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[Retropunch]

Well a Merchantile civ historically tended to have a rather large military and a very strong assimilation drive.

You seem to want to turn them into the Ferengi Retropunch. "To use these stairs you must pay 10 dollars!"

That was already in the policy chart that URR posted (Mercantilism - Enter/exit city costs)! In case there was any confusion, I'm not suggesting adding more penalties, but instead making none of the policies inherently good or bad for the player. With a lot of cities in the game (and presumably a lot of ways of reaching the end goal) I can imagine the player just not bothering with a lot of cities due to their penalties. This is especially the case being an RL game: the player is much more adversed to risk, and is likely to try to min/max the situation to at least some degree.

Whilst I know there's other ways to balance things out, I just feel that policies are one of those things that are innately balanced. Having ones that are bad doesn't really add a lot to the game, and from a 'realism' standpoint I can't imagine many cities implementing a policy that has no good effects.

[Servant Corps]

Suggestions That May Be Ignored By The Good Doctor

Populism: Move the Chemist guy elsewhere because I don't really associate "mob rule" with "knowledge of chemistry". I'd create a Demagogue position, somebody who is an expert at leading the masses (usually in favor of whatever ruling class you have). In the original RTS foundations of this game, the demagogue might be a good recruiter, but in this new Cultural Murder Mystery genre, he might just be useful as a source of rumors (being in touch with the masses).

Vigilantism: I view roving bands of self-appointed "enforcers of the laws" protecting the people. They would be less well-armed than a regular police officier, but there would be more of them. (Note that this is a Cultural Murder Mystery though, and I'm not sure how fleshed-out combat may be, so this idea can be jettisoned in favor of something else, like dennislp3's buildings and weaponry).

Free Trade - a Bazaar building that has lots of goods and services imported from outside the city. These goods and services are more expensive than if you have bought them "locally"

Hegemony - The Poet, a propagandist whose main purpose is writing poems glorifying the dominant groups and denouncing the "Others". After all, any hegemonic power needs propaganda.

[Neonivek]

Well then Merchantism falls under the age old "Someone so cheap and money grubby that they actively drive away sources of income"

[Retropunch]

Suggestions That May Be Ignored By The Good Doctor

They're all great suggestions, and I hope they're not ignored!! I really like the vigilantism one. Depending on how you handle crime, it could be quite an interesting, especially from a cultural standpoint.

Whilst I do like how the policies are more direct, I do think that they should be expanded to be more than just 'city has x' if at all possible. I imagine this will be one of the central points for deciding whether or not to go to a city, so they could do with being quite far-reaching (but direct) if possible

[Scoops Novel]

The city nicknames should include some ghetto ones imo. Something you'd hear informally, or maybe in a bar

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Whew, thanks for all the comments guys! Too many to reply to individually, but I've pondered them all, and come to some conclusions. Here's this week's post, cross-posted from the blog - however, for all the powerpoint downloads, you will have to head to http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2015/05/17/policies-and-nicknames-part-2/ to get them! Just a short one this week.

--------------------

Well, I almost missed a weekend update for the first time in over a year, but in my current timezone (Germany) it is still Sunday, so here we are! Just a quick one this week, but I’ve got a few really long and interesting updates, and some more abstract discussions, scheduled for the coming weeks. However, since this entry is rather short, here are four of my most recent conference/lecture presentations, in no particular order. Enjoy!

Talk to AISB AI & Games conference on designing URR’s upcoming NPC AI:

Talk at a conference on literary dystopias about Command and Conquer: Tiberian Sun

My main talk at DiGRA about Japanese arcade culture, danmaku games, high scores, and some other cool stuff (a full paper version is going to be published as a chapter in a book on Gaming and East Asia in 2016)!

