ATLANTISv2 atl-design-digest #32

From: csd@microplex.com (Christian Daudt)

Date: Fri, 14 Jul 1995 00:00:00 +0000

This is kept by me (csd@microplex.com)
If there are any problems, please tell me 'cause I normally
don't have enough time to read them.
If you want previous versions, they are available via WWW at
http://www.microplex.com/~csd/atlantisv2/
----------------------------------------------------------
From: tim.hruby@his.com (Tim Hruby)
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 17:58:55
Subject: Atlantis 2.0 factions

Geoff said, in commentary on the faction numbers:

> Faction type: Generic
> Based on the low numbers here, it looks like these are mostly
> starting factions, and there aren't many Generic factions that
> are actually doing much.

One suggestion I might make is that you allow people to play Generic factions
for free in the commercial version.

This is a more of a marketing rather than play-balance consideration.  Think
of it like the evolving shareware/registeredware concept.  Generic factions
are really the bastard stepchild of faction types, compared to anything even
slightly more specialized, but they are functional enough to act as a
free-taste of advertising for new players.  This would allow people to play
the game a little and see if they like it, but if they wanted to have any
serious impact in the game, they'd have to "upgrade/register" and get the
commercial version.  I've seen this in at least one other PBeM game, and I
think it could have a good deal of potential as a marketing strategy.

It will have somewhat of an impact on the actaul play of the game, as there
will be a number of people who will be content to run free Generic factions.
Still, I'd argue that this would add to the game, as it would create an
incentive for the creation of inter-player feudalism, since these 2 hex
factions would
probably need the protection of a paying player War faction overlord to ensure
their security.

Comments, anyone.
----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 14:38:36 PDT
From: "GDUNBAR.US.ORACLE.COM" <GDUNBAR@us.oracle.com>
Subject: Re: Atlantis 2.0 factions

--Boundary-10193942-0-0

]> Faction type: Generic
]> Based on the low numbers here, it looks like these are mostly
]> starting factions, and there aren't many Generic factions that
]> are actually doing much.
]
]One suggestion I might make is that you allow people to play Generic factions
]for free in the commercial version.

Interesting. Of course, this begs for abuse in a number of ways.
I'm pretty sure some people are playing multiple factions right
now; one good thing about having people pay is that this doesn't
happen as easily (it's easier to come up with 2 email accounts
than 2 credit cards under different names). I guess some sort
of "start-up" fee might help this. But that defeats the whole
idea.

Still, it's something to think about.

Geoff

--Boundary-10193942-0-0
X-Orcl-Content-Type: message/rfc822

Received: 13 Jul 1995 14:22:58                    Sent: 13 Jul 1995 14:21:06
From:"Tim Hruby" <owner-atl-design@tango.rahul.net>
To: atl-design@tango.rahul.net
Subject: Atlantis 2.0 factions
Reply-to: tim.hruby@his.com

Geoff said, in commentary on the faction numbers:

> Faction type: Generic
> Based on the low numbers here, it looks like these are mostly
> starting factions, and there aren't many Generic factions that
> are actually doing much.

One suggestion I might make is that you allow people to play Generic factions
for free in the commercial version.

Comments, anyone.

--Boundary-10193942-0-0--
----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 13:59:41 PDT
From: kbrors@mindscape.com
Subject: Re[2]: Atlantis 2.0: Magic Improvements

>         SOmething I've seen in MUDs now and then is a braching
>         factor, where once you get good enough in the basic
>         foundation you can choose specialties to learn... MOre than
>         that though, I like the systems where the more you learn in
>         one area, the more time it takes to learn other areas.
>
>         (ie: You can master one area, or be ok in multiple areas.)

I don't like systems where you get stuck in one branch of
          specialization. I prefer the current type of system where
          you can learn everything but if you do that you will never
          learn those level 5 spells. This way the player decides how
          his mages will end up without the system deciding it (its
          more fun this way). To balance the high level spells make
          them take multi-turns to learn (like skills). If you are
          currently doing this ignore this comment.

Sorry Jonathan for hitting you twice with this message ...
          I don't have a very good mail system.

----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 14:08:20 PDT
From: kbrors@mindscape.com
Subject: Re: Atlantis 2.0: Improvements for Trade

>         Here are some of the things I have planned to make trade
>         factions more interesting:
>
>         1) More plentiful trade items, and a reason to use them.
>         There will be new skills Farming and Ranching, to produce
>         the items grain and livestock. That makes the "Basic Trade
>         Items" (as I am thinking of them) Furs, Grain, Livestock,
>         and Fish. Basic, because they have no purpose other than
>         trade, and will be very plentiful.

