Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

I have been reading the "Fantasy Mod" with keen interest. I like the idea of a total redo of SEIV as a new game. It got me to thinking about doing SEIV up as a Roman era style empire game. I would never do this, it would take too much work, but it's fun to think about. Let's call this a mental exercise into what kind of things could be done.

Planets would become cities, systems would become nations or "regions".

Ships as they exsist now I am thinking would become some kind of army unit. Call it a company, or whatever. Components in each ship would be smaller sub units of specific type, or perhaps individual men. Your commanding officer would be the bridge component. As components are destroyed that decreases the effectiveness of your ship/army unit.

Fighters/sats and mines I am thinking would have no place in this mod. Weapons platforms would do nicely as defensive armaments for cities. Troops could be used for taking and defending cities.

The thing I can't see doing at all is any sort of naval combat. But I guess that wasn't a huge part of combat in those days anyway. To do Naval combat you'd have to have a diffent kind of "ship" and someway to restrict it to only water sectors, and someway to keep the land units off the water sectors. I don't see any way to do that in SEIV.

So anyone care to contribute? All I need is ideas. Since this mod will never get done you don't actually have to do any work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geoschmo

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

I like the idea of having individual components represent small companies of warriors within a larger integrated unit. You could have small divisions composed of frontline warriors, bowman, pikeman, etc.

You'd have to do a lot of component adjusting and removal. For instance, ranged weapons would not be the norm now; you would have maybe two families of distance-damage weapons only, representing bows and javelins. These could be upgraded by improving arrowhead/javelin shaft composition, with greater resulting accuracy, range, and damage. Pretty much everything else would have to be weapons with range 1, or maybe 2 (for pikes and the like).

Engines would be tricky to handle. They don't really fit in well with the concept of ground combat. Perhaps experience (which should now include morale) could bestow movement bonuses as well as the other combat bonuses? That way a more experienced, determined army could march further than a disorganized rabble. Other than this, I don't know how you would represent the addition of engines; if a ship is now a unified conglomeration of soldiers, the "ship" can only move as quickly as its slowest constituent, and you can't just add in "fast warriors" to increase the movement of the army.

Cavalry presents an interesting dilemma. If anything matches the fighter analogue, it would be cavalry (even this is not a good fit, though). You can't really make cavalry part of this army/ship, because cavalry tactics typically consist of separating from the main army and outflanking. They don't just line up with the other soldiers; they do their own thing. I suppose you could represent this with a particular type of medium-distance weapon, but IMHO this is unsatisfactory. If you made fighters into cavalry, they could then separate from the ship/army and conduct their own movement.

If this is done, the concept of fighters would have to change, because in addition to being faster than infantry, cavalry is more powerful and does much more damage, which is not true of starfighters when compared to ships. Fighters would have to be bigger and more powerful, and significantly faster than all other ships. Yet they would have to have a weakness to avoid having them unbalance the game (although cavalry really was overwhelmingly powerful).

Hmm...now it sounds like cavalry should be its own ship type. But then you couldn't have it be part of a ship/army, in accordance with your idea.

Interesting concept.

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

I think the engines would be represented as horses, wagons or whatever transportation you're using.

Give the ship a +1 standard movement built into the hull to represent basic marching.

Each component soldier can be given a movement bonus ability. The slowest soldier will then determine the army's speed.

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I dunno...I'm probably being needlessly nitpicky here, but this just doesn't capture the idea well. If adding engines is like adding, say, wagons, then the only way that this would speed the army is if all of the army rode in these wagons, or on the horses, which is obviously unrealistic and kind of silly. Just throwing some wagons into the army doesn't speed up poor Joe Legionnaire, who still has to walk and determines the speed of the entire army. Obviously, there could be specialized armies consisting only of cavalry and the like, in which adding better engines could be like adding higher-quality horses, but these would be the exception.

I guess the engines = wagons/horses would work for terrain (non-combat) movement, in a limited way. If you have 1000 soldiers and 333 wagons, then a third of the soldiers could be cycled in and out of the wagons, resting while the army moved, in order to retain overall stamina and freshness. Even this is of limited effectiveness, though, and it's still pretty unrealistic, historically speaking. Regardless, combat speed would have to be handled separately, using this concept.

I like the idea of each component having its own movement rate much better. That solves things right there. I would do away with engines altogether, and give each component a movement speed, with the lowest speed determing the overall speed of the army.

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

Well I was thinking of something the equivalent of a train. Shove the army in, and row the boat.

