. I think we can do better for the Craft generating GP, IMO. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

A far cooler (again, IMO) thing in a similar vein would be to use the Ogier writing. The GWoW analogue for us is Prophesy, which is of course not really something that would make sense with Ogier. But the "Write Political Treatise" ability WOULD translate well, IMO. "Write Historical Account" --> culture dump. Or something. Could be a cool ability for an ogier.

While we are maintaining two distinct lists here - the CiV lists and the new-to-our-mod list, it does bear mentioning that it's also possible for us to mix the two. We could have a Tech dump ability (a CiV ability) dump *less* tech that it does in BNW, but have it additionally, say, reveal some map or something (new ability). This way we could theoretically preserve some existing mechanics that are likely needed, without ending up recycling all the GP.

I suggest this because I do suspect it'll be a difficult thing to "cut" existing GP abilities. You really want to get rid of "Start Golden Age"? "Hurry production"? "

Totally, we'll definitely want to do that - the separation is just for while we're discussing which abilities we actually like themselves - when it comes to associating with GPs I think we'll want to mix and match BNW with WoT. And completely agree that we don't want to cut most of the BNW abilities because they fulfill necessary gameplay roles in such a way that if we were to replace them with different alternatives, those alternatives would primarily be characterized by their avoidance of the original mechanic, while trying to achieve the same aim.

OK, good. A general note, though:

Shouldn't we group these abilities based on whether they affect Tall/Wide balance or are simply internal systems? It seems reasonable to expect that we might come up with some new T/W ones.

I mention this here because the regulating system might be worth mentioning under each ability.

Good point, let's do that too!

As a point of example: Alignment. Are we totally pssitive that this is *not* tall/wide concerning? I know we tried to do so, but when conceiving of GP abilities that focus on DFCs, for instance, the number of cities vs total population a civ has might be *very* relevant - and so it's generation mechanism might need to reflect that, right?

I think on the whole Alignment is mostly Tall/Wide agnostic (and it not being is a DFC balancing issue we should solve, that seems the most Tall/Wide relevant). As you've said, that means a DFC-related GP ability is probably Tall/Wide balancing, since it's specifically to do with citizen counts and such. The Thread one, for example, would be system specific.

When viewed flavor-wise, I'm totally sold as this for a sniffer, mainly because he doesn't sniff out DFs, he sniffs out violence.

If we're looking for a flavorful use of the sniffer, I think it should reflect that - i'll try to dig something up below. Of course, if we need somewhere to put this ability, a sniffer *could* work.

When viewed mechanically, the first ability here is of course simply a Great Herald. I find that relatively uninspiring, honestly. If you're using heralds enough to generate a super herald, you probably don't need a super drastic DFC shift, I'd guess - so this might be rewarding somebody in a pointless way.

As far as the alternate, I suppose that could be viewed as more useful, though the similar critique applies. hmmm...

Sniff out Darkfriends
First paragraph, was that intended to say "I'm not totally sold on this"?

I think your issue with having a Great Herald kind of underlies the whole GP system. The point is to reward people for being good at something by making them better at it. GSes come from putting citizens in Science buildings - the process of which generates beakers. And so on for the point-based other GP types. Prophets are useful when you have a religion, which tends to mean you generate more faith, which gives you more Prophets. Same for GGs - makes you better at fighting people and is spawned by fighting people.

This ability is sort of the mirror of the Forsaken Quest one below in that it's Light-specific and the one below is Shadow-specific.

I can see a GP that has either ability being spawned by moving through the Alignment tiers. Maybe there's just one at tier 4 and any others are only available through wonders/free GPs - to avoid messing with our previous Alignment math. (This is mostly in answer to your question below, but I've put it here since it applies to both.)

Maybe the flavor for this shouldn't be related to the Sniffer and should be more Children-y? Or another element of WoT flavor - some way to characterize the common tendency towards Lightness of Borderlanders who constantly live at the edge of the Shadow?

very interesting, the first one. Are we ok with this, or does it mess up all our careful planning? Also, what mechanism would prompt this thing appearing?

I think the first ability feels more impactful than the second, which is both good and bad. The second feels a little disappointing - you might use it and not see effects until 20 turns later.

Treat with the Forsaken
I agree about the second ability - it's very underwhelming for a GP ability.

The mechanism I've mentioned above.

In terms of messing with the progression through the Forsaken Quest stages, that's something we'd need to consider. We have two primary options, that I can think of:

• Make it an "extra" Quest that doesn't interact with the players' progress on other Quests.
• Make it included in the progression - so it effectively accelerates them along. This is difficult because we can no longer guarantee the length of time before the next Quest is triggered.
• Any other ways?

I think this one may be alittle more viable than the FQuest one, because it's not directly shadow linked, and because Threads aren't as strictly limited in number as FQs. Again, how would a relevant GP get produced?

Pull of the Pattern
Agreed, this is certainly much simpler, and I think it's my favorite from the ones I proposed in this post. It's also suitably splashy for a GP ability. Do we think it's powerful enough when compared to other GP abilities like hurry production/science?

A GP type with this ability could be given out a bit more liberally than the ones above - maybe every 2 Alignment tiers? It would presumably have a second ability that competes with this one in some way - so the player won't always have extra Threads, because they'll want to use the other ability.

An alternative spawning method would be to have expending Heralds generate "GP points" toward the GP type that wields this ability. (In "quotes" because they are not GP points like the other existing ones in BNW.) This means only players being really active about Alignment would see them.

Another alternative would be to use them to "tempt" players into choosing an Alignment - giving them to players who've remained relatively Neutral at certain eras or techs.

I like the inclusion of this from a flavor perspective, for sure.

As far as the Traveling ideas... I like them in theory. It makes sense flavorfully and seems useful, and a great ability for a Channeler GP. That said, it's also very "precious" and specific, and perhaps a bit annoying to keep track of, for opposing players AND "the player" - moving your traveling-shields around the map seems way more micro-managey than civ ever is. I like the improvement idea more because of this.

That said.... can't you only Travel to Traveling grounds anyways? You can't just blast into somebody's territory, I though. right?

The Culture idea seems cool, though.A little less splashy and unique, though. Probably shouldn't "add" it, since it's clearly relevant to the culture victory, right - would need to replace an existing culture ability, I'd guess (although, this doesn't *help* you, it hurts your opponent.

I could also imagine this as a GImprovement that boosted happiness or something.

Plant a Dreamspike
Good point - Traveling is an allied-only thing (just yourself to start with and then unlocked for allies by something later-ish game than Traveling itself, IIRC?). Is Traveling short distances as a sort of paradrop something we want to do? It lines up with the flavor of how Traveling works quite nicely. We've got room to stop that with this ability then. I think if it's an improvement it would also need to provide a yield. Not as good as the GP tile improvements, but competitive with/slightly better than the default constructable ones, otherwise it will become like Forts - never worth building because its bonus is circumstantial.

Interacting with Dreamspikes via T'a'r users is also another way we could make T'a'r more prevalent, which I think we'll need to do. More detail on that below.

Separate to that, we could even make the Dreamspike co-exist with other improvements on a single hex, then even a small yield bonus would make it pretty cool.

It's difficult to figure this one out without a larger discussion on how T'a'r works with Wise Ones.