You could give these item purpose by letting 1 grain feed
          5 people (or 10). If you don't have grain then you pay the
          $10. This way you keep the current system (simple) but give
          an advantage to the TRADE factions (and they can now feed
          their folks).

>         Plains will be more plentiful in the next version, and will
>         be the producers of grain and livestock. The population will
>         depend on the production of these items. Also,
>         villages/towns/cities (which will be locations, rather than
>         region types) will have their populations be heavily
>         dependent on the amount of basic items being sold there.

I would make the increase in size one way ... that is up. It
          will get way too complicated if the pop centers are always
          going up AND down in size based on trade (it might create
          massive barren areas ... who does trade before the players
          get there?). Also have most areas have a trade item they
          will buy. That will give the trade factions someplace to
          sell without have to trek long distances to some big city.

>         When a village grows into a town, it will begin to have
>         demand for other items (iron, stone, horses, etc), and will
>         also begin to produce bows, swords, etc, for sale.
>
>         When a town grows into a city, it will begin to sell, and
>         demand, "Advanced Trade Items". These will be more exotic
>         and rare items, that can be sold between cities for higher
>         profits.
>
>         2) More things to build: Roads, mines, quarries, horse
>         ranches, smithies, etc. These will _not_ be required for
>         production (that was a bad idea), but will rather increase
>         it. And roads, obviously, will speed movement.
>
>
>         So, between these 2, hopefully trade factions will have a
>         bit more to do, and also be more important. Woe to the War
>         faction who drives the traders out; he'll be left with empty
>         plains, and a bunch of low-tax villages.
>
>         Geoff

----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 15:13:31 PDT
From: "GDUNBAR.US.ORACLE.COM" <GDUNBAR@us.oracle.com>
Subject: Atlantis 2.0: The Faction Type System

OK, the last couple of posts have been to tell you what's in
store. This one is to find out what you want. After we go
through some discussion, I'll probably run a vote.

The question at hand is the faction type system. The directions
we can go are:

1) The current system.

2) Something like the current system, but a little more flexible,
allowing factions to do more. What I had in mind was something
like:

You get 5 Faction Points. You can spend the points as follows:

1 point per mage.

For trade or war, you get a number of regions according to the
number of points you spend:

points    regions
------    -------
1         2
2         5
3         10
4         25
5         100

3) Another, faction point for skills system. In this one, you
get 10 faction points (or so). 1 faction point per mage. For
all the rest of your units, you may learn skills at 1 skill
per faction point.

4) "Screw it, I want it all." No limits, except a limit of
5 mages per faction. (This is the Atlantis 1 system).

5) OK, one last variation. This one's sorta like Olympia. No
restrictions on trade or taxing. 5 mages per faction.

However: leaders are no longer permitted to produce or tax
(and possibly pay 0 maintenance?). Only regular units are
allowed to do those. You are only allowed 10 regular units.

At the same time, you can create a garrison, or a production
unit. These do not count against your number of regular units.
However, you don't have control over them; all they do is
sit there and tax (or produce), and fight for you, if it comes
to that.

(Note that Trade should have much more ability to produce and
make money with the new economic system.)

Comments? Questions?

Geoff

----------------------------------------------------------
From: Mike Inman <nims@cris.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 18:09:27 -400
Subject: Helping Trade Factions

I have been giving some thought as to how to give Trade a chance
against War, and I think I've come up with a workable solution...

Simply put: Ally the peasants in a region with the Trade faction.

So, if a war faction wants to bully the Trade faction, they will have
to expend enough resources to overcome all the peasants as well, and
after the battle, if they have wiped out most of the peasants, the
region will have very little TAX income left, sort of a double edged
sword.  There would have to be a provision for the slaughtered peasants
to "grow back" after maybe two years, but make it a significant bite
out of the short-medium term TAX income.

The above is an over-simplified statement of my idea, a more complete
(but probably rambling and confusing) description follows:

Each faction would develop a "charisma" rating based on their historical
actions.  This might be a number 0-100 that starts at 50, or perhaps at
different values for different faction types.

Some things (Pillaging, Taxing, Losing battles, etc.) would have a
negative impact on charisma, where other things (Produce, Guarding a
Region, Selling items to market, etc.) would have a positive impact.
There are various ways to handle this, but basically, working Trade
factions should get better charisma ratings than working War factions,
especially brutal War factions.

