The Living World

  I think the living world will get fleshed out when Stardock creates the next level after the cloth map.  I don't really think the cloth map mode is meant to be living/moving.  It is so that people with low end or older systems can play also.  Think the vast majority of gamers cannot afford to constantly upgrade or buy new systems every couple of years.  Its a great feature of this game.  When they go to the other active map creation; animations and other assets will then be introduced.  That is just an opinion, but one gleaned from the developers earlier statements. 

I think Goontrooper meant introducing new gameplay elements rather than graphics...

Edit: Corrected the username of the original poster, sorry for spelling it incorrectly earlier.

Yes and no. The plan as I understand it is to keep the 3D stuff in-house until the mechanics are solidly 'fun' for most testers. To me, that most certainly includes the 'living world' theme, and I fully expect to spend much (or even nearly all) of my time on the cloth map because I'm fond of the largest maps that a TBS can handle. (I started playing GC2 on a sub-spec machine and had to stay zoomed out just to play. After I moved to a rig that could handle the 3D level, I still had no real use for it other than taking an eye candy break.)

Re the OP, I think the most important (and somewhat under-discussed) point you raise is about making sure that cities can be as distinctively individual as sovereigns and champions. I've yet to have what strikes me as a helpful suggestion for that challenge, but I sure know I'll be extra-happy at RTM if the devs can pull that particular rabbit out of their collective hat.

Yeah, not at all was I was talking about, and if you had read the post you would have seen me talking gameplay features...but oh well.

I personally love the cloth map, great concept and perfect for testing and even for actual gameplay.

You are dead on with my concerns. In most great works of fantasy, the cities  themselves have true personalities of their own, just like many great cities in the real world. I'm really hoping that we will see this in Elemental through a combination of lore and gameplay.

  I did read your post but you and apparently _Pawels_ interpreted what I said to fit your idea of what I meant.  And I only care about gameplay, stability at this point.  I've already posted somewhere else my feelings about this.  Don't expect you to read every post but I thought I should clarify since you didn't understand my comment.  Graphics, etc are very far back in my concerns for this game.

Alright, whatever, I'm not going to make an issue of it. I just don't see how your response, which talked about animations and the cloth map, had anything to do with the gameplay modeling of a of 'living world' that was the subject of the thread.

Anyways, what ideas do people have on this? Is it something people want to see and think that the devs can include? I think that most of what I want can be included. The dynamic changes to the world will be the most difficult, but I don't think any of it is impossible or implausible. For those that want a world that will really draw them in, I think this is one of the best ways to do it.

I hope cloth-map games will still support fully animated tactical battles and Movies/cinematic. I mean, if I end up playing on huge maps, I might get stuck on cloth as well, but I would still wish for pretty battles and what not

I think that the dynamic, living world is going to play a very important part in determining what kind of longevity and success this game has.  I hope Stardock follows through with their living world idea, in much the way you describe.

Personally I wouldn't read too much into how the game is set now though.  Almost everything in it is currently a placeholder to one degree or another, and in many cases no way representative of how the game will execute things.

I'd like markets and housing to be organic.

Really, why am I building houses for my peons?  I'm some sort of god emperor here, they can decide where they want to build a house themselves.  I'll be too busy building castles, barracks, training yards, the meat and potatoes of public infrastructure.  Individual domicile construction is something the citizenry get around to themselves.

Same thing with markets.  I'd even be ok with getting rid of some resource utilization, but feudal systems and such did put control over even agriculture into the hands of the leadership, so I'll settle for just the consumer end of it.  I shouldn't have to worry about the bazaar, it's formed naturally just by being allowed.  I would however get rid of the "farm" implementation and make the generic farm organic as well, something citizens create at the nearest arable field whenever they need more food production.  It's bugging the hell out of me as it's currently implemented.

Markets, and the tax revenues from the merchants that create them, should pop up in places where people have settled and goods are available.  The more you're producing and using, the richer your markets will be, the more tax revenue you'll gain.  Neglect your infrastructure, and your markets will suffer poor saturation, leading to access deficiencies.  Tax or conscript your population too heavily, and the ability to consume will be hindered, reducing the margins and wiping out your revenue source.

I'd abstract other purely private enterprises as well.  An inn shouldn't be something you build.  It should be something your populace ends up constructing because there's a market for it, visiting merchants.  The time waster that is micromanaging the construction of buildings, that should be reserved for things a sovereign would need to encourage or want to control.  Education, warfare, infrastructure projects.

I figure that's good for a living world.

I've been having illegitimate fun playing blocks-and-tiles with the beta, but I think I quite agree with you here. I have no good ideas about how to enable 'organic' development without more or less ditching the current UI, but as a player I'd much rather see my infrastructure attention focused on 'royal/state' facilities like barracks, keeps, and academies that might or might not influence the development of things like inns, markets, and neighborhoods both posh and poor.

Agreed.

I could go for some location based settling based on race, but that might be a little too complicated.

