There are several gameplay aspects I'd like to have in this game but don't know too much about. In order to plan for them some research needs to be done. I'll simply outline some stuff here:
Resources: Koku is one, but should there be others, and how will they be used/gained?
Provinces: What gameplay properties should they have? Should an entire province be owned by one clan or can multiple clans reside in one province? (Through multiple towns.)
Major towns/castles: What gameplay properties do these have? I was planning to have at least one of these in each province, but have more in densely populated areas. What economic and military implications do they have?
Armies: At what level of detail should they be portraid?
Trade: Is it something that had a major economic influence in this time period, and enough for it to be included in the game in some form?
Diplomacy: What diplomatic relations between clans should be possible?
Victory condition: When should a clan have "won"? I'd imagine it'd be something related to becoming the new Shogun, but I don't want total annihilation to be necessary condition like in for example Shogun: Total War.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
How much have you planned on the features and design? I could find the specs from the game I never made and post them if you want suggestions or ideas.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Economy. Stick with koku (or whatever) for simplicity. Then how it is generated can be made more detailed, from farming and gold/silver mines (eg Shingen had a gold or rice policy for his vassals to pay with).
Provinces/towns/castles.
First, I'll say that the player can control only 1 province directly, the rest must be ruled through vassals. Otherwise, detailed province management will cause a micromanagement hell when the player controls many provinces, and very not detailed management will cause utter boredom for small daimyos (compare wiht CK). This way both problems will be avoided and it'll add some uniqueness compared with similar games.
Two suggestions for possible smaller breakdowns.
1. only one town allowed. smaller fiefs may be abstracted.
2. several towns allowed. The province has one ruler who reside in the capital, the smaller are direct vassals to him.
Armies: together with the one-province rule, you can make army handling a bit detailed, where you personally organize your army you keep at you province/town (recruiting and apointing generals). The rest of the army you simply request from you vassals and they'll send what they have or want, or give them orders (eg, defend this town/province, or conquered that).
Trade: I'd leave it out with the exception of the perfidious Portuguese (silver for weapons?).
Diplomacy: everything possible. Relations could be: peace, war, alliance, vassal and a special one, partizan, which means you are allied AND the other support your cause to become Shogun. I'd also like to see a lot of backstabbing and secret treaties.
Victory: the obvious one is to become shogun. Example of condition is that 80% of the map is either yours or partizan to you.
Generally, I'd like to see a game that is more centred towards management and relations with retainers and enemies/allies, where you can demand or ask for a lot of stuff of your vassals, like sending money/food/weapons/troops or helping with construction work, making deals with other clans and the like.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Economy: I suppose that's the easiest thing to do. I just want to avoid a situation like in CK where "money" (let's use this generic term for now) is scarce at the beginning and commonplace in the end. EU2 is much more balanced in this respect - I suppose we should find ways for the player to spend his money on liabilities and undo investments.
Provinces etc: Interesting idea, but then province/town management would have to be fairly detailed to provide enough interest. Possibly, some kind of "demesne limit" ala CK could also be introduced if we want to allow a little bigger province number (once again, it depends on what detail province management can offer). The reason to why I thought of multiple towns was that the maps looks kind of empty as it is. Big provinces will benefit from more graphical elements.
Armies: Yeah, I want it more detailed than EU2 but I want a more dynamic feeling than CK where war wasn't very fun (hey I know it's not good game design to compare to other games all the time :P).
Diplomacy/vassals (lumped together):
This can become a very interesting aspect of the game. But we really need to decide on what level to represent individual characters like clan members and generals. Should we approach the EU2 direction or the CK direction? How much freedom from history to give the player when he builds up his clan? Also, I guess we need to work out what kind of diplomacy can be used in detail too (implications of retainership etc.)
Trade: Okay, we'll ignore it unless we figure out something in the future.
Victory: I guess that's the clear possibility.
Keep the discussion & ideas coming!