When a battle is brewing in a region, each side would get a collective
charisma rating (an average of all the factions on a given side, weighted
by the number of men in each faction), and if one side out charismas the
other by say 25, then the natives will side with the nice guys.

Many other things could play into this, most notably, the race of the
men involved.  A faction might develop a separate charisma rating for
each race, so if they pillage a village of vikings, the darkmen might
not care so much, but all vikings will become their enemies.  Also, if
a faction's force consists mostly of Sea Elves, Sea Elves might like
them better while Nomads like them less, regardless of their history.

Finally, of course, mages could cast spells to improve charisma ratings,
but I'd like to be careful to not make the mages powerful enough to let
a War & Magic alliance come along and out-charisma a pure Trade faction.
Limiting the rating to 0-100 would mean that if a faction achieves a
rating of 75, they can be sure that the natives will never side against
them, while if they are below 25, the natives will never side with them.

My experience has been that fellow players have no respect for anything
but your combat potential, so giving "nice guys" these allies should
keep the war factions at bay, and if the War factions say F--- you and
wipe out the natives, they'll be in a much worse situation than if
they had pillaged the region.

On a side note, the Guardsmen could have a stable charisma rating of 75,
so that a War faction would have to pussyfoot around without pillaging
the lands of the race that lives in a city to avoid having the peasants
in the city ally with the guardsmen.  This makes it even harder to take
a city, but I believe that cities are turning out to be a little too
easy and simple to capture anyway.

Any comments?

Mike Inman
nims@cris.com

----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 19:03:19 -0400
From: Greg Lindahl <gl8f@fermi.clas.virginia.edu>
Subject: Re: Atlantis 2.0: The Faction Type System

> 5) OK, one last variation. This one's sorta like Olympia. No
> restrictions on trade or taxing. 5 mages per faction.
>
> However: leaders are no longer permitted to produce or tax
> (and possibly pay 0 maintenance?). Only regular units are
> allowed to do those. You are only allowed 10 regular units.
>
> At the same time, you can create a garrison, or a production
> unit. These do not count against your number of regular units.
> However, you don't have control over them; all they do is
> sit there and tax (or produce), and fight for you, if it comes
> to that.

I'd like to make a few comments about plan 5. The goal of plan 5 is to
dramatically reduce the number of orders and units that a player has,
without reducing the fun. In this scheme, you're allowed to have 10
mobile "army" units, and all other units are single guys. This
naturally gives a similar limit to current war factions -- 10 mobile
units can only guard so many garrisons, so maybe you'd be able to
control 100 hexes, probably fewer.

-- greg

p.s. Note that I'm not on the design mailing list, so if you have any
comments specifically about plan 5, please CC me.
----------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Food for thought
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 16:30:16 -0700
From: Anson Winsor <apwinsor@span.CS.UNLV.EDU>

Now this is a good aspect. As long as trade depend on war to
stay alive--even for food that trade should be able to produce
by themselves, then war will always be a faction type that
has an advantage.

But swords are actually an advantage over food anyday.

Food should enable units to keep from starving.
Not but new ones, pay for studying, but to keep from starving.

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Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 15:04:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Joshua Mosher (JE 1996)" <mosherj@minerva.cis.yale.edu>
X-Sender: mosherj@morpheus
To: "GDUNBAR.US.ORACLE.COM" <GDUNBAR@us.oracle.com>
Cc: atl-design@tango.rahul.net
Subject: Re: Atlantis 2.0: Improvements for Trade
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On Thu, 13 Jul 1995, GDUNBAR.US.ORACLE.COM wrote:

>
> --Boundary-11486924-0-0
>
> I like the silver=maintenance idea. I don't think worrying
> about food supplies would be many players idea of "fun", so
> probably nothing like this will happen.
>
> Geoff

I always thought it was nice to keep it simple, but it might be nice to
require something for survival that a full war faction cannot provide.
The huge advantage of the War faction is simply that money is the root of
everything in Atlantis, and taxation is the best way to get it. If we
make something else also required, they are more limited.

Josh

------- End of Forwarded Message

----------------------------------------------------------
From: tim.hruby@his.com
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 19:54:32
Subject: FOOD FOR THOUGHT

> I like the silver=maintenance idea. I don't think worrying about food
 > supplies would be many players idea of "fun", so probably nothing like
 > this will happen.
 >
 > Geoff

I've said as much in my other post in support of the idea of allowing food to
be a replacement for maintenance silver, but let me state it explicitly here.

Silver=maintenance allows _War_ factions to not have to worry about supplies,
but _does_ make Trade factions have to worry about supplies, since it is a big
logistical hassle to turn products into silver, requiring product couriers to
market and money couriers back.

