Honor, Infamy, and Influence in the Candle'Bre Universe

[Velociryx]

Here's something that's not been touched on to any great degree, but most definately something that warrants more discussion.

Before we can discuss it well, however, a distinction needs to be made between where we are now (ie - free release) and my own ideas thus far about where I want the concepts above to go (commercial release and beyond). For the free release, the concepts above will be just barely fleshed out...present enough to provide a taste, but almost nothing discussed in depth here should be regarded as a serious candidate for inclusion in the free release.

I do have some solid ideas about where I wanna take those concepts, but am *extremely* interested in hearing other thoughts and opinions on the subject....in my mind, this represents a potentially HUGE part of gameplay in both the SP and MP environments.

First, a bit of background about these components

Honor and Influence are "alternate forms of currency" in the game. They have their specific uses (Honor can protect you from the machinations of Espionage, Influence can be used to buy "intercessions" from the Church), and are stored in a "treasury" for each player, but they are fundamentally different from gold in a number of ways.

Honor - a "finite" resource in Candle'Bre. That is to say that there is a set maximum of 250 "points" of honor in the kingdom. No player may ever have more than 200 points of honor (game ends, victory for that player), but all players may run honor deficits freely.

Honor deficits (Infamy) reduce the total amount of honor available in the kingdom. At game start, there are 250 points of honor available, and each faction begins with 20 points (the rest are held in a "common pool" where initial honor gains are drawn from). If you behave dishonorably, and lose your initial 20 points, they do not transfer into the common pool, but are removed from the game entirely (shrinking the total honor available in-game). Thus, it is within the realm of possibility that dishonorable behavior (resulting in the total loss of 51 points of honor) will render an honor victory impossible.

It is possible for players to temporarily run an honor deficit, and then, through "reformed" behavior, get back into a positive honor situation.

It is also possible that Fate will increase the total honor supply in the kingdom (some fate cards grant an increase in Honor to the drawing player...this honor does not "come from" anywhere...it is generated by the card itself, and is the one way that the total honor pool of Candle'Bre may be increased.

When Honor is gained by a player, a check is made. If there is honor available in the "common pool" then the honor is deducted from that account, and deposited in the honorable player's account. If there is no honor available in the common pool, then the honorable deed is presented to the reciever in the form of a popup. Accepting it (say, money or troops) from the donating player must be paid for if that player has a positive honor rating. If the player has a negative honor rating, then the gifting player will be informed that there is no honor in the transaction, but may still make it freely.

*Addition - The following marks a slight rules change, and as such, will be posted in the appropriate thread shortly, but there IS NO LOSS OF HONOR when calling on a Church Intercession if the player calling for the Intercession is being attacked by an Infamous player (negative honor). If two honorable players are involved, then the normal honor loss applies.


Influence: Will likely serve as the basis of our magic system in the commercial release of the game. For the time being, however, the only purpose Influence with the Church serves is the act of Intercession.

Where we are now:

For the free release, here's the scaled back version of what the three (Honor, Infamy, Influence) will do:

Honor: Represents an alternate win condition. Collect 200 Honor, and that's the game. You win, by being the most beloved and honorable leader in the Kingdom.

Infamy: Negative honor = Infamy. In the free release, the penalties of infamy are as follows:

a) Research costs are 10% higher

* - Addition b) Any of your troops listed as captured BY AN OPPONENT WITH A POSITIVE HONOR RATING (cos if you're fighting an infamous opponent, there won't BE any captures) may be converted into mercenaries by the capturing player after the current battle resolves (such captured units may be placed in any province the capturing owns).

* - Addition c) You gain no further influence with the Church. If you have stockpiled Influence, you may spend it freely, but once it's gone...it's gone.

The benefits of infamy are:

a) No captures. If your troops make an attack that would result in a capture, count it as a kill (higher kill rate)

* - Addition b) Looting/Pillaging/Grave Robbing - Any time you kill enemy troops, you gain 1/10th of their value (rounding in force) in gold, added directly to your military coffers (stripping the valuables off of the dead). Also, when an infamous player captures a new territory, if there are any provincial improvements IN that territory, any ONE of them may be ripped down in exchange for 40% of the build cost. This is effective immediately, and is only an option on the turn the province changes hands.

