[BTS] Warhammer FB Mini-Mods

[kairob]

I like the Quarters system because it did 3 good things;
1) Added Flavour and is more emmersive as it makes more sence for the large scale of cities. (why the f**k would a single herbalist make any difference in a city of a million souls?)
2)Because large sizes are required for better buildings it acts as an incentive to acquire resources and good city spots.
3)It allows early and effective specialization of cities.

Now to counter the argument for keeping it simple then why not just turn Civ into a game of chess, with 16 pieces on each side? That would be simple? The reason is because complex things are exciting as long as they are understandable and given a few games on the new building system it is very understandable.

 

[Humakty]

1) I guess we can argue for hours about whether or not a building represents one building (and a unit : division, regiment, bataillon ?) or a complex infrastructure of such buildings.
2) I saw countless posts about people who keep razing the cities they take over, because the spot doesn't fit them. So I bet the incentive is high enougth already. Resources are already good reasons to declare war, no need to increase resource competition either.
3) I do specialize my cities anyway, but i'm rather of the warmongering type of gamer. Builders could get frustrated of those limitations.

Well, to counter your argument, I'd say that getting things complicated doesn't mean it'll be better. I was never able to play Go properly, and it bores me. Do you really think the mod will be better if we keep adding stuff to it ? In any number ? Do you know there are some steps between chess and an indigest mess of stuff ?

Oh, and will the AI know how to use it properly ?

 

[Masada]

As the "progenitor" of the whole quarters idea, I stand by the fact that it's far and above simpler than the old FFH-Warhammer system it was to replace, that was a land of a anachronistic concepts and half hashed out designs with the remains of what must have been two or three attempts at rationalization. The old system was an abomination, and the antithesis of a war mod, or for that matter any rational mod. It was ugly, inelegant, and confusing, so I contrived to create a far simpler system. I think I've succeed, it's quite simple and suits the gameplay we are after.

1. Does it matter? it's not not a builder mod, and the scale of the buildings is silly, not to mention there is no building curve. They also aid specialization which is a good thing, beyond the prosaic changes that Vanilla has.
2. Incorrect. People do, do that, but they almost never do it to big cities, only small undeveloped ones, and lets face it it's not a common thing in Warhammer to burn down a city other than Chaos.
3. It's not a builder mod, but to get the highest tiers takes some serious patience, and some skill.

Summary: It's a simple system, your building a mountain out of a mole hill. And yes the AI gets it, it's not all that hard to get.

General Note.

I'm more or less standing back, since everything seems to be going in the direction I set the ball to roll towards. Even if it deviates here and there the net result is still similar to what I want. It's also better for the mod if I'm not the "controlling mind" for everything, the group efforts have produced specialization in the necessary categories which needed to be fleshed out, orcs, dwarves, chaos etc. So good job and keep at it.

 

[Ahriman]

Does it matter? it's not not a builder mod,

We've had this out before - and the consensus was against you.
You don't want to play builder strategies. Fine. Other people do; we're not going to deliberately foreclose them from enjoying the mod.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

and i once again point out the fact that im a builder too . im still fairly partial to districts but im not bothered whether we include them as an optional minimod at some point or not. if enoigh people request it ill do it but untill then, meh.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

Say I wonder what you do in RL Ahriman?
Me, PL and Orlanth all seem to be biochemists.
I forget what Deon did. Masada never told IIRC.

Maybe mindset required for job/study influences our playstyle.

 

[Ahriman]

I'm an economist. Specifically, a micro-economic theorist.
I design models for a living; and the single most important aspect of model design is to keep things simple, and to make judgement calls about what aspects of the real world are worth including in your model. And also, to think about any new potential feature and what would be the implications of including it - what would be the impact, and what unintentional consequences might it have.

Most of the time you have to say no, in order to keep the model tractable.

I think game design is mostly the same. The good games are ones that manage to keep things fairly simple. The bad ones often spiral out of control into unnecessary features and detail (MOO3 being the classic example).

So, absolutely mindset matters. But read through the tech tree and unit design threads to see the discussion with Masada - it got a little ugly, unfortunately.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

moneys and systems. I suspected so.

A biologist's mindset is more experimental: think about possible mechanisms and systems, then extrapolate what a model implies in order to test for it's viability.

MOO3 sucked. for more reasons than badly balanced features.

 

[Ahriman]

Actually, nothing really to do with money....
Assuming economists deal with money is like assuming that engineers build bridges
Most of my fields in economics have nothing to do with the economy; its just the implications of a particular set of behavioral assumptions about human activity (we assume that people have preferences, and that they make decisions to give them more preferred outcomes - they try to maximize a payoff that represents their preferences).

think about possible mechanisms and systems, then extrapolate what a model implies in order to test for it's viability

Its a similar approach, but in economics you really can't run experiments or test things. So, you have to use mathematical logic to see what the implications of something will be, and exclude features that you think won't work without going through the hassle of trying to include them or test them.
Which saves a lot of time! Its really useful when you either can't run experiments, or when you have limited resources (as we do) and don't have the time to create and test every possible option.

Yeah, M003 sucked, but IMO the main reason was because it tried to become an empire simulator, with way too many variables and features, to the point that a) the AI was broken and b) the player couldn't tell what the effects of changing a particular variable were.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

people are rarely rational in their choices though.

One hypothesis of mine is that this is often caused by investment bias.
(eg if one invests time, money or trust into something, it will have higher value. even if it is just an idea, and completely untrue, having invested in it people will cling to it and defend it. Some longer than others, depending on character.)

