General Settings

Discussion on game mechanics, balancing etc.
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Trilarion
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General Settings

Post by Trilarion »

Here now an overview about some general settings. Of course all such settings can be edited in the editor. It's just what we want to have in general.

1. Number of turns: 4 per year (seasons), earlist 1814, latest 1914 (400 turns) but continues to run if the player wants it

2. Victory conditions:
  • Militaric victory: 2/3 of provinces owned
  • Diplomatic victory: 2/3 of votes in governor council (every 10 years), initially governors are neutral, at least three councils before victory possible
  • Cultural victory: First to achieve a certain number of cultural points
Diplomatic and cultural victory can be turned off.

3. Number of Nations:

No artificial differentiation into minor and major powers. Minor powers are just less developed, act defensively and usually do not act aggresively. Maximal up to 10 major powers and up to 20 minor powers.

See Basic Scenario for more information about the nations contained there.

4. Map

No wrapping as in the original. Nation consists of 4-30 provinces, province of a couple of tiles as in the original.

4. Terrain:

8 Types: Desert, Plain, Swamp, Jungle, Hills, Mountains, Tundra, Sea

Different costs for rail roads, resources only appear at specific terrains.

5. Resources

Type (allowed terrain): Apples (Plain), Wheat (Plain), Wood/Scrub Forest (Plain), Oil (Swamp, Desert, Jungle), Iron/coal (hills, mountains), Fish (Sea), Buffalos/Horses (Plain), Cotton (Plain), Cotton (Plain), Sheep (Hills)
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Trilarion
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Changes to the original

Post by Trilarion »

Cultural victory
I would like to add a cultural victory condition to reward defensive game play for players who want to maximize infrastructure but are mostly peaceful. This victory condition could clash with diplomatic victory. With diplomatic victory I am not completely satisfied. After which criteria do governors go? Diplomatic victory could be something like a shortcut for militaric victory (in case it's too boring to conquer the rest of the world). Cultural victory should be the opposite of military victory.

Tundra and Jungle as terrain
In order to allow more versatile scenarios (region-wise) we should add tundra and jungle and later possibly more.

No difference between minor and major power
This might make development a bit easier since we do not have to deal with two categories but foremost it changes the specific role of minor nations. In the original they are canon fodder and product sink (just consume everything you produce). This is a bit too much artificial and I hope we can circumvent it.

No gold or gem resources
They were like a bit of lottery element. When you had them they were a big boost, when not a big drawback. I think they are only loosely attached to the rest of the game and can be cut without much damage. Simplifies the game.
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Trilarion
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Post by Trilarion »

Please discuss this and post your opinion or your ideas.
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Re: General Settings

Post by Veneteaou »

Cultural victory: I'm not really sure how this differs from a diplomatic victory with the Council of governors. Perhaps we use the Council of Governors as a cultural/internal victory, and create a new diplomatic treaty above and beyond the standard alliance to be a diplomatic victory?

Tundra/Jungle: We have tundra, although I agree that it should probably be expanded upon some as a group of tiles. As for Jungle, I agree entirely that we should at least have the assets prepared even if we aren't using them initially. We should also consider if there are other types of terrain we could be including.

Minor/Major differences: I made this suggestion for the New Imperialism project. I think it's a good idea in general, but when we discussed the mechanics of such a change we realized that it makes the game very much different from Imperialism. It would require that major nations also have a need for finished goods, that we have to build an economic system to manage finished goods and capital on the global scale, and anything else I'm forgetting. It would likely mean we need population management to make use of finished goods, which is more work. Lastly, the whole underlying diplomatic situation that makes Imperialism work (both the game and the geopolitical concept) is that one nation comes to the table with an advantage over the other.

In my opinion, I would rather see scenarios built with imbalances between major powers (like the Imp1 scenarios) than see minor nations modeled more accurately. It's far too much work for us to model them when it won't add anything to gameplay aside from a bunch of nations that lack the industry to fight wars or do much of anything except fill the game with more places to conquer.

Gold/Gems: These were somewhat important in Imp1 because of how much more likely minor nations were to have them. Gold and gems would guarantee money coming in on every turn, and could be accounted for on the ledgers. They were incredibly valuable, which worked to separate the value of individual provinces. It was also possible to maintain a much larger army with the money that came in each turn.
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Post by Trilarion »

Victory conditions: So far the governors council is just a shortcut to world domination as long as you own at least 1/3 of the world because it means that never someone else will have a 2/3 majority while you do not have to conquer all 2/3 of the world in order to win the council. It's mostly for those who have 1/2 of the world and do not want to do the rest. The idea of having another victory condition is to reward peaceful, defensive, strongly industrialized and good diplomatic gameplay (kind of everything except military). I am not sure if it should be a diplomatic or a cultural victory.

Minor Nations: I feel this would call for it's own thread. So I would open one.