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Regarding only controlling province directly: I thought about it and it's quite nice. Let's make it so that in every province some character has to be *governor* (replace this with a title more appropiate for the Sengdoku period). Your main character (the one who you are more or less), resides in your capital province. From that province you get an optimal amount of taxes and troops since it's directly under your control. In all other provinces you conquer under your banner you'd have to institute governor's of either your own clan or someone else (loyalty fluctuating on a number of factors). This affects how much taxes actually reaches your treasury from the province and number of troops recruitable. I think this'd be an excellent way to promote historicity early on; until a player expands a lot his starting province is his main source of income, this in turn makes it easier or harder to expand.
An unrelated question: How long can rice be stored? Is it reasonable to model a percentage waste of koku compounded every month or year?
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
That sounds very good. With multiple towns within the province you could also have the "governor" ("lord", "daimyo"?) appoint rulers over them, so a 1-province ruler also have vassals to play with, especially since we will have so many of 1-province realms at scenario starts.
Waste seems like a really good way to avoid money hoarding, kinda like inflation in EU - spend the money now, or loose it.
---
Characters: I'm more into the CK or Romance of the Three Kingdoms model, with actual characters you have to keep loyal and use for different things (court officials a la CK, appoint as negotiators or generals, send them out to qualm rebellions or face invasions etc). The possibilities are endless there.
Trade: come to think of it, some clans had a substantial extra income from having exclusive trading rights with China or Europeans, so maybe it could be modelled as an extra income for some clan or province (you could have more of these, piracy for the Tsushima or Iki owners for example), but in any case, this should be something extra, and could be added later on if there is interest.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I've copied the following from the Paradox board thread, where I presented a character/inheritance system without females: (what a boring world that is :P)
---------------------
General game design discussion again:
How closely should we model family ties and characters in general. In my opinion (comparing Paradox games again obviously ) CK was a bit too specific for my tastes. CK's system does not allow for any kind of historical "thread" like in EU2. On the other hand, it can be argued EU2's monarch and leaders are too static. If the Luxembourg performs a world conquest it will still have the same monarch file. Also I feel family bonds were significant enough in the Sengdoku period (though I'm not the expert...) to be modelled.
I found the model in Shogun: TW rather nice though simplistic. You start out as a clan's leader. You get sons at controlled random intervals through your early years that are added to the "leader pool". When your current leader (daimyo) dies in combat, is assasinated or by some random chance from old age, the next person in line to receive the throne are his mature sons in order of the oldest first. If all of these die without leaving new sons or haven't reached ~16 years of age, the oldest male relative inherits. However (and this is the important part to restrict the family tree), as up until a character becomes a clan leader, no sons are modelled for him. He gets a chance to have sons immediately once he becomes leader. (Since most people died relatively early by modern standards even in the nobility the assumption that there is no upper age bound of fertility makes sense. Pobability of birth might become much lower but not come close to 0 as to have a chance to save the player's clan.)
Rule summary:
Oldest son inherits if > 16 years of age, else other sons in descending order.
If no sons can inherit, the oldest relative inherits.
What I see as one advantage in this model is that family management is almost totally abstracted away from the player. Just make sure to keep enough male relatives alive any you're safe. In Shogun: TW this is not as easy as it sounds though because relatives are assigned as generals and thus risk death in battles... Of course, something similar can't be done for this game (a player could just hide a minimal army in a far away province if he was forced to use all relatives as generals). However, assasinations should still be an option.
Another big advantage is that of historicity. Using this limited model we can control it rather strictly and not let it completely wander off. We can assign historical names and properties for relatives born in a certain time intervals. Thus historical Imagawa, Shimazu, Takeda, etc. clan members can show up in the appropiate time periods. In reverse we don't need to do any (which I would guess is more difficult) research on females since they're not modelled. Sorry for any feminists out there but it I think they can be taken out of consideration for anything but historical events.
Still managing inheritors I think can become a significant part of the game. Unlike in CK where the after a couple of generations huge family tree will make losing the game very hard, the restriction of what births are modelled here makes the supply of relatives limited in some ways. Other suggestions include giving them chances to revolt if they feel ignored (not getting to lead armies/hold offices in combination with a slim chance of inheritance). Perhaps the player could be given the choice to bypass inheritance (if different candidates have different capabilities/experience), at the cost of strong discontent of those bypassed.
