The Gaming Den

Some notes towards a project that I do eventually want to see done, but with absolutely zero timeframe currently in place.

Basically, I'm thinking of a very fiddly version of 4X with a very different technology advancement system, more fiddly bits to control in your society, and a lot of fiddly bits you cannot directly control...at first. The idea is that you are Supreme Leader, but that being Supreme Leader can mean very different things in different societies, from being a powerless puppet to being a Communist-style dictator ordering the Great Wall of China dismantled and rebuilt on a whim. The working title for the other significant individuals within your side is Actors - and these can be everybody from local chieftans, head priests, etc. to genius-level inventors and, later on, merchant barons, industrialists, billionaires, etc.

Ideally I'd like to marry a Crusader Kings II-esque dynasty system in place instead of having the generic Civilization-style immortal High Chieftan-for-Life, but I'm still working out the details in my head.

Opening Thoughts: Technology
There are three basic goals of technology. One, I would very much like to open up the tech tree to alternate and variant technological paths. Two, I would very much like for technological development to be tied into the social infrastructure of your side - which means that your control of technological development depends in part on your actions as Supreme Leader, and your level of technological advancement depends on how much influence you have against other individuals of power in your society.

You start out your civilization with X Tech Points worth of technologies - everything from Fire to Writing. Your sum total of technologies is your techbase, and determines the overall technological level of your civilization.

As your civilization grows turn by turn you earn more points which are invested in your technologies based on what your civilization does - commission a big building project, and more points are going to go into Masonry or Brick Making than Wine Making, for example. As your techbase advances, you the Supreme Ruler get more control over how Tech Points are invested.

Every turn, you have a chance to get new advancements in your technologies - for Horsemanship for example, you might develop Stirrups or Saber. Sometimes an advancement will unlock/unveil a new technology. Partially this is based on how many points invested in that tech (the more you work to improve a tech, the more likely an advancement is), and partially this is based on how educated your populace is (a more educated population is more likely to generate advances).

The spread and advancement of technologies is something you as Supreme Leader have limited control over (particularly in the beginning of the game) - it depends in part on your specific powers and influence, and the education and influence of the other Actors.

A big thing is that there are no real prerequisites for technological development - in researching Writing, for example, you might skip heiroglyphs entirely and go straight to alphabet, or you might retain heiroglyphic scripts for the next 3,000 years (see: China). Normally, you would need steelworking to forge, say, a cavalry saber - but in this muckabout, you don't! So if it's 1400 B.C. and you've discovered Horsemanship (Cavalry, Saber) and Bronzeworking, you've got bronze sabers on your cavalry. Not the best weapons, but not bad when the other guy is still mucking about with flint-knapped javelin-throwers...

And, not all of the technologies/advancements you discover are necessarily positive. Lead Piping and Recreational Tobacco are going to have a mix of positive and negative effects for example.

Ancient History wrote:And, not all of the technologies/advancements you discover are necessarily positive. Lead Piping and Recreational Tobacco are going to have a mix of positive and negative effects for example.

This is an interesting thing. I'm not much of a 4x connoisseur, but the little I've played of the genre always seemed to have tech research always be a monotonically increasing positive when in reality...well, you could argue that's still true, but things are a little more nuanced.

Opening Thoughts: Political Interface
Most 4X games have a relatively autocratic interface. Yes, individual cities have their own default settings and in some of the Civilization games you can set governors and so forth, and some people take great pleasure in micromanaging production and the movement of each individual unit. This is very good for playing the immortal President-for-Life who doesn't need to delegate anything because they are effectively omniscient within their dominion, but it's not terribly realistic. So what I have in mind is something a bit more complicated and interesting.

For starters, you may start out as High Chief or Chief-of-Chief, but you have a limited number of courses of actions available to you, and these powers, rights, and privileges (which may be roughly divided into the categories religious, military, legal, personal, and political) are determined both by the structure of your society and the relevant cultural developments, as determined by related technologies.

So instead of setting a lot of taxes and building troops directly, you either Take an Action or Issue an Order. Taking an Action involves the things you can do personally - you can, for example, take command of those troops that are personally loyal to you, or go kill someone in a duel and marry his wife, or perhaps excommunicate someone, depending on the powers inherent in your person. Issuing an Order involves telling other people what to do, and is generally a lot broader and may involve tricky bits like Loyalty and Resistance ratings (if it would reduce the individual's personal power or violate their principles), which can be modified by negotiation or consideration. Initial options for orders are probably going to be relatively few, while later in the game they can get quite complicated and you might have dozens of options available to you.

So, for example, you might start out with the Tribe and/or Clan technology, and your default society starting out will be a culturally distinct tribe (with a tribal chieftan) made up of separate clans (each with a separate clan leader). You may combine in you position the powers of the chieftan and clan leader, and thus you have the ability to command your clan's resources personally (Take and Action), and the ability to command your tribe's resources by ordering the other clan leaders about (Issue an Order) - with the caveat that each of the clan leaders has a given inherent Loyalty/Resistance with regards to you, and their own goals and limits. So, for example, you may need the help of the Bear Clan to go to war against a neighboring tribe, but the Bear clan leader is reluctant to commit his troops because he really wants your position for himself, so you can't go to war yet. Now the Tribe technology might then pop up the War Chief advancement, and you gain a new option - you can Issue an Order for the Bear clan leader to gather his troops for the war, and to moderate his decision you can appoint him War Chief. This gives him more influence in some respects, but also lowers his Resistance to accepting your order.

