Would you play in a game where the nations, instead of being static or player controlled, were instead ran by an AI?

Basically, imagine a game with 5-12 different nations. Each one controlled by a "Civilization (the game)" level of AI. You do all the normal things you do as a player (Quest, Craft, Goblin Genocide, etc.) But things such as trade agreements, war/peace declarations, freedom of movement treaties, etc. are deciced between nations by these various AIs.

What roles do players have in the metagame?

First, your actions (Questing, Crafting, etc.) provide input for the AI's decision making. If you and your guild start going into a nation's territory where there is no freedom of movement you start influencing the different decisions for each country. (I.E. You trespass in nation A, who decides to stop allowing trade into your nation (Nation B). This causes Nation B to declare war on Nation A.

Second, through in game actions you might be able, through elections or other actions, to change the personality of the AI that is controlling your nation. (Civilization AI's have differen't "Personalities" such as peace loving Ghandi, warmongering Ceaser, etc.)

How would this benefit you?

First, its sandboxish. You have freedom to make choices as you want.

Second, its dynamic. You as a player have to learn to play in an evolving world. Nations might be at war only to end up as allies later. This means that you have to be able to adapt to it. Those better able to adapt/influence the world are better at succeeding. While you may be doing legal trade one week, the "mood" can shift, and you can find that same trade route is now a smuggling operation because the trade agreements went away.

Third, its a different style of Factional PVP. Instead of their being constant factional warfare, you go to war sporadically against different enemies. You might find your guild HQ is now in the hands of a neighboring country because of a poor battle.

So what do you think, Would this sort of set up be good for you? Would you play in it?

[Edited by - robert4818 on November 8, 2010 4:21:03 PM]

I don't know if I would care for AI, personally I would rather have human "Story Tellers" in control. Have things change up, be able to read, or better yet listen to, speeches by the rulers to explain their changes of action. And do this in a few layers. Highest would change slowly, actual interactions between nations. Then lower levels, interactions between cities/regions inside the nations themselves. (Including the options for them possibly trying to break away to form splinter kingdoms, or defecting to another nation.)

An option to allow Player Guilds to gain power and influence within their own kingdom and have their leaders get to have a say in what goes on and help direct things.

Allow players (Thief class) to wage cloak and dagger wars in the kingdoms to help support their own goals within the game. Break into an opposing kingdom's tax house and loot it, thereby weakening its NPC guards or something.

It is an interesting idea but I've always felt that AI has the unfortunate side effect of not producing the drama that humans tend to produce. The reason online games (MMOs especially) are fun is because humans are the ones making the decisions, for good and especially for bad. I like how the AI are affected by your actions but I feel that the affect would be lost in the mass of an MMO. In a Civilization type game, you can feel the weight of you actions because you are the only human making them; if I attack another country and that country comes at me with knife and a bad attitude, I quickly become aware of the gravity of my decision making process. In an MMO, my actions would be like a drop in a bucket because they are just one of thousands. It would be like they don't really matter in the end.

Instead of having 5-12 different AI controlled nations, you could have thousands of human controlled nations. They are essentially guilds but more formalized with things like territory control, trading, espionage, etc. Because there are more nations, they would likely have smaller numbers meaning the actions of each individual within those smaller nations would have more weight.

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Original post by Switch0025 It is an interesting idea but I've always felt that AI has the unfortunate side effect of not producing the drama that humans tend to produce. The reason online games (MMOs especially) are fun is because humans are the ones making the decisions, for good and especially for bad. I like how the AI are affected by your actions but I feel that the affect would be lost in the mass of an MMO. In a Civilization type game, you can feel the weight of you actions because you are the only human making them; if I attack another country and that country comes at me with knife and a bad attitude, I quickly become aware of the gravity of my decision making process. In an MMO, my actions would be like a drop in a bucket because they are just one of thousands. It would be like they don't really matter in the end. Instead of having 5-12 different AI controlled nations, you could have thousands of human controlled nations. They are essentially guilds but more formalized with things like territory control, trading, espionage, etc. Because there are more nations, they would likely have smaller numbers meaning the actions of each individual within those smaller nations would have more weight.

I would not want to go that way myself because it defeats the feel I want for the concept. That is players are part of the society, not the movers and shakers. I WANT that feeling of "Do MY actions really count?"

Part of this concept is that players are NOT the movers and shakers, but the game reacts to the PLAYERBASE.

The other primary part of this idea is that the players have to react to an ever-changing world, instead of the world reacting to the player. Its intended for a very different style of atmosphere than the one you are presenting.

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Original post by robert4818 If you and your guild start going into a nation's territory where there is no freedom of movement you start influencing the different decisions for each country. (I.E. You trespass in nation A, who decides to stop allowing trade into your nation (Nation B). This causes Nation B to declare war on Nation A.

This will result in squads of young people deliberately violating border agreements in order to see their effect of starting wars. It enables a feeling of power over greater things with a simple act of "Hee hee hee, we started a national war!"

The feeling of having power over greater things is probably a refreshing and desirable expression, and could be used to good effect if it wasn't represented as something having bad consequences. Sort of like a Uiji board, where the players contribute to a higher cause.

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Original post by AngleWyrm Quote: Original post by robert4818 If you and your guild start going into a nation's territory where there is no freedom of movement you start influencing the different decisions for each country. (I.E. You trespass in nation A, who decides to stop allowing trade into your nation (Nation B). This causes Nation B to declare war on Nation A. This will result in squads of young people deliberately violating border agreements in order to see their effect of starting wars. "Hee hee hee, we started a national war!"

