Olympia musings From: khearn@pyramid.com (Keith Hearn) Date: Thu, 07 Dec 1995 00:00:00 +0000 I've been playing Olympia since turn 43. I realize that that makes me a relative newcomer, but I think it's long enough for me to have gotten a feel for things. I see very little inter-player trade going on. Almost everyone has become a generalist. If you want a ship, you build it yourself. If you want swords, you make them. There is nothing like an economy based on making and trading goods. I've been thinking about the general design of games of this ilk, such as Oly and Atlantis. A central problem is that of interdependancy of factions. Simply put, the game works best if factions need to work together, rather than one being able to work completely on it's own and grow exponentially to a point where it completely overpowers it's neighbors and dominates the game. Interplayer cooperation is better fostered if players have incentive to specialize, rather than having every faction able to do everything. Atlantis tried to solve this problem by creating types of factions, military, trade, and magic, similar to D&D's character classes. Military and trade factions could not have mages, military and magic factions could not produce goods, and trade and magic factions could not have significant armies. This is, of course, a simplification of the way it works, but you get the idea. Thus, if a military faction wants swords, they need to work with a trade faction, and if they want magical support, they need to work with a magic faction, an so on. While this seems to work, it is very artificial. I quit playing D&D because I hated the restrictive class system (Why is it completely impossible for my 18 intelligence mage to learn to pick a simple lock?). Olympia tries to avoid the problem by the use of noble points, but doesn't quite manage to cause much in the way of specialization. For instance, if I need a ship, I have two basic choices: make it myself, or trade with someone else for one. Trading with someone else involves finding someone who has or will make one, and then waiting for them to bring it to me, or else going forth to pick it up. This takes time, probably several turns, in addition the the construction time. On the other hand, it only takes one noble-week for me to have a fully qualified shipbuilder trained up and ready to go. Another noble-week and I've got a noble ready to harvest the wood I need. Why should I ever buy a ship from someone else, when I can be ready to make my own in two noble-weeks? This leads to there being no niche for shipbuilders in the game. A game like Olympia should be full of niches, like shipbuilders, weaponmakers, transportation companies, miners, et al. But since anyone can set themself up to do just about anything in a few turns, the niches simply aren't there. Then there's also the consideration of realism, if we want to consider it. Does anyone *really* think they can learn to build a sailing ship in just a week? It should take months, at a minimum. Similarly for most other skills. One doesn't learn to make a sword in a week. I think Olympia would be a better game if skills took longer to learn. It would encourage people to specialize and fill niches, rather than all of us being generalists who can do anything, and thus don't need to work together. If it took months to learn to make a ship, and years (game years) to become really good at it, then those who took the time to learn would have a market for their products. Other players would seriously consider buying a ship from someone else, rather than just spending a week training one of their own people to do it. A faction would still be able to do anything they wanted, but it would take a long time. There would be no artificial constraints on what you can do. You could make a decent profit without a castle, by spending your time learning to do something that those who built castles haven't had the time to learn. I also think that the experience system should be used more heavily. Right now all it seems to do is shorten the time required to do something. There should be a difference in quality as well. Maybe apprentice shipbuilders should only be able to make galleys, and only journeymen or adepts should be able to make roundships. Other skills could have other progressions. It is also too easy to become very experienced. Becoming a grand master at something should require years of working at it, not just 9 tries. A swordmaker should have to make dozens of swords before he is even a journeyman. I've been playing Olympia for only 33 turns, yet I already know 52 of the 70 skills. I've got nobles that are masters or grand masters in several skills. By turn 100 I may know every skill in the game (magic spells not included). In 12 game years should half a dozen nobles be able to learn everything there is to know? I don't think so. Yes, this would make the game start slower, but once a few player had gotten over the first hurdles, trade between factions would start up, and a real economy could develop. One could even borrow a page from Odyssey and allow people to pick a few skills to start out with. You could have a point system like Odyssey has for it's setup, and allow starting players to spend points on extra nobles, and on training them in some basic skills. Points could also be used to start out with goods, similar to the gold and wood that people currently start out able to claim. This would make the startup go a bit more quickly, while still keeping people from being able to learn to do everything too quickly. Well, this has already gotten far too long, but what do others think? Would slowing down learning make the game go too slowly, or would it enrich it my fostering more trade and cooperation? Keith Hearn khearn@pyramid.com Referenced By Up