ze_jackal:

You brought up an important point that I felt I should clarify and RTE game would not be like rise or nations or empire earth. Lets make a little scale from 0-10, If starcraft and c&c are 0 and Civilizations and Masters of orion are 10. I see RTE games being a 5. Rise of nations, empire earth would most likely be 1 at most 2 on the scale.

I agree that RON is fun but really compresses time to greatly and there really is only a slight diffrence between the diffrent tech levels.

Also real time doesn''t have to mean fast time. Just that the game is played continusly and not in turns.

As far as the comment on balancing thats really a rather lengthy discusision on its own. But I find the best system to be "the all created equal system" basicly everyone start on the same footing and thats all the player balancing nessary. If during the course of the game your opponent has twice your technology, units and production, thats not poor balancing that means they are a better player then you it''s as simple as that.

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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

quote from Technogoth;

"Also real time doesn''t have to mean fast time. Just that the game is played continuously and not in turns".

I agree with this statement. Who says that the fun is taken away when you have to put some thought into the game? There is a reason that it is called real time strategy games. There is little strategy in amassing a huge force of swordsmen to rush another player and storm his castle before he can do the same to you. That gets old really quick. Empire building games seem to get a bad rap because you have to think. Now I agree that if a game takes 3 hours and no progress has been made and every player hides behind its walls and just trades all day, that is no fun either.
There has to be a happy balance in a RTE game to keep the players just interested enough to see the game through to its outcome. The best games give you a little bit of satisfaction throughout the whole experience. Always learning new technologies and tactics throughout the match. Most RTS games that I have played give you a jolt of excitement and a very quick end which leaves you feeling somewhat unsatisfied by the abrupt ending.
Now I must admit, that I have not played the vast majority of games out there. Someone mentioned that I try Alpha Centuri, which is similiar to the Civ series. I enjoy those games but they are still strictly turn-based.

Okay, I was under the impression that you were trying something like RoN. Although, if Brian Reynolds can''t get it right, I don''t think we have much chance .

In RTSs there is always one implied resource, that must be carefully managed, since the supply is finite - time. The whole point is that it occurs on a time scale. This is the strength and weakness of the RTS genre - they require you to think under pressure. Not entirely unlike a test.

TBS games, on the other hand, allow for a much more relaxed pace - more like an essay. Consequently, tech advances are slower, units take longer to build and maps are bigger. It''s not because you have to think (I''m a huge Civ3/SMAC fan), just that the game exceeds the average North American attention span by several dozen hours.

So what do you think should happen? Take the breadth and depth of a 4X game and speed it up? Or take the standard RTS mechanics and slow them down? The former results in Rise of Nations - too much content, too little time to enjoy. The latter would need some careful balancing to provide enough to keep the player interested.

Well, automation would be key. Most TBS games make heavy use of this; it could easily be adapted to RTS. Bases need to be able to run themselves, and units need to be intelligent enough to defend themselves. Most units in RTS games tend to the braindead.

The current "tech tree" would have to be rethought. Most tech trees don''t even branch (C&C, I''m looking at you). Again, steal shamelessly from TBS - create a *real* tree, with complex dependencies. Alpha Centauri (artificialintel18 - play it, it rocks) came with a poster of the tech tree that was 4''x3''. Something like 100 technologies available, all of them deeply interconnected. The added complexity will require more research at a particular stage - you can only get so far in a single branch before you have to go back and catch up.

I think I''m going to try breathe new life into this concept hopefully I''ll get some good discussion going I''ll try and be more detailed this time through.

RTE Basic concepts:

Manpower: - “A war is won or lost at home and not on the battlefield" AB.
In order for a nation to succeed they will need manpower, this will represent your entire labor force. Expanding and managing this labor force will be the key to victory although manipulating the labor force would be kept simple it requires finesse in order to be successful. Manpower is organized into several sectors such resource gathering, manufacturing, military, research and civil. How manpower is manipulated will depend on the design and implementation. However the player can not directly control individuals with in there manpower or generate new manpower themselves. Manpower would change overtime as the size of the faction’s labor force changes do to population growth, migration or territory accusation.