:) Maybe. But then again, the AI might go a different route. It might lead to an open border agreement instead. It might lead to just a trade embargo, which opens up smuggling opportunities. It might cause A to get C to trespass into B instead.

Also, the concept is like that of influence from the base as a whole. So it might take more than just a couple of squads doing border violations to have a big effect.

The key will be finding the proper balance so that things shift frequently enough to keep things interesting, but not so frequently to lead to chaos.

I would expect that the AI's would run in "turns" (like in Civ) with each turn occuring once a week. Though its entirely possible that the AI's could run continuously.

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Original post by AngleWyrm Quote: Original post by robert4818 If you and your guild start going into a nation's territory where there is no freedom of movement you start influencing the different decisions for each country. (I.E. You trespass in nation A, who decides to stop allowing trade into your nation (Nation B). This causes Nation B to declare war on Nation A. This will result in squads of young people deliberately violating border agreements in order to see their effect of starting wars. It enables a feeling of power over greater things with a simple act of "Hee hee hee, we started a national war!" The feeling of having power over greater things is probably a refreshing and desirable expression, and could be used to good effect if it wasn't represented as something having bad consequences. Sort of like a Uiji board, where the players contribute to a higher cause.

Actually this could be a good thing to have occur. Of course, a few players wouldl not be able to make a nation go to war with another, but if enough players did this, then it could lead to war (so a significant part of the player base would need to do this).

But, this could lead to other action other than war. If the offended nation could find out who was violating their border, the home nation of the players might get pressuered into putting a price of their heads (or giving them a fine). the player could then choose to either keep going rogue (and then maybe being banished from their home nation or some other action) or pay for their crimes. However, if the nations were already hostile to each other, then war might end up happening. Or, perhaps the player's nation is too powerful and the offended nation might just choose to ignore it because they could not possibly win against the player's nation.

A lot of different things could happen, and it would take a considerable effort to force a nation into war (but it would still be possible) if there were other options that could be considdered. Also, there could be Developer (Game Master) interventions to force a nation to act a cerain way if they wanted.

But, I think the idea that robert4818 is aiming at is that the world is more dynamic than a pre set world as they are now. This is moving towards my theory of how to get real role playing into a game, that of reciprocal reactions from both parties (in this case players and the NPC heads of state).

In pen and paper RPGs, the Game Master acts as the NPCs and gets them to react to the PCs, the PCs then react to the Game Master and the reciprocal cycle of reactions goes on.

In current cRPGs, the developers write the plot, and the palyers react to it. However the story does not react to the players (there might be alternate pre-set plot paths that the story follows, but these are still pre-set so it is not a true reciprocal reaction cycle).

With this NPC nation state system, it allows the game to react to the actions of the players as a group. So although one individual player or a small group of players might not be able to make a significant change to the game world, the players as a large body will have an influence over the unfolding of the game plot. The plot is no longer pre-set, but is formed from the reciprocal reactions of the players and the NPCs.

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Original post by EdtharanIn pen and paper RPGs, the Game Master acts as the NPCs and gets them to react to the PCs, the PCs then react to the Game Master and the reciprocal cycle of reactions goes on. In current cRPGs, the developers write the plot, and the palyers react to it. However the story does not react to the players (there might be alternate pre-set plot paths that the story follows, but these are still pre-set so it is not a true reciprocal reaction cycle).

Which is why I suggested using human "Story Tellers" at various levels, possibly giving proven players the ability to become low level story tellers. (Such as an option for the GMs to 'upgrade' a trusted guild to a 'royal' status or something that sets it apart from random start ups. Nothing over powering however, but maybe options to post up 'guild quests', where the guild funds the prize, but it could have the option of having an effect on a larger picture.)

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Original post by Talroth Quote: Original post by EdtharanIn pen and paper RPGs, the Game Master acts as the NPCs and gets them to react to the PCs, the PCs then react to the Game Master and the reciprocal cycle of reactions goes on. In current cRPGs, the developers write the plot, and the palyers react to it. However the story does not react to the players (there might be alternate pre-set plot paths that the story follows, but these are still pre-set so it is not a true reciprocal reaction cycle). Which is why I suggested using human "Story Tellers" at various levels, possibly giving proven players the ability to become low level story tellers. (Such as an option for the GMs to 'upgrade' a trusted guild to a 'royal' status or something that sets it apart from random start ups. Nothing over powering however, but maybe options to post up 'guild quests', where the guild funds the prize, but it could have the option of having an effect on a larger picture.)

The only drawback to that is that it has the chance robbing the players from being able to influence results. With an AI, the players KNOW that their actions have an affect, however small, on the directions things go. However, with a human story teller, this just isn't as true. The story teller COULD simply decide to go his own way.

In that case it is a matter of giving the higher level (non-player) Story Tellers the data they need to actually make their choices. Basically taking the info on the actions that you would have fed into the AI, and allowing the Story Tellers to interpret that information. These people would be under the control of the developer, so it is up to them to make things work.

Personally I don't think I would care for playing in a faction driven by an AI when the AI glitches out. "I declare war on you, and you and you,..." which leads to "Hey, look at fraction A, they're totally getting whipped in a 10 sided war,... hey, why haven't any A players logged on in the last week?"