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And an extra visible stat for block loyalty? Or does this stay the currently hidden personality stat value … But we make it visible?
And can this value ever go 'down' ? (or if the currently hidden one – move towards someone else?)
I'm a bit weary of a general being able to refuse a command. While it makes loyalty more important…
Let's say we get to a point where cao cao has guan yu. He attacks yuan shao who currently has liu bei.
Towards the end of the fight, only the two brothers are left.
Both are loyal enough to their rulers that they don't change sides, but their familiarity stops them from following 'attack' battle scape orders against each other. Deadlock.
Btw – I don't like 'personality' as a description for block loyalty / alignment. Conflicts with the 'traitor bit' generals have in the original.
'block alignment' or 'block loyalty'?
If we end up with two block stats, whatever.
'familiarity' seems decent as well.
My standing definition for an officer block: "A group of officers loyal not to the force leader but to another officer who serves him". So Dong Zhuo arguably has a small block under He Jin, but it's dissolved when he seizes Luoyang.
By 220, yeah, the original block members have mostly passed away… and that assuems that he never seized control.
Having multiple blocks is certainly possible, although that'd probably involve getting other forces to surrender (or for the force leader to be conquered and recruited).
The smaller the block is, the more control you have. Presumably, the player should be able to adjust block power (and, if they want, turn off blocks completely!).
Yes, keeping block leaders loyal to you will usually keep the officers in their block loyal. After all, Zhang Fei's not likely to say "I'm sooooo drunk, so I think I'll leave Liu Bei and serve Cao Cao instead! *hic*"
Officers probably should have loyalty both to the force and to the block; the block leader presumably has perfect loyalty to the block for the same reason Cao Cao has perfect loyalty to Cao Cao's force. Of coruse, we can instead have how dedicated the block leader is to the block, with lower dedication increasing the chances of officers being peeled off and/or the block leader deciding "We don't need a block, we're serving Uncle Unfy!"
Spy commands would help with finding info about the block; naturally, it should be easier than it is for other forces, seeing as you have the home field advantage! XD
It shouldn't be too hard to tell block loyalties, so they should be visible; only exception is if you add a much-despised feature to hide officer loyalties to the force leader.
Block loyalty should be able to decrease, as I described above; of course, if the block leader thinks that the ruler is responsible…
Block generals should only be refusing a command when they have lower loyalty to you than the block leader AND the block is quite strong. Do keep in mind that guan yu was technically not in the block at guandu, so that shouldn't trigger here.
As for compatibility (or personality, as you put it) keep in mind that it's the same thing that makes guan yu so fond of liu bei instead of sun quan. It won't be the only reason (15-charm Lu Bu isn't going to have a twenty-officer block!), but it'd be why Guan Yu is more likely to join the Liu Bei block than Pang De is.
Finally, the desire to rule is still be here as their urge to start a new block. Of course, even if Zhang Da values block leadership the way the pope values christianity, he'll have trouble getting anyone to join him…
EDIT: i typed this out as you were typing your reply out, so this doesn't take into consideration your post just prior to this one. reading that now :3
Typed those last three from my phone, hoping to catch ya before ya called it good for the day / night hehehe. So if there's any auto-spell corrections, apologies.
Out of curiosity, if I happen to rule over Liu Bei…. how does Liu Bei end up recruiting someone for me on his own ? A betrayal / conversion during battle is about the only thing that comes to mind outside of 'so and so joins you' that happens every year relating to sons of prominent generals etc.
Or, if someone's loyalty drops below a certain point, do they leave their current ruler and go find their block leader and join them ? Or become a free general and migrate slowly towards their block leader (where once they get there, they get recruited automagically) ?
If their loyalty drops below a certain point, but the block leader is loyal to you… do… they just happen to stay then ?
And concerning blocks…
Lets say that for some reason that I have that superman Cao Bao as my ruler (cough). Liu Bei and his entourage are under my rule. Liu Bei happens to be very loyal time. Liu Bei's entourage is very loyal to Liu Bei…. but… their loyalty to me is rock bottom.
