RTW DemoGame - Or should that be RepuGame?

[Zild]

Since an underpowered computer and some fatal errors made by myself have left me unable to play any of the Total War games for the last three months, I have been getting regular (okay, non-stop) methodone treatments of Civ3 instead. Hardly a real substitute, but better than nothing.

One interesting concept of stumbled across is the Civ3 "Demogame", or "Game of Democracy". The basic concept is that anybody who wishes may take part in a single game, with the game decisions decided democratically by the community as a whole. This section of the Civfanatics forum can probably explain the details better than I can.

This got me wondering, and I think it might be nice to try something similar here.

The basic aim is to play a single game of RTW as a community, in which the members each contribute to the decisions made each turn.

In the Civ3 demogame, an individual, or sometimes a small group, would be responsible for what occurs in a single city. Another person is responsible for the military, and others for things like culture, science, and so on. A president is elected every so often, whose job it is to actually play the turn (this is done at a set time of day at regular intervals, with many of the community being reported to in a chat room). There are also positions for people on judicial bodies, to ensure that everybody plays by the rules, or even to change the rules of the community.

Some aspects of this could easily be translated to RTW. For example, you might have one person or a small council as a governor for each city/province, and one for each general, captain and family member in the field. This could cause disputes over who is in charge when two armies combine ;) How well this would work with the generals themselves then taking command of the battles remains to be seen - it might not prove practical for each general to fight their own battles (it would greatly increase turn-length as the community waits for players to wake up, log on and take their turn...) so either auto-resolve or one standard battle fighter would probably be good alternatives. Exactly how the game is played is entirely up to the player community as a whole.

Turns may occur every day, every week, every month - this all depends on what the players want. Needless to say, it will be a relatively slow, long game, but then you have to take the rough with the smooth...

The community itself might not even need to be formed as a democracy - in fact, keeping in the spirit of the game, I would recommend it doesn't! Family members would all get a chance to contribute to overall strategy, with the Faction Leader having the ultimate say. The rules might state that the city Governor has no authority over what construction occurs in his city, or they could be defined so that the city must be played in accordance with the governor's will (if this is in disagreement with the leader, there could be some assassins lying around ) The emphasis here is that the rules the community play by are entirely up to them. I will offer suggestions, I'd even be interested in playing a role in the game (but can't actually play RTW right now, obviously), but what we actually do is up to you guys reading this now.

I will also be suggesting this idea for STW and MTW, as it is equally valid there - in fact, it might be best suited to STW (especially in the first attempt), given the relative size of the map. A trial-run, as it were. Of course, there's no reason why multiple games couldn't run concurrently. Note that with STW and MTW, one important consideration for the community would be which expansion packs to use, if any.

All comments, suggestions and ideas are welcome at this point. In fact, I'll get the STW and MTW people to contribute to this thread at first, as the general feedback at this stage should be equally applicable.

Now, unfortunately, the bad news. I'm going to be out of action for a couple of days as I've got a long-haul flight, and things may be a little shektchy for a while after that as I have a number of job interviews to attend. But I'll keep my eye open here and post when I can. I hope to see lots of feedback!

[Zild]

Mods, please don't edit out this double-post, as I'm hoping people from the forums of all three games will be redirected here, but expect many not to read the above post.

If you would like to be involved in one of these games, please put your paw-mark below. But please also include whether you would prefer to play STW, MTW or RTW.

Again, any other comments are also greatly appreciated. In fact, they're pretty much the point of the entire game!

[Amir-san]

I think this is a great idea. :D

[BobTheTerrible]

Ah yes... Civ3, civfanatics. Good memories. You wouldnt happen to know if TETurkhan finished his test of time map, would you? I regard civ3 as the best game of all time. Perfect balance of detail and simplicity. The AI was possibly the best of any game to date (that i know of) save perhaps GlaCiv. Giving the AI a very slight bonus (10% or so IIRC) Made it the equivelent, if not better than, a good human player, and even on the easiest setting (where the AI got penalized a good deal, I think 50% or more, in the grounds of 70% maybe) many people I know couldn't beat the AI. It was(is) just that good.