A disadvantage of the model is whether there is any justification for it at all. Basically I want to know (and maybe you can find out?), what the inheritance rules actually were in Japan in the Sengdoku era. What age was considered the smallest to inherit, or whether old age was considered a priority to having a closer genetic bond to the old ruler etc. I guess I can research some of this myself too but who'd know.
Due to it' simplistic nature there's also a problem of what family ties between clans can be represented and what vassal-liege relationships. It might be able to include some fun gameplay into elements into it still; one idea I have is that upon a relative upon reaching an age to marry the player gets to choose whether to ask another clan for bride or to marry into a local noble family of a province. Marrying local would perhaps cement the loyalty of a province (abstraction abstraction), while marrying another clan could include effects such as getting a chance to inherit when a clan's last alive character dies as well as simply improve relations (and have negative effects for a war ala royal marriage of EU2).
--------------------
Expanding upon this idea, we could allow branches to develop. However, children should only be entered into the game if the father holds some kind of title (this could be town gov/provincial gov/daimyo/general/whatever). Also dead characters could start to get removed once living relatives were too far to make much difference in inheritance.
I also propose all characters are born to one tag-defined clan (maybe changable by event though), even if it's a clan that doesn't presently hold any territory in the game. It could allow that if for example one province governor revolts to add the territory to his clan's (and thus add a new in-game political entity if it didn't already exist). Also, if you have a general of the X family, he might not be very loyal if you want him to go to war with his relatives.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I read that, I like it. I did like the genealogical approach of CK, but I don't think we need it. Automatically giving sons to rulers seems better suited for this. Also, it should be possible to adopt sons from retainers and vassals/lieges, if the relationship is good enough. I'm not sure if the player should ever loose the game though. If he has no sons maybe a retainer would take over, and the player continue as him.
It should also be possible to name a heir, as that was the case.
I do think inheritance itself should be in though, with all that comes with it (read: rebellion and inner strife).
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
BTW, take a peek at Romance of the Three Kingdoms 3&4 by KOEI. Their system with officers, generals and the like is bound to give inspiration and ideas for how to handle retainers (ie, you assign a retainer to do different tasks, eg the time to build/strengthen a castle depends on the organization/whatever skill of the retainer who is put in charge, and the defensive level on the retainer's military skill (or so)).
Here's more ideas, listed shortly. Before any major programming is undertaken we need to decide upon the main game features.
Province control;
*whoever owns the capital, owns the whole province
*minor towns can be owned by other clans
*province ruler defined as 'daimyo'
*if there are special mapobjects in province, benefits goes to prov owner
*owner receives province events
Province options:
*Build mines (if possible)?
*stop rebellion (see below)
*attack Buddhist fort/Ninja lair
suggestion:
Province traits
peasant rebellion
bandits
etc
Province mapobjects:
*Buddhist fort (if player buddhist, gives or lets you buy support - or they may attack you)
*Ninja lair (yes, they did exist, gives or lets you hire retainers
with ninja trait, good for covert ops, negative honour hit)
*trade center? (additional income)
*major road (additional income)
*more?
Towns/forts:
*income mainly from each town. Specified annual income in koku.
Dynamic: increase by improvements
and decrease by pillage and bad events
*one retainer has position as castellan in each town, these have no
other implification than affecting
tax income and army. They may however revolt should their loyalty drop
too far. if changed they can refuse to give up their position and revolt.
Is their unit mobilized when this happen, they will revolt too.
Economy
*Income centered around the castles.
*Income in gold and koku.
*Gold used for: building, diplo & covert missions, creating new units.
*Koku used for buldings and troop upkeep and creation only.
*koku income on yearly basis, gold on monthly
*All koku from castle goes to its castellan, gold splitted half/half with clan ruler/regional ruler.
?tax rate adjustable. affects population loyalty
*negative treasure possible, but when indebted you cannot build buildings or train units, only pay army upkeep
suggestion:
*different kinds of income: rice/wheat farming (a town can have one of eact)
fishing (only coastal)
special: (trade with China, Korea or Europeans)
*the different kinds of income are affected differently from buildings and events
Clan leadership:
*each clan has a lord, and diplomacy, retainer loyalty, income etc affected by his stats
Inheritance;
*see the lengthy post above, this is a summary
*clan leader dies - check for sons.
if no sons, nearest relative
if no relative, retainer with very high honour and loyalty
if no retainer, split clan
all money transfered to new leader
Retainers:
*each clan has a number of retainers, (all instances of CPerson in your court)
*these are used as vassals, administrators, diplomats, generals etc
*if a player managed to loose his retainers, he WILL NOT automatically get new ones - you may run out of them. Keepin the retainers loyal is a goal in itself
Vassal structure:
*All castles belong to the clan, but each castle is ruled by a retainer of choice.
