I've recently started reading a book by a guy called Jared Diamond. It's called Guns, Germs and Steel. It's a pretty fascinating book as it chronicles man's history for the past 13,000 years. It attempts to answer some fundamental questions about the nature of civilisation, such as why civilisations rise to power and why they die out. For example, why is it the case that the Spanish conquered the MesoAmericans and not the other way around? Why is it the case, that in the scheme of things, nothing really became of African civilisations despite the continent having a massive head start on the rest of the world? For those who haven't read it, it's definitiely a good read, aimed at a general audience. I'm a big fan of strategy games, I've recently gotten back into playing AoE, AoE2 and Civ2. However, after reading this book, it's become apparent just how simplistic man's evolution is presented as being in these games. No doubt this is intentional, not many people would be as interested in what I'm going to propose as in a game that you can start and finish in a couple of hours. Basically, I believe that todays RTS games are the RTS equivalent of a linear FPS. Take AoE, for example. The tech tree for each civilisation is set in stone no matter what the environment that the civilisation is immersed in, interactions between different civilisations are simplistic (and boring), at best and technology seems irrelevant to what the actual "purpose" of a civilisation is, i.e. survival. I'd like to develop the historically based RTS genre further, both with my own thoughts and perhaps with the GD community. I'm aware that not everyone is a fan of the genre, and not everyone who is a fan will be impresed with my ideas. Please don't spam this thread if you have nothing worth contributing. Here's my ideas: * in real life, the success of a fledgling civilisation depended on the crops and animals that that civilisation had at its disposal. The people of the fertile crescent had a huge head start on the people of California solely because they had the precursors of modern wheat, barley, oats, rye, cattle and dogs at their disposal, whereas the AmerIndians of California did not. I propose that tech-trees should reflect the environment that a civ is based in, and not be fixed in stone. This then gives a logical explanation for conquest. A civilisation without the needed crops ould either have to make do without (hard) or fight for the lands in which they grow (which is what happened in real life). * much greater emphasis on trade. In many RTS games, trade is of little importance, and, in those games where trade has a greater importance, only wealth is transferred by merchants. In real life, what we saw was not only wealth, but knowledge being transferred. This explains partially how Europe became dominant. We acquired the crops of the fertile rescent via trade and God knows what else. Trade can then become a liability as well as a blessing. Imagine trading with some potentially hostile tribe. You have knowledge of firearms, yet they do not. Via trade with your tribe, they gain this knowledge and become a much greater threat to you. * cultural influences. This was modelled partially in Civ3. A set of people who trade with your tribe and live on lands near yours should be gradually assimilated into your tribe over time. * greater delineation between hunter gatherers and modern farming civilisations. Hunter gatherers cannot produce enough food to support neither an army or a government. This is a minor nuisance with the genre. * diseases have a direct affect on population levels. The more domesticated animal a tribe had been in contact with, the greater exposure they had to diseases. This ws true in real life, the reason why the Spanish nearly wiped out the MesoAmericans with their smallpox and flus was because the Spanish had had a history of exposure to diseases commuted by animals, whereas civs like the Aztecs had had a far leser exposure. Whereas domesticisation of animals is necessary to advance past a certain stage, it also has a negative affect on the population (note: this could also be used as an advantage, a civ trading with another civ with no exposure to their diseases could be seriously weakened by the disease). Basically, this is what I envisage; an RTS game where each tribe is andomly allocated a position on the board. The immediate environment that the ribe finds themselves in directs their development. They start off as primitive hunter gatherers unable to support a government or army but whose homelands grow as the population does. After a certain familiarity with these crops, they can then start to cultivate them and produce an excess of food to support an army etc. The weapons these people have and the technology they develop is tied directly to their cultural influences and on the resources they have at their command. In order to develop other technologies, they must conquer the lands that possess the resources that they need to do so. This is a very basic explanation that really doesn't do my idea any justice. Basically, it's probably more of a simulator than a game and is a) probably going to be mind numbingly boring to play b) possibly unfeasible with today's techology. Has anyone else got any other ideas? (This may be in the wrong forum).