Explore Tel'aran'rhiod
This comes up a few times below, but I thought we had discussed how T'a'r works with Wise Ones? The whole extra map layer that's invisible to sight provided in other layers, patchy visibility for units in that layer, projections from Wise Ones that, if killed, kill the Wise One as well. More direct thoughts on this way lower down in this post.

I will say that due to it being a GP, this feels like it should be either a one-time thing or a multiple-use thing, but not a cooldown thing or unlimited use thing. Relative to Wise Ones, I'd suspect this should be somehow different - perhaps "better." Hard to say how at this point, though.

Could also be like a super instantaneous spy or something. Not sur that's useful enough, though.

Explore Tel'aran'rhiod
Agreed on one-time or multiple-use. I mention this below (writing out of order), it might be worth coming back to this if we discuss T'a'r first now.

Yeah, Groves could work for culture or prestige or happiness. Any could work.
a Grove could provide influence with nearby (all?) stedding, if we wanted a diplo aspect that was tied to the improvement/building.

I think the forest growing makes a lot of flavorful sense, but it seems highly circumstantial. We could definitely make Stedding love forest tiles and like civs who have them, but it's weird to imagine somebody really sculpting their civ around that - unless the UA was related to it as well (ie Celts).

The stump thing could work, though we haven't figured out how that works, or it could simply be aboost to influence. I do agree that this could be a tag-along ability. I could even imagine it tagging along with "hurry production" or something.

Treesing
I thought we had discussed how the Stump works? We haven't discussed the specific details of the things the Stump decides yet (Resolution equivalents), but the general framework is there. We talked about each Stedding casting a vote in the Stump and players who are aligned with Stedding can "vote internally" about what they think the Steddings they have a relationship with should vote for (weighted by the Stedding itself also casting an "internal vote"). Friends get 1 vote, ally gets 2 - the Stedding itself gets 2 and wins ties (so a single ally can't always decide for it). The contents of that discussion went into the diplo summary back when we decided on it toward the end of page 17.

I actually think the Stump one should be split out into separate consideration from the other two alternative I suggested at first - I think it's quite a unique and cool ability and operates in quite a different mechanical space from the first two. Quite GP-like and good secondary, as you've mentioned for the others, in that some civs will find it instrumental in some circumstances. It could even be more far-reaching and give you an additional vote with each Stedding in the upcoming Stump. An additional vote also allows an ally to outweigh a Stedding's own internal votes by themselves (if they're the only two sources of votes that are competing in that Stedding), which is a very interesting one-time capability.


So, Groves/Forests as a separate ability - part of Zalminen's post is also about this:

Yeah, a grove sounds good. Happiness would fit the flavor well so I'd probably go with that.

I'm not as sure about this one. There's great flavor here, but it's seeming difficult to make it mechanically relevant. I'm not the biggest fan of an improvement that creates happiness, having considered it further - it doesn't seem like the kind of yield role that an improvement plays.

I could see us doing something like the Portuguese Feitoria - an improvement that you own that you create in a CS's land. The Feitoria copies a luxury, but we could cause it to improve relations (make your relationship with that Stedding +1 per turn instead of -1. Though that is less useful given that Stedding can have multiple allies simultaneously.)

Alternatively it could provide an influence "floor" - your influence stops degrading over time with the Stedding once it hits the Friends threshold - similar to the 20-influence-floor provided by one of the Policies in the Patronage tree in BNW (though this time with one target).

I'm torn about waygates. I think probably it's best to have it be just a national wonder or something, or perhaps something that simply exists at the start of the game in every capital (though that's less interesting). It might provide some benefit, but also hurts you in the LB.

I would think "Close Waygate" might almost make more sense as a GP ability, though it's use is so crazy specific to the LB as to make it sort of pointless.

Create/Open a Waygate
I feel much the same - Waygates seem like a difficult mechanical fit. I think we should leave this ability aside until we address Waygates in more detail. Do we want to do that now or later?

I'm torn on this too. It makes sense and could be good, but it also scares me a little bit to have something so blatantly intrusive on another mechanic, especially since votes are somewhat "finite" in the game.

Defintiely don't want it to be possible, for instance, to save up your Great Diplomats and do a dump in order to win the game

It feels a bit sketchy to seize somebody elses votes as well, since that could be used to sort of unfairly snipe somebody - in a way that can't really be retaliated against until the next compact. The only thing like that in CiV is the Citadel steal, but that can be immediately thrown right back at the civ. This seems like we're asking for people to save these suckers up and do crazy things with them.

If we do this, I'd say it should be sublte, like +1 vote or something, or localized in some fashion.

Form a Compact
Totally agree about the sketchiness of stealing other players' votes - it's a bit too swingy for CiV, and opens up room for exploits.

We could associate the GP this ability resides on with the Compact resolutions - coming in the top places of some contests and such? The top two candidates in the World Leader elections receive a permanent +2 delegates in BNW, so we definitely have a balance precedent for permanent addition of votes. I totally agree that we wouldn't want to go beyond +1. Something that will decide close races, but not allow players to found their entire voting strategy on them.

Hmmm, I'd say Tower overall, since it helps you specifically, without messing up other people's ranking in the tower in a snipey way. As far as gifting an AS... hmmm, it's more likely to make sense as a way to immediately recover one or two lost AS, or something.

First Alternative seems to be better perhaps if it's just like the GG ability, except with channelers.

Second alternative seems to fall victim to the problem of sort of redundant rewards. A civ that is doing the channeler thing really well may already have high-tier Ajahs, right?

Discover a Weave
I agree about Tower Influence being the better of the two to modify then. When you say it's about a way to recover lost Sisters, is that mechanically distinct from spawning a new one, or just flavor? Is it just that it counts towards Quota - so the ability is disabled if the civ has their full complement of Sisters? (If that's the case, what do we tell the player? Quota has yet to become visible to the player until now.)

I'm not a huge fan of the first alternative, mainly because a GG for channelers doesn't feel very exciting to play. I use GGs in BNW because they work, but it's never very exciting and feels a bit like a lost GP - pretty much every other GP types (bar GAd) is more splashy and fun to use.

I think the second alternative (added Ajah tier abilities) is actually my favorite. I don't think it's got a problem with redundant rewards, because I wouldn't expect one civ to dominate most/all Ajahs simultaneously. I would expect there to be too many global Quests that other players are completing - too many competing priorities for them to complete all of the Ajah Quests that they get to stay ahead in 7 separate competitive influence races.

So that ability would provide them a ton of extra value from the Ajahs of the Sisters they're not way ahead on. (And given the way the Ajah influences work, if a couple of civs have gone in heavy on one Ajah, there could be some very channeler-y civs without any top tier abilities.)

I'd say it's a close race between #1 and #3 for me. #1 is very mechanically like BNW GPs and that's quite a powerful comparison. #3 feels like it's more in tune with our mechanics.

interesting. Seems sort of un-civlike, though. "Special Attack" and all that.

Gentle a Foe
I'm not so sure - it seems a similar kind of ability to planes' bombardment or nuclear bombs', err, bombing. It's unusual that it's on a non-combat unit though - unless we have a GP that can fight? That could be an "ability" unto itself. Would certainly combine well with this one.

Interesting. Very limited in its scope, though. Not sure its GP worthy... I'm still having trouble imagining how these LB-only GPs would really ever spawn and such, anyways.

Treat with the Dragon
Agreed, it also messes with the rest of the GP system - free GPs with a player choice should be able to choose any of them, and making this ability only relevant in the last 50 turns of the game is bad. Let's drop this then.