The value of each individual unit of manpower and its available uses is determined by the technology, structures and infrastructure available in cities and bases.

Resources:
Without sufficient resources your faction can neither support itself nor expand. The actual resources depend entirely on the game and its design. However they fall into two categories normal and strategic.

Normal - resources are widely available and all factions have access to them. Each normal resource can also be generated or gathered by several different means. Those means are determined by the technology available to a faction and the infrastructure they have constructed. Normal resources are the basis of all construction activates and are need vital to maintain and support a faction.
Examples: Food, Energy, metal, wood, money.

Strategic - resources are not always available to a faction, in order to utilize them a source must first be located and the appropriate structure built in order to begin gathering and processing of the resources. Strategic resources are critical to the success of a faction since they provided access to technology, structures and units that could not otherwise be created with only normal resources. They can also be used for diplomatic actions, such trade and treaties. Once access to a resource has been acquired this allows a faction to begin researching its potential applications as well as begin construction of things that require those resources. Like all resources strategic resources provide some amount of resources that must distributed amongst all applications you want to use it for. Because of this the more sources of strategic resource a faction control the more readily they can be utilized.
Examples: Oil, Uranium,


Research and Development:
Technology will be important to expand and prosper. Each faction has a tech tree with which to research. Within the tech tree are different field corresponding to major topics of research each field has multiple levels. Each level represents one or more new pieces of technology that can be utilized by the faction upon completion of research. Research is accomplished by the accumulation of sufficient research points, which are generated by manned research structures. Research can also be obtained through trade with other factions.

There are two other subdivisions of research improvements and countermeasures. Improvements refine and enhance an existing technology in someway the actual improvements depend on the implementation. Examples include making the device cheaper, faster to manufacture, stronger or smaller. Countermeasures consist of defenses and protections against technologies belonging to other factions. Example a vaccine against a bio weapon. Before a countermeasure can be developed the faction must first be exposed to the technology either through intelligence gathering or exposure.


Construction:
In order to construct buildings it takes time, resources as well as manpower. Each building has its own construction and maintenance costs, as well as a minimum and maximum manpower value which indicates the minimum amount of manpower needed for the building to be operational. Further manpower allocated to the building beyond the minimum increases productive and efficiency. The buildings themselves provide a host of options and productions all of which are implementation specific.

Military Units:
Military Units make up the factions military force they are produced by military structures and the factions manpower allocated to military. It is important to note that manpower currently involved in active military duty is removed from the manpower pool of the faction. Thus care should be made when building an army to leave sufficient manpower to allow the faction to continue to function and expanded. Military units are never produced individually instead they built in nodes the size and composition of a node depends on implementation. As well nodes can be combined into larger chains which consist of several nodes that act as a cohesive unit. The advantages of these chains are that they can benefit from the abilities of all nodes in the chain. As well as a chain can be constructed and organized as a whole instead of building and organizing each node separately. Further chains can be combined together to form larger chains thus allowing the player to construct and maintain entire military strategies without the necessity of constructing and controlling each individual node. Military units require an initial allocation of resources, time and manpower to construct, as well as continued amount of resources to maintain. Because of this it can be difficult for smaller factions to maintain a sizeable military force.

Commanders
Commanders are integral part of controlling a factions military force, each commander has there own statistics and personalities that influences their decisions and their effectiveness on the battle field. As well commanders imparts various bonuses and penalties onto its troops based on their abilities. Commanders can be placed in charge a various different commands often times they will be placed in control of a unit chain, which they will organize and lead during battle. Because of the dynamic nature of warfare and the fact that multiple simultaneous engagements can be initiated across the game world, the player is unable to control every engagement or personally supervise every battle. Thus commanders become a necessity during times of war. They allow the player to focus on a particular battle or other duty while the commanders control their forces. Commanders gain experience through engagements and thus become more cable as time goes on. However they can also be killed as the result of battle or assassination. New commanders arise during the course of a game as military units gain sufficient experience. Like military units commanders can have other commanders under there control with which they will further delegate their tasks, such as placing one of there sub commanders in charge of a particular chain or battlefield.