But the bonus movement for every troop would work very well to make your army go at the speed of the slowest men.

You even get to go faster if the slow guys are killed! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

Actually I think you guys have worked it out nicely. You give the army unit(ship) a base movement of 1. Then each sub unit(component) gets a move bonus. The movement of the army unit is then equal to 1+the loswest surviving units bonus.

Cavalry would have a higher bonus of course. And if you have only cavalry units in the army unit then that army unit could move faster than anybody else on the battle field. So you wouldn't put cavalry units in with foot soldiers. You could, but you wouldn't cause they could only move as fast as the slowest guy.

In fast most army units would be stritcly one type of component and a commander(bridge). The Exception might be you might want some infantry mixed in with your archers as protection from roaming cavalry. That would lessen the offensive impact of the archer company, but it would increase there posibility of survival. Even if they are damaged you want your your companies to survive cause that's how they accquire experience.

Geoschmo

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

And as you get more advanced you could field larger army units. This would be done by adding lieutenants(life support) along with the commander(bridge).

Geoschmo

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

How about these for "racial techs":

--Religious (Religious)
--Gemworking (Crystalline)
--Sanitation (Organic)
--Construction/transportation (Temporal)
--Shamanism (Psychic)

These would obviously have far different effects than their counterparts, and they need not be modeled after the counterparts at all. (I do so only because it's easy, and for reference purposes.) This would do well to account for the various cultures that might be around in a Roman Empire type game. The Romans would be religious, obviously, while the various Germanic tribes might have Shamanism. (Perhaps "Druidic" for Pictish/Celtic cultures?) The Romans would also have Construction/Transportation, while Middle-eastern cultures would have mercantile technologies such as Gemworking. Indic civilizations, renowned for their sanitation and mathematical city plans, would have Sanitation, which would bestow population and happiness modifiers for various buildings (facilities).

There are many other ways to go with this, that need not have any parallel to the SE4 tech fields. Any ideas?

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

Well my view of this mod would be it would have no racial traits at all, but since I am not doing the mod anyway feel free to suggest it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I think those things you mentioned would be neat to have as tech areas. General empire advancment stuff that would allow beter cities, and thus better production and reproduction. But since they are all one race, humans, it wouldn't be something someone else couldn't also develop themselves given the time and research.

Geoschmo

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I am coming back to this cause doesn't there need to be some way to increase the speed of an army unit in the strategic map, getting to the battle, that doesn't affect his movement on the combat map, during the battle.

Is there a way to do this?

And can you have negative movement bonuses? If all Army units have a base movement of 3, call that the speed of a guy walking in formation, can we then have armored troops move at a speed of 1, since they have to carry more they can't move as fast right? And could you include a "wagon train" as a component that would give more movement (standard, not bonus this time) on the strategic map without giving more movement in combat?

Geoschmo

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

Well, replace "racial techs" with "cultural techs", and I think it would do fine. I mean, yes, there's certainly no physical reason that another culture couldn't use the same cultural techs, but there's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that goes with it. For instance, the Roman religious obsession: this isn't simply a matter of understanding the concept of gods and then developing a religion. It's an entire civilization-based concept, a state machine. It is closely intertwined with the very essence of the Romans: the influence of the Greek culture, the ideas of essential materials (elements) and that which is responsible for them, the close association of the ideology of the Romans being tied up with half-divine heroes, etc. This wouldn't be something that could be duplicated by another culture, having to do with cultural mindsets and relationships and specifics as it does.

So, the effect would be the same, in my opinion. A bunch of technologies, or buildings, or weapons, whatever, that arise due to the particular characteristics of the cultures that spawn them. It would be a neat addition.

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

I guess so, but the question is, and I'm not sure we can ever answer this, is did their culture and religious beliefs allow them to make technology and increase their power, or did their power and technology allow them the luxury of developing this rich religious culture and the ability to spread it.

I would think the latter.

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

I think you may be sticking to a too-rigid definition of "technology". (Either that, or I'm using it too loosely, or both.) As with any conVersion of the magnitude that you've proposed, lots of stuff will have to give, be re-interpreted, redefined, etc. I wasn't thinking of "technology" in a precise literal sense, for this Ancient Wars game. Rather, I was thinking of some way to provide a unique element to the different cultures available. Some of it could manifest itself as actual technology, such as the Oxus and Indus civilizations' sanitary prowess. Some of it could manifest itself as an enlightened political system, such as the (early) Roman state. It need not be actual scientific technology for the analogy to work.