Yeah, probably not the best idea.

Align with <Alignment>
And so it is written: we will not go back and do all that Alignment math again!

And all was well with the world.

Eh... this seems redundant to some wonders/policies or whatever, right? Or, perhaps, Ajah abilities, right?

Advise a Governor
I don't think so - they do achieve the same kind of aims, but this one enhances the Governor's existing progression - it's basically a speed up, whereas I figured Policies would work "externally" like they do for most things in BNW. ("X building produces an additional +Y yield" - doesn't affect the building's other capabilities.) The Ajah abilities layer on without interacting with upgrades.

Wonders we did discuss doing upgrades/spawning Governors. Spawning was the primary purpose (I thought) of the wonders that do so - upgrading is allowing cities that already have Governors to get a benefit from that component of the wonder as well. I figured the GP ability could be used to more rapidly train-up a late game Governor to be marginally useful, instead of just a worse improvement. And given the exclusivity of wonder construction, I don't think it intrudes very much on the abilities of other systems if they are shared.

No problems with this existing, but it is probably not powerful enough. Would need to be attached to some other ability, though I'm not sure which.

Counsel a Migration
Agreed, this is quite weak. One way to make it better would be to permit multiple uses?

Yeah, always thought this one was cool. Probably less % than the GG bonus, but applying to everything.

Dice in my Head
I wasn't thinking of it as a % bonus, though we could do it that way. I was thinking of weighting all of the randomness calls in the user's favor. So, for instance, when a unit attacks another, there's an element of randomness in how much damage it does. The ballpark is decided by the relative strengths of the units, but the exact number varies (hence why the combat preview sometimes says you will kill something and then you might not - the preview is an estimate). We could explicitly make all of these favor the entities under the effect of this aura.

 

[S3rgeus]

Could work. Not very glamorous, though. As faith, it's "Create Landmark," which is included above.

GP points, though... that's definitely interesting. A GP that creates GP. It does fit Min, I think. So bizzare, though. Might be cool, somehow.

Interpret a Viewing
Create Holy Site for faith - Landmark is Culture.

I like the GP points one too - it fits the flavor of Viewing (and Min in particular) very well.

Yeah, this is potentially cool, especially attached to a GS or equivalent. Problem is, what does that ability do for the first 250 turns of the game?

<Reference to Herid Fel>
This might be something we tag onto/"unlock" for our Great Scientist or closest Equivalent when the Last Battle starts. I can't see a GP type revolving around this for the GP-system stuff mentioned above.

At the same time, it's a bit of a risky ability to put in. It might mean players suddenly burst-research most of the Seals when the Last Battle starts, which isn't really the point. (Though depending on the other abilities of such a GP type - that might not be a problem if it has a massive opportunity cost.)

Hmmm... this depends wholly on how T'a'r works. Would you simply be huinting Wise ones and GPs in T'a'r? If so, that's way too limited in scope. Or, is this basically a way to teleport/make invisible a unit?

Run with Wolves
T'a'r info above. I think we do need to discuss T'a'r a bit more though - make it available to the game in some more ways, otherwise it's looking like a mechanic that's not worth including, which is a shame because it's great flavor. Do we want to do that now? Or in a few posts' time when the massive parallel discussion of all these GP abilities dies down?

Yeah, I was harsh on most of those above. Sorry. Probably for the better though, we only need a few of them.

No worries, discussions abound above!

It's worth noting that we can still cull abilities after "this stage" of the process if we find some of them don't fit into any good GP roles, so we don't need to whittle it down to a set-in-stone list yet.

Legendary Monument (mason or something)
Balance - perhaps Tall/Wide
Enhance an existing building in a city to provide bonus yields, perhaps Prestige, Happiness, Culture, or Faith, in addition to its normal function.

Alternate: Corrupt or Sanctify a building - make it produce alignment points.

Interesting - having said way above that Alignment being Tall/Wide imbalanced is a problem for DFCs - we could use this alternative to explicitly balance against that. It also means we don't need to redo our math (maybe) if we just make this source make up the difference between Tall and Wide DFCs.

Recruit
Balance - Internal (military)
Convert civilian units in adjacent tiles into combat units.

I'm not too sure how useful this would be - most players don't really have many civilian units. Trade units, but they're not really disposable. Same with workers for the majority of the game. Definitely not for GPs or Settlers. It seems like only players putting up last-ditch defenses would use it.

Something that converts enemy units into yours could be very cool. "Splash" conversion of adjacent enemies, expending the GP?

Ancient Memories
Balance - Internal (military)
Provides +X EXP immediately to all adjacent units.

Good flavor on this one. It feels like a GG-like aura of exp boost would be more useful, but I'm not a huge fan of those.

Call Wolves
Balance - Internal (military, or something weird)
Summons wolves to fight for a limited of time.

This is interesting, though I'm not sure if GPs spawning combat units is a good idea. I could see this being used to "direct" wolves for a one-time attack on a zone that damages the enemies within it, maybe?

Discover Relic
Balance - Tall/Wide?
Creates a GW of Relic Type - weird, I know.

Interesting! This could be really cool. Part of the way theming bonuses works is sort of the exclusivity of the way you get Relics vs the others. On one hand, you'd want this to be on a GP type that also has another GW-generating ability, to prevent there being more independently costed ways of making GWs (though making them not-independently-costed may solve this). But on the other hand, that means the player will pick and choose the GW type they need from that GP based on their theming bonuses, which isn't how theming bonuses should work.

Many Roads
Balance - unsure
Raises the trade-route limit of the civ by one. too good?

Doesn't sound too good - sounds quite nice to me! Seems like a tall/wide balance to me, since it's addressing Gold output.

Shrewd Negotiation
Balance - unsure
Provides the civ with extra goods they have traded for (maybe double strategic resources, etc.) for some amount of turns.

Alternate: allows the civ to trade away X resource without losing that resource.

These feel like strange abilities for a GP - particularly since they're both very similar to existing UAs. There is clearly a difference - the second is "free copies" not retaining the yield like the Dutch do, but they're very similar for the player in that they both lead to "yeah, I'll trade you my last X" *rubs hands together* "mwahahaha, that wasn't really my last X!". The former is very like the Russian UA with a time limit, except it's trading focused.

Ta'veren Influence
Balance - unsure
Raises minimum influence with CSs/Stedding/Tower

Alternate: one-time boost of influence to one CS

Alternate: one-time boost of influence to all CSs.

the first one feels more like a policy/resolution than a GP ability - given how reusable GP abilities are, stacking that up will be super powerful.

I think it's a similar kind of thing with #3.

#2 is certainly viable, but it's the GMe ability without the Gold, which I think players won't like much.

Sniff out Violence
Balance - Internal (military)
Teleports units adjacent to the GP directly to the last unit that killed the player's own units.

This is a very interesting one. It's a bit of a mindbender - "the last unit that killed any of yours" is not always easy to determine. You might have lost multiple units in a single turn and the only real way to know which died last is the order you get the notifications (and I'm not 100% sure that's an accurate measure).

Anger Dragonsworn
Balance - unsure
Spawns X Dragonsworn units (not controlled by the player) next to the expended unit.

In other words, a *&#^ you.

Haha, I like this one! That is awesome, yes, let's do this.

Any merit to having a GP ability that concerns the Horn? I couldn't think of one.

