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[Leatra]

My inner dwarf is satisfied! I'm just throwing out ideas so you can modify them to fit into the game design. I don't expect any the ideas to be implemented %100 the way we described here. I didn't really expect you to go all "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED" when I talked about tongue removal There is a dev who isn't afraid of anything!

[Retropunch]

This might lead to interesting gameplay if there were different gradients of civilization. You could have a good chance of avoiding losing favour with a religion in a semi-uncivilized area so you might risk committing an infraction, but you'd probably not dare do anything in very civilized areas. This could alternatively (and more excitingly) be tied to areas of religious influence - committing infractions far outside your religions (and possibly similar religions (think CoE<->Catholic)) influence would be a lot less risky.

Agreed: re: No Omni, I'm definitely leaning heavily away from that one - I hadn't considered the inventory repercussions, but that's definitely true. Now, this gradient idea - that I really like a lot. Civs with that religion could count as ominpotent over errors, civs which border a civ with the religion could be partly omin, and other civs you can do whatever the heck you want and nobody would know. That could be a very clear/explicit three-level thing for the player to understand, I think. I need to add a religion overlay to the world map, so maybe something like "Religious Presence", "Religion Spreading" and "No Religious Presence"? I realize a three-part tiering of this isn't very nuanced, but could work really well with making clear when your infractions will/won't be known. So in the spreading areas, would it be something like "Wielding a forbidden weapon is a 50% chance of discovery"? Or maybe for each X turns you spend in that territory, you have a Y% chance of your religion hearing about it? Or some other method?

Hmm. And maybe each infraction loses one rank whilst doing stuff your religion wants gains a rank. I quite like this idea - the higher up a rank you've gone, the more you can do unacceptable things before your religion kicks you out. There are probably going to be around 5-6 ranks for a religion, so each of those could tolerate one infracton?

I think a three-part tiering is fine, and a lot more sensible than a full 1-100 style gradient. However, in terms of infractions being known I feel it should be rather more obfuscated/random. I don't feel the player should be 'playing the numbers' with their religion, and should instead just be thinking a bit more naturally. This may just come down to percentages, but I feel they should be some flexibility.  I also don't think it should be on wield, but rather on use (or the 'active' version of whatever conduct).
I'd also suggest giving some religions traits that increase/decrease their ability to catch your indiscretions and also the level of punishment. 

As far as losing ranks that's exactly what I had in mind! As I said before, I believe some religions should be absolutely zero-tolerance (or perhaps only allow 2 discretions at the highest level), I'd also suggest that the punishment for committing an infraction at the first rank be somewhat lower/gives you a free pass the first time (as long as you're still at the first rank). This would stop the player from being punished when they haven't got much invested in the religion. Probably at worst you'd just get kicked out of the religion and be banned from re-joining.

Lastly, I think it's really important that the player not know if they've committed an infraction until they go back to a main religious building. It'd mean that the player wouldn't make a gamble and then just think 'nope, I've been found out - game over' and just quit/save scum. It'd also cut down on the 'god messages' which I find a bit jarring.

[BlindKitty]

Update after 5 minute consideration: I'm putting in the hand/eye/tongue punishments. Hell yes.

In India, and - if I am not mistaken - Persia, it was a long standing tradition to cut off noses for particularly serious crimes. While less extreme than tongue removal, it is still pretty painful and leaves a clearly visible (and allegedly really ugly) mark, so aside from being a mark, it could reduce your conversational abilities.
As for trading by holding up coins etc. - Chinese have a system where they are able to count up to 100 000 on fingers of one hand (it is hard to describe easily, but I'm sure you could look it up in the Internet, if you are interested), allowing for negotiations to be conducted in silence and without visibility (by touching other party's hand). Civilizations that know this (or similar) technique might not care if you have no tongue during bargaining, while those - like Arabs - who generally consider bargaining a vocal matter might be unhappy that you try to conduct your business silently. This can be interesting also with characters who still have tongue; Chinese developed their systems to avoid publicly stating the prices on goods when trading in the open market, to avoid giving leverage to other trade partners, who could try and get lower price on basis that somebody else already did. And at the very least, it would make for a very different feel of markets - some extremely chaotic and loud, like Arab suk markets, some more peaceful, but still buzzing with constant negotiations, like European ones, and some almost silent, like Chinese, with completely silent bargaining.