?retainers ruling province capitals can be (or auto?) given authority to rule over minor towns as well (less micro mid-game)
?Regional bosses can be appointed, administrating all the provinces in a certain region (less micromanagement late-game)
* a clan can be a vassal to another clan (1- or 2-level limit, for simplicity?)
(* if so IMPORTANT: interface for easy arrangement of vassal structure needed)
*vassals can not have their own politics, start no wars, etc. If their land is attacked, they will mobilize what they can
and defend themselves, but not go to the offensive
*if a town rebels and gains independence, a new clan is created, according to the clan name of
the new lord
*if personal town lost: (unless leader trapped or killed: inheritance)
automatic transfer to another province capital of choice, if owned.
if no such is owned, transfer to town of choice
Diplomacy
diplomatic relations:
*neutral (no relation)
*allied
*war
*non-aggression
various treaties ideas:
*defensive treaty (war against aggressor, but no support in aggressive war)
*agree to declare war against specific clan at specific date
*breaking treaties gives negative honour and may give backstabbing (name needed) trait
*keeping treaties when bad for you (eg supporting an ally against terrible odds) gives honour boost and good trait
*trade should perhaps be possible (exchanging towns for example)
Warfare
*your military consists of your personal units (those from your town + those of your capital province towns) and
the armies your direct vassal daimyo send to you
*your personal army you recruit and train yourself, while your vassals do that themselves
*two ways to create a unit: standing samurai units, costs more, maximum determined on fort size, better quality, morale
dormant ashigaru or samurai units. samurai are better, but more expensive. takes a while to mobilize
*units can consist of one or several troops types
*one unit is led by a retainer of choice, and can be up to 2,000 men strong
*once mobilized, all units can be arranged into armies
*Armies move on a road network between the towns. battles occur when they meet and when a town is attacked.
*abstracted battles, no tactical mode.
?armies can fortify its position between two towns, or prepare for ambush if terrain and army size makes it possible
*armies can be garrisoned in a fort, how large troops depends on troops size.
*once a town is taken, it is yours, no need for peace settlements
*when a town is taken, an 'intermission' ruler is there until you assign a new one (or choose a 'generic', which is then created?)
Army upkeep:
*upkeep calculated automatically
*if no free road connection to friendly non-besieged castle exists, armies will suffer additional attrition.
*if an army has been in field for longer than a certain time, it starts suffer from very much attrition
*garrison upkeep: if besieged, after a certain time depending on castle size, garrison start suffer terrible attrition
Covert ops:
*Place spy. Choose a retainer. Place in any town. In capitals, it is harder to keep
them but gives info on clan.
?Incite unrest. May cause peasant uprising.
*Incite mistrust. Target vassal, may make him loose loyalty towards his lord. Can
backfire if he is too loyal
*Buy over. Make a vassal agree to join your side in case of a war between you and his
lord.
*Hire. Hire any retainer of another clan. Only illoyal can be (succesfully) targeted.
*Assassinate: assassinate any retainer. Harder to assassinate daimyo and town rulers.
Works different from CK. You place the
assassin in the town, and after a while you will get the option to
proceed with assassination or not (eg,
"Lord, an opportunity to continue have come"). will cost you money as
long as you keep him looking for an
opportunity. you can only have a few of these running at any given time.
(proposal: You need a retainer with 'assassin' trait to do this)
Random events
*disasters, such as storms, volcanoes, eartquake
*good harvest
*Portuguese/Dutch traders
*uprisings
*bandits
*more
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
There are several gameplay aspects I'd like to have in this game but don't know too much about. In order to plan for them some research needs to be done. I'll simply outline some stuff here:
Resources: Koku is one, but should there be others, and how will they be used/gained?