I was trying to think of one as well, but given how narrow the Horn's scope is (only available to a single player at a time, only visible for part of the game) it has has similar difficulties to the LB-specific abilities I suggested. Revealing the location of the Horn could be a viable ability? But once you've done it once, I wouldn't see most players needing to do it again, making the ability a bit redundant.

Had a nasty flu, now feeling mostly normal again.

That sucks, hope you're feeling better now!

Well, if someone manages to take out all the steddings before the Trolloc Wars, then it should certainly mean something. So no ogier units to battle the trollocs in that case.

Although it would be nice to get an announcement of "All the Steddings have been wiped out!" if that happens so the other civs would at least know to prepare then.

This makes me think we should disconnect the Ogier-TW-unit-gifts from the on-map Stedding entirely, because we have to cater for this very specific edge case that breaks the whole system when it occurs otherwise. That's an odd piece of information to have to give players, but with the Stedding-driven spawning, they would need to know.

I've used Java/XML/SQL at work but it's been 10 years since I last programmed with C++. Haven't touched LUA yet but that should be easy to pick up.

I'm sure you could get back into C++ then - the transition from Java isn't too bad. Lua's really good fun - it's one of my favorite scripting languages at the moment.

 

[counterpoint]

hey all. just stopping by to say that there might be a bit of a delay in my next response. I may get a chance to write a full post tomorrow, but it's possible it won't happen until the end of the weekend or even Monday evening. Things are crazy 'round here.

until then!

 

[counterpoint]

OK. time to post! I know it's only been two days since S3rgeus's last post, but it does feel like I'm slowing things down here when I delay things on the weekend.

Although it would be nice to get an announcement of "All the Steddings have been wiped out!" if that happens so the other civs would at least know to prepare then.

I think this should probably just mirror the announcements for the rest of the civs/cs's. Doesn't it say something if a CS gets wiped out by an unknown civ? Does it say something if an unknown civ is wiped out ?We should probably just go with the method used in these situations. Just as a civ might plan for a lack of stedding support during the TW, by the same token, a civ being wiped out and unable to draw trolloc attacks in the TW is probably even more significant.

and besides, *all* the steddings wiped out in the first 2 eras will be extremely rare.

Hmm, I think I still prefer the unit gift to borderland civs idea since
a) that would help them survive better during the onslaught (especially if none of the steddings happen to be nearby) and
b) it wouldn't get in the way of the 'which civ can kill the most trollocs' contest like a stedding-led army might do.

But yeah, certainly agree on only allowing the gifted ogiers to attack shadowspawn.

I'll say more on this below, but as far as b) above, I could argue that gifting the borderlanders free units is most definitely getting the way of the Kill-the-Most-Trollocs-Sweepstakes, in that they get an "unfair" advantage. B-landers already have an "advantage" because they're up against the Trollocs. If anything, I'd say a neutral stedding killing some shadowspawn sort of "evens the playing field," in that it lessens the burden on the b-landers, without giving them undue advantage in the Sweepstakes.

Sung wood was what I was mostly thinking. It's already in the resources list though and I can't remember straight away if the books even mention any famous items made out of sung wood. So I'm OK with dropping that one.

Yeah, Sung Wood is currently a luxury. I figure Sung Wood could be a descriptor on human-made Relics and/or Crafts (Sung Wood Staff, etc.). We hear of Ogier *making* the SWood, but not necessarily doing cool things with it.

I like the sound of the idea of Stedding controlling the units that take part in the TW. But I think it's very variable based on the locations of Stedding on the map. Some (or all) of them might be isolated away from the Blight and unable to participate, so the amount of support the Ogier provide will vary a lot from one game to the next, which I don't think is the right idea.

I see your point. We could theoretically force a certain # of steddings be near the blight?

But also, why does it have to be natural unit movement? Couldn't it just be "an Ogier Oger has appeared from Stedding Tsofu!" and a unit zaps near the blightbordre?

It also creates some AI work for us specifically to deal with this situation - we'd need to make the Stedding use those units aggressively, otherwise they wouldn't provide the support we wanted even if the Stedding were well positioned to fight the Trollocs. The alternative approach of giving Ogier to the Borderlander civs mean we can leverage the existing AI (it just wants to defend itself and now has more stuff to do so). It also means that players will receive a consistent amount of support in each TW, and also prevents Stedding support from favoring some locations over others within a single game. (Areas near Stedding being better defended, those near the Blight and not a Stedding being bowled over.)

I understand, and as always defer to your best judgment on AI issues.

I think the flavor works fine for either approach, marginally favoring the Stedding-controlled one, and given the drawbacks of Stedding-controlled units, I think gifting them to players is the one we should go with.

This brings us on to several other questions: what are the units that they're gifting? How many of them do they gift? Is it at all related to friendship or not with Stedding? Or how many Stedding there are on the map?

As far as units, I think we'd probably be best served deciding that later, once we've designed other units. I'd say a powerful melee unit of some sort. Whether these are unique to the TW (or that era, at least), or part of a larger system of upgrading ogier units, I'm not sure (and don't think we need to know right now).

the whole Only-to-Borderlanders thing doesn't seem to coexist well with Friendship requirements. If we're rewarding Friendship, why not gift units to *every* civ that has friendship with a stedding (one unit per stedding?)? If we don't like that, I'd say maybe it's better just to gift to any civ that isn't openly hostile with a stedding, adn keep it simple. I prefer this, I think, since there can't be any weirdness of being friends with 1, 2, or 6 stedding and what exactly that would do.

In short, I don't really think there should be a metagame to this. I think it's simply a bit of flavor,and perhaps, a way to cushion the borderlanders. I don't think you should be able to "play the system" and more ogier units or anything.

Also, I don't think we should prevent the Ogier units from attacking other human units, if the controlling player wants to use them that way during the TW. This is the kind of thing where I think a "soft restriction" like we discussed for Governors makes more sense than an arbitrary absolute limitation. By gifting the Ogier units just to Borderlander civs, it should ensure that those civs have their hands full with Trollocs. If they're doing so amazingly well that they can multitask a war with another player at the same time, then I'd say let them go ahead. Having the Ogier units return to the Stedding (or just disappear) when the TW ends also makes an overall "aggressive Ogier army" tactic unlikely to work - which is generally what we're trying to avoid.

Pretty sure I diagree with you here. I don't see a reason why a borderlander civ "deserves" a free (multiple?) more-powerful-than-most-other-units advantage over other civs. You're right that they will perhaps be occupied by fighting the trollocs, but wouldn't other civs potentially be too? If Andor comes to the borderlands to defend (and rack up light points), and relieves some pressure off of Saldaea, should Saldae be able to attack a vulnerable Caemlyn? Of course. Should they be able to use a super-unit to do so? No way. In this scenario, Andor is the more-engaged-by-the-TW civ, and they'll get a city sacked because of it.

Also, I really can't get past the horrible flavor of it. I don't think, based on what we know of Ogier, they would stay with the civ and fight their random territorial wars. I'd figure the moment you tried this, the ogier would leave (aka disband). alternatively, maybe they wouldn't, but I'd suggest the Stedding (all stedding?) should declare war on that civ in that case, or at least suffer a tremendous influence penalty.

I know there are ogier Gardeners in the seanchan Deathwatch guard and stuff, but those 1) simply serve as bodyguards, I don't think they go to war, and 2) do so because of some really weird historical curiosity and idiosyncracy that we simply are not shown in the books. Such a broad application of that specific case to the whole of the TW seems flavorfully suspect at best.