It should be a simple matter to develop your town in a generic fashion though.  Where you build would end up being the center of society, a downtown of sorts.  Neighborhoods would pop up around it just as they do in real life.  In real life it starts with a port, a general store, a saloon, some central structure providing a good or service, and spreads out from there as people build a life near the activity they partake in.  You would control the general layout by placing those places that generate economic activity.  The families of soldiers would want to live near the areas they train, farmers would either live on their farms, or somewhere near the market where they went to sell produce.

It would remove finite control over what was built where, but then being able to plan the perfect city detracts from the requirements to adapt to your situation.  Although we'll need good city invasion mechanics for that to be relevant.

If I'm following you correctly, that's another reason I'm losing my love for the current mode of building up cities. At the moment, I'm particularly reminded of the things Tyrion Lannister did to defend King's Landing towards the end of A Clash of Kings. I would never deliberately pile up vulnerable housing and commercial buildings outside a city wall, but city walls historically seem to encourage that sort of bad decision-making. I'd like this game to model that sort of behavior and possibly let me decide whether I wanted to try doing anything about it before I felt the need to simply lock the gates and give the 'organic' economic assets up as lost at the first sign of serious threat.

Raph Koster tried this originally in UO back around '97 or so.  See http://www.raphkoster.com/2006/06/03/uos-resource-system/ and http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/bakebread.shtml for part of the story.

Basically, he wanted a virtual ecology - from the second link:

"Each creature in the game was defined in terms of its needs. For example, dragons required huge amounts of meat to survive, and sought out gold (and if they found it, were supposed to carry it back to their lairs). The use case which was described in the design documents was that a dragon would have alair, and seek in widening circles for food. Should a player hunt out all the deer in the environs of the lair, the dragon might end up finding its meat at the local village. Then you could solve the issue by either feeding the dragon (herding deer to its cave, for example) so that it didn't need to hunt so far, or by slaying it. An example of how simulationist design can result in a more dynamic environment."

It didn't work so was dropped (tho for a while wolves would 'hunt').  It's too bad because it'd have really added a lot to UO at the time.  Today's computers are much more capable, and Elemental isn't a MMORG, so some sort of living world/ecology may be possible (tho it would necessarily compete with graphics, AI, etc. for processing power).

As a TBS. there is also utterly massive resourcing available in comparison with a real time environ.  Manipulation of the macrocosm can also be done on delay, allowing the computation to happen mid turn.  Rerouting the peasantry dependent on the existing structures could be determined separate to the changes made, making the necessary modifications in the next turn.  You could get away with a fairly small end turn load.

Programming it all will be the only difficulty.

You're following me correctly.  These games with fortress cities always amuse the hell out of me.  As if anyone could realistically supply the manpower for eighty foot high, ten foot thick stone walls around a self sustaining metropolis.  Defense is only interesting when you can't defend everything.  It's why Civ has succeeded despite such a lame implementation of combat where others have failed with far better.  Even the best fortified city is a pile of corpses waiting to happen once you raze all the infrastructure around it.

If I can get battle maps generated based on the fortress design with units placed according to their location in and around it and the capability to play scorched earth with the property outside the walls, I'll be in heaven.  I am a pessimist though, so I'm not expecting any such thing.

I have to concur 100% with the points being brought up here.  At the most I should create housing and market "districts" to marginally influence that.  But the majority of the buildings that I personally place should be state infrastructure that as a King I would actually build.  I mean really, why would I care where "Joe's Inn and Horse Station" ends up?  Where "Joe" chooses to place that is his business, as long as he pays his taxes, fees, and informs on his guests.

Actually, to follow up on this, certain state run companies or monopolies should be permitted.  But for the most part, the government should be parasitic.  Setting the conditions for successful (or unsuccessful) economics in order to to secure a larger tax base.  If there is an area where direct state control is desired (for example, more tenements for the poor, or chrystal mines that, due to your recent successful wars, you now have an abundance of "low cost labor" for) or needed to make up a shortfall or simply provide revenue for the government then you should be able to create your own state owned buildings, to the extent that you even make this a preferred course.  But complete government economic control should always be significantly less profitable (if somewhat more focused) than a private sector.

We know the "City" is considered a single unit. At least for now. It will be defended or lost in its entirety. Any walls or other defensive structure built inside its borders will provide a Bonus, plus a graphic.

I see the "Cities" in Elemental more as a representation of the growth, wealth and over-all health of ones Kingdom as a whole.

The current change to allow outlying Outposts (4 tiles away), plus the addition of Pioneers, to provide another means to secure external resources, tends to show that perhaps "a scorched earth" policy will indeed be a possibility.

That being, if you were to lose a large engagement within your own territory, and be forced to retreat to the nearest "City" for it's defensive bonuses, there's currently no reason you couldn't simply "raze" that infrastructure outside as you retreated.