So, politics would be complicated, taking into account the social structures of your Side, and the Actors who occupt positions of influence on your Side, and to a degree how you manage to accumulate and hold onto various powers, rights, and privileges. So ideally you really could have something like the Empire in Warhammer Fantasy, where you have old tribal loyalties and a council of Elector Counts who pick one of their number to be Emperor, and when the Emperor wants to go to war he makes the call to arms and gathers those troops and warriors that are personally loyal to him, and goes to war with whomever answers the call...and maybe has to deal with those who do not answer said call.

On the technology side of politics, social technologies (Tribe, Clan, Democracy, etc.) develops in part based on what your civilization does; warring will tend to develop very military-based technologies like Fuedalism or Gift Economy, for example. In the right set of circumstances a particularly effective leader may be able to establish a Code of Laws, which may form the basis of the legal system to influence a civilization for centuries to come.

Random technologies is nothing new, MoO did it ages ago. However the idea that the direction of technology would also depend on your influence over your society is very interesting and provides a good incentive to use the system. The aim here is to make sure that the system itself is fun and does not fall into repetition.

Opening Thoughts: Economics
Running a pre-economic society is kind of difficult to even envisage, but let's assume that what we think of as economics doesn't really come into play until somebody manages the Barter technology. But the big thing I want to come away from is the simplification gold == money. I mean, I get it's a useful simplification, but I like a fiddly society.

So, as with politics, your economic options and institutions are largely driven by the technologies your civ discovers, and centers around currency, the total wealth of your civilization, and economic disparity. Economic actions are a subset of political actions and orders, so a ruler's influence plays a large part in how effective they are - a single god-king with direct control of the population is very effective at levying a new tax, a king elected by a council of robber barons notsomuch.

One of the issues involved with economics is, basically, paying for shit. As with personal power, you're divided between the resources you as Supreme Leader personally own and control, and those of the nation you own and control. The ideal goal is to reach a relatively higher level of fiscal and monetary interaction than is possible in other games - taking on, paying back, and voiding loans and the like, for example. And these actions should have reprecussions: if you as Supreme Leader take out a lot of loans to pay for stuff and then refuse to pay them back, that can cause a great deal of resistance to your rule, and might even result in a Magna Carta situation where your powers become limited.

Currency is a big thing, insofar as I'd like to be able to have actual Currency Wars where China refuses to be paid in anything except silver and the Roman/British Empires start running out of specie. This brings up something else I'd like to implement: standardized systems.

When different civilizations are in communication - sharing a border or trade route will do - there's a chance for some specific systems (language, writing style, weights and measures, currency units) to cross-pollinate, with various advantages and disadvantages. For example, if your nation adopts the lingua franca of the age, then they can more easily communicate with other nations and stand a higher chance of getting bonus technologies/advancements from that civilization; however, cultural contamination is a two-way street, so that they also have a higher chance of picking up techs from your civ, and may more easily be culturally influenced by them.

In terms of currency units, this is usually a matter of ease of trade. The closer your currencies are to one another, the easier it is for commerce between the sides. This can lead to actual fiscal and monetary union agreements, though that's probably rather high-level economic thought.

Opening Thoughts: Religion
Your default religious technology is Ritual Corpse Disposal - I need a better name for that skill - with different advancements like Afterlife, Grave Goods, Burial (Sky, Sea, Earth), Cannibalism, and Cremation. Things really develop from there, and are in part influenced by the new technologies you develop and vice versa. I feel like there might be some other basic techs that need to be added on there - Animism, Mana/Taboo, etc. - but I basically don't want everybody to start as god-kings of their Stone Age tribe with fully-fleshed out mythologies from year zero; I instead want a chance for religion to develop in the society and interact with technology and politics in interesting ways, and particularly to play up the occasional separation and unification of church and state.

Early religious ideas spread like normal techs, and like normal techs there's a chance for "contamination" or proliferation of techs from other cultures you're in contact with. Depending on the technologies/advancements you have, your religion may be more or less open to such spread, but what /will/ happen (almost guaranteed) is the development of syncretic religious populations at points of contact. These "new religions" combine aspects of the old religions, and become part of the identity of your civ population - so you can have a civ with multiple religions, even multiple related religions, and each of them can develop religions technologies independently (and spread them to each other). To prevent you from having a bazillion different religions, there's a general cutoff point where sects consolidate, turn against each other, combine, etc.

This ties in to a mechanic I'm loosely calling "Cultural Event," which can be triggered by discovering a new tech, and built sort of like a wonder in the old Civ games, but which can also occur randomly. Cultural events represent fundamental changes and defining moments of a civilization like the rise of a particular prophet, the creation of a standardized code of law or religious text, etc. Depending on how the civilization develops this could lead to the incorporation of temples and churches in powerful organizations, influence the identification of your civ with an individual language or religion, etc.

You could also go with Offerings as the first tier, since leaving objects somewhere with no intent of retrieval has many motivations and expressions. That'd let it easily serve as a springboard towards more specific rites or cross pollinate with normal building techs--for example, it's easy to imagine a tombs path that has the knock-on benefit of advancing your engineering capabilities.