While We Wait: Part 2

[Birdjaguar]

Am I mute or something? Somehow, all three of my statements on this subject have been entirely ignored, included the below one. It's fine if you all (here I mean mainly Bird) don't agree, but please, don't simply ignore a third party's statements even if they are quite different from the rest of the opinions being expressed. For your convinience, my last post is quoted below. I was quoting Bird's formula which involved VoDs:

The discussion did evolve away from your thinking. In my case, though, the ideas have not been lost. The biggest drawback for me of the very simple eco center idea is that it separates world exploration from economic growth.

There is no way for this game to represent economic reality. All it can do is to try to encourage players to think about broad policies about how to get more EP within the rules. Certainly i could take charge of eco centers and have a way of having them show up in major trading areas. I have to think and not the players. Or I can just let players pay to have a new one whwn and where they want, with or without some limitations. Neither is any good at bring realism or accuracy to the game. They just keep it simple.

My goal is to try and add rich detail to the way players have to think about what they do. And I can (tend to?) make things overly complicated. I want a game that is fun, forces players to think in 16th Century terms and is not too cumbersome. I try to hide all the complicated formulas and realtionships so players can ignore them and concentrate on the basic relationships between things: do these things to get more EP; do these to fight wars, wars will wreck an economy, etc. Some palyers like Abaddon and Perfectionist will want to get into the bowls of the stats to see how it all actually works and figure out exactly what the effect of a TP in Sumatra will change things. I will not stand in their way.

So, Eco centers alone are too simple for me. But in my latest iteration of all this I may have TCs, ECs and TPs. TCs would be the places through which goods move and ECs would be places that either produce or consume traded goods. I am still trying to figure things out and testing different ways of calculating stats.

 

[LittleBoots]

I was toying with the idea of a War of the Roses NES, with France and Ireland Permanent NPC and players as Noble Houses/Factions within noble houses. Hadn't given it much thought, but I think economic stats could be fairly simple as it would be rather heavily based around the war going on, not on how many sheep you have. Diplomacy and treacherous noble houses would naturally factor into the game, and yes this was inspired by the Avalon Hill game Kingmaker, although I haven't played it a long time.

This wouldn't start up for at least a month or two, as I'll have to find a map of Britain that is suitable, research the important noble houses (Percy, Roos, Scrope, Beaufort, etc) and where they had lands at the start of the Wars. I'm also not committing strongly to doing it, I'm mainly throwing it out there to see who would be interested if I did.

 

[shortguy]

I think that would be a great idea. I once pondered something similar, an NES where the players were all vassals involved in some sort of macro-conflict (the Hundred Years' War or somesuch), but I never finished fleshing it out fully. As I recall it helped me pass the time at Shoney's, so it wasn't a complete waste.

 

[a_propagandist]

Could we not use this idea of leaders as players and large states as NPC in an NES with Roman Republic (with SPQR), Gallic warlords, Germanic lords, Pic tribes leaders, Persian generals and include players that take roles that are outside the scope of the nation (like North African pirate commodores who do not rule states)and etc?

 

[Erik Mesoy]

As per BananaLee's thread, I would like to note that I have a US passport, and can thus insult the intelligence of "Americans" in general. I also have a Norwegian passport.

 

[Kal'thzar]

As per BananaLee's thread, I would like to note that I have a US passport, and can thus insult the intelligence of "Americans" in general. I also have a Norwegian passport.

On that note; I'm british, so arrogant enough to do it anyway.


Anyway; I'm teaching myself some php/mysql. So i was wondering If Could run an excersice of handling NESing information. (stats are after all tables, first page is a database). Who knows it might have some practical purpose.

Bascailly I Would want to automate as much as possible of the stats, giving the mod ("admin") the ability to go in and alter tables at will for those special occasions where odd things happen.

But at the moment I'm just wanting people to throw some ideas out on what I could be able to do with it with regards to NESing.

 

[Disenfrancised]

Anyway; I'm teaching myself some php/mysql. So i was wondering If Could run an excersice of handling NESing information. (stats are after all tables, first page is a database). Who knows it might have some practical purpose.

Bascailly I Would want to automate as much as possible of the stats, giving the mod ("admin") the ability to go in and alter tables at will for those special occasions where odd things happen.

But at the moment I'm just wanting people to throw some ideas out on what I could be able to do with it with regards to NESing.

Well NES stats (for any one NES) have hardly complex enough relations to be worth putting into MySQL, just have a properly marked up flatfile and edit/push it out with a nice little text editor like java, perl or python . For example:

<year date="1889" turn="4>

 <nation>
  <name>Britain</name>
  <size>
   <population allowed="small,medium,large" growthrate="medium">medium</population>
   <area allowed="1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10">4</area>
  </size>
 </nation>

</year>

Thus having hidden attributes and constrained values (probably better to be put in a style sheet though), and have everything a) easier to store and diseminate and b) human parsible.

 

[Kal'thzar]

Thats not the point. I'm merely looking for an excercise in Php/mysql.

I'm doing a much more complex project [compared to NESing] at the moment. Which is basically an intranet system for an oil company, with a bunch of queries and other things working on it.

Its a bit dry however. The Nesing thing gives me more freedom to play around as the above project is simply a conversion exercise (Asp -> php).

 

[Nylan]

On a totally unrelated note, I'm quite pleased with the way PureNES is working out thusfar. The only drawback is we need a few more major powers in EoG, but the world seems to flow well enough without them, and the cradle is moving right along. Good stories too

 

[alex994]

Says a pirate. I think this means that Symphony D. is preparing to do something important and wants to take our eyes off it. He might be trying to conquer the New World with simultaneous attacks on all the colonies there; but possibly he wants to conquer Spain, or perhaps the British Isles.