I think on the whole Alignment is mostly Tall/Wide agnostic (and it not being is a DFC balancing issue we should solve, that seems the most Tall/Wide relevant). As you've said, that means a DFC-related GP ability is probably Tall/Wide balancing, since it's specifically to do with citizen counts and such. The Thread one, for example, would be system specific.

Right. So it's both. I guess all things are somewhat both, right? I mean, faith is a stand-alone sytem, but wide empires do of course have the potential for higher faith output (I think).

Sniff out Darkfriends
First paragraph, was that intended to say "I'm not totally sold on this"?

absolutely I did mean to say that I was not sold on this. Sorry

I think your issue with having a Great Herald kind of underlies the whole GP system. The point is to reward people for being good at something by making them better at it. GSes come from putting citizens in Science buildings - the process of which generates beakers. And so on for the point-based other GP types. Prophets are useful when you have a religion, which tends to mean you generate more faith, which gives you more Prophets. Same for GGs - makes you better at fighting people and is spawned by fighting people.

still Sniff Out "Darkfriends

In most cases, you are correct that the whole point of the GP system is to make people good at certain things better at those same things. However, with Alignment-related citizens, this is not the case.

A Great Herald is not the same as a GScientist or Merchant or whatever. The reason is that there is no cap to the effectiveness of gold or science - you can always use more science. The problem is that Heralds, by their very nature, are not a "bonus" or anything - they simply pull you back towards the "mean" of your civilization's alignment, correcting problems that have occurred due to the machinations of other civs. So a GHerald, presumably rewarded due to success in the manipulation of Heralds (or something) would likely be given to a civ that, because they have been successful with heralds likely has many if not all of their cities in Balance with their alignment, and thus has no need for a super-herald. So what if it knocks of 4 DFCs instead of 1? I don't have any! This GP ability seems to only be useful in cases of *extreme* manipulation from an outside civ - such that the "defending" civ is accumulating tons of "alignment GP points" defending themselves, and its *still not enough*. This is very specific a circumstance, and not one deserving of a GP ability.

Of course, inflicting your Alignment on other civs is something that doesn't have such a hard-cap.

This ability is sort of the mirror of the Forsaken Quest one below in that it's Light-specific and the one below is Shadow-specific.

I can see a GP that has either ability being spawned by moving through the Alignment tiers. Maybe there's just one at tier 4 and any others are only available through wonders/free GPs - to avoid messing with our previous Alignment math. (This is mostly in answer to your question below, but I've put it here since it applies to both.)

While I am on board with your previous notion that we can trigger GP creation however we want (and don't have to be bound by BNW logic), I still can't help but feel like this kind of mechanism doesn't quite "feel right" for GP. It might be the only option, though - although, we could also simply consider accumulation of various Alignment Points (net?) as working, and that might feel a bit more in-line with how things go.

I do like, in theory, rewarding players on the extremes of Alignment with GP - any reason to shoot for Tier 8. That said, the Herald GP (which I don't think I like) would actually be one that would make sense to be awarded to neutral civs.

Maybe the flavor for this shouldn't be related to the Sniffer and should be more Children-y? Or another element of WoT flavor - some way to characterize the common tendency towards Lightness of Borderlanders who constantly live at the edge of the Shadow?

Hmmm... I find the Children equally problematic, both for flavor reasons (they are "light" but clearly have tons of DFs) and mechanical - we need them elsewhere, whether in beliefs or UA/UUs).

I'm not sure what else to do, though. There's a reason we had to invent the flavorless "Herald" - there isn't a good representative for this in WoT.

Treat with the Forsaken
I agree about the second ability - it's very underwhelming for a GP ability.

The mechanism I've mentioned above.

In terms of messing with the progression through the Forsaken Quest stages, that's something we'd need to consider. We have two primary options, that I can think of:

• Make it an "extra" Quest that doesn't interact with the players' progress on other Quests.
• Make it included in the progression - so it effectively accelerates them along. This is difficult because we can no longer guarantee the length of time before the next Quest is triggered.
• Any other ways?

I'm finding that I prefer the Thread-based Alignment abilities much more than the FQuest-based ones.

I see problems in all the approaches you've indicated. I think honestly, the best reward is one that's impossible for us to do - make an FQuest easier. The next best.... have it provide more alignment? Lame.

Pull of the Pattern
Agreed, this is certainly much simpler, and I think it's my favorite from the ones I proposed in this post. It's also suitably splashy for a GP ability. Do we think it's powerful enough when compared to other GP abilities like hurry production/science?

It's probably not comparable no. But we could make it do something else, right? Like balance a city or something (I know I just railed against that above, but this is a very secondary ability) or spread your alignment a lot or something.

Pull of the PAttern still
A GP type with this ability could be given out a bit more liberally than the ones above - maybe every 2 Alignment tiers? It would presumably have a second ability that competes with this one in some way - so the player won't always have extra Threads, because they'll want to use the other ability.

An alternative spawning method would be to have expending Heralds generate "GP points" toward the GP type that wields this ability. (In "quotes" because they are not GP points like the other existing ones in BNW.) This means only players being really active about Alignment would see them.

We could use this as a way to incentivize herald-use. Problem is that it rewards "Defensive" herald use as well, which relies on your neighbors to be active as well.

Another alternative would be to use them to "tempt" players into choosing an Alignment - giving them to players who've remained relatively Neutral at certain eras or techs.

I do think this is a valid angle to take with these.

Plant a Dreamspike
Good point - Traveling is an allied-only thing (just yourself to start with and then unlocked for allies by something later-ish game than Traveling itself, IIRC?). Is Traveling short distances as a sort of paradrop something we want to do? It lines up with the flavor of how Traveling works quite nicely. We've got room to stop that with this ability then. I think if it's an improvement it would also need to provide a yield. Not as good as the GP tile improvements, but competitive with/slightly better than the default constructable ones, otherwise it will become like Forts - never worth building because its bonus is circumstantial.

OK, firs toff, I've almost never used Paradrop, so I don't have a strong opinion about whether we would use it as our traveling mechanic. It certainly could work though - it certainly sounds good (the traveling grounds thing did always feel a little clunky) - what do you think?

I think this might be ridiculously circumstantial for a GP ability. If the GChanneler is a unit that "hangs out" with your units for awhile like a GG or GAd, I could see this being a tertiary ability that is always on.

Plant a Dreamspike
Interacting with Dreamspikes via T'a'r users is also another way we could make T'a'r more prevalent, which I think we'll need to do. More detail on that below.

Separate to that, we could even make the Dreamspike co-exist with other improvements on a single hex, then even a small yield bonus would make it pretty cool.

interesting. So, what is that, a "feature," then? I dunno, what's to stop somebody just dumping them everywhere? Maybe you can only drop 1 at a time or something? I don't know, a little too RTS for civ, I think.

I really like this flavor though! I feel like the idea of it as a GImprovement with this as a primary ability is just too underwhelming. As a *secondary* it could be cool, but what is the primary, then? You say below that you don't like Happiness as an improvement yield.

What if it were to combine with a holy site or something? or else generate *alignment* or something (but we have all our sources!).

Explore Tel'aran'rhiod
This comes up a few times below, but I thought we had discussed how T'a'r works with Wise Ones? The whole extra map layer that's invisible to sight provided in other layers, patchy visibility for units in that layer, projections from Wise Ones that, if killed, kill the Wise One as well. More direct thoughts on this way lower down in this post.

