You mentioned waiting for ETW several times in your thread you linked; to see how the political system (for one) would come out and to see if it could be modded.

It can be modded, but did the political system not meet your standards?

And if not, roughly how robust of a political system are you looking for; is there an example game conceptually that you have in mind?

[edit]I would say Torque with the RTS add-on was a good suggestion as well btw; but I'm thinking that you will need to eventually get down into the code somewhat if you want something specific out of the political system.

politics in a Sim are difficult because they must be simlified to keep them interesting and understandable while still retaining the realism.

The Poltical system for ETW, ie 18th century world, is good, having various Government types but there's no connect to the player I feel. It has elections but in the game it's hard to tell any difference if a government changes!? In reality England for example, I think, had Conservatives and Liberals, one all for military expansion, the other more for social reform?? This should be exploited more. It should annoy a military expansionist player if Liberals are voted into power and his actions are restricted. RTW did this to an extent with the player forced to do the Senates bidding otherwise face war.

A far better game design for TW would have been multiplayer, realtime, where 6-8 players take control of the Roman Republic, each player a senator / head of a faction so not only do you have external conflict but internal as well. 2 players would be elected consuls while other roman players forced to do their bidding. Other nations, controlled by kings, would be headed by one player as king while other players are his generals. etc etc.

Sounds a Great Sim idea but not for all gamers.

Padlock.

Could you not allow for leadership population within a player's empire to modulate according to a variety of factors (whatever you want) so that players must concern themselves with what powers are growing in their empire; also, by extension, allow for the same (or similar) political options within the empire as the options that exist outside of the empire (such as those in TW between empires).

Then, as far as parties and why they matter, treat each party as a very complex version of how you design a unit.
Normally, you would designate various attributes to a given unit.

Instead here, attribute a variety of societal variables (military, economy, and growth sub-categories) to the different parties, each to reflect how you want each party to be perceived as in the game.

This means that a player playing as the ruler would be concerned with who is potentially capable of being in power in the senate in Rome because they can sway the government structure towards a government standard that will move counter to what the player is wanting to work with.

If the government does sway opposite to the players interests, then they will be forced to make a decision to accept the new form of government, sway more toward their ideas, or remove the opposition that have swayed the government standard away from their interests.

Would this work for your interests?

Sorry, I didn't understand any of that, are you referring to ETW? or a new game concept? what's a "leadership population"?

As to a king, yes there would be internal factions trying to oppose him. other players wouldn't just play minor generals but aristocratic generals (with possible claims), kin, leaders of religions, leaders of commoners etc

Do you have a current game in mind?

Padlock.

I wrote it from a single player perspective; assuming multiplayer as an extension.

The leadership population is other leading character's than the player; who, assumably, is the king or emperor.
The leadership population is assumed as individual AI characters.

I did not have any game in mind, but instead modeled after Total War; which aside from the political, seems to be to your liking.

Then I treated the political structure as a unit, just like a soldier.

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Perhaps this will help.
(this is an incredibly simplified version only to help in explanation; add complexity of the attributes [for starters] and you could get quite a bit more back out of the system)

1. You are king of Red Empire; Red is good for Military; moderate for economy; poor for growth(population).
   
2. You are in a government type that does not use a Senate; Tyrant.
   
3. You have to run off of appointed local rulers.
   
4. You pick your rulers; all Red favored at first, obviously.
   
5. As time goes by, you expand to new areas and you need to choose new rulers, but eventually, you don't have enough rulers on hand, so you choose from the local group with the most favorable to you, though not to Red; he's a Blue.
   
6. Some of your Rulers, you have noticed, are turning to Orange and others to Yellow for a variety of political reasons (read this as, insert a large amount of systems [other empires courting your rulers with gifts and trade, for instance] that would arrive at this issue)
   
7. So now you have to contend with Blue, Orange, and Yellow biased internal rulers in your empire.

So what do you do?

• Do you accept the changes of time?
  
• Do you set a tyrannical campaign for reforming the empire? (read; witch-hunt)
  
• Do you set a passive campaign for reforming the empire? (read; plead, or create a military mission of success to stir up Red favor.)
  
• Do you call for a massive wall to block the empire from outside interaction?
  
• Do you kill all of your rulers that oppose you?
  
• Do you win the rulers that oppose you back over?
  
• Do you do one of the other many choices possible?

This is all on top of all of the politics that you would have to deal with from other kingdoms and empires as well.

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Now that is an incredibly small and empty version of the concept, but it helps in showing the movement between the functions of such a political system.

To reach any complexity that you want, simply continue to add as many attributes (above there were only three; military, economy, and growth) to as many different parties (above there were only 4; Red, Blue, Orange, and Yellow) in as many different Countries as you wanted (above, only one empire was examined. However, extrapolate to other empires and kingdoms and you would have a more accurate picture).

This basically means that each Party has attributes (just like your infantry and cavalry, that you design for the game, have varying attributes).
So parties become political "units"; the number of which exist in a given area of the same party, or friendly parties, sways the area to favoring that construct of politics.

(instead of military, for example, "their" political party favors population growth and frowns on military expansion; if you are a tyrant, you won't like this idea.)

That sounds a good system, it seems fairly genetic and could work with many socities.

my idea was to have population groups, each with it's own attributes, and you would extract leaders / soldiers etc from these groups. For example, as in historical reality, Roman Senators originally only came from the ruling class - Patricians, who probably originated from Etruscan invaders in the 7th century BCE. The common romans were decended from Sabines and Latines, thus you end up with the conflict of the Patricans V Plebs. Luckily both groups had the common sense to stick to political conflict to obtain their needs rather than mass murdering each other, like in other societies.

In the game design, a group of 3D characters would represent a population group and they would be seen living their lives as their attributes dictate. Different population groups could live totgether in one society etc.

Have you produced a design document for game concept? I'd like to see it. I haven't produced one for my game yet, it's all in my head.

Padlock.

Quote:Original post by padlock
Have you produced a design document for game concept? I'd like to see it.

I have created design documents, yes, and I don't mind sending you one for you to look over if you want it.

That said, I can say from personal experience of suddenly going from a mechanics modifier of RPG's to a hired game designer of an MMORPG charged with writing such a document, that the best method is to just start writing entire groups of information out with little regard to format.

Then circle back around and reorganize the concepts together as they are needed to be later.

Documents usually end up written in many versions so don't worry if your first version is not perfect, or even missing entire sections.