That said, this is no reason to take our eyes off alex994, who is probably in a secret agreement with the pirates in order to undermine Portugal.

Taking this out of Birdnes; how does everyone feel about what's going on in the world with the various evil conspiracies?

Das, I bet your plans are just as evil as symph's and much worse than mine

 

[das]

Nah. Well, I suppose they could be considered pretty evil, but more in the bluntly-destructive way than in the sinisterly-conspiratory way. Its what the Radziwills do best.

Speaking of Radziwills, here's a picture of my evil warlord that I never quite figured out where to use:

Now imagine a longer beard and more blood.

 

[fantasmo]

Taking this out of Birdnes; how does everyone feel about what's going on in the world with the various evil conspiracies?

Das, I bet your plans are just as evil as symph's and much worse than mine

I, for one, am paranoid and exceedingly frightened, just like always.

Das gives me the heebie-jeebies.

 

[~Darkening~]

Taking this out of Birdnes; how does everyone feel about what's going on in the world with the various evil conspiracies?

Das, I bet your plans are just as evil as symph's and much worse than mine

das's plans are the hardest to figure out . They're not unifying Germany under an evil organization, they're not unifying Italy under a religious power, they're not taking a nice slice of Germany for himself, they're not (in general) killing people . Through he may get some satisfaction from the general killing, I don't think das cares about the protestants. A means to the ends, at the most.

(*cough*Bavariaisn'tsurprisinganyoneeither!*cough*)

 

[das]

they're not taking a nice slice of Germany for himself, they're not (in general) killing people .

A bit presumptious, aren't we? What makes you assume that simple good old human greed and bloodthirst, and the fully natural and healthy desire to drown Europe in blood and choke it with smoke of cities turned funeral pyres, are somehow beyond me?

Through he may get some satisfaction from the general killing, I don't think das cares about the protestants. A means to the ends, at the most.

It's more like they got in the way, but yes, this isn't simply about religion. Although it is about religion as well, as all of the direst threats to Poland's long-term wellbeing are anything but Catholic, while our natural allies tend to be Catholics. The logic is rather obvious.

Though really, all those considerations are secondary; primarily I'm simply roleplaying a very warlike nation with leaders that feel both threatened and insulted by the Reformation (as well as certain nations associated with it that made their ambitions all too clear previously) and have decided to cut the Gordion knot with a steppe yatagan. All I'm really doing here is directing the destructive potential of the szlachta, the cossacks and suchlike at external targets.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Given what has gone on in the update due tonight, I think the players have created some pretty interesting opportunities for their nations. I have ceased trying to predict the rise and fall of empires. On the religious front, the BirdNES Europe of 1560 is not too far off from that of OLT in regards to the extent of the Reformation.

Politically, though, we are quite off track; our hindsight has enabled players to "speed up history". In OTL the changes from 1500 to 1560 were far less pronounced than in the Game.

Having active players in Asia should make that area more volatile and interesting.

 

[das]

I strongly disagree. Pesky Aztecs and their ilk are still around, and the destruction of two entire civilisations strikes me as a very major development. Likewise, the Ottoman Empire has failed to unite most of the Middle East,andthe Mughals were stopped in India. People didn't as much speed up history as derail it, and in some cases historical progress was seriously set back (although, ofcourse, it is amptly compensated by the bloody Khmers).

 

[silver 2039]

Yes a pity we'll never have the Taj Mahal...I'll see if I can't build some large grandoise structure to make up for it....

 

[alex994]

I strongly disagree. Pesky Aztecs and their ilk are still around, and the destruction of two entire civilisations strikes me as a very major development. Likewise, the Ottoman Empire has failed to unite most of the Middle East,andthe Mughals were stopped in India. People didn't as much speed up history as derail it, and in some cases historical progress was seriously set back (although, ofcourse, it is amptly compensated by the bloody Khmers).

Wha what? Why must you keep on mentioning my nation?!?!?!?! I have a bad feeling about Asia in general I must say; I've seriously given thought to a Splendid Isolation...

Though I don't understand how we compensated the various setbacks of historical progress...

 

[Birdjaguar]

Politically, though, we are quite off track; our hindsight has enabled players to "speed up history". In OTL the changes from 1500 to 1560 were far less pronounced than in the Game.

I strongly disagree. Pesky Aztecs and their ilk are still around, and the destruction of two entire civilisations strikes me as a very major development. Likewise, the Ottoman Empire has failed to unite most of the Middle East,andthe Mughals were stopped in India. People didn't as much speed up history as derail it, and in some cases historical progress was seriously set back (although, ofcourse, it is amptly compensated by the bloody Khmers).

I'm not sure where we disagree and I'm not sure which two civs you see as destroyed. Some have never flowered as they did in reality (mughals and ottomans), but they are not out of the picture yet. Nosw the destruction of Poland was a serious blow, but I'm sure that civilization will recover.

I cannot imagine that Germany will remain a stew of tiny states for much longer and Europe will surely orgainize itself sooner. New wild cards seem to make appearances regularly to shake up the game as you all will see tonight. It is all quite interesting.

BTW, the biggest writing piece of the American portion of the update (Calusa and the Aztecs) is done except for peripheral details. I am confident that I will post the update and map tonight.

 

[Symphony D.]

I'm not sure where we disagree and I'm not sure which two civs you see as destroyed.

Aztecs and Inca, likely...