4X Audience mechanic in SF 4X (looking for ideas)

[Chris Koźmik]

I'm making a 4X game (another topic: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...x-space-empire-builder-feedback-needed.98458/ ) and one of the twists is it focuses on you being the Emperor.

And if you are the Emperor there must be audiences :D Absolutely. The queues of subjects, ambassadors and the like inviding your privacy on regular basis. And you having to listen to them (or at least trying to not fall asleep) and making some decisions.

Important part, it's a 4X space strategy, not a throne room simulator So, audiences are just an addition, not the core, it should not "take over" the rest of the game. Therefore I envision these audience to happen once every 10 turns (to not be too distracting). Also audience is obligatory (until you ressolve it one way or another (ignore being the option too) the EndTurn button won't work). There is a separate screen with a throne room, you have a queue of people "small portraits" that await being graced with your presence, you click on one of them and a window pops up with description what that person wants and your options.

Examples: "your imperial inspectors found out that a planetary governor is stealing money, you have an option to fire or keep that official (he is loyal to you, just a thief)", "two ship designers disagree if battleships should have better armours or better mobility, you are to decide (permanent battleship perk)", "a person wants to be hired as a food tester in the imperial court (reduces chance of successful assassination attempt)".


Overall, I feel a strong desire to implement some sort of audience system, yet I have a blurred vision how exactly it should work (mechanics based? story based? random events?) and could use any ideas here

 

[oscar]

Definitely take a look at King of Dragon Pass

In general I prefer events with a variety of contextual responses and long-term or unexpected consequences (that make sense however) over the simplistic "Lose 50 gold or 10 research point" type events you might see in Europa Universalis or Civ IV.

Competing advisors and factions could be interesting. Does your setting have a clergy? A nobility? An influential merchant's league?

 

[Norfleet]

The kicker with KODP vs. EU-style events is that KODP is a MUCH more story-driven game. Each of these events is basically a handmade story arc that resolves in some way based on the choices you've chosen (and a shitload of RNG). EU-style events, on the other hand, are basically randomly generated occurrences that repeat over and over as long as their trigger conditions are met. In the example of the planetary governor event, for instance, if fired EU-style, pretty much every planetary governor will eventually trigger that event...which also means none of these guys actually have any personality to them, they're just a blank slate waiting to randomly trigger an event, which, given p > 0, means p = 1. If it has a nonzero chance of happening, and nothing removes this guy from play before it happens, then it will happen. In a more story-driven approach, the corrupt governor event will only happen basically ONCE. Your decision will propel the corrupt governor story arc towards some kind of conclusion....and afterwards, you'll never see it again. Eventually, you run out of occurrences.

So, basically, it comes down to "recurrent, guaranteed things that will always happen to every eligible subject if you wait long enough" vs. "hand-crafted story arcs triggered once when the conditions are met".

A combination of the two could work well, with handwritten story-arc events that pick an eligible cast of characters to fire ala KODP's story arcs, combined with procedurally-generated events that can recur based on circumstances (peasants dissatisfied with some aspect of your management, etc)...and I think KODP had these, too, as minor events of this nature would often recur, unlike the Big Events.

 

[Malakal]

I'd love to see envoys done well in a game. Basically you pick a guy/girl/alien and make him your ambassador and give certain orders, then he goes to do his thing but you dont influence what hes doing there. He comes back with a treaty you wanted or not, depending on his stats and how well he negotiated. Some kind of delegated diplomacy basically.

The same could be done with audiences. You set up a vizier kind of guy and he is dishing out justice in your name and advising you on decisions - and as we well know many viziers dont even serve you!

 

[rezaf]

I have a hard time imagining how something like this could be properly implemented without "taking over the game" in the sense of being a major part of the gameplay.
Having an audience every 10 turns would be rather gimmicky - kinda like the GNN reports in MoO.

Event based audience thingies (like EU/CK) would be much easier to implement, but also repetive and somewhat pointless. Story-arc based audiences (like in KoDP) would be much more interesting and flavour-rich, but would take a ton of time to implement. Arguably too much time for a feature that's "secondary".

 

[Chris Koźmik]

I have not played KODP, just read about it. And here I have a problem (similar to Save the Queen), replayability & scripted events. These all look great and everything when you play it first time, but after 10th play (which is not a lot for 4X) it becomes boring... And another problem, 4X is a numbers feast, when I play story driven game I don't care and can accept ambiguity, but in 4X I mini-max, I need to know the hard numbers. Which means either tooltips with exact mechanics explained or me googling how it works KODP mechanic was a great one during pre google era, now it has flaws and it's not so compatible with 4X overall.