[Majestic7]

Re: religious punishments. Don't forget punitive missions bestowed upon those breaking the rules who still wish to return to the fold. Plus extreme mission options for those who want to return to the fold after the most hideous deeds and punishments.

For example, one huge attractor to go on a Crusade was originally the promise of all sins being forgiven. That attracted many religious veterans who had been involved in questionable actions in wars and were now worried about the afterlife. "Do what you do best, but for the True Faith and you'll get to Heaven!" and all that. Pretty good recruiting speech in a religious mindset.

As another example, when a HRE emperor eventually failed in his power struggle against the pope, he had to do penance by walking to Rome covered in ashes and wearing only a horsehair shirt. According to legend, that is.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

My inner dwarf is satisfied! I'm just throwing out ideas so you can modify them to fit into the game design. I don't expect any the ideas to be implemented %100 the way we described here. I didn't really expect you to go all "CHALLENGE ACCEPTED" when I talked about tongue removal There is a dev who isn't afraid of anything!

Haha, excellent! Yeah, I really love the ideas. The friend I always bounce bold ideas off before implementing also thought it was an awesome idea, so they've passed The Test. Those punishments will be in the next release, even if we don't yet have NPCs to do the actual arm-chopping

I think a three-part tiering is fine, and a lot more sensible than a full 1-100 style gradient. However, in terms of infractions being known I feel it should be rather more obfuscated/random. I don't feel the player should be 'playing the numbers' with their religion, and should instead just be thinking a bit more naturally. This may just come down to percentages, but I feel they should be some flexibility.  I also don't think it should be on wield, but rather on use (or the 'active' version of whatever conduct).
I'd also suggest giving some religions traits that increase/decrease their ability to catch your indiscretions and also the level of punishment. 

As far as losing ranks that's exactly what I had in mind! As I said before, I believe some religions should be absolutely zero-tolerance (or perhaps only allow 2 discretions at the highest level), I'd also suggest that the punishment for committing an infraction at the first rank be somewhat lower/gives you a free pass the first time (as long as you're still at the first rank). This would stop the player from being punished when they haven't got much invested in the religion. Probably at worst you'd just get kicked out of the religion and be banned from re-joining.

Lastly, I think it's really important that the player not know if they've committed an infraction until they go back to a main religious building. It'd mean that the player wouldn't make a gamble and then just think 'nope, I've been found out - game over' and just quit/save scum. It'd also cut down on the 'god messages' which I find a bit jarring.

All good thoughts, I'll definitely have to think about the exact mechanic by which infractions are recorded. I agree though, "use" is more logical than "wield". Interesting re: traits that enhance/decrease observation. I think I'll have to know how exactly infractions work before knowing whether I can implement something of that sort or not!

Nice ideas re: zero tolerance and low-level tolerance. As for finding out when you reach a building only... hmm. The issue with that one would be that once you've reached a high enough level in the religion, you could just infract constantly and never return to a building. At the same time, though, I understand your concern over a god message. Perhaps a compromise could be the next person of that religion you encounter, or the next high-ranking official, or if you've broken the rules someone is dispatched to tell you, or the next time you enter a religion-majority nation, or...

There's a bunch of options, though I'm not sure which works best. On the save scumming, though, I recognize there's nothing I can do to prevent that any more than any other RL, so I'm actually not too concerned about that. Those who want to play properly will, and those who don't, won't, and that's that. HOWEVER, I have ideas for mitigating the severity of this, especially by having some secrets and solutions requiring the input of more than one individual player to solve/deduce.

Update after 5 minute consideration: I'm putting in the hand/eye/tongue punishments. Hell yes.

In India, and - if I am not mistaken - Persia, it was a long standing tradition to cut off noses for particularly serious crimes. While less extreme than tongue removal, it is still pretty painful and leaves a clearly visible (and allegedly really ugly) mark, so aside from being a mark, it could reduce your conversational abilities.
As for trading by holding up coins etc. - Chinese have a system where they are able to count up to 100 000 on fingers of one hand (it is hard to describe easily, but I'm sure you could look it up in the Internet, if you are interested), allowing for negotiations to be conducted in silence and without visibility (by touching other party's hand). Civilizations that know this (or similar) technique might not care if you have no tongue during bargaining, while those - like Arabs - who generally consider bargaining a vocal matter might be unhappy that you try to conduct your business silently. This can be interesting also with characters who still have tongue; Chinese developed their systems to avoid publicly stating the prices on goods when trading in the open market, to avoid giving leverage to other trade partners, who could try and get lower price on basis that somebody else already did. And at the very least, it would make for a very different feel of markets - some extremely chaotic and loud, like Arab suk markets, some more peaceful, but still buzzing with constant negotiations, like European ones, and some almost silent, like Chinese, with completely silent bargaining.