An either/or system (silver or food) would do much to lessen this "unfun"
logistical burden on Trade factions, while not adding any burden to War
factions.

----------------------------------------------------------
From: tim.hruby@his.com
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 19:45:13
Subject: HELPING TRADE FACTIONS

> I have been giving some thought as to how to give Trade a chance against
> War, and I think I've come up with a workable solution...
>
> Simply put: Ally the peasants in a region with the Trade faction.
>
> So, if a war faction wants to bully the Trade faction, they will have to
> expend enough resources to overcome all the peasants as well, and after
> the battle, if they have wiped out most of the peasants, the region will
> have very little TAX income left, sort of a double edged sword.  There
> would have to be a provision for the slaughtered peasants to "grow back"
> after maybe two years, but make it a significant bite out of the
> short-medium term TAX income.
[etc.]

I don't think the problem is that War factions have an advantage in taking out
Trade factions through the use of military force -- War factions _should_ be
better at the use of force than Trade factions.  The problem is that War
factions probably don't need Trade factions as much as Trade factions need War
factions (though even this is matter of dispute).

Therefore, I think the answer lies in the ay the discussion has been going,
namely, to make Trade factions more important to the economy, rather than more
powerful militarily.

Just my opinion, YMMV.

----------------------------------------------------------
From: tim.hruby@his.com
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 20:13:15
Subject: ATLANTIS 2.0: THE FACTION T

> 1) The current system.
>
> 2) Something like the current system, but a little more flexible,
> allowing factions to do more. What I had in mind was something like:
>
> You get 5 Faction Points. You can spend the points as follows:
>
> 1 point per mage.
>
> For trade or war, you get a number of regions according to the number of
> points you spend:
>
> points    regions
> ------    -------
> 1         2
> 2         5
> 3         10
> 4         25
> 5         100

This is preferable to [1] if for no other reason then that it continues the
current system, but gives players a little more freedom to tweak their factions
to suit their vision.

> 3) Another, faction point for skills system. In this one, you get 10
> faction points (or so). 1 faction point per mage. For all the rest of
> your units, you may learn skills at 1 skill per faction point.

I'm not so sure I like this, as it eliminates a lot of the diversity among
factions, and hence the need to cooperate.  I imagine this system would lead to
most factions looking very similar (e.g., combat, a bow skill, tactics, 3-5
production skills depending on held terrain, and 2-4 mages).

> 4) "Screw it, I want it all." No limits, except a limit of 5 mages per
> faction. (This is the Atlantis 1 system).

Same objections as above.

> 5) OK, one last variation. This one's sorta like Olympia. No restrictions
> on trade or taxing. 5 mages per faction.
>
> However: leaders are no longer permitted to produce or tax (and possibly
> pay 0 maintenance?). Only regular units are allowed to do those. You are
> only allowed 10 regular units.
>
> At the same time, you can create a garrison, or a production unit. These
> do not count against your number of regular units. However, you don't
> have control over them; all they do is sit there and tax (or produce),
> and fight for you, if it comes to that.

Greg's comments about this being designed to reduce workload seem about right
for the impact this could have.  For that reason alone, it has potential.

Here's a slight variation:  You are only allowed to issue x orders per turn
(say, ten, or even better 15-# of mages).  But there would be a few new orders,
standing orders, which act a lot like the current flags.  Once a unit has been
given a standing order (autotax, autoproduce y, autostudy z, autogive surplus
silver/product to another unit (need this one to allow production chains, like
iron-sword)), it will continue to do that until it recieves a new order.  This
allows you a little more flexibilty to activate, dismantle and/or move a
garrison if the need arises.

----------------------------------------------------------
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 17:19:07 PDT
From: "GDUNBAR.US.ORACLE.COM" <GDUNBAR@us.oracle.com>
Subject: Re: FOOD FOR THOUGHT

--Boundary-11499145-0-0

Many good points being made here. However, I still maintain that
the items should be worth more as trade items than as food.
Otherwise, we are basically giving the trade factions the
ability to "PRODUCE SILVER", and no reason to sell it. And
that it, after all, the point of a trade faction.

So, the food items will probably have a market value of something
like twice their food value. But I think allowing it to be used
as food makes sense.