How does this affect:
a) the entourage's loyalty to me
b) liu bei's loyalty to me
c) the recruitability of the entourage by other rulers
d) recruitability of of liu bei to other rulers ?
e) the odds of liu bei doing what he does best and stabbing me in the back ?
Basically, your standard intrigue — the block leader loves me, but his friends hate me. Does the leader feel the plight of his friends and look for ways out, or ?
Nasty complicated icky oy heheheheh.
Still fun to think about, and could make for a very interesting game!!! :)
ps – thanks for names lists
Also, if a general can ignore commands… i dunno… this just seems… dangerous for making grid locks / impossible situations. i love the idea, but it also scares the shit out of me.
Now, having more commands affect loyalty… that I do like. Gotta be careful to not turn loyalty into the third resource though (outside of gold and rice).
In jest: Zhang Fei: reward the peasants! Zhang Fei loyalty goes up cause he drinks on the side, Cao Bao's loyalty goes down due to receiving a drunken flogging…. *cough*
tonight's goal: a first run 'functionality over aesthetics' run at the provincial screen gui that make just hollow function calls at the moment. basically, i just want it to be able to get to the point where things can be interacted with wholly… making it pretty or more usable comes later… this is just so things can be tested.
after functional provincial gui: starting to fill in lots of RPN stuff.
Presumably, all forces (including yours) would be available for Liu Bei to recruit officers. While recruiting a distant officer makes Liu Bei's block larger, he also so thoughtfully provided you with an officer for your force.
Having low loyalty doesn't make someone apply to a block. But if you have a 70 loyalty officer in your force, Liu Bei will view them the same way your rivals view a 70-loyalty officer…
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Assuming that Liu Bei's loyalty is low (say, 70)….
Liu Bei's block is less than thrilled with you, but they want to stay with Liu Bei.
Because Guan Yu is loyal to Liu Bei, Cao Cao will have no luck recruiting him. He'd have nop trouble recruiting Liu Bei, though — and if he gets Liu Bei, then Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, etc. will also join Cao Cao.
And yes, there's the strong risk of Liu Bei stabbing you in the back. If he's a governor, he may declare independence. If he's not, he (with most-if-not-all of his block to back him up!) may attack the province he's in, trying to conquer it from you. And if his block is outright stronger than the nonblock (think Sima Yan & Cao Huan), he may simply demand that you abdicate to him — which would make him the ruler and YOU the leader of the few not-part-of-LiuBei's-block officers.
If we DO wind up with Liu Bei fighting you for the province, then rice/gold would have to be divided; presumably it'd be divided according to soldier strength and officer count, with the governor getting a bonus.
Remember, even though I came up with the idea of officer blocks, they're in no way set in stone…
EDIT: If we do wind up with guan yu and zhang fei in battle as members of a block but on opposite sides, there should be an answer. If they're sitll willing to battle, that's fine. If not, but one of them is with Liu Bei's force, the other guy joins them as well. If not, then one of them will withdraw from battle.
Ok…. so… you're thinking of blocks as being smaller in scope than I was thinking of… but having very strong game play influences.
And multiple blocks *has* to be an eventuality… it *will* happen towards the end game. Towards the end of the period, Cao Cao has the royal court under his thumb, the tribes to the west, his own group, tribes to the north, some yuan shao stuff, etc…
Multiple blocks are certainly possible, but it depends on the settings. On the lowest setting, there are no blocks. Second lowest, blocks are barely there, and even Liu Bei has trouble getting more than Guan Yu and Zhang Fei. Middling ones, whether they're there or not depends on ruelr stats and whether the player is careless enough to let them form. And finally, the top level will have even Cao Cao treading very lightly around them.