These are very cool ideas for methods by which silent bargaining could take place! At the same time, I see your point about being vocal in markets, bartering, etc. Perhaps you can directly buy without a tongue, but you aren't allowed to barter? Though... I think losing the ability to converse would be a huge enough downside. Probably.

Re: religious punishments. Don't forget punitive missions bestowed upon those breaking the rules who still wish to return to the fold. Plus extreme mission options for those who want to return to the fold after the most hideous deeds and punishments.

For example, one huge attractor to go on a Crusade was originally the promise of all sins being forgiven. That attracted many religious veterans who had been involved in questionable actions in wars and were now worried about the afterlife. "Do what you do best, but for the True Faith and you'll get to Heaven!" and all that. Pretty good recruiting speech in a religious mindset.

As another example, when a HRE emperor eventually failed in his power struggle against the pope, he had to do penance by walking to Rome covered in ashes and wearing only a horsehair shirt. According to legend, that is.

Now that is an interesting idea. I confess, the notion that once you've left a religion you're done does appeal to me - as the game progresses, there's a clear risk/reward there as you exploit more factions but more factions come to dislike you, or you can play it safer and just stick with your starting religion and take your rank in that one as far as you can go (or some middleground). On the other hand, I quite like the idea you threw out of being able to rejoin with a greater offering than before. I'll have to think on it. I'm leaning towards keeping things as I have planned now, but I do like the penance/crusade idea...

[Retropunch]

I think a three-part tiering is fine, 

All good thoughts, I'll definitely have to think about the exact mechanic by which infractions are recorded. I agree though, "use" is more logical than "wield". Interesting re: traits that enhance/decrease observation. I think I'll have to know how exactly infractions work before knowing whether I can implement something of that sort or not!

Nice ideas re: zero tolerance and low-level tolerance. As for finding out when you reach a building only... hmm. The issue with that one would be that once you've reached a high enough level in the religion, you could just infract constantly and never return to a building. At the same time, though, I understand your concern over a god message. Perhaps a compromise could be the next person of that religion you encounter, or the next high-ranking official, or if you've broken the rules someone is dispatched to tell you, or the next time you enter a religion-majority nation, or...

There's a bunch of options, though I'm not sure which works best. On the save scumming, though, I recognize there's nothing I can do to prevent that any more than any other RL, so I'm actually not too concerned about that. Those who want to play properly will, and those who don't, won't, and that's that. HOWEVER, I have ideas for mitigating the severity of this, especially by having some secrets and solutions requiring the input of more than one individual player to solve/deduce.

Re finding out at building: It definitely makes sense for it to be anyone from your religion you talk to. I had envisaged that as there would be no 'magic powers' conferred on you from following a religion, the only place you'd really be able to 'use' your religion would be in religious buildings, but having it as the first person from the religion makes sense. Similarly, a dispatch is probably a good idea, or just when you reach a religion-majority (all good ideas!).

My feeling on save scumming is that whilst you certainly can't stop it, it should not be so trivial that it becomes almost routine. Stopping save scumming was the wrong way of putting it though, I mainly meant in terms of the punishment not being so immediate that it'd cause you to immediate know if it's succeeded or not. I feel reward/punishment that is delayed from the action is something sorely missing in games - usually you do something and you get a star or a slap, whereas it gives choices a lot more gravity if you don't know how they're going to play out further down the line.

 

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Re finding out at building: It definitely makes sense for it to be anyone from your religion you talk to. I had envisaged that as there would be no 'magic powers' conferred on you from following a religion, the only place you'd really be able to 'use' your religion would be in religious buildings, but having it as the first person from the religion makes sense. Similarly, a dispatch is probably a good idea, or just when you reach a religion-majority (all good ideas!).

My feeling on save scumming is that whilst you certainly can't stop it, it should not be so trivial that it becomes almost routine. Stopping save scumming was the wrong way of putting it though, I mainly meant in terms of the punishment not being so immediate that it'd cause you to immediate know if it's succeeded or not. I feel reward/punishment that is delayed from the action is something sorely missing in games - usually you do something and you get a star or a slap, whereas it gives choices a lot more gravity if you don't know how they're going to play out further down the line.