Gold/Gems: An alternative to soften the lottery effect of finding gold/gems would be to reduce the profit per deposit, but increase the number of deposits.
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Re: Victory Conditions

Post by Xylander »

Victory Conditions: I think world conquest should only be a special playing style but nothing relevant to winning the game. Having more provinces doesn't bring you closer to winning the game - at least not always. You need a decent workforce to build up a strong economy and a decent army to prevent others from taking your riches by force. Relatively small nations might dominate the world market and might be accounted as a dominant power in the world! Imperialism's victory condition reflected that somewhat properly (my opinion). A province governor could vote for nation x regardless whether he has a formal alliance and better relations with nation y! In real world you don't have to like USA. In fact you can hate it. You'd have to admit that it's the world's leading super power, though, wouldn't you? I'd like to have this style in our game, too.
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Re: Gold/Gems

Post by Xylander »

Trilarion wrote:Gold/Gems: An alternative to soften the lottery effect of finding gold/gems would be to reduce the profit per deposit, but increase the number of deposits.
You could give every player some extra income and leave gold/gems away. That's the same as distributing them equally over the world. I think the very special about precious metals and stones is that they are very rare in the world. There should be only 5-10 locations (depending on world map size) where you can find them. It will create very valueable provinces and controlling them must be an advantage!

I see no problem in the fact that a player controlling a majority of the worlds gold/gem production will win the game, although it should be hard doing so. There has been a run for Africa during the industrialization era - for a good reason! Failing in aquiring a decent share of the world's most valuable resources may mean being a super power no more!
Don't repeat yourself. (DRY)
Keep it simple, stupid. (KISS)
You ain't gonna need it. (YAGNI)
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Trilarion
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Re: Victory Conditions

Post by Trilarion »

Xylander wrote:...I'd like to have this style in our game, too.
Me yes and no. Surely we could define the winner of the game to be the most powerful (whatever this means) nations with a certain edge in power over all others. Problem is then that this isn't very transparent unless we define some hard criteria. I could easily imagine players to get annoyed when the computer (province governors) declare another nation to be the winner and you are convinced that you would have dominated in the end. I see no alternative to world conquest as one big winning condition. I saw the council always only as a shortcut to world domination. As a compromise I would include world council but make it optional on scenario settings level.

I still wonder what the true cultural/diplomatic victory should be?

Gold/Gems: I guess it is a matter of balances for me. I don't like games much that rely heavily on luck or lead to quite imbalanced situations. Especially the replay value is lowered for me. But since one can easily adjust the importance of gems/gold by adjusting the profit from each deposit I'm not against them. It's true one could use them to make less attractive regions more attractive. That would be a plus.

Having more location would distribute them more evenly, not completely equal but would resemble an additional income. You're right. If gems/gold are part of the game they must be rare.
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Re: II. General Settings

Post by Trilarion »

I thought a bit more about victory conditions. Here are my thoughts:

- Military victory Conquer/own at least 60% of the provinces. With that much, you are probably invincible. This is a very strong indicator that noone else will be able to withstand you.

- Diplomatic victory Owning less than 60% of the provinces but being so advanced and powerful that according to some objective criteria people just think that you are the one. It's the governors council but not based on provinces but on general rankings like your industrial output, your miltiary strength, your technological advance, the size of your empire and your diplomatic standing (being peaceful helps there). From the statistics which are available every turn it should be possible more or less to estimate whether during the next convention/council you'll be the winner.

How would I calculate such a thing:
- There should be weights for each part (diplomatic standing 30%, military standing 20%, territory 20%, industrial capacity 20%, tech advances 10%)
- There should be absolute threshold before you even qualify. Maybe start the first council only after such a threshold is reached.
- Otherwise it should be a relative measure, so close competitors will prevent a diplomatic victory (then you have to use violence)

So war is not always necessary but might be required. Or do we want another victory which is completely peaceful and just requires the achievement of a certain state with non-war means?

And another thought: What if all players in a game do not want to win or fail to meet the victory conditions for some other reason? Then there should be a ranking (maybe again diplomatic victory) which counts at the end of the time. I think that might be the right way to go.
visitor

Re: II. General Settings

Post by visitor »

Some thoughts.

Instead of winning the game, how about we just count the score? There could be different score board for, military dominance and diplomatic / cultural power. For military score you gain one point every turn for every province you control. On diplomatic / cultural score you gain one point for every province (owned or foreign) that actually likes you and is happy.

I know that this is just a game, but lets look at the real world. Has there ever been military victory or cultural victory that made it game over for everyone else? No. Wars can be won, but the situations change. No empire has lasted forever. USA is going down and China might be the next super power.

Cultural victory. What is it supposed to be? Pop music and Hollywood movies? On the other side we have more traditional things like nationalism and religions. Could you spread your culture little bit every time you sell your stuff to other powers? And that would make them like you more and you would score more diplomacy/culture points. War would make you disliked. Unless you liberate people that like your culture.

Military victory. Has it ever happened in real life? Germany tried it and took almost the whole Europe, but was pushed back very soon. Nobody has ever made this. I think the game should be more about surviving and scoring the points. It adds replay value as you can try to gain better score.

In Tropico (banana republic simulation game) one way of gaining score was, how much money you stashed on your secret bank account :) I would like to see that also as option how to play the game.

So my suggestion is: at least 3 different score boards. (DOMINANCE, DIPLOMACY/CULTURE, FAMILY STASH) It would also be nice that it saved more info in it than just the name and score.
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