My secondary talk at DiGRA about civilians in the original Command and Conquer

Remaining Policies

Thanks to everyone for their ideas on the remaining policies. I realized as I read through the suggestions that something had been a tad unclear: Tribal Knowledge, Chiefdom and Escort Cavalry are policies which can only appear in hunter-gatherer and nomadic societies, and are therefore rather like “placeholders”, so suggestions for those – although there were some great ones and I might integrate them as general buildings/NPCs/etc! – won’t be directly integrated into the policy system. So, without further ado, the Militia policy will result in citizens owning weapons in their homes; the Imperialist policy will allow that civilization to seize colonies (currently all feudal nations can do this, but this’ll therefore be changed); the Hegemony policy will mean that race (which is to say, skin tone) will directly affect citizens in that nation in some way, but I haven’t yet decided precisely how; and the Vigilantism policy will cause bounty offices to spawn, listing wanted individuals and the bounties on them. That means interventionist – by which I mean covert operations, spying, espionage – remains undecided.

Nicknames

So, as well as city nicknames, I’m working on nicknames for people. This means both historical figures, and living figures who the game considers important. Right now I’m splitting this into two categories: people from important noble families have a certain generation algorithm underlying their nicknames, whilst anyone else who isn’t high-born but has still become “important” will have a different generator. Firstly, if someone is from an important family, the game looks at the coat of arms for that family. If their coat of arms contains a “distinct” pattern, it will go to a unique generator for that pattern; if it doesn’t, then it will default to a more “general” generator. This generator can sometimes use words from the terrain of the homeland of this person as well.

So, for example, let’s say someone comes from an ice/tundra area, and their coat of arms contains the pattern of the dragon flying “upwards” (I’m sure many of you will have seen it). They might be nicknamed “The Roaring Breath of the Ice”, “The Adorned Wyvern”, “The Drake of the Hailstones” or “The Ennobled Dragon”. Alternatively, someone who hails from a temperate region and has a coat of arms containing a trident might be nicknamed “The Halberd of the Bluffs” or “The Invested Spear”; someone from a family with a harp on their coat of arms and who lives in the desert might be “The Singer of the Dust” or “The Sand Melodist”… and so on. Alternatively, if a coat of arms is generic or geometric enough to not merit any special words, it instead defaults to a name based on the policies of that person’s nation: “free trade” as a policy might yield “The Glorious Merchant”, “frontier” as a policy might yield “The Grand Marshall”, “theocracy” yields “The Sublime Conduit”, and so on. I still need to finish off some of the generation possibilities, but these are basically done.

And that, I’m afraid, is all for this week! I’ve been at a conference so haven’t been doing any programming this week, but there’s a lot of cool stuff on its way. See you all next week for probably a URR update, or a discussion of one of the many interesting game-related things this conference has got me thinking about!

[Neonivek]

Suggestions That May Be Ignored By The Good Doctor

They're all great suggestions, and I hope they're not ignored!! I really like the vigilantism one. Depending on how you handle crime, it could be quite an interesting, especially from a cultural standpoint.

Oddly enough Japan has had this culture at one point or another. Where if you wanted justice because someone wrong you... You not only had to do it yourself, but no one could deny you. It was later SPECIFICALLY banned in about the Meijin Era.

Magistrate system is also something I like as well. Basically Judge Dred is a Magistrate. A police officer who can collect evidence and sentence you... themselves. Quebec is a place that still uses Magistrates today.

Then there is Tribunal Justice where basically the community, or select members of the community, pass down judgement... and yes mob mentality was quite common.

Lots of lovely justice systems.

It is why when I was writing about that game setting I was making for a game I was going to run... I was just perplexed by people constantly saying "Well if that is the case then there would be a lot of unrest" because well... Historically? No...

[MDFification]

Suggestions That May Be Ignored By The Good Doctor

They're all great suggestions, and I hope they're not ignored!! I really like the vigilantism one. Depending on how you handle crime, it could be quite an interesting, especially from a cultural standpoint.