Maps:
There are two primary kinds of maps in the game these are Strategic and Tactical.

Strategic:
The strategic map consists of the game world as a whole, this is the primary map it is from here that the factions are organized and interactions with other factions are initiated it allows players to observer the state of the world and plan their strategies accordingly.

Tactical:
A single game consists of any number of tactical maps. Tactical maps represent the battlefield in a particular engagement. It is from here that the player can control an actual battle or observe the battle currently underway.

Engagements:
An engagement consists of an encounter between two or more factions. Because of this for the most part military units can not be constructed in the engagement they must instead be transferred form other parts of the factions territory to the engagement in order to participate. An engagement is just one of many battles that are fought between factions as such; success or failure may not impact the overall struggle between factions. It is possible to lose battles and still win a war. Engagements can have numerous possible outcomes such as retreat, stalemate, total victory or total defeat.

Diplomacy:
Through diplomacy factions interact, whether it is to discuss relations, plans for the future. Or to initiate trade between the factions or establish treaties, diplomacy is important in order to for a faction to prosper do to the fact that allies maybe needed in times of war as well as to gain access to strategic resources.

Espionage:
Espionage is used to gather information on the factions. It can reveal positions of troops, composition of forces, as well as allows for the theft of technology and disruption of a faction through sabotage.


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Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

mmmm... I like both genres, but I only ever want to play multiplayer, and I usually want to be able to just find a game and join in. I don''t want to have to prepare for it before hand, arrange a time, and worse still, find the same 5 players tommorrow so that we can finish the game we saved today.

What I would like to see is an even-faster-than-normal RTS, in which players can join or leave without disrupting it too much, and in which joining half way through doesn''t mean your completely outclassed. Aside from removing the research element altogether you could make research do a balancing act (who said 5;3;1 earlier?). Players on the server for a while would be skewed to their preferred style of play, but new comers would be able to put up a fair fight fairly quickly.

I imagine it being played like most Team-FPS games, except with small armies instead of a single avatar. I expect it WOULD work, but I also think it would be rather a challenge to make :/

HELOOOOOOOOO


Ive been saying forever that RTS and RPG should go together...along with FPS.

The whole point of CONFLICT:Omega is that they all should work together for a more immersive experience.

Guilds in MMO''s hardly do anything now days but farm items. At best in ShadowBane you farm gold to give to your guild for a city.

In our game, you will be fighting and gathering resources (as in an RTS) to further the fighting and the RPGing.

What we are noticing is that users are demanding more sophistication out of the interaction and PURPOSE of the actions you do over and over.

As that happens...we are seeing the separate genres combine to create something new.

Pardon the fact that Im talking about my game over and over but:

a) I cant resist
b) as a previous poster said....its been discussed before.

New thought and brainstorming is crucial to taking the genre further though. Definitely needs discussing.

Alfred Norris, VoodooFusion Studios
Team Lead - CONFLICT: Omega
www.conflictomega.com

I guess I''m a little confused by what you mean when you''re looking for a genre between an EBG and an RTS. It seems to me that RTS in your mindset is the purely military aspect of playing strategy games? While the EBG component deals with the homeland side of dealing with manufacturing, logistics and infrastructure?

My main beef with RTS games of today is that they do muddy up the gameplay distinctions between these two elements. They want to create the feeling of creating your empire while simultaneously fending off or defeating rival empires who are also trying to strengthen their domains through whatever means possible.

