(New and old) gaming concepts, styles, and philosophies

[monamipierrot]

This is to continue a off-topic discussion which started in http://forum.longturn.org/viewtopic.php?id=70. Be free to add your ideas on how LT is (or should be) in this thread, wether they're structured or not.

[monamipierrot]

Another way to put it: anything that adds epic drama to the game is a good thing! That includes offending some more powerful superpower in the game by sinking their nosy destroyer and get ones own entire country nuked into oblivion in return!

IllvilJa, I found very interesting what you said.
I suspect there are shades between in what you mean with "RPgamer","wargamer" and "simulationist".
Have you ever read the design principles of C-Evo (http://c-evo.org/text.html)? Not that I completely agree with them (actually I most disagree), but they are quite useful to set some concepts with which to agree or not. IMHO, the worst principle is "determinism", but I will write about this another day.
I don't think I'm a "simulationist" but I love History (and military history as well, wlthough I'm a pacifist) and I think history is a great source of inspiration for a game, thus I should like when a game "simulate" history. Be careful, not simulatin History as it actually happened, but just it's general mechanics, along with its surprises etc. etc. The worst thing I could think of is playing on the Earth map (which actually happens in ltex23, but this is another story), expecially in early history: where's the fun???
So, I'm a RPGamer? I would think so, if I ever played a RPG in my life, which didn't happen. But I love to set atmosphere, to add something which is not just plain maths & models, thing that I tried to set in my 1st and only LT game befor LT30 (Dude/Akfaew will remember): we were the communist Red Star team and I (the cuban people) only spoke and wrote with authentical socialist rethoric. Too bad it was a diplomacyless team game and there were no room for useless words (just kick their a***s!), let alone "drama"...

Do you know what I think it can be a real revolution in LT gaming? Introducing politics. Let me explain. I don't refer to me being leftwing, you being rightwing, thus (cold) war and so on. I just think that different ways to see the game itself could be a great add-on. This may interfere with the above discussed "external-world-and-reationships-shouldn't-exist-in-LT" philosophy, but one solution could be not to take too seriously even the politics thing. So, you and me seem to agree on what is fun (for us), thus we may want to contact each other in LT30, and then have peace as well as slaughter each other with the greatest pleasure and pathos.
If Dude (just to pick up someone at random...) doesn't like or is even annoyed by our "drama" he could be less interested in both peace and war with us, who tells? And even if we found him on our path and can't avoid him, for our "drama" he can always be the evil empire (or a skilled friend mercenary) who speaks in terms of swords rather than of words.

When I have time I will paste and edit some ideas I already wrote on improving Freeciv/LT mechanics in order to encourage drama/RPG-like atmosphere in the game. I think you will like it but it requires some coding.

Nice topic, anyway, curious to know your opinions.

[monamipierrot]

I wrote this after reading this thread http://forum.longturn.org/viewtopic.php?id=71, about a Alliance Manager.

IMHO this topic connects with an idea I already heard - and before hearing it I already thought of- which I found very interesting. The idea is that Player is not more a Nation.
I bet that implementing this would require a rewriting from scratch of a large part of the server and client code, but I want to point out the possibilities it would offer:
More than one player can concurr in managing a single nation. They can have different level of access to gameplay. One or few could be the Nation Administrator(s) - or Ruler(s) -, and there would be some more guys assigned to different tasks (ministers?), e.g. finance, production, foreign affairs, environment/infrastructures, trade..., or to different geostrategical areas (governors, army generals, fleet admirals). As many I would love to be a General or an Admiral, but I know some guys (e.g. my brother), who likes to stay hours in trimming empire production and finances and doesn't like war...
A game could still start ona 1 player = 1 nation basis, but when later in the game a successfull nation becomes too large, and things becomes some bad, the Admin could hire some ministers among new players (or among the dead ones?) to handle some aspect of the empire with great benefits in terms of efficiency and time managing. Of course the amount of freedom and consequent benefit depends 1. on some Admin choices and 2. on the type of Government.
If helping ministers act well, they may be rewarded with some gratifying tasks (e.g. geopolitical ones), but expecially when they control a province or an army, they may revolt against the Ruler and start a civil war.
It would be very useful to reintroduce the King (every player has a "king") and to introduce the "loyality" of units and citizens (units may become loyal to a General when having survived many battles with him, citizens may become loyal to their Governor when happy for some turns and so on).
Well, enough!!!

[maho]

Re ministers and gov depts - there is also need to delegate control over some specific army to given person.

Eg, there is aliance of 30 players and war on the 3 fronts. There shouldn't be one ministry of war, moving all thousands of units, but 3 of them, moving hundreds of units of various nations from 30 players.

[maho]

I like the idea of regional generals and governors but aren't teams and alliances are just the same thing?

No

Eg. When I was in alliance few LTs ago, I had no time to connect exactly on time of some military action. And few actions failed because I had explorer, but couldn't move to bypass ZOC, because I was offline. More, I was even not able to read all strategies and considerations, so I didn't know exactly what should I do with my army.

It would be avesome, if I mark group of units and give control over them to eg. You (let's assume that you're in alliance with me), and you can control them as they are yours (maybe except disbanding).

So it's possible, that I'm focusing on production, someone else is focusing on using them.

[monamipierrot]

I like the idea of regional generals and governors but aren't teams and alliances are just the same thing?

Nope. my original proposition added some "hierarchy" system among players. But actually Maho proposition goes beyond and somewhat implicitly suggests the possibility that this internal "hierarchy" in single nation and the discussed military alliance system between nations should be part of the same gaming access mechanics. Still far from being the same thing, anyway, but Maho gave the next step and merged them.
The problem is that even if taken alone, this ideas would completely alter game design. I would call it another, different, game, and it would very hard to develop, I guess.
But if we find the right basis and trim of the concept (which should be at the same time simple and flexible) then it would be easier to code and use.
For this reason different ideas are very important.
I insist: the concept should be simple and intuitive. I saw too much small or big proposals which complicate Freeciv/Longturn mechanics making it not more complex: just more complicated. (I don't want to offend anybody, but e.g. the prefortress thing is IMHO an ugly idea)

[monamipierrot]

Another great thing is to merge everything with the AI governor and to add a AI general/admiral. This way one player can give the AI some small tasks exactly as if he were a human.