If we look to move to a more Organic build model, allowing only the placement of the more "glitzy" structures, most of which require research to even become available, then what do you do, as the all powerful SoV, other than roam around the country side, kicking open old crates or seeking out Shards and Resource locations that your minions will at some point capture/secure, or you start yet another Outpost that will grow organically on it's own?

You direct the construction of those early "City" yourself.

As noted above, it may be a tad early to worry about a "Living World" when all we have is a Cloth Map. It seems the Dev's are playing at least 3-4 builds ahead of us and maybe the world does already have some life, we just can't see it yet.

Yeah, I hate this, like stab the cd with a fork hate.  It's utterly fagtastic(no offense GW) and really needs to be one of the changed features before release.  A stripped down economy with abstracted production I can handle.  I can even deal with a lame implementation of logistics where armies are capped in size by some stupid trait or research instead of having an automated supply system that would add massive strategic depth to the game.  I'll probably get myself banned with the rant if this ends up being anything resembling the final system for city defense though.

No system in Elemental should be like Civ, but horribly inferior.  A multiple tile complex that is taken down as a single entity would be a gross underachievement for a game with tactical combat.

I could hardly disagree more. The 3D level is about eye candy for everyone and increasing the appeal for short-game, small-map players. For the rest of us, the world should most definitely feel alive before we leave Beta 2, and it should feel that way at RTM for anyone who can't or doesn't want to use the 3D level.

You might have something with the devs playing several builds ahead of us thing, though.

I've only played Civs I-III, but I think I fully agree with this, although I admit I'd probably have tried to sound more deferential if I'd made the point myself. I have a completely unjustified theory that you increase the chances of a dev really listening to your ideas if you try to be nice about the prose.

My statement was not in opposition to the games need, real need, for a "Living World".

I do suspect however, from what I have read thus far at least, that Beta 2 is to be a strictly Hardware, Connectivity related MP Beta (2 week) test phase.

Here is a quote from the Dev.

"The object of beta 2 will be to begin the testing of the server infrastructure.  Elemental is client/server for its multiplayer. In fact, it’s dedicated server for beta 2 – players will be playing on our own servers distributed across the world.  The reason for this is that it eliminates the whole connectivity issue – if you can get on the web, you should be able to play. At least, in theory."

If we get to see more of the under the "Cloth Map" view of the "Living World", wunderbar!

Now Beta 3. hat seems to be when things are really going to start coming together? Oh ya!

But I have to ask GW Swicord. Is it your intent to play the FINAL game at MAX zoom, with GIGANTIC models running about?

I guess they will have to allow the sounds of the Cities to stay ON at all zoom levels to truly enjoy the full "Living World", as currently you have to zoom in pretty close, to hear what there already is of the "Living World".

I won't know until we're closer to RTM, but I'm pretty sure that because I've loved the largest possible TBS maps since Civ I, I'm likely to spend most of my time out on the cloth map in Elemental unless the UI is rude enough to force me to do routine things other than tac-combat (and maybe dungeon exploring) at the 3D level. Even there, the 'netbook-friendly' goal seems to imply that we should be able to do everything necessary without seeing the full 3D thing.

Re beta 2 goals, they seem to have been shifting (not a bad thing), so I'm a little confused/conflicted about the older assertions that overall gameplay should be in solid shape before the 3D stuff rolls out to us beta volunteers.

Re ambient sounds, I agree that it would be better to have them detached from zoom level.

Perhaps the term "Living World" has differing prospects for me and you... I see the term putting us "on the ground, amongst the "flora and fauna" whereas when I utilize the ZOOM out to Cloth Map levels, I would be making a self imposed decision to forgo much of that "Living World" aspect.

How do you see a "Living World" being detailed on the Cloth Map?

Yup, very different takes on the term it seems. Mine's not at all visual; it has to do with wanting game elements, including the non-built environment, to interact as organically as possible and be able to produce surprises long after I've lost track of the number of maps I've played. Basically, I want a 'living world' that would work in a text-only UI. Clear that spider nest, something happens, and the something varies according to whether the nest was near another spider nest, the only one in a forest, the thing blocking the pass out of a swamp where brigands camp, etc.

Yeah, I could go for different colored dots as far as the UI goes. It's the mechanics that interest me, not the visuals.  I want settlement to be organic for mechanical reasons.

Placing houses is an annoying waste of my time that adds nothing to the game play.

Total control over building allows for unrealistic defensible points where there would naturally be scattered infrastructure in a more vulnerable, and thus tactically more interesting manner.

I don't want to play a sim, I'm just not interested in playing bob the builder.  When it's a plus to game play to get rid of control over something unrealistic to control in the first place, it's a pretty brain dead answer on what to do with it.

You're probably right about your theory being unjustified, I haven't been banned yet.

Since I'm an asshole and not a poet, it's probably more entertaining for them to read my posts as is.  If I attempted to put it nicely, I'd probably just end up condescending and patronizing instead.  Not that I don't spread healthy doses of those around already.