[Human-beings-discuss] preliminary rules

[Guillaume Cottenceau]

Hi,

This week-end, I've spent roughly 5 hours hardly thinking the
concepts and rules of the game. They are more or less almost
complete, except the extensive list of batiments and units (which
will be pretty long to design as well of course). They are the
results of the mission statements, the discussions on this ML so
far, and a couple more ideas I had while thinking.

They are of course not definitive, please point out errors and/or
suggest corrections.

WARNING: please do quote the message correctly, e.g. remove the
unnecessary quoted parts of the message. Thanks.


        Overview

The Human Beings game can be viewed as an hybrid between
Civilization (50%), StarCraft (20%), SimCity (10%), with a few
percents of original rules.

It's like most strategy games in the sense that each player will
control batiments and units, seen on a map, with the aim of
ruling the entire map.

It's like Civilization in the sense that each player controls a
civ which will develop over the time, discovering new scientific
advances helping to build more complex and powerful batiments and
units.

It's like StarCraft because this is a realtime game (NOT a turn
based game) and the units have HP, AP, DP (see the "Words"
section). The "cities" look like in StarCraft because you can see
(and actually, place) the batiments on the map.

It's a bit like SimCity because if you badly organize your city,
it will ne uneffective; you need to handle roads, power lines,
police stations.

The originalities are:

- there is no "money": each civ produces a range of goods, to
  build and operate batiments, and operate units
- the political system "automatically changes" when some crucial
  discoveries are made

To simplify the game, there is no sea/ocean, nor navy units (like
in StarCraft).


        Cities

The cities are the heart of the game. Each civ is organized with
a capital city and a (low) number of annex cities.

Each city is built around the mayor's house. The player will then
build roads and batiments (this will need some goods, see the
Levys section for more details) to develop the city.

The heart of each civ is the capital city. The capital city is
the one containing the National Flag on the mayor's house. The
capital city's population grows twice as fast as the other
cities. You can move the National Flag to another city if you
want.

You need to have a high "cultural ratio" in annex cities (the
farther from capital city, the more you need), or production of
batiments will decrease; if this decrease is too important, the
annex city secessionates.

You can conquer another civ's city by moving any military unit to
the mayor's house, provided there is no military units of the
other civ "close" to the mayor's house. You then gain control of
all this city's batiments after a (short) period of time. If the
city had a high cultural ratio, the production level of the
batiments will need time to reach normality. The other civ gains
knowledge of two random discoveries from you.

When you conquer the mayor's house of a capital city, the
opposite player is dead. The remaining annex cities secessionate.


        Words

"civ" means the civilization a player controls (also called a
"race" in other games)

"discovery" designates a Scientific Discovery (also called
Scientific Advance or whatever)

"HP" reads Hit Points; it means the "energy" or "life" of a
batiment/unit (it comes from the role games)

"AP" reads Attack Power; it's actually divided into two numbers:
the raw "power" of each attack and the time for reloading (some
types of units have limited power on some types of
units/batiments, or none)

"DP" reads Defense Power


        Discoveries

The scientists of each civ work on one or several subjects. When
they work on more than one subject, the time to complete a
discovery is slightly reduced, but the discovery actually
discovered is a random from the list of studied subjects.

Establishing ambassies in other civs accelerate the scientists'
work. You may exchange discoveries between civs if you have an
embassy and if you're in peace; in such a case, the discovery
will be made much faster (but not immediately).

Some discoveries may impact the levys; when that's the case, the
effect is not immediate (because it would be really unpleasant in
some situations) but goes along a (short) period of time, leaving
the civ the possibility to adapt.

Here is the list of discoveries, with the dependancies:

Fire
Peasanry
Fishing [Peasanry]
Cattling [Peasanry]
Cooking
Burial
Religion [Burial]
Wheel
Bronze [Fire]
Masonry [Fire, Wheel]
Drawing
Writing [Drawing, Wheel]
Potery [Masonry]
Iron [Bronze]
Bridge building [Wheel]
Mathemathics [Writing]
Medicine [Mathematics]
Physics [Mathematics]
Engineering [Bronze, Physics]
Gunpowder [Engineering]
Electricity [Engineering]
Steam [Engineering]
Steel [Electricity, Steam]
Gravitation [Steam]
Chemicals [Electricity, Steam]
Industrialization [Engineering, Chemicals, Steel]
Petrochemicals [Chemicals, Industrialization]
Bitume [Petrochemicals]
Mass production [Industrialization]
Automobile [Petrochemicals, Mass production, Bitume]
Flying [Industrialization, Petrochemicals, Gravitation]
Relativity [Flying]
Plastics [Industrialization, Petrochemicals]
Electronics [Electricity]
Computing [Plastics, Electronics]
Nuclear power [Plastics, Relativity, Computing]
Biochemicals [Chemicals, Computing]
Spaceships [Flying, Nuclear power]


        Political system

The first political system is Despotism. When Religion is
discovered, it changes to Monarchy. When Industrialization is
discovered, it changes to Democracy.

The production speed of the batiments (goods and units) grows of
20% at each political system increase.

If all of your annex cities have a low cultural ratio and you're
in Democracy, you go back to Monarchy.


        Population

The population is divided into different categories; each
category has a "specialization level" which barely indicates the
time needed to train some, and potentially needs a discovery to
be available.

