Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.

From: carl@gergo.tamu.edu (Carl D. Perkins)

Date: Thu, 08 Jul 1993 21:59:00 +0000

rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace) writes...
>Of course both these points are correct.  The important point I think is
>that *there is no reason on earth why newbies should be forced to go up
>against established players without having a chance to prepare*.  If a
>newbie goes up against an established player, either he'll get
>slaughtered (no fun for anyone) or if he has a chance, then the
>established player hasn't been well rewarded for all the effort he's put
>in.
>
>A better solution is to say, newbies are not expected to go up against
>established players (though they might against other newbies).  The way
>I implement this in Atlantis is to start new players in different
>regions, so by the time a large empire's advance scouts reach them,
>they'll be able to defend themselves.  There are other possibilities,
>e.g. a rule forbidding attacks on anyone for their first X turns.
>
>--
>"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem"
>Russell Wallace, Trinity College, Dublin
>rwallace@cs.tcd.ie

I think that, eventually at least, you'll run out of unoccupied regions.

A very large part of the problem seems to be an unrealistic level of
information being provided to the players of the games.  If a player's
character, Mr. Wombat, is in an area, then all other players with a unit
in the area recieve a report that "Mr. Wombat is here". In reality one rarely
has such accurate information, particularly in an area like a city - Emperor
Crumpet will not normally be informed that Mr. Wombat is in city X unless he
has told his troops specifically to do so or Mr. Wombat is in some way
famous (or infamous).  In a system which acted in this way, the newbie
Mr Wombat would not be being looked for by Emperor Crumpet's units as he
can't have told them to be doing so since Mr Wombat didn't exist until just
recently and he has never heard of him and they won't report him on their
own as he is not someone that they recognize as being unusually
important/interesting/famous/infamous.  To implement this all that needs
to be added is a "fame" value to each individual and/or unit that increases
under various apropriate circumstances and also an "APB" command so that
players can instruct their units to report sightings of specific characters
or units (the spotting of which may not be automatically successful even if
they are in the same area).  The fame rating could, for example, start at
0 and increase to a maximum of 100 and represent the probability of a
character or unit being reported automatically as someone who is interesting.
In a complex game more than one type of fame value may need to be tracked as
any given character may become well known in different areas (like military,
trade, financial, legal, etc.), but in many cases one value should be
sufficient.

I think that a system such as this could help in reducing the "nuke the
newbies" syndrome. Until they have actually gone out and done something
notable they are simply beneath the notice of the other players' units.
This should also have its drawbacks - for example if a powerful player
has some of his units visit a village to impress some peasants into
service and the impressors don't recognize a new character, which will
presumably be the case if the character is really new, they could
very well attempt to impress him (and even succed in doing so).

Additionally, it sounds as if the most common reason for simply killing
any new character encountered is that they are very vulnerable and may
have stuff that is worth taking.  Both of these things could be countered.
The vulnerability can be countered by having any single character have
an excellent chance of fleeing from a hostile force, particularly for a lightly
equiped new character against a unit that is better equipped as all that
equipment, such as good armor and weaponry, is going to slow down the
attackers' persuit.  The theft aspect can be countered by having new characters
start with very little that an experienced character would consider worth
the risk - a new character may have 50 gold sovereigns and a sword, but that is
how much you have to pay the 5 men who you sent to kill him each week, and
that's not counting medical expenses if he injures one of them is injured or
payment that may need to be made to the dead soldier's family, but it is
enough for the new character to survive on for a month if he is careful.
It's the relative scale that is important - a single, essentially unknown,
person is much harder to track down and has considerably lesser financial
needs than a large troupe; on the other hand, an estabilshed and powerful
character should be able to hunt them down, if willing to pay the price of
hiring, or diverting from other persuits, a reasonably large number of
retainers but it will probably not be a good way to make a profit (and would,
if not in some otherwise unoccupied area, also increase the fame rating of
the unit resonsible as well as the fame of the unit's boss).

--- Carl

References

Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Thu, 08 Jul 1993 15:45:36 +0000
Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
bonar@gnumath.rutgers.edu (Doug Bonar)
Thu, 08 Jul 1993 17:17:00 +0000
Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu (Carl Edman)
Thu, 08 Jul 1993 18:16:56 +0000
Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Fri, 09 Jul 1993 00:01:40 +0000

Referenced By

Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
srt@aero.org (Scott 'Dr. Pain' Turner)
Thu, 08 Jul 1993 15:45:36 +0000
Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
bonar@gnumath.rutgers.edu (Doug Bonar)
Thu, 08 Jul 1993 17:17:00 +0000
Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
cedman@golem.ps.uci.edu (Carl Edman)
Thu, 08 Jul 1993 18:16:56 +0000
Re: Ongoing Strategy Games.
rwallace@cs.tcd.ie (Russell Wallace)
Fri, 09 Jul 1993 00:01:40 +0000