Excellent! Yeah, I think something along those lines will work well. Probably a more generalized dispatch system too for NPC from factions finding you, any who want to hunt you down, etc, and this would just be one of those.

Ah, that makes more sense, I think I misinterpreted your comment! You've got me thinking though, about the delayed reward thing as a way to stop savescumming. I've never really considered that, but it makes a lot of sense - the higher the number of choices that are strategic, rather than tactical, the bigger the "unit" of a savescum becomes. Very interesting, especially given the role I do want the strategic layer to play, and the *big* "decision" you'll be making at the end of each "dungeon". I may consider emphasizing those even more as a method to prevent scumming...

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Update cross-posted from blog:

Until today three districts remained without generators: docks, military districts, and city centers. I knew how I wanted the centers to generate but hadn’t worked on them yet, whilst docks I’m leaving until I actually implement ships and naval travel, but military districts needed to be done this releae and were proving very challenging. I didn’t just want to have huge regions of endless barracks – I wanted something much more varied – but at the same time I wanted to try to only add things that would have gameplay valuable if/when you gained access to a military district. I’ve settled on a middle-ground between the two – some areas are just for decorative purposes and to make the world feel consistent, coherent and real (akin to farms, for example), whilst other parts have clear gameplay goals, will contain important NPCs, etc.

So, military districts (like upper-class housing districts) are split into four parts. Each of these has a number of features which slot together in a fairly complex manner, and in a range of different orientations. These can be: Barracks, Parade Grounds, Archery Ranges, Siege Weapons, Armouries, Officer Quarters, Hospitals, and Stables. These combine in a range of different permutations to produce military districts. Each military district is also guaranteed to include two special combat NPCs – these may be able to raise a stat, or train you to use some of the more complex moves for a weapon. More on this in a few versions time when we’re doing weapons and combat. Here’s a labelled example:



Archery Ranges and Siege Weapons are self-explanatory, and (currently) for decoration only (you can’t raise stats by using the ranges or anything like that). All the others, however, will have gameplay use. Barracks contain troops, their beds, possessions, etc, and therefore may contain important NPCs. Parade Grounds are self-explanatory, and once we have NPCs in two versions time, you may be able to see soldiers marching around there in times of peace, or actively drilling in times of war (not sure how much variation it’s worth thinking about here). Armouries are most certainly not decoration and will contain huge numbers of weapons if you can gain access to them, but will be well-guarded. Officer Quarters will contain high-ranking military officials, and possibly some expensive items too. Hospitals will contain a range of healing items and those able/willing to heal you for a price (or if you are a close ally of the civilization), and Stables, funnily enough, will contain lots of horses (though I am still working out how exactly riding is going to integrate with the rest of the game). There will also presumably be patrols moving around the outside ring road of the district in the future.

I tried hard to make each building recognizable by shape, which is something I’ve already been putting a lot of emphasis on with the different kinds of special building that spawn in housing districts (banks, theaters, arenas, etc). In this case stables are all right-angled shapes, barracks are a 9×7 grid, hospitals are more uneven, organic-looking lines and branches of building, officers quarters are a loop than encloses an area within it (or sometimes two areas), armouries are either octagonal or a number of octagons with a large gate at the front, while catapults and archery targets have distinct characters by which they can be recognized. The circular buildings – there is one in the top-left near the central fort, and one within a loop of road in the bottom-right – are the buildings that house training NPCs.

However, military districts have two restrictions on your entry – they are expensive to enter, and you must be very friendly with the civilization in order to gain access (or be playing as the player class which allows you to try sneaking into districts, though I am still figuring out the exact mechanics there). Starting in a civilization with a military district will therefore be a significant early-game boost, though I will try to balance this by giving significant value to non-militaristic civilizations too. I’m currently working on the lookup images for these new items. We already have archery targets:



And I’ll get siege weapons done soon enough. Along with city centers and upper-class housing districts, I want entering military districts to be a significant investment that makes you think about whether it’s worth it for what you may find inside. However, these – along with markets – will be arguably the most valuable districts to explore, although market districts are deliberately free to enter. If you’re low on money you can always check out a market district (assuming you can get to it within the city), but you’ll have to think harder about entering those other districts. So, all that remains to be done here is siege weapon lookup images which I’ll probably draw this week, and then as everything else we need some appropriate door graphics, but otherwise they’re done for this release. Once I’ve got them finished off I’ll be working on city centers, at long last. I’m anticipating a 0.6 release somewhere around mid November, which is also when I hope to finally start my full-time development year. In the real world I’m currently house-hunting (at last!) and hoping to move at the start of November, and once I am settled in the new place, that’s when the full-time year starts. Updates as and when…

[Retropunch]

Excellent! Yeah, I think something along those lines will work well. Probably a more generalized dispatch system too for NPC from factions finding you, any who want to hunt you down, etc, and this would just be one of those.