But enough about civ. I think the Rome would be a truly awesome game for a demogame like that to happen. The only trouble I see is that the turns would crawl if each player resolved his/her own battles, but if one player did all the battles, if he was too good/ too bad it would definately sway the game to be too easy/hard/predictable (ie an expert plays all the battles, and wins all of them, even those 10:1 or 5:1 in the enemies favor)

Although, I think it would be truly fun, rewarding, and awesome if something like the following structure were set up:

Faction leader: Someone to give general orders, like "send your men north". He would also fight his own battles. He would also be the guy who actually does the turns

Family members: People with armies under their command, and cities too. They choose more direct orders in the map, like: move men west of _cityname_, and fight any armies encountered. Each family member would also get a city to govern. He would make reports like "train a unit of hastati, and build wooden walls" and give them to the faction leader.

Advisors: players only in the forums just giving general input, and other such duties relating to forums only, not in game.


Then captains' battles would be auto resolved, and the cities without governors would be automated too.

The only problems would be:
1. Too long gameplay, turns would take a week or so, for a quick one
2. Having more than 5 family members would be really hard to coordinate.
3. If any family members wanted to plot for the heirdom, their plans would be revealed to the leader.

I know this would be hard to pull off and extremely fun, I don't think that Rome is suited to it as it is. Heh, and I say this after writing out that long post.

[Zild]

Ah... ideas...

I too was worried about the balance when it came to battes, given the current state of the AI in RTW, and at the moment I tend to agree with the idea of having battles auto-resolved - a bit of a shame, as it means you lose about half of the game. But battles already have an MP mode of their own, damnit

I'm not sure how many players are involved in the Civ3 demogame, or how long each turn takes, but I'd like to think we could get it to about two turns per week if we stick to dedicated players (as part of this, I suggest that only people on this forum who have been promoted above Junior Member level be allowed to take part.)

My initial thoughts on structure were as follows: (Where I refer to governors, I mean humans playing as the leader of the town, not AI)

Faction Leader: Actually plays the turn - although there should be rules to ensure that they play it fairly. Obviously the Total War games are not based around democracies, so it doesn't strike me as being proper that the community should, but the Faction Leader should be listening to advisors, and control over towns and armies should be played according to the desires of whoever is in charge of that town or army. Characters such as assassins would be controlled by the Faction Leader - I can't imagine a sane, sensible Faction Leader having it any other way!

Family Members, Generals, Captains and Governors: Any army or town has a person in charge of it (if we run out of people, I would suggest assigning it to a Family Member until more players join). I would suggest that the towns keep the same person/committee in charge of them as long as the town is in the empire, although perhaps adding rules whereby visiting family-members have some say might be fun, and there should be the possibility of removing governors from power... If two armies merge, the highest-ranking (command) family member or general takes priority, although other generals act as advisors for that army. Family members always take priority over generals, if this is how it works in the game. If the generals are of equal rank, the Leader decides. What happens when armies split up needs deeper thought, and I've not the time for that now I'm afraid

Heirs would know enough about the Kingdom to advise the Leader in all matters. Governors would have ultimate say over their province and city, although their weight beyond this should be limited or perhaps non-existant. Anybody (general, leader, family member, captain, admiral...) in charge of an army has ultimate say over that army. With armies on ships, I would say the general in charge of the army has the final say - he has enough manpower to threaten the admiral An army in a town is governed by the commander of the army, but the town is still governed by the governors (exceptions may include things like extermination - I don't know enough about that yet!)

So although it is only the Faction Leader who plays the turn out, I think that he should be forced to move armies and perform construction, recruitment, taxation etc according to the person in charge of those entities. If he wants to remove them, perhaps he should build some assassins? (Suddenly, I can see all the governors refusing to build assassins!) The faction heir may give orders, but that does not mean his subordinates have to follow them!

When a faction leader dies, his job obviously passes to the next faction heir. Factions heirs can be made by the adoption event from existing generals, but when new ones are born they would have to be chosen from the community - here, I'm wondering if a semi-formal election procedure might be appropriate (it doesn't fit historically, but then nothing could as far as I can tell...)

I guess it's a bit of a moot point, but any thoughts on names for this monster we have created?!

---

Bob, I seem to recall there being a number of TETurkhan maps in the PTW expansion, and I think I saw the words Test of Time in there with them at least once - I guess that's a yes Did you ever take part in the Demogames? I'm not sure if I made it clear in my previous thread, but I do not have experience with them - anybody with experience of such things would be really welcome at this stage :)

Also, don't forget that I'm also looking at starting these up for Medieval and Shogun (in fact, since I still can't run Rome...)