Competing advisors and factions could be interesting. Does your setting have a clergy? A nobility? An influential merchant's league?

Well... Partially... It might have corporations or guilds and the like (but no nobles). Anyway, post what you have, I should be able to adjust it to the theme, as long as the mechanic is working.

 

[rezaf]

These all look great and everything when you play it first time, but after 10th play (which is not a lot for 4X) it becomes boring...

This is why I wrote these take a ton of time to implement. It's easy and fast to implement a few story driven events. But to avoid the repetition problem, you have to have a TON of them. Obviously, if in any given game, the player is going to encounter 10 such events on average, and you only have a pool of 25, this is going to be quite the issue. If you have a pool of 100 or even 1000, things will be very different.

I think Darklands had some great examples of story-based "events" (more like encounters) that mostly weren't actual arcs, some of which were rare enought not to be repetive - but it had the added benefit that you'd usually not play it over and over again the way you do this with an 4x game.

KODP mechanic was a great one during pre google era, now it has flaws and it's not so compatible with 4X overall.

Like you wrote, tooltips are the key to your line of thinking. Recent Paradox games solve this decent enough.

 

[Norfleet]

This is why I wrote these take a ton of time to implement. It's easy and fast to implement a few story driven events. But to avoid the repetition problem, you have to have a TON of them. Obviously, if in any given game, the player is going to encounter 10 such events on average, and you only have a pool of 25, this is going to be quite the issue. If you have a pool of 100 or even 1000, things will be very different.

You're going to need a pretty big pool, since this bears a lot of similarity to the Birthday Problem in reverse. Just as it doesn't take too many people before they start having colliding birthdays even under the assumption of random birthdays, it's going to take a LOT of events to keep events from colliding too much for a given player.

And, as in both problems, it's unlikely the events are actually totally random, there's going to be a strong bias towards events relating to common success or failure states.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Hmmm, I think pure story/event based would not work here. Even if it was doable, it would be too overwhelming (for several reasons I would like to have up to 6-12 visitors per audience, if each would bring a new storyline the player would lose the track quickly). So, I think, while there might be a few storyline based, most should be mechanic based...

Not that these mechanic based can't have a story like flavour. For example in each game you might be building a "Death Moon" and each audience there are people coming with reports of the progress (usually asking for forgivness for the delays) or asking what to install on the upcoming fortress of doom (better shields, more fighters hangars). These would be partially random, but overall would repeat each game (since you always would build one) with some variations (different problems on the way).

Similary, there should be assassination attempt event which should trigger at least 3 times per game (more in the "Rebellion" scenario :D), and that one could be identical each time each game (it still adds to the mood of a daily life of the Emperor :D)
(note: you can't die due to assassination attempt, but if you fail the check there are penalties (like your clone was dead, you were wounded and had to work less so the tax efficiency falls for 15 turns because everyone is stealing when the Emperor is not watching, loss of prestige, etc), so it won't be unbalanced)

Having an audience every 10 turns would be rather gimmicky - kinda like the GNN reports in MoO.

In what sense/why? GNN reports were unexpected/random, here you would have a counter "turns till the next audience" and you would eagerly wait for it because some officials will promise that something "will be done by the next audience" (so, audiences would act also like "big turns" I suppose). Or did you mean something else?

I'd love to see envoys done well in a game. Basically you pick a guy/girl/alien and make him your ambassador and give certain orders, then he goes to do his thing but you dont influence what hes doing there. He comes back with a treaty you wanted or not, depending on his stats and how well he negotiated. Some kind of delegated diplomacy basically.

How it could work? You have some courtiers with a single "diplomacy" stat and you send the one that has it highest to the most important to you embassy?

 

[rezaf]

You're going to need a pretty big pool, since this bears a lot of similarity to the Birthday Problem in reverse. Just as it doesn't take too many people before they start having colliding birthdays even under the assumption of random birthdays, it's going to take a LOT of events to keep events from colliding too much for a given player.

Yeah, I agree. That's an important lesson Firaxis hopefully learned when shipping their XCOM with non-random maps claiming: "No player is going to see the same map twice in a playthrough.".