Ah, that makes more sense, I think I misinterpreted your comment! You've got me thinking though, about the delayed reward thing as a way to stop savescumming. I've never really considered that, but it makes a lot of sense - the higher the number of choices that are strategic, rather than tactical, the bigger the "unit" of a savescum becomes. Very interesting, especially given the role I do want the strategic layer to play, and the *big* "decision" you'll be making at the end of each "dungeon". I may consider emphasizing those even more as a method to prevent scumming...

Yeah an NPC dispatch system would be great, and could allow for a lot of interesting dispatches to keep you up to date with the rest of the world. However, I would suggest a careful think over how to introduce the NPCs arrival - there's nothing worse than an NPC randomly appearing whilst you're in the middle of combat/something interesting. As before, I believe separating the map into 'civilized areas' (where NPCs can find you) and varying levels of wild-ness would help again here, as it'd stop you encountering NPCs randomly out in the wilderness. Obviously this would depend on how determined they were to find you (assassins would travel nearly anywhere for instance).

This might even lead to interesting strategies, where you might stay in the wilderness to stop certain NPCs catching up to you!

[Leatra]

And those kind of encounters should be difficult. In Fallout: New Vegas, when Regulators caught up with me, my first reaction was "wow, how awesome. NPCs are responding to my actions!" then after I killed them without breaking a sweat, I was like "Walking EXP bags!" whenever I saw them later on.

In most instances, player should be afraid of the pursuers. If a faction isn't powerful enough or relevant enough (as in geographical distance) to the player, they would probably break off the chase or hire some stronger outside party (like a faction of assassins) to pursue you.

Love the way how the district looks varied btw. All kinds of buildings that should be in a military district seems to be in there.

[Retropunch]

And those kind of encounters should be difficult. In Fallout: New Vegas, when Regulators caught up with me, my first reaction was "wow, how awesome. NPCs are responding to my actions!" then after I killed them without breaking a sweat, I was like "Walking EXP bags!" whenever I saw them later on.

In most instances, player should be afraid of the pursuers. If a faction isn't powerful enough or relevant enough (as in geographical distance) to the player, they would probably break off the chase or hire some stronger outside party (like a faction of assassins) to pursue you.

Love the way how the district looks varied btw. All kinds of buildings that should be in a military district seems to be in there.

Agreed, I feel that npc dispatch should be a very important part of the game, as it's probably one of the key mechanisms that you see the results of your actions and get news from parts of the world you're not currently in.

I feel that a key to this would be to allow the player to avoid (or lessen the chance of) the interactions they didn't want by going on different routes/making sure to avoid certain areas. For instance, Unless you did something truly heinous, most religions would probably only dispatch in their area of influence, similarly, government dispatches would only go to within the city and near by areas of the city. My main point of this is that sometimes these sorts of dispatches can get really annoying if you're just trying to do a quest or wanting to get on with another part of the game. This is just because I imagine you'd eventually rack up quite a number of npcs being dispatched towards you, so they should be relevant to the area you're in.

I'd like to think that you'd only get assassins after you if you did something really awful, and they'd obviously need to be incredibly tough (as otherwise why pay for them!?) and that they would instead use more subtle measures to disrupt you. Though perhaps acolytes of certain religions might try to gain favour by taking you on themselves.

 

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Yeah an NPC dispatch system would be great, and could allow for a lot of interesting dispatches to keep you up to date with the rest of the world. However, I would suggest a careful think over how to introduce the NPCs arrival - there's nothing worse than an NPC randomly appearing whilst you're in the middle of combat/something interesting. As before, I believe separating the map into 'civilized areas' (where NPCs can find you) and varying levels of wild-ness would help again here, as it'd stop you encountering NPCs randomly out in the wilderness. Obviously this would depend on how determined they were to find you (assassins would travel nearly anywhere for instance).

This might even lead to interesting strategies, where you might stay in the wilderness to stop certain NPCs catching up to you!