In fact, this more loose definition is incorporated into SE4 already. The very concept of "religious technology" is something of a misnomer...I don't think of the Death Shrine, Nature Shrine, etc. as literal technological advances. Rather, they are a reflection of Religious empires' unique viewpoint and abilities.

So, the things that you are talking about--powerful culture, strong beliefs, etc.--are all included in the sense of "technology" that I mean here. I guess I made a mistake in referring only to the five technologies, and not to all of the Empire characteristics, such as Industrialists, etc. It's more a sense of the latter that I'm trying to get across.

[ August 19, 2002, 19:28: Message edited by: Singollo ]

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

I understood what you meant I think. The differance is I see all those "advances" as something that any race should be and would be able to acheive given time and motivation. They could in fact be "Cultural" factors and not so much pure technological ones. But I don't see them as being something that is or should be intrinsic to one empire and not acheivable by another. So the only way to reflect that in SEIV is to make them technology areas that any empire can research, and not racial traits that are restricted to empires only that chose them at game setup.

In our history the Romans, the Greeks, the Persians, the Carthaginians all had strengths and weaknesses. Things they did better then others, things they did worse. But they didn't do them better because they were Romans, or because they were Greeks. They did them better because their grandfather figured out how to do it better and passed that knowledge down to them, and the other guys grandfather didn't.

I was thinking of this mod as one where you would be taking the reigns of an ancient empire and leading them the way you wanted too. So you might develop these areas, or you might go another direction.

Geoschmo

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

Huh. Okay, fair enough. It's your mod, after all. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif I guess we have different opinions of cultural affinities; I definitely do see these types of features as being intrinsic to individual cultures, because it is impossible to simply embark upon, or "take", the vast intricate web of factors that is responsible for such features, as if it were nothing more than an area of learning to be studied.

In fact, the same thing can be applied to the existing technologies in SE4. Things like crystallurgy, organic technology, etc....if viewed simply literally, as the physical ability to work with crystals etc., then there is no reason that these technologies should not be available to everyone. The game clearly views it as something more than this, as something intimately associated with the culture's history and character, something that is impossible for others to reproduce. If it consisted solely of crystal refining abilities, then anyone should be able to master them.

In other words, if the [fill in organic empire] have Organic Tech simply because their grandfathers decided to study organic tech, then there's no reason that any other Empire couldn't do the same thing. But it isn't like this. There must be something more going on there. Similarly, if the Persian expansion and poetry/government were merely something that their grandfathers decided to do, then you're right, anyone should be able to do that too...but it was much, much more than this. Those elements were inextricably bound up with the fabric of their very Empire, just as religion was with the Romans, sacrifice was with the Toltecs and Aztecs, orderliness and caste were with the Indus civs, etc.

Sorry, I don't mean to be argumentative. As I said, it's your mod. Methinks my degree in anthropology is causing me to be more stubborn about this area than I am usually. (Then again, I am a stubborn person in general.)

[ August 19, 2002, 20:20: Message edited by: Singollo ]

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

I don't take it as argumentative. And yes, it's "my mod" but I don't intend to actually do it. We could just as easily not do your idea as not do my idea, as long as we can agree upon which idea not to do. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Your point of comparison with the Racial traits in SIEV is valid. Although I have in fact argued the same position in the past agaisnt racial specific traits in SIEV. Although there I have been able to tell myself it's something intrinsic because they are in fact different races from different planets. They may in fact have a bioligical differance that allows them to manipulate matter differently than us. The universe is a big place afterall. Even if it's a cultural and not a biological thing, there you are talking about perhaps millions of years on a different cultural track to get to where they are. Not somthing to be overcome easily.

I am suprised that a person with a degree in antropology would be disagreeing with me on this actually. I would think you would be of the opinion that we all are pretty much the same at our root, not intrinsically differant than one another.

Truely it's difficult to equate the variuos empires of history strictly, as they did not develop at exactly the same time. The Romans came to power after the Greeks, and much of their culture was based on Greek culture as you pointed out yourself.

My idea in proposing this mod was not to take the end result of Roman, Greek, or Cartheginian culture and compare them and compete using their various historically accurate strenghts and weaknesses. But to modify the game and place you at the head of an empire early in it's history, before those cultural differances arose, and allow you to choose the path to domination that you feel suits you best. You wouldn't actually be nessecarily controling the Romans agasint the Carteginians yourself. You would simply be running an empire in an alternate universe, that as closely as possible models the choices that were made along the paths of development for those peoples.