Oddly enough Japan has had this culture at one point or another. Where if you wanted justice because someone wrong you... You not only had to do it yourself, but no one could deny you. It was later SPECIFICALLY banned in about the Meijin Era.

Magistrate system is also something I like as well. Basically Judge Dred is a Magistrate. A police officer who can collect evidence and sentence you... themselves. Quebec is a place that still uses Magistrates today.

Then there is Tribunal Justice where basically the community, or select members of the community, pass down judgement... and yes mob mentality was quite common.

Lots of lovely justice systems.

It is why when I was writing about that game setting I was making for a game I was going to run... I was just perplexed by people constantly saying "Well if that is the case then there would be a lot of unrest" because well... Historically? No...

"People would revolt if a hierarchy existed to better people other than them. That's why we're all still hunter gatherers!"

[Scoops Novel]

It may be a lot of work , but practically anything of sufficient importance should have a chance of a nickname, from places to legions.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

A few more detailed replies! I'm really swamped right now folks (just had one week-long conference, off to another momentarily, and working on getting URR 0.8 to a point where I can show it off at the UK IRDC, whilst also working on the UK IRDC itself!). However:

Suggestions That May Be Ignored By The Good Doctor

Populism: Move the Chemist guy elsewhere because I don't really associate "mob rule" with "knowledge of chemistry". I'd create a Demagogue position, somebody who is an expert at leading the masses (usually in favor of whatever ruling class you have). In the original RTS foundations of this game, the demagogue might be a good recruiter, but in this new Cultural Murder Mystery genre, he might just be useful as a source of rumors (being in touch with the masses).

Vigilantism: I view roving bands of self-appointed "enforcers of the laws" protecting the people. They would be less well-armed than a regular police officier, but there would be more of them. (Note that this is a Cultural Murder Mystery though, and I'm not sure how fleshed-out combat may be, so this idea can be jettisoned in favor of something else, like dennislp3's buildings and weaponry).

Free Trade - a Bazaar building that has lots of goods and services imported from outside the city. These goods and services are more expensive than if you have bought them "locally"

Hegemony - The Poet, a propagandist whose main purpose is writing poems glorifying the dominant groups and denouncing the "Others". After all, any hegemonic power needs propaganda.

Populism, my thinking was along the lines of basically home-made explosives. I KNOW, this is a loose/vague connection, but I was thinking about populist uprising, black flag anarchism, etc. It's not a perfect link. Interesting idea though - I'll think it over! Hegemony, I really like the idea, but poets/poetry I intend to be slightly more widespread than that, and you should be able to find them in many places. Having the game generate (meaningful) poetry will be very exciting!

That was already in the policy chart that URR posted (Mercantilism - Enter/exit city costs)! In case there was any confusion, I'm not suggesting adding more penalties, but instead making none of the policies inherently good or bad for the player. With a lot of cities in the game (and presumably a lot of ways of reaching the end goal) I can imagine the player just not bothering with a lot of cities due to their penalties. This is especially the case being an RL game: the player is much more adversed to risk, and is likely to try to min/max the situation to at least some degree.

Whilst I know there's other ways to balance things out, I just feel that policies are one of those things that are innately balanced. Having ones that are bad doesn't really add a lot to the game, and from a 'realism' standpoint I can't imagine many cities implementing a policy that has no good effects.

So, the interesting thing about this is that it depends on how many cities the player will visit. If the "clock" is very strict, the player won't even visit every city, so will be "forced" to enter some more difficult/challenging cities, so policies don't need to be "balanced". If, only the other hand, the clock is very generous, then the player will have a lot of freedom and can, as you imply, just avoid the crappier cities or those which impose harsher penalties, so that promote some more policy balance. I suppose the ideal would be to position the game somewhere in the middle of those, whereby you have some freedom, but not a lot, so you have a meaningful choice but will still sometimes need to go to cities less friendly to your character/less friendly in general. It's just a gameplay balance/timing thing, and therefore something which will probably start to appear around the end of this year, but I do totally take your point. I'll think about potential negatives too...