Agreed; I think some metric for how much influence the dispatcher has in your area would make sense, and also some restrictions so they cannot appear in certain circumstances, or they are far more likely to appear in others (within settlements?), etc!

And those kind of encounters should be difficult. In Fallout: New Vegas, when Regulators caught up with me, my first reaction was "wow, how awesome. NPCs are responding to my actions!" then after I killed them without breaking a sweat, I was like "Walking EXP bags!" whenever I saw them later on.

In most instances, player should be afraid of the pursuers. If a faction isn't powerful enough or relevant enough (as in geographical distance) to the player, they would probably break off the chase or hire some stronger outside party (like a faction of assassins) to pursue you.

Love the way how the district looks varied btw. All kinds of buildings that should be in a military district seems to be in there.

Ha, I had the exact same experience with the Regulators. Yeah, I want combat to be rare and very significant, so that should tie quite nicely in to making dispatches who are hostile to you more relevant than they perhaps are in other games. Excellent! Today's very short update will probably be about the early starts to city centres...

Agreed, I feel that npc dispatch should be a very important part of the game, as it's probably one of the key mechanisms that you see the results of your actions and get news from parts of the world you're not currently in.

I feel that a key to this would be to allow the player to avoid (or lessen the chance of) the interactions they didn't want by going on different routes/making sure to avoid certain areas. For instance, Unless you did something truly heinous, most religions would probably only dispatch in their area of influence, similarly, government dispatches would only go to within the city and near by areas of the city. My main point of this is that sometimes these sorts of dispatches can get really annoying if you're just trying to do a quest or wanting to get on with another part of the game. This is just because I imagine you'd eventually rack up quite a number of npcs being dispatched towards you, so they should be relevant to the area you're in.

I'd like to think that you'd only get assassins after you if you did something really awful, and they'd obviously need to be incredibly tough (as otherwise why pay for them!?) and that they would instead use more subtle measures to disrupt you. Though perhaps acolytes of certain religions might try to gain favour by taking you on themselves.

In a similar vein I've been thinking about how a news/current event system could/should work, especially with the core mechanic of fiddling with the historical record. I have a bunch of ideas for how this could work, though none of these ideas have thus managed to defeat the others in my head, so we'll see how that goes...

Agreed, it should definitely influence the strategic level of the player's movement around the map. I cannot abide games with constant random encounters so nothing like that will happen, and maybe there will be some hidden timer to prevent too many dispatches, or.... as ever, there's so many ways I could work it. I like the hopeful acolyte idea! I also need to think about how dispatches work if you're on the travel map or the human-scale map, too.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

I’ve finished up Military districts – each part now has a wide range of variation in terms of how it appears, as well as where exactly on the map grid it actually appears. Some military districts contain features others do not, but all contain sufficient locations for two training NPCs to spawn – something we’ll get to once 0.8 is properly in the works. I’ve now begun work on City Centres.

I’ve been struggling with city centres. What you see in this entry is already the third iteration, and I’m not sure how much I like this one. There isn’t much to show yet. This is partly because most of this week has been spent looking around flats and investigating a possible academic post that might be coming my way, and because much of what I’ve been doing is under-the-hood stuff. There are ten possible layouts for city centres, as aptly illustrated by this lovely MS Paint infographic:



I am sure you can see why each is named the way it is, and the number notes how many things may spawn in it (large buildings discussed in this paragraph count as 2). There’s a key difference between the last three designs – star, fat X, and cross – and the other seven. There are two types of building that are very large and need extra space in a city centre to spawn: these are religious cathedrals (the hub for each religion), and parliaments. Cathedrals only spawn in nations designated as the home nation for that belief, whilst parliaments only spawn in civs that have the Representation policy as their choice of leadership. In the first seven, the cathedral will spawn within the square – these can be of almost any shape and having this shape adjust the spawning of the rest of the district causes things to spiral into revolting complexity, so they are contained within this area and some interesting patterns of grass, road and fountains on the ground around. If there is a parliamentary building, meanwhile, it will cut across the other larger sections. However, if there is no religious building, the last three designs can be used, since these have no room for cathedrals.

City centres also contain other buildings – currently each contains a mint, a number of embassies for nearby nations, and at least one garden. However, I think this is a little sparse. Below is a very early example of how a city centre currently looks: this one contains a cathedral in the centre and various buildings around it (gardens do not yet spawn).