Influence:
Any player posessing 20 points of Influence can call upon the church to interceed on their (or another player's) behalf and halt any attack in the game, outright. No noble in Candle'Bre would ever dare question the might of the Church (since approval OF the Church is essential to being recognized as King), so even the most infamous of Lords will abide by the Church's decisions to intercede.

*Addition - Slight rules change: It would be heinously cool if we could see our way clear to also allow "intercession of intercessions" in the early releases...that is to say, I spend 20 Influence to block FP's attack on Chowlett, and RPM spends 20 Influence to block my intercession, meaning the attack can go forward as planned (unless somebody else blocked RPM's interference).

****
NOTE: Things marked with "* Addition" are not presently in the change thread nor the core rules, and represent my own further thinking on the basic concepts. As such, they are open for debate and discussion....those are things not set in stone....just ideas I thought I'd toss out there.

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

As to where it'll go....well, I'll hold onto those thoughts for the time being, and see what comments and ideas the above generates, then add some more of my thinking to the mix....

-=Vel=-

[Chowlett]

Sounds Ok - althugh the exact size of the honour pool will need to be play-balanced.

Does this pool exist in the Board Game? I may get a game going on Sunday, and I need to be au fait with the rules beforehand. It may not happen at all (we may decide it's too complicated to learn of a night while preparing for exams, and also while vaguely drunk from a formal dinner - any thought on difficulty of new players learning would be appreciated)

Afterthought: - we're going to have to release regional versions of this game: "honor" or "honour"

[Velociryx]

Quite true re: the play-balancing, and yep...honour and honor both exist in the core rules as they stand at present!

One thing I'm really happy with about this setup is that it's player option....honor and influence can be ignored if you're not interested in playing with them...or, a player can behave honorably to a point (say, the acquisition of 51 honor), then start showing his true colors and deny any other player the honor win, and though the power of the Church's intercession is really cool, the only faction that it's really a natural for is Castillar (with their higher rates of influence anyway), so that's a "take it or leave it" option as well...but for those who wanna experiment with alternate playing styles, and mix/match strats, there's certainly a lot of room to do so....

-=Vel=-

[Chowlett]

If you go into infamy, thereby losing your 20 honour points to start with, and then "reform" do the points needed to pull you back up to 20 come out of the pool, or are they recreated, thus re-raising the pool?

Did that make sense?

[Chowlett]

Also - how long did it take your band of veteran wargamers to pick up the basics of Candl'Bre, and what state of sobriety or otherwise were they in at the time?

[Velociryx]

Nope...that's a one-way ride....if you lose your starting 20pts of honor, you gotta get 'em back the hard way, AND the honor pool stays 20pts smaller (unless, of course, the Fates smile on you).

As to the guys here who helped me test...well...lol..our turns were generally taking about an hour each, as we cross referenced rules and double checked with each other...the coolio thing about the test games I've run with 'em so far though, was that there was a whole lotta diplomacy, wheeling, and dealing going on. In fact, the "interceed the intercession" idea came out of one of those test games.....60 points of Influence blown to block one attack...but it was great!

-=Vel=-

[ravagon]

Originally posted by Chowlett
Sounds Ok - althugh the exact size of the honour pool will need to be play-balanced.

My half cents worth ...
I'd think 250 (or less than 260 anyway) would be about right. Hence if 3 of the 5 players (a majority) behaved dishonourably and each lost their entire pool, the Honour of the "kingdom" ( and I've forgotten whether or not it is a kindom ) is tainted forever (or for the duration of the succession (ie: game) anyway).

[Cyclotron]

Just a tie-in note here: This is free release stuff, and it is this same influence that the religion model divides up: Instead of one religion pool, there is one for each diety. Besides that, the model is fundamentally the same for this version and likely future versions.

[BigRich]

Query,

Does slipping into infamy *always* reduce the total Honour Pool of the Kingdom, or just the first time it happens. Because I can envisage a spoiler tactic of continually bouncing back and forth between honour and infamy, reducing the pool each time. Could be done by gifting forces to an ally on the one hand and then ruthlessly butchering enemy forces on the other.

Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick here.

Rich.

[Velociryx]

Rich...absolutely correct. It *would be* possible to use such tactics. Some would argue that this adds a somewhat "artificial" feel to the game, but I would take the opposite postion.

The fact that there is some limited supply of an intangible in-game resource, split among 2-5 players in the game puts a certain pressure on those who hold that resource to have some importance. Thus, one who is seen as opportunistically draining the resource away will be an in-game pariah, and likely hunted down, while those who care little for the acquisition of honor will rally behind the one being so hunted, in such a way that the game polarizes between the knights and vagabonds.