Right. That jives with my memory of what we'd discussed. But that was a looong time ago, so all bets are off. More on this below.

Explore Tel'aran'rhiod
Agreed on one-time or multiple-use. I mention this below (writing out of order), it might be worth coming back to this if we discuss T'a'r first now.

right, preserving quote block then.

Treesing
I thought we had discussed how the Stump works? We haven't discussed the specific details of the things the Stump decides yet (Resolution equivalents), but the general framework is there. We talked about each Stedding casting a vote in the Stump and players who are aligned with Stedding can "vote internally" about what they think the Steddings they have a relationship with should vote for (weighted by the Stedding itself also casting an "internal vote"). Friends get 1 vote, ally gets 2 - the Stedding itself gets 2 and wins ties (so a single ally can't always decide for it). The contents of that discussion went into the diplo summary back when we decided on it toward the end of page 17.

This also jives with my recollection.

I actually think the Stump one should be split out into separate consideration from the other two alternative I suggested at first - I think it's quite a unique and cool ability and operates in quite a different mechanical space from the first two. Quite GP-like and good secondary, as you've mentioned for the others, in that some civs will find it instrumental in some circumstances. It could even be more far-reaching and give you an additional vote with each Stedding in the upcoming Stump. An additional vote also allows an ally to outweigh a Stedding's own internal votes by themselves (if they're the only two sources of votes that are competing in that Stedding), which is a very interesting one-time capability.

Treesing
I agree with your assessments about how this works. It is hard to say whether it should be targeted or should apply to all stedding at this point, because I'm having trouble visualizing actual numbers of how a Stump vote would go.

So, Groves/Forests as a separate ability - part of Zalminen's post is also about this:

I'm not as sure about this one. There's great flavor here, but it's seeming difficult to make it mechanically relevant. I'm not the biggest fan of an improvement that creates happiness, having considered it further - it doesn't seem like the kind of yield role that an improvement plays.

Treesing
I don't disagree, but I am curious as to why Happiness stands alone as sort of off-limits for improvements? is it because having an active worker (population) is meant to cause *unhappiness*?

I could see us doing something like the Portuguese Feitoria - an improvement that you own that you create in a CS's land. The Feitoria copies a luxury, but we could cause it to improve relations (make your relationship with that Stedding +1 per turn instead of -1. Though that is less useful given that Stedding can have multiple allies simultaneously.)

Treesing
This is interesting. It's a bit weird though - maybe too underwhelming for a GP ability - and since it occurs in another's territory, we can't really add supporting secondary effects.

I don't think this would be a grove, though - they don't plant them in stedding. The whole point of groves, I think, is to make Ogier feel like home when they're in the human cities.

Alternatively it could provide an influence "floor" - your influence stops degrading over time with the Stedding once it hits the Friends threshold - similar to the 20-influence-floor provided by one of the Policies in the Patronage tree in BNW (though this time with one target).

Trees
This is probably the best option for groves.

Create/Open a Waygate
I feel much the same - Waygates seem like a difficult mechanical fit. I think we should leave this ability aside until we address Waygates in more detail. Do we want to do that now or later?

Waygate Shenanigans
This makes my head hurt, I actually don't think we need to tackle them now. We *could*, but this has already balooned into a complex discussion.

It does appear that, wahtever we decide for WGs, they are highly unlikely to absolutely need a GP ability - probably they are too specialized a mechanic. So I'd say we can safely table them and drop this one.

Form a Compact
Totally agree about the sketchiness of stealing other players' votes - it's a bit too swingy for CiV, and opens up room for exploits.

Agreed.

We could associate the GP this ability resides on with the Compact resolutions - coming in the top places of some contests and such? The top two candidates in the World Leader elections receive a permanent +2 delegates in BNW, so we definitely have a balance precedent for permanent addition of votes. I totally agree that we wouldn't want to go beyond +1. Something that will decide close races, but not allow players to found their entire voting strategy on them.

hmmm... the top leader thing seems a little random, to me. I honestly don't know what else, though. It's lame just to make it "GP poitns" that accumulate for every alliance you have.

Discover a Weave
I agree about Tower Influence being the better of the two to modify then. When you say it's about a way to recover lost Sisters, is that mechanically distinct from spawning a new one, or just flavor? Is it just that it counts towards Quota - so the ability is disabled if the civ has their full complement of Sisters? (If that's the case, what do we tell the player? Quota has yet to become visible to the player until now.)

I was originally thinking it would be a rapid means of "filling up your quota," but I suppose that's kind of unfair to people who are already full, right? But then, what happens if you're over quota? Is there a penalty (like having too few horses?)

I'm not a huge fan of the first alternative, mainly because a GG for channelers doesn't feel very exciting to play. I use GGs in BNW because they work, but it's never very exciting and feels a bit like a lost GP - pretty much every other GP types (bar GAd) is more splashy and fun to use.

Discover a Weed
You are correct that this is a little underwhelming.

I think the second alternative (added Ajah tier abilities) is actually my favorite. I don't think it's got a problem with redundant rewards, because I wouldn't expect one civ to dominate most/all Ajahs simultaneously. I would expect there to be too many global Quests that other players are completing - too many competing priorities for them to complete all of the Ajah Quests that they get to stay ahead in 7 separate competitive influence races.

So that ability would provide them a ton of extra value from the Ajahs of the Sisters they're not way ahead on. (And given the way the Ajah influences work, if a couple of civs have gone in heavy on one Ajah, there could be some very channeler-y civs without any top tier abilities.)

I'd say it's a close race between #1 and #3 for me. #1 is very mechanically like BNW GPs and that's quite a powerful comparison. #3 feels like it's more in tune with our mechanics.

Discover a Weevil
So, the choice then is whether this should be something you expend that increases the Ajah rating of your sisters for X turns, or else an Aura ability - any sister next to the GChannelers gets Ajah+1. That's sort of awesome, but also nuts... especially if they're all linked....

Gentle a Foe
I'm not so sure - it seems a similar kind of ability to planes' bombardment or nuclear bombs', err, bombing. It's unusual that it's on a non-combat unit though - unless we have a GP that can fight? That could be an "ability" unto itself. Would certainly combine well with this one.

OK. It can exist. I doubt it'll make the cut though.

Treat with the Dragon
Agreed, it also messes with the rest of the GP system - free GPs with a player choice should be able to choose any of them, and making this ability only relevant in the last 50 turns of the game is bad. Let's drop this then.

dropped.

Advise a Governor
I don't think so - they do achieve the same kind of aims, but this one enhances the Governor's existing progression - it's basically a speed up, whereas I figured Policies would work "externally" like they do for most things in BNW. ("X building produces an additional +Y yield" - doesn't affect the building's other capabilities.) The Ajah abilities layer on without interacting with upgrades.

Wonders we did discuss doing upgrades/spawning Governors. Spawning was the primary purpose (I thought) of the wonders that do so - upgrading is allowing cities that already have Governors to get a benefit from that component of the wonder as well. I figured the GP ability could be used to more rapidly train-up a late game Governor to be marginally useful, instead of just a worse improvement. And given the exclusivity of wonder construction, I don't think it intrudes very much on the abilities of other systems if they are shared.

ok, I agree with your assessment on policies and wonders, but what about White and Blue sisters (was it also brown?)? I do think this ability loses uniqueness due to them.