Moved. You'll get more intelligent answers here than in the Lounge.

Thanks.

Have you ever played Alpha Centauri? That game touches on some of the ideas you propose, but not in the depth that you describe. For instance each faction was in a race for territory that had artifacts that assisted in the gain of knowledge, and the factions that gained more knowledge had the upper hand. There was also the ability to have alliances with other factions to trade knowledge. I don't remember that much more about the game (it has been years since I played it). But I do like the sound of your ideas. A much more in depth RTS would be challenging and fun for someone like myself to play.

Thanks for the comments. No, I've never played Alpha Centauri. I'll try and get hold of it.

Sounds like a good game...however, sounds like it'll have a really steep learning curve, a la civilization.

I have a few suggestions for game play, if you don't mind...

I was thinking that you could ONLY build basic structures, like, for example, a "Craftsman's Hut", a "Hunter-Gatherer Camp", or a "Barracks". Once these structures were built, you could upgrade them depending on what terrain they were placed on--for example, a "Craftsman Hut" placed in a mountainous area could become a "Gemcutter's House", while one placed on forested terrain would become "Woodcutter's House".
In a civilization clone I once played called C-Evo (not sure if it's the same in the REAL civ games) part of your production capabilites depended on what resources were in the area, represented by icons (for example, a fishi n the ocean meant you could fish there). I was also thinking that structure upgrades could also depend on whether there was a given resource wihtin a certain range: for example, a "Hunter-Gatherer's Camp" placed on a grassy area, with a Cattle resource nearby, could upgrade into a "Ranch", while a "H.-G. C." without that cattle resource on a grassy plain could only upgrade to a "Farm".

Of course, the production capabilites for each of these buildings would increase as they were upgraded, but, at teh same time, becoem more specialized. A basic "Hunter-Gatherer's Camp" would produce "X" amount of grain and "Y" amount of meat, depending on the location, while a "Ranch" would produce "Z" amount of meat, but no grain.

As far as trading: What you *could* do is create "Merchant" units, to be dispatched to potential trading partners. When they reach the trading partner, you enter into a trading session similar to the Oregon Trail system: "I am willing to trade X amount of Commodity A, in exchange for Y amount of Commodity B." Technolgies could be traded this same way--Lords of Magic, a turn-based strategy game, would let you trade spells in this sort of manner.

Having read GG&S, you'll understand why it would be inherently unbalanced. What if you start a multiplayer game, load the screen, and see that you've randomly "spawned" in the Australian Outback? You can enjoy your handmade wooden weapons, hardened with fire, for 15,000 years while the lucky stiff on the Iberian Peninsula is reaping the benefits of iron, then steel, then gunpowder, then nukes. There's no ground for competition. You just wait for your inevitable assimilation into one empire or another.

How will you address this? Having everyone spawn in identical geographic locations seems to tear the soul out of your project.

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Original post by MDI I've recently started reading a book by a guy called Jared Diamond. It's called Guns, Germs and Steel.

Great book. I've only started it, but it's got such a fascinating perspective on historical catalysts.

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Basically, I believe that todays RTS games are the RTS equivalent of a linear FPS. Take AoE, for example. The tech tree for each civilisation is set in stone no matter what the environment that the civilisation is immersed in, interactions between different civilisations are simplistic (and boring), at best and technology seems irrelevant to what the actual "purpose" of a civilisation is, i.e. survival.

Whereas in Civ3, at least the starting tech (and I think subsequent opportunities, to some extent) are impacted by your environment. If you start as a coastal civ, for instance, you get access to shipbuilding; but if you're mountainous, you get early access to mining.

The main challenge I see for your ideas is balance. In real life and history, certain civs were just subjected to cosmic injustice: they were just screwed. Mountainous terrain and lack of horses, for instance, really hampered the Incan civilization's developments of animal power and the wheel.

In Civ, it is technically possible to start disadvantaged, but if you have a more deterministic system, it's going to be more unfair. (Of course, what no one has ever done to my knowledge is allow you the possibility of continuing play while still conquered-- this could obviate cosmic injustice in the game).

