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[Willfor]

Can I just make the point that crucifixion was an entirely secular practice? I feel this point has been lost somewhere along the way. That wasn't religion, that was the outcome of professional torture workers in the justice system and military.

[Graknorke]

Can I just make the point that crucifixion was an entirely secular practice? I feel this point has been lost somewhere along the way. That wasn't religion, that was the outcome of professional torture workers in the justice system and military.

What.
Nobody ever said that crucifixion came about religiously. Just that they want to crucify people as part of a religion.

[Leatra]

I think we should have control over even (seemingly) little things like ban on alcohol and tobacco products, death penalty, education system, ban on weird religious sects, etc. Because all these little things add up to create greater things. While I definitely don't except a regent to be able to decide on everything in the 1.0 version, I hope we will have more control over things as the game evolves.

You can let the player regent choose what kind of a civ he wants. Do you want a religious civ? Okay, here you go. Do you want a civ of liberties? Done. Or you can let the player to decide on laws without labeling the laws as "This is a +Religious -Freedom law" or "This is a +Autocracy -Democracy law". For example, you can ban alcohol because you genuinely believe that it's bad for your people. You can increase the power of the police because you believe crime is rampant across your civ. And you can increase the privileges and the salary of your spies because you believe a claimant is currently raising an army to overthrow you and you need information. However, all these little things will add up and will greatly lower the liberties in your country, regardless of how good your intentions may seem to you.

Also, even though we don't have anything to do in the game right now, I have to say that this is the most visually beautiful ASCII game I have ever seen. I say this as someone who can't play DF with ASCII and has to use custom tilesets.

Interesting. I hadn't considered that kind of "sub-policy", but it would certainly be an interesting direction to take things. All those little things are the things I want reflected in the existing policies, to an extent - they aren't defined as "more authority" or "less freedom". I'm specifically having it so that the policies do indeed say what the policy does, but abstracts like "authority" or "freedom" are hidden and under the hood. Maybe things that you can ban/allow should form a different category, slightly like mandates etc in DF?

There are innumerable possible policies and sub-policies a regent could enforce but it could be interesting to have something like policy categories. For example, in the Religion policy category, we could have policies about religious sects, inquisition, punishment/tolerance for heretics, mandatory religious activities, converting efforts, etc. They don't have to have much effect since they will add up anyway.

But it may create clutter and increase micro-managing. Maybe sub-policies should only be created if they are going to have an effect. Like, mandatory religious activities may not be important and the player shouldn't have to deal with it but if we have a sub-policy option for dealing with religious sects and minorities, it may allow more different religions to grow in your civ. Imagine a civ where almost all major religions have pretty much similar number of worshipers.

So... I don't know. I'm just throwing ideas out there, hoping I'll contribute in some way and you'll manage to create an idea out of my rambling

Ban/allow as a different category sounds good. Considering how there is a crazy amount of stuff a regent could ban.

[Graknorke]

Suddenly, be King Lyandir? Just ban everything. I could get behind that.

[Leatra]

I gotta say, it's a really interesting story.

[Graknorke]

I gotta say, it's a really interesting story.

I have to respect the TES writers who write all of the books. Because they're to a pretty high standard of quality; considering how many books there are.

[Devling]

Small states, and city states, were and are much more prevalent then depicted in most games.
Will these exist instead of the whole world being covered in giant, monoculture, empires?

[Neonivek]

Small states, and city states, were and are much more prevalent then depicted in most games.

There is a lot that most games do not depict.

When I heard that the idea of a nation is relatively recent I never really got the idea of what that REALLY meant (afterall the idea of a Kingdom existed) until I saw a letsplay of Crusader Kings and it actually started to make sense.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Well I guess im asking is how will you handle areas that both civilizations have boths claims to and citizens/colonists there?

I.E. Frontier areas, or areas where the population is mixed from 2+ empires.

and by handle I mean what are we going to be able to do with these proverbially land toss-ups? Like, will they be easier to attack, need less of a reason to conquer, etc. etc. ?

Hmmmm. I hadn't considered functions of either claims or colonists so far; one civ would send colonists to land x, and then that land would start expanding like their mainland territory. Maybe colonists can check for other colonists in their immediate area, and that has a diplomatic/military effect? "Claiming" land is a *really* interesting idea, and one I hadn't considered before now. Maybe colonists land, actually control maybe only a 3x3 grid around their landing, but can claim a large amount of land, and if that clashes with other claims, then there might be trouble.

I would like to have areas "peacefully" contested as well as militarily contested, but I guess this actually goes back to the idea of claiming land, even if you don't directly control it. Similarly, I could have treaties give/acquire land as part of peace deals. I think they'd definitely need less of a reason to conquer. I'm not sure about mixed populations yet - population dynamics are still on the drawing-board stages!

Can I found a religion, oh god the possibilities...
What role will religion play? Support buffs? War initiation? morale boosts?

Now that's an interesting question. A cult more likely than a religion; I imagine (though there will be a longer blog entry on this soon) religions as being more on the grand-strategy level of the game, whilst cults are much more on the micro, tactical level. So I wager I will let you found a cult, potentially, but probably not a religion. As for the role of religion, it has a part in diplomacy, a hefty part to morale I wager, but I'm not yet sure what else (apart from just general flavour). Well, religions will have different forms of buildings for worship (proc gen, naturally), various holy books, various artefacts, etc etc, so they should by extension generate a number of different relations between different group, items to seek out, ruins (old temples, shrines?), and the like. Either way, now  I've finished Monarchy generation in the history gen, I might take a break from "leadership" generation (as Monarchy is only one of the five!) and work on something else, and maybe that'll be religion next. We'll see.