On a late note, in 189 Cao Cao technically served Zhang Miao because he only ran a small county. In a remake, logically he'd be a textbook example of "officer who forms block"! Within a couple years (and with Ziahou Dun, Xiahou Yuan, Cao Ren, etc. as free officers — they should also be fair game for forming blocks), I can easily see him getting stronger than Zhang Miao and stealing rulership form the CPU. Of course, if a player was careful, they could prevent that, and as a bonus they'd have the entire Cao Cao family to assist them…
installed new ssd into netbook, and figured i'd up the win7 install from starter to pro 64bit. well… in general it kinda went good, but intel doesn't support 64bit os on their gma 3600 (newest released atom platform graphics afaik)…. had to hack around it a bit.
it seems… okayish, but far from perfect.
dunno where my usb -> sata/ide thing went, so gonna have to take everything to work and fetch data off old disk there. might do so tonight, might wait until tomorrow.
Got called into work because stuff was down!%#@@!$!@ at a location ~1000mi away. Turns out someone had been into the server rack there and unplugged something…. yeah… really related to me :retard: …. played phone chain / tag and got someone to plug it back in. fixed.
Anyhoo using tools available here to backup stuff off of the old spinning disk and am installing win7 pro 32bit as we speak.
should be able to get back to dev'ing tonight (dunno if i'll do anything, but it should be possible at least).
oh, and for the curious — using the dev environment that i am, this should compile and run on just about any platform you can think of (except dos or os/2 perhaps).
Good, good.
On another side note, I imagine that most officers will NOT be in an officer block, especially when blocks are set to be weak.
So….
After they get cable plugged back in, I finish the beginning of the netbook re-install / maintenance and head home (15min drive).
Get home… start the windows update cycle for a fresh install (~140 updates, then after these will be more updates or service pack 1, then more etc etc etc)… can't wait to get to the point of installing drivers heh.
Get a text — same location 1000mi away is having problems again. Needless to say I'm a bit miffed. Wait for the updates to finish downloading and ask about license agreements… then head back to work while it's spending forever installing.
Get to work…. check it out… the cable is unplugged AGAIN. :bon:
So very not amused.
Blocks: first incarnation will be block-less while we getting a playable game and we work out the details.
I'm not sure if game configuration block level stuff is better served as static "severity" choosing (ie: non-existent, weak, middle, strong, worship huo hu) and to have game logic work off of these finite settings….
Or if we'd rather implement it as just a variable (say, 1-100) that gets put into each calculation to affect how likely block-level actions occur or get affected etc etc etc.
I'm leaning more towards block-level calculations are always made and their involvement is dictated by this "how influential they are" variable.
IE:
event check tiger wolf:
likelihood = ruler soldiers – ((block soldiers * (100 – block-leader-to-leader loyalty) * block-leader-ambition * global_influence) / (100 * 100 * 100))
if likelihood < 0 then revolt!@%!@#!
PS: saw some of the SoSZ posts you've made concerning rotk2 and stuff, will have to dig into them :)
EDIT:
updated formula a bit, it's still a little wrong, but whatever. would also need to be able to be able to allow really aggressive guys to attempt a revolt even if under powered (maybe div by 50 instead of div by 100 ?)
I'll take a look at this when I'm up for it; I'm preoccupied right now, I'm afraid.
As for really aggressive guys, maybe intelligence should factor into it; they'd have to be both rebellion-prone AND pretty stupid to get an Ou Xing incident.
Also you need a giant "DO NOT UNPLUG" sign XD
everything updated, installed. even installed paintshoppro (the old coder's preferred art proggy heh) … onward!
So reading some of this thread I gather that you are doing an extensive mod for ROTK2. I don't remember much about that game (it's been years since I touched it). Can you summarize for someone who barely remembers ROTK2 what your major changes are/will be?
Also have you given any thought to tinkering with ROTK1? I know my brother was very interested in someone modding that game. He asked me to do it but cracking open a mod for the first time is a tall order. Nobody has tried to mod ROTK1 at all from what I've seen.
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