Counsel a Migration
Agreed, this is quite weak. One way to make it better would be to permit multiple uses?

Sure, I guess....?

Dice in my Head
I wasn't thinking of it as a % bonus, though we could do it that way. I was thinking of weighting all of the randomness calls in the user's favor. So, for instance, when a unit attacks another, there's an element of randomness in how much damage it does. The ballpark is decided by the relative strengths of the units, but the exact number varies (hence why the combat preview sometimes says you will kill something and then you might not - the preview is an estimate). We could explicitly make all of these favor the entities under the effect of this aura.

Right, that makes sense, but... how is that any different than a % bonus? I mean, by how much are we skewing the randomness? By a certain percentage perhaps?!

 

[counterpoint]

Interpret a Viewing
Create Holy Site for faith - Landmark is Culture.

Correct. And Academy gives a bonus to Steam Level, right?

I like the GP points one too - it fits the flavor of Viewing (and Min in particular) very well.

Interpret a viewing
cool. we're in agreement then!

<Reference to Herid Fel>
This might be something we tag onto/"unlock" for our Great Scientist or closest Equivalent when the Last Battle starts. I can't see a GP type revolving around this for the GP-system stuff mentioned above.

At the same time, it's a bit of a risky ability to put in. It might mean players suddenly burst-research most of the Seals when the Last Battle starts, which isn't really the point. (Though depending on the other abilities of such a GP type - that might not be a problem if it has a massive opportunity cost.)

I can definitely see the merit in unlocking it at a certain point, but you're right, I think it's quite risky.

I think the truth is I'm finding all the LB-related ones (that don't simply concern alignment) to be problematic. GPs being useful throughout the whole game is part of what makes the system work. If there was incentive to do a "GS Rush" in the Modern era or something, it would sort of break the system. LB GP abilities are by definitely going to be clumped in their use, and I think that leaves them very vulnerable to exploits and weird unintended meta games (or else total irrelevance).

Run with Wolves
T'a'r info above. I think we do need to discuss T'a'r a bit more though - make it available to the game in some more ways, otherwise it's looking like a mechanic that's not worth including, which is a shame because it's great flavor. Do we want to do that now? Or in a few posts' time when the massive parallel discussion of all these GP abilities dies down?

I'm very torn by T'a'r. On the one hand, it is pretty central to the books, but on the other hand....man, I just don't love it. It feels like an "extra" thing that isn't going to be super well integrated into the game, and/or will feel very civlike. It's almost by definition going to be a Big Deal that is Restricted to Very Specific and Rare Circumstances, namely the few GP and Wise Ones. That's fine for certain mechanics, but something like this.....? eh.

As much as I'd love to say "table it!" Like I have with Ogier Ass warriorsand Waygates, the truth is it's highly likely that one or two of our desired GP types (Wolfbrother and Dreamer) will either somewhat or entirely rely on T'a'r. This is not something we can ignore, as much as I'd hate to start a parallel conversation.

So my longer bit on t'a'r will happen at the bottom of this post, in order to keep the GP-ability stuff together.

No worries, discussions abound above!

It's worth noting that we can still cull abilities after "this stage" of the process if we find some of them don't fit into any good GP roles, so we don't need to whittle it down to a set-in-stone list yet.

Yeah, it's helpful to remember that we aren't deciding on whether they're really "in" or not at this point - we're just trying to make them as good as we can for the voting-in process afterwards. This is highly efficient of course, since 90% won't make the cut. Of course, we'll be able to theoretically use some as GP abilities or something.

Interesting - having said way above that Alignment being Tall/Wide imbalanced is a problem for DFCs - we could use this alternative to explicitly balance against that. It also means we don't need to redo our math (maybe) if we just make this source make up the difference between Tall and Wide DFCs.

Legendary Monument
Interesting though. That seems to be an option. If this is to make up for the more DFC potential of wide civs, how does this one favor Tall civs and make up ground? Would they be more likely to produce these?

I'm not too sure how useful this would be - most players don't really have many civilian units. Trade units, but they're not really disposable. Same with workers for the majority of the game. Definitely not for GPs or Settlers. It seems like only players putting up last-ditch defenses would use it.

Something that converts enemy units into yours could be very cool. "Splash" conversion of adjacent enemies, expending the GP?

Recruit
Sure. That's cool. I wonder if it's too intrusive on some UUs that might exist, though.

Good flavor on this one. It feels like a GG-like aura of exp boost would be more useful, but I'm not a huge fan of those.

Ancient Memories
Thing thing is intended as a replacement to the GG +% effect that is flavorful in regards to Mat... maybe there's a promotion we could instead grant to nearby units that is somehow flavorfully related?

This is interesting, though I'm not sure if GPs spawning combat units is a good idea. I could see this being used to "direct" wolves for a one-time attack on a zone that damages the enemies within it, maybe?

Call Wolves
Yeah, a single-time attack seems kind of lame for a GP though, right?

I feel like wolves have to show up *somehow*, right? Just from a flavor perspective.

Maybe they're simply the wolfbrothers T'a'r manifestation?

Please say more about why you don't like unit generation from GPs.

Interesting! This could be really cool. Part of the way theming bonuses works is sort of the exclusivity of the way you get Relics vs the others. On one hand, you'd want this to be on a GP type that also has another GW-generating ability, to prevent there being more independently costed ways of making GWs (though making them not-independently-costed may solve this). But on the other hand, that means the player will pick and choose the GW type they need from that GP based on their theming bonuses, which isn't how theming bonuses should work.

Discover Relic
I'm looking at this now and wondering why I thought this was a good idea. Like, totally steps on the toes ofthe archaeologists and such.

Weird idea - what if, instead, this GP ability changed the nature of a GW? Like, switched its nationality? Or, crazy even, switched it from a GWA to a GWM (equivalent) or some insanity?

Many Roads
Doesn't sound too good - sounds quite nice to me! Seems like a tall/wide balance to me, since it's addressing Gold output.

Right. Ok, good!

These feel like strange abilities for a GP - particularly since they're both very similar to existing UAs. There is clearly a difference - the second is "free copies" not retaining the yield like the Dutch do, but they're very similar for the player in that they both lead to "yeah, I'll trade you my last X" *rubs hands together* "mwahahaha, that wasn't really my last X!". The former is very like the Russian UA with a time limit, except it's trading focused.

Shrewd Negotiation
ok, agreed. too close to some CiV UAs.

the first one feels more like a policy/resolution than a GP ability - given how reusable GP abilities are, stacking that up will be super powerful.

I think it's a similar kind of thing with #3.

#2 is certainly viable, but it's the GMe ability without the Gold, which I think players won't like much.

Ta'veren Influence
right. all good points....

what if it was something like a uber coup or "election shenanigans" or something that intersected with the Eyes and Ears system? A way of hitting diplomacy without literally being about influence.

This is a very interesting one. It's a bit of a mindbender - "the last unit that killed any of yours" is not always easy to determine. You might have lost multiple units in a single turn and the only real way to know which died last is the order you get the notifications (and I'm not 100% sure that's an accurate measure).

Sniffer
Can you think of any other possible way we could include a sniffer-related ability? Or is he simply destined for some weird back-alley flavor elsewhere in the mod?

Haha, I like this one! That is awesome, yes, let's do this.

Anger Dragonsworn
on the list, it should be, then!

speaking of which, is there going to be a "list" that we choose from? Right now, things are a bit crazy....