What I find unrealistic about many of these types of games (not all) is that you start from scratch or with a tiny paltry sum of buildings and other infrastructure, and you must slowly build your nation. I want to experience a game in which my nation is already built. I want to experience a game which happens in the span of 1-10 years, not 100-1000 as most of these other games would require (if you realistically want to believe that an empire could grow that quickly). Think about it, other than if your game is about colonizing a new world (or you start at a very primitive age), most nations are already established. They already have armed forces, they already have their resources, and they already have delineated borders. And even if the game is about rival nations trying to colonize a new world, the war is fought between the existing nations, not between some "harvesters" trying to build a viable nation within a gametime time span of a few hours (and in real world time would realistically have to equate to dozens of years even in fantasy or sci-fi settings)

If one is trying to model something inbetween these two genres, then I''d suggest having your nation already pre-existing, with it''s armed forces and resources already alloted. The trick then would be to conquer your surrounding territories. This is similar in vein to what the Total War series does (and is one of my more favorite RTS/Turn based games out there). Indeed, another thing I liked about the Total War series was how it was split into real time tactical battle sequences, and turn based strategy plans. This helped alleviate the player from having to scatter his attention on multiple fronts.

Unfortunately on the flip side of the coin, few wargames deal with the infrastructure and logistics side of the problem of warfare. Generally most wargames are in the grand tactics scale of battle. They usually concern themselves with one battle or scope of campaign. A few wargames are truly strategic in scope (Cross of Iron for example) and require a good amount of thinking on the player''s part in dealing with getting new war material to the front lines. Another often overlooked aspect of wargames and RTS/EBG games is the affect of morale on the nation as a whole. Not just the morale of discrete units which are faced with disaster, but for a nation as a whole with an impending sense of doom. Would a nation act like Italy or France in WWII, so that when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds would they fight bitterly? Or would they hang on tenaciously like the Russians or Japanese despite atrocious losses?

As for your suggestions:
Strategic Resources: The best example I can think of here is oil. Only a few nations have sufficient quantities of it, but it''s an extremely important resource which is a pre-requisite for additional technologies. Another example could be Uranium deposits. Iron ore is another (for example, many jungle environments are lacking in this which made iron working a less developed technology, and hence all derivated technologies)

Research and Development: Me personally, I''m not too inclined to deal with the issues of technological advancement, but that''s because I''m interested in games spanning less than 10 years. But even given that, technological progress can be amazing even in that time span especially with a war prodding along mother necessity. Mot designers though focus on the military aspects of technological improvements and not on other social, industrial, transportation, communication, agricultural or even cultural changes. Imagine what would happen in a slave-owning society for instance if all of a sudden there was a popular movement within that society that banned the owning of slaves? And what if this society was heavily reliant on slaves for war (some Middle Eastern cultures in their use of the Mamelukes for instance) or for industry/agriculture (an obvious example being the antebellum South)? Imagine the upheaval this would create within that empire. And this could be both a good thing and a bad thing once everything gets settled. Even look at agriculture. Take for example the Mongolians who are a largely nomadic people. Being nomadic has its upsides and downsides. It makes the people extremely tough and resiliant to withstand the dangers of the environment as well as making the whole people very mobile. But this very mobility comes with the price of instability for advancements of certain technologies as well as not providing enough foodstuffs. And yet the Mongols defeated everyone they ever encountered (it took the death of their Khan to make the Mongols pull back). And yet when the Yuan dynasty (who were Mongols) overthrew the native chinese, they eventually succumbed to the sedentary lifestyles of their peers and in turn were overthrown to form the Ming dynasty (who in turn were defeated by another nomadic like people the Manchus to set up the Qing dynasty). So all in all, if one is to truly try to model the rise and falls of empires, one must look into all the changes that happen within society beyond simple technology.

Settlements: Settlements set up the premise for these colonies to seperate from the motherland. Moreover, colonization of already populated lands will forever taint the native people with resentment for their new masters. One need only look at America for the example of colonizing a new world, or India or China for looking at examples of the latter. While in the short run creating such colonization efforts may benefit the mother land, in time, these new settlements will form their own ways and seperate on their own (some with good relations between their former motherland...say Australia for example).