Hmmm, I think pure story/event based would not work here. Even if it was doable, it would be too overwhelming (for several reasons I would like to have up to 6-12 visitors per audience, if each would bring a new storyline the player would lose the track quickly). So, I think, while there might be a few storyline based, most should be mechanic based...

Maybe you should completely turn the idea around and make it a bit like the "limited actions" thing in the original concept for MoO 3.
There's a set of "problems" from different areas of a game that can only be directly influenced by hearing out somebody at an audience. Say, inefficiencies or other delays in projects of any kind (infrastructure, ships, research, espionage), population (overcrowding, no growth), diplomacy ... and so on and so forth, whatever fits in the context of your game design.
To tackle any of these problems, you HAVE to grant the person an audience. Thing is, you only have audiences every 10 turns and you can only hear out x people each audience, so some of these things are going to be unattended (which is why I think the results should usually be non-critical, but that's of course your call). And you don't know about the specifics before granting the audience.
Is the researcher guy from Ursus VII reporting an important research delay? Or has he found a way to make your labs more efficient? Will he inquire money/resources you don't have anyway? You knever know.
So do you rather hear him out or the Military advisor from Epsilon Theta, who might bring important tidings from the war or inquire about more Mountain Dew for frontline fighters for -3 credits / turn granding +3% combat efficiency? Decisions decisions...

If you come up with a good list of petitioners and problems, this might a way to abstract actual stories and make even repetition relatively bearable, all while keeping the work required for implementation to a relative minimum.
But like I said, of course it's all your call. Hope you don't mind the throwing-out-ideas.

Having an audience every 10 turns would be rather gimmicky - kinda like the GNN reports in MoO.

In what sense/why? GNN reports were unexpected/random, here you would have a counter "turns till the next audience" and you would eagerly wait for it because some officials will promise that something "will be done by the next audience" (so, audiences would act also like "big turns" I suppose). Or did you mean something else?

I merely meant that unless you find a way to make the audiences meaningful it's going to be something you'll often ignore like the GNN reports. There's some situations where this can be quite insightful in MoO, but often enought - especially later in a game - the facts will be blatantly obvious and you'll just click through the report.
Meaningful can be realized in either having engaging storylines or in having a good motivation to go through with the audience procedure with some decent hopes to get something out of it.

I outlined one idea to make that happen without too much story-focus above. You can also go a slot-machine approach where EVERYTHING provides boni (no arbitary penalties to players if an audience isn't granted) and it's only a matter of trying to get those that are most useful to you in the given stage of the game.

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Got an idea "projects". There is a big list of projects (think of these like wonders in Civilization), you don't build these and don't see the list (hidden). Each audience you have a random set of 5 such projects, you decide which one to start. Once started it slowly progress (the fewer projects the faster one individual project goes, so in some cases it might be desirable to skip starting a new project). Once completed (triggered always during nearest audience) you get the bonus (permanently, empire wide).
In addition, you have an option (again presented during audience) to alter what kind of projects are more likely to be presented to you (industry, agrarian, military, science, social), so the set of projects is not completelly random.

The nice thing here is replayability, you don't know what projects you will have available in a particular game.

Example projects:
- College of Civil Service (all new governors start with Competence +1)
- Food processing conglomerate (+10% to food production)
- Imperial statue on each planet (+5% to all planets loyalty)
- Law Enforcement Agency (halved rebel support)
- Industrial Complex (each Tritanium resource decreases cost of ships by 1% (maximum 10%))
- Merlin Foundry (each Iron resource is considered Tritanium resource)
- Scent Generator (all planets you controlled for at least 10 turns have halved desirability for The Hive (insectoid race) also all insectoid races get -10% penalty to ground combat on these planets)
- Deep space expeditions (you get an additional exploration attempt every second turn)

Maybe you should completely turn the idea around and make it a bit like the "limited actions" thing in the original concept for MoO 3.

I have not player MoO3 but I assume it worked similarly toe GenghisKhan's actions (or other KOEI games)?

Anyway, I was trying to come up with similar systems of "limited actions of the emperor per audience" and... the results were not great so far... Too unbalanced and/or too trivial choices.

One idea, maybe make a separate audience type "festival/party" (like once every 100 turns is soem celebration) and you have this huge bunch of governors, admirals and the like all at once in a single audience but you can grant 3 favours only (choice who get it, those who don't loyalty -1)?