I was trying to think of one as well, but given how narrow the Horn's scope is (only available to a single player at a time, only visible for part of the game) it has has similar difficulties to the LB-specific abilities I suggested. Revealing the location of the Horn could be a viable ability? But once you've done it once, I wouldn't see most players needing to do it again, making the ability a bit redundant.

Yeah, I think this isn't meant to be.

This makes me think we should disconnect the Ogier-TW-unit-gifts from the on-map Stedding entirely, because we have to cater for this very specific edge case that breaks the whole system when it occurs otherwise. That's an odd piece of information to have to give players, but with the Stedding-driven spawning, they would need to know.

Yes, definitely, whatever we decide, I'd prefer if this wasn't connected to a specific stedding, rather "The Steddings" in general.

So, some thoughts on T'a'r. This isn't an extensive and procedural "Introduction" like I normally do, because 1) I've been doing this for 2 hours, and 2) I can't wrap my brain around t'a'r enough to do so.

OK, so Tel'aran'rhiod seems to be able to be worked in in two ways:

1) Literally - units go into it and do stuff.
2) Abstractly or indirectly - things are flavored with it in mind, and are perhaps mechanically unique, but don't involve actual movement in t'a'r.

I have to confess that at this point I'm tempted to lean towards the second. The literal units-on-a-map-layer thing just seems like a lot of work and a lot of game that won't get seen very often. I find this a problem.

The other thing is that literal use of t'a'r feels very action-game or RTS to me. It's one character doing one thing once. CiV is normally about "units" of thousands of soldiers doing stuff. Of course, we've destroyed that with Aes Sedai and such, but still, entering tel'aran'rhiod to do stuff seems like a kind of weirdly high level of detail. So, somebody spies in T'a'r.... that's a logistical detail. We might as well design a whole system to describe sword combat.

No, we will *not*.

But, then the problem is what to do that's a sufficient indirect use of t'a'r? Here are some things about t'a'r that might be worth considering:

A)People wander around in it. Spying on others
B)People occasionally do battle in it
C) Wolves hang out there
D) People can enter via a Talent or ter'angreal
E) Dreamspikes are a thing, preventing traveling
F) You can track a person's specific Dreams
G) Nightmares are a thing that popped up a few times
H) People can Will T'a'r into various forms/break the laws of physics if they are awesome enough at it.
I) The Heroes of the Wheel/Horn hang out there.
J) Dreamers can tell the future with Dreams, which may not be directly connected to tel'aran'rhiod.

So, some possible uses for that t'a'r that enter my mind (some are not new) that aren't directly related to map layers and stuff

a) a "guard tower" sort of sight-generating beacon , most likely in the form of an improvement (a la a fort). Reflected flavorfully as a in-dream "lookout", probably using a ter'angreal.
b) another offshoot of a Spy/Eye and Ear. A t'a'r spy that has some different features. Or similiarly, a unit (wise one or GP) that instantly does some of the same things as a spy, instantly, via t'a'r.
c) an improvement that generates some sort of yield, either happiness or faith or something, flavored to reflect a Dreamspike or something,
d) traveling-blocking, as previously discussed as Dreamspikes
e) a few more threads or quests could be reworked to deliberately insert t'a'r flavor (like the hawkwing-ripped-from-the-pattern one)
f) Dreamers creating GW of Prophesy
g) a promotion available to channelers that boosts some ability, flavored to describe them going into t'a'r for some advantage. +Sight. +somethingelse.
h) a "sight bomb." Click a point on the map, reveal it.

I'm out of ideas.

As far as the literal map-layer thing, there's a few ways this could go. Again, the main issue to me is that this isn't used by many units and so feels like a big deal for little benefit. However, if it can be made to be not-a-big-deal, this is probably the ideal use of t'a'r, yes?

I suppose I feel like a full map layer that units can travel throughout at will (which t'a'r should be) is what seems overwhelming to me. I'd rather see it re-purposed into something that feels more like a single "mission." In civ a turn is a year or even years, so the trip a wise one goes on over a isngle night seems weird as a turns-spanning quest in civ.

To that end, I wonder if we can turn the "direct" t'a'r abilities into one-turn deals. One turn abilities also make more sense for GP, as well.

a)The "Sight Bomb" described above is one way.
b)a sort of wise one "teleport" is another. Be able to pass through units in movement in ways you normally couldn't. Wouldn't make their movement longer or make them invisible or anything,b ut would let them cross cities, ignore ZoC and other units, etc.
c) a "hide" ability - make yourself vanish for a turn. To heal or something.
d) maybe "hide" combined with some movement. Like, move, stay invisible, come out of it and appear once that turn is done.

What I don't love is the idea of a unit going into t'a'r, moving around t'a'r, encountering other units in t'a'r, doing stuff with them, coming back into t'a'r.... It just feels like another game we're building. Also, it doesn't play nice with the GP single-use-ness.

OK, none of this is particularly good, I know.... this is why we don't yet have a great solution for t'a'r!

 

[Zalminen]

I'll say more on this below, but as far as b) above, I could argue that gifting the borderlanders free units is most definitely getting the way of the Kill-the-Most-Trollocs-Sweepstakes, in that they get an "unfair" advantage.

Well, I mostly meant physically in the way. As in 'I'd love to kill trollocs but the ogier army marching to war is hogging the whole valley'. Which of course isn't that much a problem if the units just appear near the blight instead of marching there.

My original suggestion was actually to gift a few ogier units to each civ, borderlander or not.
Maybe this is something that should be decided after actual playtesting? I.e. start with every civ getting a few and then if the borderlander civs prove to be in too much danger of getting wiped out by the trollocs, we can then give the borderlanders more than the others.

Also, I really can't get past the horrible flavor of it. I don't think, based on what we know of Ogier, they would stay with the civ and fight their random territorial wars. I'd figure the moment you tried this, the ogier would leave (aka disband). alternatively, maybe they wouldn't, but I'd suggest the Stedding (all stedding?) should declare war on that civ in that case, or at least suffer a tremendous influence penalty.

Yeah, I absolutely agree with this. Besides, if the ogier units can only be used to attack shadowspawn without an automatic disband afterwards, this will give every civ more of an incentive to actually go and fight trollocs instead.

I think the truth is I'm finding all the LB-related ones (that don't simply concern alignment) to be problematic. GPs being useful throughout the whole game is part of what makes the system work. If there was incentive to do a "GS Rush" in the Modern era or something, it would sort of break the system.

Agree. I know I'm the kinda player who'd save up all the LB related GPs until the LB and only then use them all. It's great fun when you're the only one doing it but much less so when it becomes a common tactic...

Recruit
Something that converts enemy units into yours could be very cool. "Splash" conversion of adjacent enemies, expending the GP?

I think this one definitely needs to have a Ta'veren related name if we do it! Pull of the Ta'veren?

Discover Relic
Weird idea - what if, instead, this GP ability changed the nature of a GW? Like, switched its nationality? Or, crazy even, switched it from a GWA to a GWM (equivalent) or some insanity?

Yeah, I think that could work.

As for Tel'aran'rhiod... I'm a bit torn about it. On one hand I'd love to see it as a map layer thing as that kind of a system feels like a good match for T'a'r.
On the other hand counterpoint is right that it may be too much for something that is still just a small feature.

Maybe we should just first see how many T'a'r related abilities we seem to be ending up with so it's easier to decide how to deal with them?