The Mint is the building in the bottom-left corner (after posting this entry I intend to change its design significantly, but I always want to upload at the weekend, so it is staying that way for now since I don’t have time to add new designs and upload this in time) and the rest are embassies. However, I want fewer embassies – we must maintain some mystery! – and more other buildings, but I’m not really sure WHAT. There are a small number of unique structures that can generate within city centres which I’m not going to give too much away on right now, but I need more. I’m happy for the overall structure to be very careful and regulated like in the above example, but more variety is clearly needed. I considered libraries/universities, but having so many books in the same location would damage the game balance of how I want books to work. So, bearing in mind that gardens are not yet present, nor the other thing unique to each centre, I still think they need more variety, but I’m not really sure what else could be included – thoughts? I never finish or release anything until I’m entirely happy with it, and centres are definitely lacking some interest at the moment, and this needs fixing. Throw me your ideas!

Edit for clarification: monarchic and stratocratic rulers rule from the city castle; theocratic rulers from the cathedral; representation leaders from the parliamentary building.

[Retropunch]

Very interesting. In terms of other centre buildings I think this is absolutely the most important time to strongly differentiate the cities on policy and really give each one a distinct feel. This would also help differentiate cities that belonged to the same empire (as each empire should probably only have one type of each city).
 
I'd say some would have a major market (perhaps if they had the 'mercantile' policy) or the headquarters of something akin to the East Africa Trading Company.
Ones with some sort of artistic policy might have an opera/playhouse/gallery of some sort.
Ones with a 'law' policy might have a courthouse/gallows.
Ones with 'aristocracy' policy might have the big houses of nobles.
Ones with a 'medical' policy might have a big hospital/apothecary.

Really, each city needs to have a 'focus' I feel, even if historically most cities in history haven't really had such divisions. I always liked this in the elder scrolls series, where you could go to say a mages guild hall in each city for minor magic stuff, but if you wanted to get REALLY good stuff you needed to go to the imperial college. Basically, to give you a reason to go to each city if you want to focus on something or need something particular. I could imagine that if you might be badly injured or get uniquely poisoned - you'd perhaps want to go to a medical city. If you want to do some heavy trading, you'd want to go to a mercantile one (but might be happy to do normal trading in any city).

Also, I'd imagine big statues/monuments might be in there. It'd be really awesome to be able to see a big monument to a historical war in the centre of the winners, and a memorial to the fallen in the centre of the losers.

Lastly, whilst I know you're trying to keep this quite historical/grounded, I feel city centres are the one place where you can add a bit of flair. I was thinking that some sort of 'seven wonders of the world' kinda thing could be scattered around the world, with these marvels mainly being in the city centre.

[Man of Paper]

Dude, your MS Paint Infographics get to me every time. It might be the lead-in that does it. Should make a tileset using your mastery of paintsmithing.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Teaching myself python went on temp hold for about as long as I haven't posted for. Issues at work with all but one of the managerial staff caused much undue stress, so I wound up not wanting to teach-learn. Still did plenty of brainstorming though, so I return with more ideas:

Real-time was decided upon. The main reasons are the intensity of the combat and the crawls.
The power of the player to cause actual effect on the battlefront was a topic briefly mentioned before. I had a good idea to fix the inconsequentiability of the PC. As mentioned before, Shovel Buddies is WW1 era, not WW1 itself. While trying to stick to historical warfare, WW1 was practically devoid of special operations. That's changed in Shovel Buddies. We plan on allowing you to take yourself and, if you want, a squad, deep behind enemy lines to hit their supply lines, factories, ports, airfields, and command posts. Each facility will have locations to enter and things to sabotage, and we want the destruction of your targets to have a tangible effect on the enemy's ability to commit resources to the war effort. Each facilities enterable locations can be easily seen as mini dungeon crawls, where your baddies are replaced by the Centric Powers or The Alliance depending on the side you're on. And those are the names we decided on for the sides. Country names will likely be randomized. The prospect of WW1 Real-Time Dungeon Crawl seemed to appeal to something in me.

With the introduction of special operations in WW1 we then have to look at the repercussions of inclusion. Namely the technological. Equipment for the only notable special operation in WW1 included a massive mine and a hill. Some small changes, like the introduction of the shaped charge before the Germans used it on Holland in the next war, are palatable to me. I almost want to stay historical with equipment and see how often people shovel some buddies. Any thoughts on what I should or shouldn't include?