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* much greater emphasis on trade.

Can you make this fit the pace of the game, or would it need to be a longer game?

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* cultural influences. This was modelled partially in Civ3. A set of people who trade with your tribe and live on lands near yours should be gradually assimilated into your tribe over time.

Take care how you implement this one. In Civ3 I almost always turn it off mainly because there's no game to be had in the actual conversion. Because it just happens and I know (at higher levels) that the computer is cheating it feels like a cheap trick to let the computer cheat. (I once lost 4 armies to a town that converted. Do you mean to tell me that 4 freakin armies made of 16 units couldn't put down a rebellion!?)

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* greater delineation between hunter gatherers and modern farming civilisations.

But unless you intend to make hunter gatherers playable and viable throughout a section of the game, won't this just be realism without a gameplay purpose? If you're weak and ineffectual in this stage, you'll want to leave it as quickly as possible. If you get stuck being the !Kung in the modern era, for example, you know you've messed up, because there'll be nothing you can do.

Cultural diffusion could work here, similar to how colonized peoples adopted new technology to stay competitive. Guns in the hands of even hunter gatherers are still guns, even if a minor threat.

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* diseases have a direct affect on population levels. The more domesticated animal a tribe had been in contact with, the greater exposure they had to diseases.

One problem I have with this idea is that it might invite gaming the system in a way that's not faithful to the feel of evolving civs. I will spend my time TRYING to get infected so that (after the epidemics and die-offs) I have a new weapon, simply because of this rule.

Although there are real instances of civs using disease as weapons (the Mongols using catapults to launch Black Plague victims into castles, for instance; or the US Army giving small-pox infected blankets to Native Americans) in truth this stuff happened because people mostly didn't know about it. I wonder if there's a better way to use this historical fact without it either being a random event or something that might lead to absurd behavior.


One final thought: I'd like to see an RTS on the scale of a open global map, like Civ has. To keep the playing area manageable you could anchor it to one or more generals / leaders (more with higher tech). That way, you could rove around like Alexander the Great, but still have an RTS size battlefield to fight on. (That would be so cool with randomly generated continents!)

Thanks for the comments guys. Hre's a bit more about my idea:

* I'd originally planned for the maps to be huge. I should have made this more explicit in my OP (I only kind of hinted at it when I said that todays technology may stumble when trying to run a game like this.) I kind of envisaged huge swathes of land populated by animals and the like ready for the taking.

* I intended to limit the game to mans early history. In this way, it would balance the game up a little more (it would still be unbalanced, as far as I can see) as there would be no possibility of a space age civ coming into contact with a civ from the stone age.

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Can you make this fit the pace of the game, or would it need to be a longer game?

(On trade). I envisaged the game to be much longer than other "god games" out there. I can't see how this game could fit into the general <= 4 hour start to finish time of games like AoE.

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Take care how you implement this one. In Civ3 I almost always turn it off mainly because there's no game to be had in the actual conversion. Because it just happens and I know (at higher levels) that the computer is cheating it feels like a cheap trick to let the computer cheat. (I once lost 4 armies to a town that converted. Do you mean to tell me that 4 freakin armies made of 16 units couldn't put down a rebellion!?)

(On cultural influences). Yeah, I've been thinking especially about this point. I'd like to see that the move from one culture to another is a very slow process, where it's obvious to the player what is happening so that he can do something about it. It may also be interesting for mixed cultures to cede from both players and form a new tribe a random percentage of the time. This could make players trying to specifically culturally take over another players lands think twice: not only now have you got another competing tribe on your lands, that tribe is at least as technologically advanced as you are!

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But unless you intend to make hunter gatherers playable and viable throughout a section of the game, won't this just be realism without a gameplay purpose? If you're weak and ineffectual in this stage, you'll want to leave it as quickly as possible. If you get stuck being the !Kung in the modern era, for example, you know you've messed up, because there'll be nothing you can do. Cultural diffusion could work here, similar to how colonized peoples adopted new technology to stay competitive. Guns in the hands of even hunter gatherers are still guns, even if a minor threat.