Can I just make the point that crucifixion was an entirely secular practice? I feel this point has been lost somewhere along the way. That wasn't religion, that was the outcome of professional torture workers in the justice system and military.

What.
Nobody ever said that crucifixion came about religiously. Just that they want to crucify people as part of a religion.

I am pleased to announce each civilization - that has capital punishment - selects any one from about 15 different possibilities, ranging from beheading to breaking on the wheel, from crucifixion to impalement, and from hanging to boiling. These'll be reflected in executions in the world history!

There are innumerable possible policies and sub-policies a regent could enforce but it could be interesting to have something like policy categories. For example, in the Religion policy category, we could have policies about religious sects, inquisition, punishment/tolerance for heretics, mandatory religious activities, converting efforts, etc. They don't have to have much effect since they will add up anyway.

But it may create clutter and increase micro-managing. Maybe sub-policies should only be created if they are going to have an effect. Like, mandatory religious activities may not be important and the player shouldn't have to deal with it but if we have a sub-policy option for dealing with religious sects and minorities, it may allow more different religions to grow in your civ. Imagine a civ where almost all major religions have pretty much similar number of worshipers.

So... I don't know. I'm just throwing ideas out there, hoping I'll contribute in some way and you'll manage to create an idea out of my rambling

Ban/allow as a different category sounds good. Considering how there is a crazy amount of stuff a regent could ban.

I do like that selection of possibilities for religions, particularly heretics etc. Hmmm. I think I will create a section field - there will be policies, all of which get detailed ANSI icons (about a dozen of which I have so far created), and a ban/allow list for a huge number of other things. That would mean if you're a smuggler or a trader, you would need to check where various goods are legal, and similarly, maybe some civs have mercenaries legal/illegal? I'd include things like tobacco, alcohol, etc in that - I think that could be a good mechanic if different civs have different prohibitions on different things. AND, some could maybe have particularly high/low tax on different products? I'll have to think about this some more...

I gotta say, it's a really interesting story.

I have to respect the TES writers who write all of the books. Because they're to a pretty high standard of quality; considering how many books there are.

Never read any of the books, but I agree the in-game content is generally actually pretty sharp.

Small states, and city states, were and are much more prevalent then depicted in most games.
Will these exist instead of the whole world being covered in giant, monoculture, empires?

Currently empire-esque civs, hunter-gatherer civs, and nomadic civs can be generated, which have very different sizes, requirements, etc. I 100% intend to add city-states before 0.3 is released, but I haven't done so yet.

In the mean time, the old menu banner text looked terrible, so I redid it. Tomorrow's blog entry is going to be all about religious icon generation, as a couple of people asked me for that, and probably some discussion of religion/cult gameplay as well (which is to say, more than I wrote in this reply). I've also done a huge amount of work on monarchies in history (which are now basically finished, but more details in tomorrow's devblog), terrain, the encyclopedia, families (royal, noble, whatever), flags, religious icons, and some smaller under-the-hood stuff...

[Eктωρ]

Can't wait for the next version. Will alternate between DF and KoDP in between. The virtual history lesson of a world that never existed thing is just so cool.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Can't wait for the next version. Will alternate between DF and KoDP in between. The virtual history lesson of a world that never existed thing is just so cool.

Thanks! That's exactly what I'm hoping for - that the world history will be interesting enough to actually sit down and read some sections of. Though with that said, I don't intend for it to be entirely backdrop; even events centuries ago are going to have gameplay effects, but more on that another time...

Meanwhile, another devblog entry, at last, with religious icons, policies, history, territory, and lots more goodness:

http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2013/01/07/history-generation-i/

[Morrigi]

What effect does the planet you choose have on worldgen?

[Man of Paper]

Question on prosthetic limbs:
I know historically there have been a good few people who had their hands lopped off in the thick of combat. A select number of these individuals had "hands" made for replacement. They couldn't do much other than stay in their posed positions, but they did allow one to secure a shield in place. Will we have the opportunity to have an iron fist, and also peg legs? Mostly the peg leg thing though.
Oh, and you get dat book yet? I'd like to know what you think of it.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

What effect does the planet you choose have on worldgen?

You don't really pick a planet; you can only take 'the Earth', though you then obviously specify what the Earth looks like after you've generated the solar system. The solar system is partly for display, and partly for gameplay I haven't yet revealed.

Question on prosthetic limbs:
I know historically there have been a good few people who had their hands lopped off in the thick of combat. A select number of these individuals had "hands" made for replacement. They couldn't do much other than stay in their posed positions, but they did allow one to secure a shield in place. Will we have the opportunity to have an iron fist, and also peg legs? Mostly the peg leg thing though.
Oh, and you get dat book yet? I'd like to know what you think of it.

Now, there's an interesting question. There will be prosthetic limbs, and I intend to move from historical accuracy a little and make them much more usable than we had in that era. My guiding light is generally that if something is physically possible, then it's fine to include - sure, we didn't have very advanced prosthetics in that era, but I'm going to change that just a little bit in the interests of better gameplay. Iron fist, definitely, peg leg... I guess that depends on the "quality" of prosthetics I decide to include. Quick answer is yes, but there may be much more advanced leg prosthetics as well.

Achilles etc? I haven't yet; it's somewhere stuck in the post, I assume, with around 30 other books I ordered from Amazon a few days ago in a big order. At the moment, I'm reading a Murakami (1Q84), but I try to alternate fiction/non-fiction, so that might be the next...

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Well as far as medieval prosthetic limbs go, Gotz Von Berlichingen had a prosthetic hand/forearm that could grasp both a sword and a feather pen among other such items.