Trade and Diplomacy: here lies the greatest rub. In multiplayer this could be a genuinely interesting concept since Player A will never know exactly what Player B''s intentions are. But there is a trick. In the real world, depending on your form of government, the leader of a nation may only be a figurehead or spokesperson for others. In a democracy for example, the President, while technically the leader of a nation, is still beholden to the people in many respects and the laws of the country. In a despotic nation, what the leader says goes...no matter if any disagree or not. The trouble is that when playing a game, the player IS the nation. There is no one potentially twisting the player''s arm to make sure he''s not doing something he shouldn''t for example. Between allied countries, normally we trade for mutual benefit without the thought in the backs of our minds "Once I''m powerful enough, I''m going to invade Canada and take out those beer-swilling, moose-loving do-gooders". We may not have reservations about duplicity between leaders of enemies or potential enemies though "sure Kim Jong-il, once you blow up the Pyongyang factory, we PROMISE we''ll give you all the oil you need and 10Billion in reperation. You can trust US". So the trouble here is that the player has to "act in character", with the character not being a single person, but rather representing his empire''s form of government.


To be honest though, I''m not too keen on the idea of playing an empire building game. After all, when do you win? When you''ve conquered everyone? Alexander conquered almost everyone, Genghis and Kublai Khan conquered almost everyone, between Hitler and Tojo they conquered almost everyone. Rome conquered about everything west of India. England had an empire that rivalled that of Rome. So basically the game can go on for years and years and years. And ultimately, most games wind up about nations fighting each other. Ultimately though, don''t you think a game about empire building should be won when there''s no more fighting? Even if you think you''ve conquered everyone, really you''re just fooling yourself...as almost all of these great empires collapsed from internal rot (and I posit that Hitler probably could have won all of Europe had he let the Generals do their thing instead of trying to meddle in strategy which he knew little about therefore Hitler himself was Germany''s internal rot).

So the question is, how do you win such a game? It shouldn''t be through conquering everyone, or creating some god-awesome weapon. I posit that ultimately, a game like this is either a toy (you play it just to play it), or that the goal is that society progresses to the point where there is no more dissension or war.

Dauntless:
I''m assuming your post is talking about the orginal post and not the much longer more detailed one I made just recently.
As far for your questions, I''m not suggesting the game consist of buiding up a nation from scratch. Because really thats the purpose of EBG. More likekly an RTE game would consist of preexsisting empires and nations. But then again alot of that has to do with the paticulars of a given game while this thread is more about establishing the concepts and ideas that should go into all RTE games.

But I see RTE games spanning much shorter periods of time most likely under 100 years. For instance you could create an RTE game about world war II each player chooses a nation to play and then play through the war. Making the alliance they see fit and fronts you can control. The game would end when your nation is conqured or war comes to end through a combination of conquest and diplomacy.

Another RTE game may consist of the conquest of the new world. Major nations in eurpoe competing with natives to secure as much of the new world as they can.

I guess what I''m saying is that RTE will in general not span the entire history of empire from its rise and fall. But instead a single important era in the worlds history.

-----------------------------------------------------
Writer, Programer, Cook, I''m a Jack of all Trades
Current Design project
Chaos Factor Design Document

quote: Original post by TechnoGoth Also real time doesn''t have to mean fast time. Just that the game is played continusly and not in turns.

A disadvantage to having time run slow is that your units will have to run slow as well. This may give a feeling of lethargy to the game ("Hurry up already!").

A better alternative, in my opinion, is to make time run at a reasonable rate, but make the game maps *bigger*. That way, you don''t have to stare at the screen for seemingly hours for your units to move where you want them to, but you''re more removed from your opponent(s), giving you more time to develop before you encounter him/them.

quote: As far as the comment on balancing thats really a rather lengthy discusision on its own. But I find the best system to be "the all created equal system" basicly everyone start on the same footing and thats all the player balancing nessary. If during the course of the game your opponent has twice your technology, units and production, thats not poor balancing that means they are a better player then you it''s as simple as that.

If you have special resources placed randomly on a map, without a way to ensure that they''re distributed more or less evenly, some players will have greater access to them than others. Now, some people like this "luck of the draw" approach, but others don''t. I would suggest enabling the player(s) to choose either option.

Just my two cents.

- Rob

isnt Rise of Nations a Real Time Empire Building game?
havent played it but it sounds an awful lot like it