Hope you don't mind the throwing-out-ideas.

Not at all! That's the whole point of me making these topics

I merely meant that unless you find a way to make the audiences meaningful it's going to be something you'll often ignore like the GNN reports. There's some situations where this can be quite insightful in MoO, but often enought - especially later in a game - the facts will be blatantly obvious and you'll just click through the report.
Meaningful can be realized in either having engaging storylines or in having a good motivation to go through with the audience procedure with some decent hopes to get something out of it.

Even if the choice would be trivial and repetitive (pessimistic scenario), it won't be like the GNN report. I mean, even if you are always presented with the same choice on turn 10 (better ships vs better economy) you still need to follow a specific path (ind it the choice here is at least remotely conneted to your specific ingame situation it might make you rethink your standard choice and follow another route during this game).

 

[Chris Koźmik]

The first screen of audience:

The game will try to adjust so there are exactly 12 visitors per audience (filling free spots with low level visitors), there are no upper limit (if more than 12 it allows scrolling of the visitors, but I will try to ballance it so it's rare)

 

[Chris Koźmik]

I'm still looking for ideas for events/storylines for the audiences. If you have something, post.


Here are some concepts:

- Emperor was Poisoned (recurring event): an attempt on your life, they were able to save you but you are need to be hospitalized so the empire gets a penalty for X turns (you can't work too much and do your emperish duties properly); you can react in two ways "become more cautious" (reduces chance for this event for next X turns) or "track the disloyal ones" (some low loyalty imperial officials will get fired without any consequences). This event can be triggered by other storylines/events (since it's a generic one).

- Constructing "Moon of death" (chain of events): the grand plan to build a super big flying space fortress to assure your rule in the galaxy. Each audience they visit you and you select what install next on the under construction space fortress or ask for money (if you decline the construction goes slower) or report delays (you can punish the responsible for delay) or report that rebels have stolen the plans/etc. In the end, after like 200 turns and several audiences where they were bugging you about it they will finish the thing, how powerfull it is and when exactly it's finished depends on the choices you made on the way.

- Asteroids belt mining licence: A guild/megacorporation approaches you and asks for a licence/monopoly to mine asteroid belts. They offer a certain perk (empire wide), the licence last for 50 turns. The trick is there might be other guild/megacorporation with a better perk next turn and you can issue only one licence/monopoly (so you need to wait till the old licence expires after 50 turns).

 

[Chris Koźmik]

Ugh, the screens are terribly outdated, I'm posting new ones

Audience (overview):

Audience (details & making a choice):

Imperial Court (12 courtiers that act as your ministers/advisors/helpers) also Court Factions:

Basics:
- every like 10 or so turns there is an "Audience"
- around 12 characters/events appear to a typical audience (if there is less than 12 events then regular planetary governors will come in with a visit)
- each event/character present you with the description of the issue/opportunity/etc and 2-5 options to choose from


More ideas for audiences:

- a regular imperial official (governor, admiral, general, courtier) can come in with a visit, they give you a small report (nothing you would not know, more like a reminder what planet the govern, their name, age, etc) and you have an option to fire this official (new officials are auto hired each turn to all vacant positions, so you only fire those you don't want and then get a random new one)

- Choose a perk (one time events) predefined mutually exclusive choices like "all powerplants +1" OR "powerplants on lava planets +3".

- Choose our priority (recurring events) very similar to the one above but it reappear regularly and you can make the decision again (by default it uses your last choice) it has choices like "our schools should train more pilots" OR "our schools should train more engineers".

- Diplomatic incident (recurring event) a diplomat of yours messed up things and relations with major race X (you don't get this event for minor races) deteriorated. You can respond in 3 ways "complain about competence of imperial officials" (a random diplomat/official will get +1 competence), "who cares, I planned to conquer them anyway" (+10 to combat vs that race for the next 20 turns)

- Intelligence opportunity (recurring event) your agents were able to bribe an important official of another race (mostly this event appears vs democratic/republican/merchant races) choose one "reveal military secrets: +10% to combat vs that race for next 50 turns", "we are friends speech: their anger vs us drops by 5 points", "we don't need this planet: you get a random border planet of theirs (that borders your empire) instantly and without consequences". Again, these won't pop up vs monarchistic/dictatorial races, only races that have politicians capable of selling their own country for their personal gain can be the target of this event.