Geoff

--Boundary-11499145-0-0
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Received: 13 Jul 1995 17:06:29                    Sent: 13 Jul 1995 17:06:21
From:"owner-atl-design@tango.rahul.net" <owner-atl-design@tango.rahul.net>
To: atl-design@tango.rahul.net
Subject: FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Reply-to: owner-atl-design@tango.rahul.net
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> I like the silver=maintenance idea. I don't think worrying about food
 > supplies would be many players idea of "fun", so probably nothing like
 > this will happen.
 >
 > Geoff

I've said as much in my other post in support of the idea of allowing food to
be a replacement for maintenance silver, but let me state it explicitly here.

An either/or system (silver or food) would do much to lessen this "unfun"
logistical burden on Trade factions, while not adding any burden to War
factions.

--Boundary-11499145-0-0--
----------------------------------------------------------
From: Mark Keen <mark@keen.demon.co.uk>
Date:          Fri, 14 Jul 1995 00:13:03 +0000
Subject:       RE: ATLANTIS 2.0

> John Bollinger writes:
> > Geoff said:
> > >I like the silver=maintenance idea. I don't think worrying
> > >about food supplies would be many players idea of "fun", so
> > >probably nothing like this will happen.
> >
> > What about allowing grain, etc. to  _substitute_ for
> > maintenance costs, if they are available.  The rate could be
> > something like 1 <item> covers one man's maintenance for one
> > turn.  In other words, goods or silver = maintenance.
> > The advantages would be several:
> >
> > a) Trade factions could start much more quickly, because they
> > could produce maintenance from the land.
> >
> > b) Trade would not be stifled, however, because trade factions
> > would get more money by selling the items than they saved by
> > eating them.  They would still need money to buy men or items,
> > and to study.
> >
> > c) Another balance would be set up, for trade items not sold would
> > not go to increasing the region's population.
> >
> > d) It adds flexibility, rather than headaches, for the players.
> >
> > e) It would provide an excellent way to feed people at sea.
>
> To the extent that votes matter, I think this would be a great improvement, as
> it would allow Trade factions to be just a little more self-sufficient.  Since
> Trade factions don't produce silver, it really is quite a hassle to ensure that
> all of your units have adequate maintenance in silver.

I think is important not to make Trade TOO independant.

The current situation might seem imbalanced toward War, but the good
War player realises that he needs Trade just as much as Trade needs
him.

In the scenario suggested above, Trade could develop it's own massive
armies, feed them with crops, and have no need of War at all. In fact
War might be out in the cold, having no-one to produce for them.

Regards
Mark
----------------------------------------------------------
From: Mark Keen <mark@keen.demon.co.uk>
Date:          Fri, 14 Jul 1995 00:05:22 +0000
Subject:       Atlantis 2.0 - Improvement for Trade

> > 2) More things to build: Roads, mines, quarries, horse ranches, smithies,
> > etc. These will _not_ be required for production (that was a bad idea),
> > but will rather increase it. And roads, obviously, will speed movement.

> I would add to this the possibility of reclamation projects.  I
> would not start with more plains hexes then now, but I would make
> it possible for Trade factions do build things like dams and
> irrigation projects to drain swampland and irrigate desert hexes,
> thus effectively turning them into plains.  These would be fairly
> massive projects, but should be balanced to have a decent
> _long-term_ payoff, in that they would result in more Basic Trade
> items producable, and thus more civilzation.  Of course, such
> projects can be destroyed by raiders, returning the region to it's
> pre-existing state.

This is all starting to sound dangerously close to the computer game
Civillization. It's a great game, but might not there be some breach
of copyright? Just asking...

Regards
Mark
----------------------------------------------------------
From: tim.hruby@his.com
Date: Thu, 13 Jul 95 22:03:36
Subject: ATLANTIS 2.0 - IMPROVEMENT

> This is all starting to sound dangerously close to the computer game
> Civillization. It's a great game, but might not there be some breach of
> copyright? Just asking...

You can't copyright an idea, only its expression.  So as long as the Atlantis
rules are not derivative of Civilization's _mechanics_ (mechanics being the key
word, since the mechanics are the publisher's expression of the idea) there's
no copyright violation.  And with Civilization being a commercial piece of
software I don't imagine we can even find out what the mechanics are, since the
code is probably not available.

And anyway the idea of land reclamation dates back to the Ancient World, not
the publishers of Civilization (and since I've never actually played the
computer game, I can also say that I didn't steal the idea from them).  For
example, the massive irrigation works around the Nile allowed much of the
Egyptian desert to become fertile cropland, and made Egypt the rich and
powerful country in was in ancient times.  Or the fact that much of Medieval
England and the Netherlands was swampland (or actually underwater), and the
massive reclamation projects that took place in the Middle Ages laid the basis
for much of the economic growth that transpired in these lands.