(On hunter gatherers). This last point was exactly what I had in mind. Either through trade or through just "contact" (i.e. battles) with a more advanced civ, you get to use their weapons in a limited capacity. For example, AmeriIndians became master horse handler despite their familiarity with horses stemming from contact with European settlers. They also used rifles, despite not knowing how to manufacture them.

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Having read GG&S, you'll understand why it would be inherently unbalanced. What if you start a multiplayer game, load the screen, and see that you've randomly "spawned" in the Australian Outback? You can enjoy your handmade wooden weapons, hardened with fire, for 15,000 years while the lucky stiff on the Iberian Peninsula is reaping the benefits of iron, then steel, then gunpowder, then nukes. There's no ground for competition. You just wait for your inevitable assimilation into one empire or another. How will you address this? Having everyone spawn in identical geographic locations seems to tear the soul out of your project.

Good question. I've been thinking quite a bit about this, too, although I still haven't come up with a completely atisfactory answer. I'll differentiate between multiplayer modes and singleplayer, if I may. In multiplayer, I see no other method for properly balancing the game than have each civ spawn with exactly the same resources in their environment. This would still lead to different civs having different characteristics (no two civs woul use those resources in the same way) but would even the game up a lot more. For singleplayer, I'd keep the game unbalanced. The "difficulty" level that the player chooses to play at would directly determine what resources are allocated to his imediate environment by the computer.

Note, these are preliminary ideas and this is something I'd especially need to think about.

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As far as trading: What you *could* do is create "Merchant" units, to be dispatched to potential trading partners. When they reach the trading partner, you enter into a trading session similar to the Oregon Trail system: "I am willing to trade X amount of Commodity A, in exchange for Y amount of Commodity B." Technolgies could be traded this same way--Lords of Magic, a turn-based strategy game, would let you trade spells in this sort of manner.

(On trading). Yeah, you could trade knowledge explicitly, but I was also thinking that knowledge would be disseminated as a side product of trade. I see no reaosn for there not to be both of these systems in the game, for example I could send a merchant to specifically trade technology A, but as a side effect, perhaps technology B also gets transferred to the other tribe (within reason, of course, there's no reason to believe that a merchant would have any knowledge of any really high level technology).

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I was thinking that you could ONLY build basic structures, like, for example, a "Craftsman's Hut", a "Hunter-Gatherer Camp", or a "Barracks". Once these structures were built, you could upgrade them depending on what terrain they were placed on--for example, a "Craftsman Hut" placed in a mountainous area could become a "Gemcutter's House", while one placed on forested terrain would become "Woodcutter's House". In a civilization clone I once played called C-Evo (not sure if it's the same in the REAL civ games) part of your production capabilites depended on what resources were in the area, represented by icons (for example, a fishi n the ocean meant you could fish there). I was also thinking that structure upgrades could also depend on whether there was a given resource wihtin a certain range: for example, a "Hunter-Gatherer's Camp" placed on a grassy area, with a Cattle resource nearby, could upgrade into a "Ranch", while a "H.-G. C." without that cattle resource on a grassy plain could only upgrade to a "Farm". Of course, the production capabilites for each of these buildings would increase as they were upgraded, but, at teh same time, becoem more specialized. A basic "Hunter-Gatherer's Camp" would produce "X" amount of grain and "Y" amount of meat, depending on the location, while a "Ranch" would produce "Z" amount of meat, but no grain.

Great! These are the kind of ideas I'm looking for.

Here's a few more ideas that I've had:

* water as a commodity. Ties in with next idea.

* supply lines are important. This could probably balance the game up a lot. In real life, the ancient armies either had to resort to scanvenging for food whilst out on campaign, use supply lines or resort to stealing food from the locals. Suppose that you have civ A who has specifically developed their hunter-gathering technique to the environment of the outback where they live. Civ B wishes to conquer A, but B is used to a more temperate climate. B's army is seriously damaged by the environment in which A lives before they even get anywhere near A.

* domesticated animals escape. North America didn't have wild horses until the Europeans brought them. This again may balance the game. Suppose A has no horses, and is being attacked by B. Some of B's horses escape, become feral and habitate A's lands. A is then free to redomesticate the horses for its own ends.