Just wondering... how frequent is historical societal collapse in URR? Do you just generate ruins, or have you got some sort of model for civs declining?

Within the game the player plays: it should be able to happen. In the world's history: fairly common. As the history generates, there is a kind of hidden metric which tries to keep the number of civilizations "constant" within certain limits (though I intend to expand on this soon when I go into more detail with the world's history, and the connection of that history to the things the player finds). By which I mean, if more and more civs are collapsing, the game will encourage more civilizations into breaking in half, rebellions, uprisings, new nations, etc; if there are too many civs, the game encourages wars and collapse. It's fairly subtle and in the background, but ensures you don't wind up with a world map filled with tiny nations, nor just one massive ubernation.

It may be a lot of work , but practically anything of sufficient importance should have a chance of a nickname, from places to legions.

I agree!

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

Here's an interesting entry that I think a lot of people will have some comments on: "The Problem with the Roguelike Metagame"!

http://www.ultimaratioregum.co.uk/game/2015/05/23/the-problem-with-the-roguelike-metagame/

[Servant Corps]

– Sense of Progress. The player dies in a permadeath game and feels angry or upset because nothing was achieved – unless, so the argument goes, they also unlocked something in the process, in which case that death no longer feels “meaningless”. Although making instinctive sense, this argument is the crux of the problem, and will be returned to later.

You still need the sense of progress though, because "gathering skills and knowledge of the game" is an important part of death in non-roguelikes as well. In fact, the skills and knowledge is actually more useful in non-roguelikes, because there is no random events messing up your memorization and brute-forcing.

So keep the sense of progress. But instead of having pointless unlocking of content, which seems to be a trick to prolong gameplay, have players be able to significantly impact the game world. Maybe the new character is a heir to the dead player (and get some of their previous skills or maps), or maybe the new character has changed the dynamics between the various factions to an extent that it makes gameplay easier for the next time around.

Relying on abstract "acquisition of skills and knowledge" as a good reward system seems flat to me. If I wanted to learn, I would want to go to school to learn actually applicable skills. If, however, you do want to encourage players to appreciate meaningless acquisitions, just have players play in the exact same generated world, so that no matter how many times they die, they are always gaining more knowledge about the world, and that knowledge is more 'direct and meaningful' than the higher-level strategy that a more advanced player would be able to focus on. There's no reason whatsoever to re-generate a brand new world every time a player loses a game. That just sounds absurd, and only reduces my connection to each individual instance of the 'game world' proper.

[Ultima Ratio Regum]

You still need the sense of progress though, because "gathering skills and knowledge of the game" is an important part of death in non-roguelikes as well. In fact, the skills and knowledge is actually more useful in non-roguelikes, because there is no random events messing up your memorization and brute-forcing.

Interesting point, but... I don't know if skills and knowledge are more important there. I'd say equally important, but obviously very different - in a roguelike you're learning "mastery" (i.e. the ability to deal with whatever the game throws at you, and learning what the game might throw at you) vs learning specifics. Both crucial, though.

Relying on abstract "acquisition of skills and knowledge" as a good reward system seems flat to me.

I suppose in this regard I am, inevitably, speaking from my own perspective here as someone who plays roguelikes specifically to master them and win them. I don't think it's flat, I think it's a very logical system and drives you towards improving; it doesn't mean you wasted the time in that playthrough, since every death you should learn something, and I've certainly enjoyed RL playthroughs I didn't win with in the end. I'm

[Scoops Novel]

If I wanted to learn, I would want to go to school to learn actually applicable skills.

I care about this because of the educational potential. If there isn't honestly going to be any, please spell it out for me, creator.

[Zireael]

There's no reason whatsoever to re-generate a brand new world every time a player loses a game

That's a good point, especially with a game with such a detailed world as URR. With the promised family trees, you could probably take my offspring idea (you keep playing as your kid in the same world) and run with it