It would be great to set to "random" some values in a ruleset, especially in geology and sociology, but even in the tech tree, just for the purpose of giving some surprise.
However, it would be not a surprise if players can actually see these values in the server settings window, or infere them from the client.
To obscure settings from the client may be hard to achieve, but I bet that it would be quite easy to keep a random value secret, just as the generator seed is. If we can't infere it from the client, here you are a random misterious value.
For values which can be other than "off" or "on", randomness could be limited to a previously chosen range.
Speaking of the planetology/geology settings (which are the most obvious and simple settings which may receive benefit from randomness and mistery), there are some values which cannot be infered at the beginning of the game, or even later, e.g.
- Landmass. To avoid having too much or too few tiles per player, we can give a small range variation, such +- 20%. This would be enough to let indetermined if a world would be mostly oceanic or not.
- amounts of hills, heat, water, specials. Are all those mountains and rivers a common feature of this World or is it just the characteristic of this corner of the island? Only further exploration can confirm.
- 1x1 islands, poles, temperate.
- Generator and players placement. This would be a very radical randomness. In most cases players can infere them from the 1st 10 or 20 turns, but if mixed with other random values, it could be much harder to infere, and much intriguing to play.
In order to achieve more mistery, it would be important to abolish the sea order recognition (Ctrl+centerclick).
Random values
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monamipierrot
- Posts: 35
- Joined: Tue Mar 11, 2014 9:54 pm
Re: Random values
I'll copy and paste an addition I made to this post, in which there's some idea of fuzziness, in nuce:
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As you may had already guessed, one thing I would like to reproduce in LT and GT games is the marvel of eXploration of your World.
The problem is that it can’t be reproducecompletel,y cause you begin as a almost-caveman but already know the physics of the world you live in (let alone the chances of the future techs will give you, but this is another story).
To build a game in which you can really say “Wow!” the 1st time you play itg is difficoult, to build a game in which EACH time you say “WOW!” is almost impossible.
It would be great to have, one day, a client that don’t give you any clue on the type of world you are in, or that even distorces your geographical representation of the world in order to disorient you and force you to think about it.
This of course is almost a dream: we should focus in other ways to achieve some unpredictably and suprise.
One quite easy is to set some generator settings random, and to hide them.
Type of planet can’t be hided right now because you still can guess it from the overview map.
Some randomization may be also extended to other kind of variables, from sociological to military, to shield costs etc. etc. if the above is welcome from players.
A very interesting thing would be to extend randomization to the tech concept and to the tech tree. Tech cost could be some random variable (e.g. +/-50%), and tech requirements may be subject to small changes, for example gunpowder could be achieved if you know , say, invention and democracy. The new tech tree could be then visible from the beginning or only when you reach the required techs.
All of this in order to force you to elaborate new short and long-term strategies.
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As you may had already guessed, one thing I would like to reproduce in LT and GT games is the marvel of eXploration of your World.
The problem is that it can’t be reproducecompletel,y cause you begin as a almost-caveman but already know the physics of the world you live in (let alone the chances of the future techs will give you, but this is another story).
To build a game in which you can really say “Wow!” the 1st time you play itg is difficoult, to build a game in which EACH time you say “WOW!” is almost impossible.
It would be great to have, one day, a client that don’t give you any clue on the type of world you are in, or that even distorces your geographical representation of the world in order to disorient you and force you to think about it.
This of course is almost a dream: we should focus in other ways to achieve some unpredictably and suprise.
One quite easy is to set some generator settings random, and to hide them.
Type of planet can’t be hided right now because you still can guess it from the overview map.
Some randomization may be also extended to other kind of variables, from sociological to military, to shield costs etc. etc. if the above is welcome from players.
A very interesting thing would be to extend randomization to the tech concept and to the tech tree. Tech cost could be some random variable (e.g. +/-50%), and tech requirements may be subject to small changes, for example gunpowder could be achieved if you know , say, invention and democracy. The new tech tree could be then visible from the beginning or only when you reach the required techs.
All of this in order to force you to elaborate new short and long-term strategies.