Provinces: What gameplay properties should they have? Should an entire province be owned by one clan or can multiple clans reside in one province? (Through multiple towns.)
Major towns/castles: What gameplay properties do these have? I was planning to have at least one of these in each province, but have more in densely populated areas. What economic and military implications do they have?
Armies: At what level of detail should they be portraid?
Trade: Is it something that had a major economic influence in this time period, and enough for it to be included in the game in some form?
Diplomacy: What diplomatic relations between clans should be possible?
Victory condition: When should a clan have "won"? I'd imagine it'd be something related to becoming the new Shogun, but I don't want total annihilation to be necessary condition like in for example Shogun: Total War.
How much have you planned on the features and design? I could find the specs from the game I never made and post them if you want suggestions or ideas.
Not enough. That would be helpful. :)
Great, I've lost them and everything else beside an early render of a castle. I'm busy today, but tomorrow I'll write a few suggestions :)
Some ideas, just to start a discussion.
Economy. Stick with koku (or whatever) for simplicity. Then how it is generated can be made more detailed, from farming and gold/silver mines (eg Shingen had a gold or rice policy for his vassals to pay with).
Provinces/towns/castles.
First, I'll say that the player can control only 1 province directly, the rest must be ruled through vassals. Otherwise, detailed province management will cause a micromanagement hell when the player controls many provinces, and very not detailed management will cause utter boredom for small daimyos (compare wiht CK). This way both problems will be avoided and it'll add some uniqueness compared with similar games.
Two suggestions for possible smaller breakdowns.
1. only one town allowed. smaller fiefs may be abstracted.
2. several towns allowed. The province has one ruler who reside in the capital, the smaller are direct vassals to him.
Armies: together with the one-province rule, you can make army handling a bit detailed, where you personally organize your army you keep at you province/town (recruiting and apointing generals). The rest of the army you simply request from you vassals and they'll send what they have or want, or give them orders (eg, defend this town/province, or conquered that).
Trade: I'd leave it out with the exception of the perfidious Portuguese (silver for weapons?).
Diplomacy: everything possible. Relations could be: peace, war, alliance, vassal and a special one, partizan, which means you are allied AND the other support your cause to become Shogun. I'd also like to see a lot of backstabbing and secret treaties.
Victory: the obvious one is to become shogun. Example of condition is that 80% of the map is either yours or partizan to you.
Generally, I'd like to see a game that is more centred towards management and relations with retainers and enemies/allies, where you can demand or ask for a lot of stuff of your vassals, like sending money/food/weapons/troops or helping with construction work, making deals with other clans and the like.
Economy: I suppose that's the easiest thing to do. I just want to avoid a situation like in CK where "money" (let's use this generic term for now) is scarce at the beginning and commonplace in the end. EU2 is much more balanced in this respect - I suppose we should find ways for the player to spend his money on liabilities and undo investments.
Provinces etc: Interesting idea, but then province/town management would have to be fairly detailed to provide enough interest. Possibly, some kind of "demesne limit" ala CK could also be introduced if we want to allow a little bigger province number (once again, it depends on what detail province management can offer). The reason to why I thought of multiple towns was that the maps looks kind of empty as it is. Big provinces will benefit from more graphical elements.
Armies: Yeah, I want it more detailed than EU2 but I want a more dynamic feeling than CK where war wasn't very fun (hey I know it's not good game design to compare to other games all the time :P).
Diplomacy/vassals (lumped together):
This can become a very interesting aspect of the game. But we really need to decide on what level to represent individual characters like clan members and generals. Should we approach the EU2 direction or the CK direction? How much freedom from history to give the player when he builds up his clan? Also, I guess we need to work out what kind of diplomacy can be used in detail too (implications of retainership etc.)
Trade: Okay, we'll ignore it unless we figure out something in the future.
Victory: I guess that's the clear possibility.
Keep the discussion & ideas coming!