Just plain idiocy is another common reason for irrationality, but that would be non-PC to write.

 

[Ahriman]

Actually, most of the time people are pretty rational, given their preferences. But there are many ways in which people's decisions deviate from a strict rationality setup. And we tend to notice these more often than we notice rationality, because we aren't surprised by rational actions.

What you talk about is very close to a well-known phenomenon known as the sunk cost fallacy; a common human behavior is a tendency to throw good money after bad, and an inability to cut your losses. If I have invested X into some project (and that X is completely irrecoverable), my decisions at a point on time on whether to continue that project *should* be based only on the remaining costs and benefits from continuing the project - X is "sunk", and should be irrelevant to my decision making.
But people don't act that way.

"Idiocy" can be thought of as something having high information processing costs (for a particular individual). So it could well be rational for someone to do something straightforward, if the psychic costs of calculating a better plan are too high to that person relative to the benefits from doing so.

However, a rationality assumption is still:
a) often reasonably valid for decisions involving large groups of people (though sometimes there are systematic biases)
b) usually right, in most circumstances of economic decision making.
c) better than any other description
And many "critiques" of rationality are really just critiques of mischaracterised preferences. Loss aversion (people suffer more from losses than they do from foregone gains - you hurt more from losing $5 than you do from losing the opportunity to gain $5) need not be irrational, it can just be a non-standard set of preferences.

So, rationality is still a very useful ground-rule for a social science of behavior. And any "deviations" from this should be considered relative to the strict rationality baseline.

If you want to get into detailed discussions about rationality assumptions and their value in economics, we can do that... but we should probably take it elsewhere.

 

[Arexack_heretic]

you're probably right. I don't know the theory or concepts of behaviour / psychology at all.

How is that loss aversion experiment set up?
does one lose 5$ from future revenue (which is equal to lost property) or is it a the possibility of a 5$ bonus?

losing a bonus weighs less I agree.
And someone taking from me something I got for free would also make me more annoyed than not recieving a potential free gift.
Something about fair play? case 1 = theft, case 2 = tough luck. both cases have the same start and end result so should weigh equal, but hanging on to property is a valuable survival trait. This is overridden by sharing in case 2 I guess "I don't really need it, so you can keep it."

Does that make me irrational? just human I suppose.

It is interesting, but your right: it is waaay off-topic.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

i laughed when i heard Ahriman was an economist, cause masada is also an economist student at uni, and both ahriaman and masada seem to be the guys that help to keep us on track of the big picture, whereas us biologists and chemists do a lot of theorising and exerimentation and like to get distracted easily by concepts

 

[Masada]

I do lots of theorizing just on various different things. I'm also moving into other slightly greener pastures... double (possible triple) degree's ftw, electives waived woho! I would also note that AH, PL, Orlanth that there is actually biologist-economist workings that deal with natural selection and "desirable" characteristics. A book which wouldn't require either degree to understand but which still covers some of the ideas well is "A Farewell to Alms".

I will reiterate my central point this is not a builder mod, it never really has been, it's not FFH in that we can invent vast stores of canon, we are limited by pre-existing canon in Warhammer. Which is not a builders idea of fun, sure you can build, but when we have an absurd amount of stuff, which isn't just non-canon it's silly to boot we should probably look at other alternatives.

I disagree that the consensus was against me, one of the two against me was not a warhammer player and showed ignorance on a myriad of topics, the other didn't bother to tender any arguments beyond this should have room for builders. Which I agreed with. It does have room for builders, but notice the absurd amount of building in this mod, also not that our building take far and above more time than Vanilla BTS to build, and longer than FFH to build in many cases.

It's a unique system, and one which suits the streamlined tech tree that is in the works. I think in general I've been pretty good at ironing out problems before they have even been made, and I've been fairly constant in coming up with decent mechanics and ideas which have been worked into the mod well. Rhyes, a slim downed tech tree, unit reform [the current system without changes owes a fair bit to me, rue it!], general background and civilization shaping.

And I'll defend the fact that when it was designed, the concept was far and above superior to what it was meant to knock off, it only got good reviews when it was in PL's mini-mod, it bought lurkers out of the woodwork to compliment the idea. I personally still think its far and above more suited to the mod, and a better concept all around, which is easier to work with but if you wish to disagree please disagree in a logical and coherent fashion. But skip the FFH me-to-ism please.

 

[kairob]

So does that make 3 economists in the team? wow thats quite a few...

Also the name of the mod is WARhammer not BUILDhammer. That isn't to say that building shouldn't be fun and rewarding, its just not what were here for.

 

[Masada]

I'm in the habit of avoiding the word "economist" I honestly prefer "skeptical empiricist" now, it stops the annoying "What do you think I should do the stock market" questions. Besides soon enough I can claim legitimately to be other things as well

 

[frenzyslave]

Sounds like a bunch of economists easing their fustrations in WHFB to me. Cant handle the economy? Lay the boot into some Chaos. Self explanatory.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

well its a nicely balanced team then 3 Great merchants and 3 Great Sages now we just need some great bards, engineers and maybe a couple of Clerics and were all set lol

 

[Humakty]

Getting back on the thread theme : districts : if you guys think this change is really an unavoidable game feature and that it really change the way the game is played in a pleasant manner, then lets go for it, but if it is not, we should avoid it and concentrate on important stuff.( ie : faction design, chaos counter, correcting the various python exceptions...)

 

[Ahriman]

but if it is not, we should avoid it and concentrate on important stuff.( ie : faction design, chaos counter, correcting the various python exceptions...)

QFT. We can revisit building design at a much, much later date should we choose to do so.