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Old 05-05-2002, 02:44 PM   #21
Yui Unifex
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Question

I think a random starting location would add a great deal to the discovery and sense of exploration available to new players, although it might mitigate the effectiveness of any special newbie-friendly areas of the game. A player could be eased into the world gradually by having a hometown situated far from any border skirmishes. Or they could be swept into battle quite early, as the king's recruiters come to bolster the army's ranks for an upcoming campaign.

Personally, I believe that each of the choices a settlement faces should be "equal" in that all of them are quite desirable. Reactionary AI tends to weigh which desires are most immediatelly needed when coming to a decision. So in the absence of player (or other NPC) attacks, the system would more than likely choose to gather food and expand the settlement. I see these attacks as a means by which players (and other NPCs) can keep settlements from getting too large -- the settlements only get as large as the ability to provide food for the entire settlement as well as defend it from attack.

But the time that players spend influencing a settlement is, in my mind, only a fraction of the time that the settlement will be influenced by the needs of food-gathering, expansion, and war with other settlements. So I think that even a large camping effort, while dramatic at present, is not enough to make the settlement a "soldier factory", so to speak ;). And if the world is large enough -- for every minute a player is camping outside of a small settlement, another one is growing and gaining technology at a much faster rate due to the lack of competition. I hope that this will provide enough of an incentive for players to not stay in a place for too long.

Sounds like an interesting scenario =). What if the system were designed in such a way that food must be constantly supplied? A small food supply would diminish the amount of good warriors that a raiding team would have available to itself. While I don't see anything wrong with players helping to provide a settlement with food, it would get fairly tedious -- even impossible for anything less than a bot -- given the appetites of some of those raiders =).

But I do see your concerns in this area. Perhaps we could give more incentive for players to move around by giving technology gain (and thus equipment forging skill) a boost to those peaceful settlements that have the time and resources to research?

But what if those goblins have a nation all their own? One that can easily overwhelm any prolonged farming campaign. Then we might get into giving them the ability to forge alliances with other, more militarily capable nations in exchange for resources and research...
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Old 05-06-2002, 03:37 AM   #22
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In addition, depending on the type of settlement, the AI's reaction to needs may be vastly different. Also, in terms of blockading, both the terrain and the AI behaviour may influence the effectivity of the blockade.

For instance, imagine a drow settlement which in fact grows underground. There are perhaps two or three access points, with only one clearly visible, the others hidden. Blockading is made easy here, but a paranoid AI model would send out all it has to break a blockade at the first sign of trouble.
On the contrary, a human settlement located on the surface in the middle of a vast plain might prove extremely difficult to blockade for players: if the settlement proper is eg on a 7x7 grid, you need players to blockade 15 squares, not a small feat. From that, depending on the society model, the AI may just defend its position (perhaps there can grow food inside the settlement's borders to hold out a longer siege), try to break the siege, or even call for help (definitely works very well in PvP environments).

This sound too much H&S for me. I wouldn't design such a system as solely an xp / equipment farm as the target.

Beyond that, having settlements matching existing playable races certainly adds an interesting twist to the notion of nations...
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Old 05-06-2002, 04:45 AM   #23
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Or, if the blockade is too powerful, it might just block up the entrance entirely (or rig it with traps and wait for the PCs to get curious and come inside to investigate why no more drow are coming out). In this case, it could easily switch to a new access point - or even dig new ones. Such a settlement could prove extremely difficult to block off entirely, as it could easily break off into new settlements without the players even being aware of it. If the AI was smart enough, it might even leave a few drow as a decoy before moving off somewhere else. Imagine camping outside the Drow city only to suddenly receive shouts of help from the rest of your guild - because the drow had launched a counter-attack against your guild HQ!

In addition, a well-situated settlement could hold out even longer - for example imagine a settlement beside the ocean, which could continue to trade with other settlements even when under seige (or "camped out") by PCs. Or the dwarven settlement which existed both above and below ground, and could simply continue expanding downwards (although admittedly at a slower rate). Even a settlement beside a river might be able to sneak supplies in and out.

If you wanted to get really smart, the settlement might try sending out diplomats to bribe some of the players, or assassins to take out the guild leaders.