Regarding only controlling province directly: I thought about it and it's quite nice. Let's make it so that in every province some character has to be *governor* (replace this with a title more appropiate for the Sengdoku period). Your main character (the one who you are more or less), resides in your capital province. From that province you get an optimal amount of taxes and troops since it's directly under your control. In all other provinces you conquer under your banner you'd have to institute governor's of either your own clan or someone else (loyalty fluctuating on a number of factors). This affects how much taxes actually reaches your treasury from the province and number of troops recruitable. I think this'd be an excellent way to promote historicity early on; until a player expands a lot his starting province is his main source of income, this in turn makes it easier or harder to expand.
An unrelated question: How long can rice be stored? Is it reasonable to model a percentage waste of koku compounded every month or year?
That sounds very good. With multiple towns within the province you could also have the "governor" ("lord", "daimyo"?) appoint rulers over them, so a 1-province ruler also have vassals to play with, especially since we will have so many of 1-province realms at scenario starts.
Waste seems like a really good way to avoid money hoarding, kinda like inflation in EU - spend the money now, or loose it.
---
Characters: I'm more into the CK or Romance of the Three Kingdoms model, with actual characters you have to keep loyal and use for different things (court officials a la CK, appoint as negotiators or generals, send them out to qualm rebellions or face invasions etc). The possibilities are endless there.
Trade: come to think of it, some clans had a substantial extra income from having exclusive trading rights with China or Europeans, so maybe it could be modelled as an extra income for some clan or province (you could have more of these, piracy for the Tsushima or Iki owners for example), but in any case, this should be something extra, and could be added later on if there is interest.
I've copied the following from the Paradox board thread, where I presented a character/inheritance system without females: (what a boring world that is :P)
---------------------
General game design discussion again:
How closely should we model family ties and characters in general. In my opinion (comparing Paradox games again obviously ) CK was a bit too specific for my tastes. CK's system does not allow for any kind of historical "thread" like in EU2. On the other hand, it can be argued EU2's monarch and leaders are too static. If the Luxembourg performs a world conquest it will still have the same monarch file. Also I feel family bonds were significant enough in the Sengdoku period (though I'm not the expert...) to be modelled.
I found the model in Shogun: TW rather nice though simplistic. You start out as a clan's leader. You get sons at controlled random intervals through your early years that are added to the "leader pool". When your current leader (daimyo) dies in combat, is assasinated or by some random chance from old age, the next person in line to receive the throne are his mature sons in order of the oldest first. If all of these die without leaving new sons or haven't reached ~16 years of age, the oldest male relative inherits. However (and this is the important part to restrict the family tree), as up until a character becomes a clan leader, no sons are modelled for him. He gets a chance to have sons immediately once he becomes leader. (Since most people died relatively early by modern standards even in the nobility the assumption that there is no upper age bound of fertility makes sense. Pobability of birth might become much lower but not come close to 0 as to have a chance to save the player's clan.)
Rule summary:
Oldest son inherits if > 16 years of age, else other sons in descending order.
If no sons can inherit, the oldest relative inherits.
What I see as one advantage in this model is that family management is almost totally abstracted away from the player. Just make sure to keep enough male relatives alive any you're safe. In Shogun: TW this is not as easy as it sounds though because relatives are assigned as generals and thus risk death in battles... Of course, something similar can't be done for this game (a player could just hide a minimal army in a far away province if he was forced to use all relatives as generals). However, assasinations should still be an option.
Another big advantage is that of historicity. Using this limited model we can control it rather strictly and not let it completely wander off. We can assign historical names and properties for relatives born in a certain time intervals. Thus historical Imagawa, Shimazu, Takeda, etc. clan members can show up in the appropiate time periods. In reverse we don't need to do any (which I would guess is more difficult) research on females since they're not modelled. Sorry for any feminists out there but it I think they can be taken out of consideration for anything but historical events.
Still managing inheritors I think can become a significant part of the game. Unlike in CK where the after a couple of generations huge family tree will make losing the game very hard, the restriction of what births are modelled here makes the supply of relatives limited in some ways. Other suggestions include giving them chances to revolt if they feel ignored (not getting to lead armies/hold offices in combination with a slim chance of inheritance). Perhaps the player could be given the choice to bypass inheritance (if different candidates have different capabilities/experience), at the cost of strong discontent of those bypassed.