Unspecialized [0]
Peasants [1]
Workers [1]
Militarian [1]
Scientists [3]
Technicians [2] [Industrialization]
Engineers [3] [Engineering]

The population grows:

- on a regular basis except when the population starves (see
  Levys)
- faster when the housing is widely available; slower when
  housing is full
- faster when the civ faces a war
- slower when the city enlarges
- slower when crucial discoveries are made (demographic
  transition): there is a factor of 0.8 after Industrialization,
  0.8 again after Democracy  
- slower when the fecondity is impacted by having military units
  (before Democracy) (see Units)

When your population grows, you can command the program to
automatically launch specialization programs to keep a desired
ratio between all the available specializations. Some batiments
may accelerate the specialization, like Schools and Universities.


        Goods

Each good has one or more means of production:

Water [Well, River pumping]
Food [Agricultured grassland, River fishing]
Wood [Forest chopping]
Concrete [Mine]
Plastics [Oil Refinery]
Steel [Mine]
Energy [Wood burning, Dam, Wind plant, Oil plant, Nuclear plant]

The goods are not automatically available everywhere. They are
produced at a given location, consumed at another, and there
needs to be a channel of communication between the production
location and the consuming location.

- For batiments, the communication channels are roads/railroads;
when Electricity is discovered, it's power lines for Energy.

- For units, this is symbolized by special units for Energy (oil
tankers), for mechanical units. One oil tanker needs to be
"close" to units; if it's farther, the unit only consumes a
percentage of the needed energy (indexed on the distance of the
oil tanker), thus it slows down at the same percentage. The Food
and Water levys for units need no channel of communication (it
would be boring or hard to play). When a unit is far from the
closest production location of any of its needs, it slows down
until a factor of 50% (depending on the distance); this
percentage is 75% when Industrialization is discovered; 90% when
Automobile are discovered.

If there is no channel of communication, only 10% of the needed
goods are available (but not none - would help building walls
very far from cities, would help a civ in which an opposite civ
broke a railroad to not have everything down, help when you start
the game, etc). If the production location is "close" to the
consuming batiment (3 times the size of the batiment or less),
the percentage is 30%, not 10%.


        Levys

Population, batiments building, batiments operating and units
operating have an impact on goods, called a constant "levy". That
is, they constantly consume a part of the goods production of
the civ.

When you have more levy than the current production, it has an
impact on all the consumers: the population will starve (thus,
decrease) except when in Democracy (the population is served
first in Democracy - there can be starvation, but only if all the
other goods consumers are already at 0% of the considered goods),
and the batiments building and operating, and the units
operating, will slow down. There is a menu to grossly tune if you
prefer to impact only one category, and another menu to fine tune
to impact only some elements.

When you have more production than the current levy, the
exceeding is lost.

We talk in "units" rather than quantity because we always talk in
"quantity per time". That is, units are an amount of quantity per
unit of time.

The population has a constant levy on Food, Water and Energy:
each unit of population needs one unit of Food, one unit of Water
and one unit of Energy. When the civ discovers Plastics, each
unit of population will need 1.5 unit of Energy.

Batiments building and operating, and units operating, have a
constant levy on some categories of population.


        Batiments

Batiments can be built anywhere (but because of the construction
and operating levys, this can be real slow if there is no channel
of communication to bring the needed goods - and if the needed
goods are not produced anywhere in your civ, the construction or
operating would simply stop).

For an additional 30% cost, you can "hide" a batiment: the
batiment will look like another one you choose (to the enemies).

Correctly placing batiments is important ("the SimCity effect"),
since the following situations decrease the population's
productivity:

- large residential areas without the necessary cultural ratio
- poor road connection between residential areas and other
  batiments
- fortified military units close to residential areas (in
  Democracy)
- police stations far from residential areas (decreased in
  Democracy)
- nuclear power plant close to residential areas
- batiments-producing-units too concentrated

An annex city without a good road connection to the capital city
will also have a negative impact on its productivity.

Cultural batiments need to be not too close to each other (else
their effect is decreased).


        Units

Military units are made by dedicated batiments; the population
unit(s) needed to operate the units are only male before
Democracy (thus decreases fecondity by a percentage as long as
they exist), both genders in Democracy.

Military units gain experience when destroying a new type of
enemy unit (+20% for the first, +10% for the second and third).
Experience impacts directly AP and DP.

When a unit is obsoleted, it can be upgraded with a cost. This
can be done automatically if the user selects this option, or an
a per-unit basis (player then chooses to upgrade or disband).

When a unit moves on agricultured grasslands, it plunders
(destroys) it.

All units can fortify. Fortification takes time, can be made only
on grassland/hills/mountain terrains. It doubles the DP of the
units and increases AP by 50%, but units can't move anymore when
fortified. Un-fortification is immediate. Units can't attack when
fortifying, and can't fortify when attacked.

Units have a DP bonus of 30% when on mountains. Units have an AP
bonus of 30% when upper than the attacked units.

The civilian population is not directly seen as units on the map.


        AI's

Multiple AI's automatically team up when they have embassy
relationship or are attacked/attack an enemy player who is far
more powerful, or who has teamed up.

AI's try to mimic human players:

- they concentrate forces much before an attack
- they don't attack at the same location each time
- they mass up defensive means (instead of defending a la
  StarCraft, e.g. one turret every 3-4 batiments) 


        Map and GUI

The fog of war:

- enlarges when units are upper than the surrounding terrain
  (e.g. you can see farther from a hill)
- units can't see other units inside their fog of war viewing
  area when there is a forest or a hill in-between
- non mechanical units may "hide" in forest areas

You can ask units to automatically retreat when they are at 10%
of their nominal HP.

You can ask a group of units to align speed on the slowest units.


-- 
Guillaume Cottenceau - http://people.mandrakesoft.com/~gc/