So if you wanted to develop your empire as the Roman Empire did, you could. But so could your neighbor. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Geoschmo

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Actually, "universality" and "cross-cultural truths" are big no-nos in academic anthropology. The trend is to say that, yes, at the base, we are all the same thing: homo sapiens, developing on an oxygen planet with 1G, requiring the same basic nutrients, etc.....but that's all that we share. Everything else is due to cultural conditioning, which is vastly different in different contexts. So, to quote your post, we are indeed "pretty much the same at our root"...but our "root" is before cultural conditioning crops up, and when that is taken into account, we are indeed very different creatures. I am not arguing that we are "intrinsically different from one another", but that we are culturally different from one another, and that culture (however you define that term) is so ingrained, so powerful, that it may as well be intrinsic.

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Hmm...maybe I've given the wrong impression here. I don't mean to say that, in my idea, you would take the Romans and then have to play a Religious culture, a la CivIII. (Actually, I want to move away from the association of Romans with religion, since it isn't really as intense as other things. Let's go with Egyptian.) Of course, each culture would be free to choose whatever the player wanted, just like with the SEIV empires. I am saying that if you were to choose Religious for your culture, you would be describing your culture as having the kind of intense, dominant fascination with religion that characterized the Egyptians, and that this complex, interwoven religious nature is not something that another culture could just "pick up". You would be saying that your culture has a long, complex, evolved history that involves religious beliefs, which influences the government, the state as an institution, etc. The same would be true of other Cultural "Technologies". Now, certainly, any other Culture could do the same thing...but then that culture would also have Religious as a cultural trait. That's all I'm saying; I didn't mean to suggest that a particular culture had to be married to a certain trait.

By the way, this is how I get around the strict literal view of technologies in SEIV. As you said, the technology could indeed be intrinsic to the race, having to do with the race's history, society, mentality, or something else that can't be reproduced--or even understood--by other races. This pretty much already exists for Psychic and Religious technologies, since you couldn't just learn such things, and it also probably exists for Temporal races...if your race's brain patterns can't intuit the concept of Temporal warping and such issues, you wouldn't really be able to fathom the technology. It isn't all that hard to extend this to Crystalline and Organic technologies, too. Again, though, this depends on one's view of the racial techs as being something more than literal, physical paths of learning; if you hold that view, I can see how the idea of culture-specific techs is kind of illogical.

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

Well, if I were going to include these ideas in this mod I am not going to do, I would have to stipulate that these cultural differances be slight, and have little effect other than maybe "flavoring".

I wouldn't want the Shaman warrior priests or whatever they are called able to convert entire army units(ships) at a time to change sides in the middles of a battle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Otherwise we would get all bogged down in trying to balance the various racial traits and we would never not get the mod done. I wan't to have this mod not done fairly soon, so that will require keeping it as simple as possible.

Geoschmo

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

Gotcha. So, you want to do away with cultural-specific "techs" altogether?

Changing the topic: why not have each star be sort of like a ringworld, with the equivalent of being like a larger city. That way you can have each star/city be the center of the surrounding area, with all other towns (planets) in the region (system) being outlying satellite towns or suburbs. That creates a more realistic idea of a piece of land, with one cultural center and a bunch of towns that spring up around it. (Obviously I don't mean that the culture starts with a free ringworld, just that the concept of a central uninhabitable star exerting gravity and keeping the planets near it should be translated as a central inhabitable town that exerts its cultural/political influence on the surrounding area.)

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

I don't diagree that you empires culture greatly affects many aspects of it's development, even technology. I was thinking along the lines that sinec these empires are all made up of men, they just shouldn't have any prediliction towards one or the other until the game starts. That the research points spent in effect would be your method of choosing a cultural path, and that would result in the various plusses that came along with it.

You could make stuff expensive enough that it would be very hard to change the course in the game, just not impossible. You'd have to tart over from scratch basically. Not a good thing to do with other empires about. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Yes, a large central city and smaller surrounding towns fits quite nicely with what I had in mind for the maps.

Geoschmo

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

Engines would be supply wagons, no matter how fast the fastest member of a unit is, without foot and ammunition he's fooked. Just increase the amount of supplies along with movement as the engines get better

Re: Ancient Wars, SEIV style
 

Essentially, Geo, you are arguing that predetermined cultural "traits" should only be defined by a scenario, not the SE4 race setup, right?