A disadvantage of the model is whether there is any justification for it at all. Basically I want to know (and maybe you can find out?), what the inheritance rules actually were in Japan in the Sengdoku era. What age was considered the smallest to inherit, or whether old age was considered a priority to having a closer genetic bond to the old ruler etc. I guess I can research some of this myself too but who'd know.
Due to it' simplistic nature there's also a problem of what family ties between clans can be represented and what vassal-liege relationships. It might be able to include some fun gameplay into elements into it still; one idea I have is that upon a relative upon reaching an age to marry the player gets to choose whether to ask another clan for bride or to marry into a local noble family of a province. Marrying local would perhaps cement the loyalty of a province (abstraction abstraction), while marrying another clan could include effects such as getting a chance to inherit when a clan's last alive character dies as well as simply improve relations (and have negative effects for a war ala royal marriage of EU2).
--------------------
Expanding upon this idea, we could allow branches to develop. However, children should only be entered into the game if the father holds some kind of title (this could be town gov/provincial gov/daimyo/general/whatever). Also dead characters could start to get removed once living relatives were too far to make much difference in inheritance.
I also propose all characters are born to one tag-defined clan (maybe changable by event though), even if it's a clan that doesn't presently hold any territory in the game. It could allow that if for example one province governor revolts to add the territory to his clan's (and thus add a new in-game political entity if it didn't already exist). Also, if you have a general of the X family, he might not be very loyal if you want him to go to war with his relatives.
I read that, I like it. I did like the genealogical approach of CK, but I don't think we need it. Automatically giving sons to rulers seems better suited for this. Also, it should be possible to adopt sons from retainers and vassals/lieges, if the relationship is good enough. I'm not sure if the player should ever loose the game though. If he has no sons maybe a retainer would take over, and the player continue as him.
It should also be possible to name a heir, as that was the case.
I do think inheritance itself should be in though, with all that comes with it (read: rebellion and inner strife).
BTW, take a peek at Romance of the Three Kingdoms 3&4 by KOEI. Their system with officers, generals and the like is bound to give inspiration and ideas for how to handle retainers (ie, you assign a retainer to do different tasks, eg the time to build/strengthen a castle depends on the organization/whatever skill of the retainer who is put in charge, and the defensive level on the retainer's military skill (or so)).
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=927
http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=2078
Looks interesting, will do so.
Here's more ideas, listed shortly. Before any major programming is undertaken we need to decide upon the main game features.
Province control;
*whoever owns the capital, owns the whole province
*minor towns can be owned by other clans
*province ruler defined as 'daimyo'
*if there are special mapobjects in province, benefits goes to prov owner
*owner receives province events
Province options:
*Build mines (if possible)?
*stop rebellion (see below)
*attack Buddhist fort/Ninja lair
suggestion:
Province traits
peasant rebellion
bandits
etc
Province mapobjects:
*Buddhist fort (if player buddhist, gives or lets you buy support - or they may attack you)
*Ninja lair (yes, they did exist, gives or lets you hire retainers
with ninja trait, good for covert ops, negative honour hit)
*trade center? (additional income)
*major road (additional income)
*more?
Towns/forts:
*income mainly from each town. Specified annual income in koku.
Dynamic: increase by improvements
and decrease by pillage and bad events
*one retainer has position as castellan in each town, these have no
other implification than affecting
tax income and army. They may however revolt should their loyalty drop
too far. if changed they can refuse to give up their position and revolt.
Is their unit mobilized when this happen, they will revolt too.
Town actions:
*Improve farmland
*Improve fortifications
*Build stuff (what?): shrine, forge, gun factory, etc
Economy
*Income centered around the castles.
*Income in gold and koku.
*Gold used for: building, diplo & covert missions, creating new units.
*Koku used for buldings and troop upkeep and creation only.
*koku income on yearly basis, gold on monthly
*All koku from castle goes to its castellan, gold splitted half/half with clan ruler/regional ruler.