Then there's magic, of course. An "undead settlement" (ie a powerful necromancer/lich controlling an undead legion) wouldn't need food, although it wouldn't be able to expand much without new bodies. Other societies might have mages who could create magical portals for bringing in supplies - not only would the PCs need to block off the settlement (hardly an easy task), but they'd also need to magically ward it off. Now the settlement only has to strike at one location and hold off the PCs long enough to break the ward in order to get supplies through.

In addition, there are other problems associated with blocking off a settlement - famine has been mentioned already, but the other big problem is plague. A group of staving diseased goblins are unlikely to put up much of a fight, but when half the guild goes down with the plague it's going to be a serious problem.

If the settlements match with player races, you could also introduce bounty and reputation systems. A guild which blocked off a drow settlement could get a "bad rep" with the drow - and drow PCs might earn a reward for killing members of that guild. There's invariably going to be some particularly strong PC members of each race (and some weak members of each guild) which means that any guild which deliberately camps out around a settlement is going to start losing guild members to PK. If the guilds are race-based (and particularly if the settlements are sometimes player hometowns) such activities are quickly going to turn into PvP wars. Camping an entire settlement is going to be hard enough, but when that settlement is the home of another guild it's suddenly going to become a LOT more difficult.
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Old 05-06-2002, 05:17 AM   #24
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Old 05-07-2002, 04:37 PM   #25
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Here's an idea for ya.

In SMAUG and others, ye can use those handy little obj_progs.

So, simply create an obj_prog that creates monsters at certain intervals.

Then allow the monsters to move around and occasionally drop a new portal object (perhaps a random type of portal, which could spawn bigger and better monsters). Monsters could spawn more portals, hell, even portals could spawn more portals (and maybe teleport them to a random location).

Wandering monsters can drop portals, the portals can spawn higher level monsters, who in turn continue dropping yet higher portals, and so forth and so on.

Could also spawn some non-portal objects, for the community aspect, since, in reality, a settlement doesn't really change the environment, it adds to it (at least in most medieval settings).

Now, add an option for players to be able to destroy PORTAL type items, and BAM, you got yourself a fairly easy to implement monster spawning system. In fact, some mobs could be peaceful, and just build their settlements without killing everyone - maybe even attack mobs from less friendly settlements.

I think I'll go work on this now, and see how it turns out.
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Old 05-07-2002, 05:04 PM   #26
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That's pretty much exactly what I did with the gremlins in GodWars, back in 1995 - plus the top level gremlins would lay mana-restoration non-hatching "eggs", which encouraged players to farm them. However it's a very simplified approach, and not really the same as the settlement (or "monster generator") concept.

Of course that's not to say it's a bad idea, but my interest here concerns a central settlement AI which manipulates individuals members of that settlement in a believable social model, providing an opposition "race" rather than a mass of free-roaming individuals.
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Old 05-07-2002, 05:59 PM   #27
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Desperate times breeds desperate measures.

So the PCs begin to farm the settlements, setting up blockades keeping the inhabitants at a certain power level. Seems like the perfect time for the settlement to call in the calvary. Wether its a goblin settlement that is being hounded calling in help from another goblin settlement that seemed to have gone unnoticed, or it could be a natural (or unnatural) alliance is formed with another race settlement.

In the case of kingdoms sending out settlers to expand the territory, should one of those settlements be hounded by guilds then the entire forces of the homeland are available to break up any camping.
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Old 05-09-2002, 10:24 AM   #28
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Maybe some custom mob and obj progs could give a realistic simulation of a real community mind.

Some sort of control file, or a status file, could give monsters a general idea on whether or not to spawn new gates and so on.
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Old 05-15-2002, 07:16 PM   #29
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Cool

I believe the reason for this thread isn't so much the implementation, as much as it's a brainstorm about the idea (or the post would have been made in another forum).

To have something relevant inhere:
Having read through the thread, I'm positive this is all quite possible. However, everyone seems to think of grid maps. We currently don't use grid maps at Cruel World, but it has crossed my mind. I can't really see how to avoid it, if anything like this should implemented. Any thoughts ?
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Old 05-16-2002, 04:41 AM   #30
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*cough* not all participants in this thread code on Dikuratives...
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Old 05-16-2002, 04:44 AM   #31
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They way I was shaping this in my mind was that the AI itself would be the grid server, and keep track of the changes of any building (barren ground->hut->house->ruin etc). That way, this wouldn't impact wether the rest of the MUD itself is using grid maps or not.
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