Thanks for the comments guys.

I'm not sure if these ideas here are anything even close to what you wanted, but here goes:

One of the things I've always found strange in rts games is the fact that buildings are considered to be so fundamentally different that they can only have one use. Especially if we consider the stone age, a hut is a hut. I mean, how does a woodcutter's hut differ so much from, say, a fishermans hut? Architecturally, that is? Also, why does the barracks building have to be build out of stone and a granary from wood? Why can't I build wooden barracks?

With that as a preamble, I think that the problem is that the whole system of building buildings is really backwards. When your group of Cro-Magnon men (or what have you) first start to learn to craft their own shelter from sticks and mud, the huts for living are just a hollow piles of sticks and mud. The storehouse is just a hollow pile of sticks and mud. The barracks is just a hollow pile of sticks and mud. See a pattern emerging here? I know it's a bit of a (even somewhat cynical) exaggeration, but it's closer to reality than the usual "no, how could you possibly even think that the building for storing wood could be used for storing stone" mentality.

Approach the situation from a different point of view; first of all, you have material for building buildings. As already stated before, the material you have depends on the starting location of the tribe. If you have wood of adequate quality, you can use wood for building. If you have stone, you can use that. If you have herds of animals, you could even build the buildings out of dung. And so on. This would be a coherent with the idea that the tech-tree is higly dependent on the starting environment. You have to adapt to the environment also with regard to building.

Then there is the concept of architecture: you could have building architectures of different sizes and shapes. You might have to do some research in order to build them, and they could depend on the different materials to some extent.

The architecture and material of a building determines its size and durability in different situations. However, the usage of the building can be chosen freely. If you choose a hut and declare it a storehouse, it'll be a storehouse.

This would also reduce the need to demolish old buildings, which is also a bit silly: usually you can demolish buildings by selecting them and pressing delete. That has no in-game explanation. If demolishing buildings was that easy, how come the enemy can't use that as a tactic? As for demolishing enemy buildings, you shouldn't need to do that either. Just slaughter the people inside or convince them to join you.

Of course there can be limitations to the usage as well — a pit that has been dug into the ground is usually not a very good guard tower.

The aforementioned supply lines and similar concepts (e.g. villagers will start to starve if the village has no food; also, food is consumed all the time and not just at the times you start to research something) are really a must if you want to have decent tactics in the game. Sieges have little meaning if they have no other effect than just hindering movement. Also, you could make forests much more valuable for tactical purposes, allowing movement through them (which is only sensible), but making the field of visibility asymmetric so that it is easy to see out of the forest but difficult to see inside. This makes ambushes a valid tactic.

As for technology, you should be able to speed up your research by studying the spoils of war. Hopefully not by getting free techs as in the Civilization games (at least 1 or 2, never played the third), as the science system in them is a bit flawed from a realistical and historical point of view.

If you invande an enemy land, you probably wouldn't want to kill all the people. The usual concept of "converting" them using "priests" is not only silly, but a bit incoherent and unrealistic, so I won't consider that a solution. Personally I have two opinions about this:

- Peasants are not inherently loyal — they do not care who rules them, as long as the ruler is fair. As such, they are automatically "converted" to anyone who rules them.

- Peasants (vassals) are the property of the lord. They serve the lord, and if the land area changes owner, the vassals must obey the new lord. Vassals as such are neutral.

As for soldiers and such you could build some sort of a morale system where the soldiers with low morale will desert and join other nations.

Still, I'd me more concerned on the scaling issues. Constructing thick, high walls using stone age methods is slow. Similarily destroying them is slow. Then again, a fighting is quite hectic. Putting both of them together is always a question of abstraction — if you try to make it realistic or historically accurate, you'll get very long games or games where you don't really get to build much.

And I personally recommend that you play the originalSettlers. It is detailed regarding other issues than war, unlike most rts games, and it has a less direct controlling system, allowing you to do so much more with much less hassle.

I think I'm starting to ramble now incoherently again, so maybe I should stop now and contribute more ideas later...