?tax rate adjustable. affects population loyalty
*negative treasure possible, but when indebted you cannot build buildings or train units, only pay army upkeep
suggestion:
*different kinds of income: rice/wheat farming (a town can have one of eact)
fishing (only coastal)
special: (trade with China, Korea or Europeans)
*the different kinds of income are affected differently from buildings and events
Clan leadership:
*each clan has a lord, and diplomacy, retainer loyalty, income etc affected by his stats
Inheritance;
*see the lengthy post above, this is a summary
*clan leader dies - check for sons.
if no sons, nearest relative
if no relative, retainer with very high honour and loyalty
if no retainer, split clan
all money transfered to new leader
Retainers:
*each clan has a number of retainers, (all instances of CPerson in your court)
*these are used as vassals, administrators, diplomats, generals etc
*if a player managed to loose his retainers, he WILL NOT automatically get new ones - you may run out of them. Keepin the retainers loyal is a goal in itself
Vassal structure:
*All castles belong to the clan, but each castle is ruled by a retainer of choice.
?retainers ruling province capitals can be (or auto?) given authority to rule over minor towns as well (less micro mid-game)
?Regional bosses can be appointed, administrating all the provinces in a certain region (less micromanagement late-game)
* a clan can be a vassal to another clan (1- or 2-level limit, for simplicity?)
(* if so IMPORTANT: interface for easy arrangement of vassal structure needed)
*vassals can not have their own politics, start no wars, etc. If their land is attacked, they will mobilize what they can
and defend themselves, but not go to the offensive
*if a town rebels and gains independence, a new clan is created, according to the clan name of
the new lord
*if personal town lost: (unless leader trapped or killed: inheritance)
automatic transfer to another province capital of choice, if owned.
if no such is owned, transfer to town of choice
Diplomacy
diplomatic relations:
*neutral (no relation)
*allied
*war
*non-aggression
various treaties ideas:
*defensive treaty (war against aggressor, but no support in aggressive war)
*agree to declare war against specific clan at specific date
*breaking treaties gives negative honour and may give backstabbing (name needed) trait
*keeping treaties when bad for you (eg supporting an ally against terrible odds) gives honour boost and good trait
*trade should perhaps be possible (exchanging towns for example)
Warfare
*your military consists of your personal units (those from your town + those of your capital province towns) and
the armies your direct vassal daimyo send to you
*your personal army you recruit and train yourself, while your vassals do that themselves
*two ways to create a unit: standing samurai units, costs more, maximum determined on fort size, better quality, morale
dormant ashigaru or samurai units. samurai are better, but more expensive. takes a while to mobilize
*units can consist of one or several troops types
*one unit is led by a retainer of choice, and can be up to 2,000 men strong
*once mobilized, all units can be arranged into armies
*Armies move on a road network between the towns. battles occur when they meet and when a town is attacked.
*abstracted battles, no tactical mode.
?armies can fortify its position between two towns, or prepare for ambush if terrain and army size makes it possible
*armies can be garrisoned in a fort, how large troops depends on troops size.
*once a town is taken, it is yours, no need for peace settlements
*when a town is taken, an 'intermission' ruler is there until you assign a new one (or choose a 'generic', which is then created?)
Army upkeep:
*upkeep calculated automatically
*if no free road connection to friendly non-besieged castle exists, armies will suffer additional attrition.
*if an army has been in field for longer than a certain time, it starts suffer from very much attrition
*garrison upkeep: if besieged, after a certain time depending on castle size, garrison start suffer terrible attrition
Covert ops:
*Place spy. Choose a retainer. Place in any town. In capitals, it is harder to keep
them but gives info on clan.
?Incite unrest. May cause peasant uprising.
*Incite mistrust. Target vassal, may make him loose loyalty towards his lord. Can
backfire if he is too loyal
*Buy over. Make a vassal agree to join your side in case of a war between you and his
lord.
*Hire. Hire any retainer of another clan. Only illoyal can be (succesfully) targeted.
*Assassinate: assassinate any retainer. Harder to assassinate daimyo and town rulers.
Works different from CK. You place the
assassin in the town, and after a while you will get the option to
proceed with assassination or not (eg,
"Lord, an opportunity to continue have come"). will cost you money as
long as you keep him looking for an
opportunity. you can only have a few of these running at any given time.
(proposal: You need a retainer with 'assassin' trait to do this)
Random events
*disasters, such as storms, volcanoes, eartquake
*good harvest
*Portuguese/Dutch traders
*uprisings
*bandits
*more
what is this porject alive???