The interesting thing about honor is that it is absolutely nonessential to winning the game. True, control of 200 points worth will net you the win, and so from a spoiler perspective, it may be worth something to see to it that one particular path to victory is shut down, but it's very interesting how the mere presence of honor as an in-game resource influences behavior. It really does make infamous players "play up to their role," (at least in the test games I've had so far), and I'm QUITE curious to see how that translates into the computer version of the game.

-=Vel=-

[moomin]

While I haven't, admittedly, read the full rules (occationally, believe it or not, even a moominparatrooper has to do real work) I find this tread very interesting. Bear with me while I ask two simple - and quite possibly silly - questions:

*) Is there a history of player behaviour that you (and, more importantly the AI) can look up at will? A karma concept of sorts?

*) What's the rationale behind having a honour as a limited resource?

[Velociryx]

OH! I *like* the notion of a "history of behavior" report you could call up....that rocks! (answer to the first question....hadn't thought of that, but it's VERY cool!). And, we could simply do that sort of thing by graphically charting one's honor....that would give at least some indication on behavior....sweet!

As to the second question, initially, it wasn't a finite system, but IIRC gasdd (one of our code team members!) came up with the notion of restricting it, and it really, really improves the system, IMO. First, because it makes it QUITE difficult to snag a win via honor, and second, because if the upper end limit of honor was open-ended, there would not be quite the incentive for some players to behave infamously, and the tensions that creates (having some people who could care less about honor, behaving infamously in the context of the game), vs. those who do hold honor in high regard. (specifically, I'm thinking that if there was no upper limit on honor, then it would not be considered quite so scarce and valuable. Also, by making it a one-sided sum-zero game, there's more thought put behind making gifts of units and gold....and accepting them. Can you take the honor hit? Will accepting the honorable gift put the person making it 'over the top'? Of course, that kind of thinking could also apply in a fully open ended system, but even moreso this way....

-=Vel=-

[BigRich@home]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Rich...absolutely correct. It *would be* possible to use such tactics. Some would argue that this adds a somewhat "artificial" feel to the game, but I would take the opposite postion.

The fact that there is some limited supply of an intangible in-game resource, split among 2-5 players in the game puts a certain pressure on those who hold that resource to have some importance. Thus, one who is seen as opportunistically draining the resource away will be an in-game pariah, and likely hunted down, while those who care little for the acquisition of honor will rally behind the one being so hunted, in such a way that the game polarizes between the knights and vagabonds.

The interesting thing about honor is that it is absolutely nonessential to winning the game. True, control of 200 points worth will net you the win, and so from a spoiler perspective, it may be worth something to see to it that one particular path to victory is shut down, but it's very interesting how the mere presence of honor as an in-game resource influences behavior. It really does make infamous players "play up to their role," (at least in the test games I've had so far), and I'm QUITE curious to see how that translates into the computer version of the game.

-=Vel=-

Yep it's a cool idea and if its causing role-playing in a game then all the better - kudos on getting that purely by introducing certain game features and dynamics! And I agree that fixed resources add an interesting pressure to the game.

But..... it would be nice to get an honour victory occasionally ya know Which looks to be well nigh impossible, or at least very difficult - at least from a first reading. Which set me to thinking...

How about including a cooperative victory? Two factions come together for the common good - surely this would accrue them both some honour, and add to the total Honour Pool (possibly on a per turn basis), as the Kingdom as a whole is becoming a better place to live because of this? Of course the corrolary(sp?) is also true - this is not a mere alliance of convenience, and the Honour penalty for breaking or dissolving such an alliance should be truly draconian. Also maintaining the alliance should not be easy - the path of righteousness and virtue is ever hard to tread! I'm thinking some form of up upkeep cost, or increased cost on some actions, or gold stealing becomes impossible or something.

Just an idea to provide the good guys with a concrete way to counter spoiler tactics by the bad guys. Whether this would muck about too severely with the game balance or not......I dunno.

Rich

[Chowlett]

A player behaviour record is all well and good, but it would ideally need to carry over between games. I was kind-of assuming that the AI would take account of your honour/infamy when dealing with you, much as it does with reputation in SMAC. Having it take your honour in previous games into account would be much more interesting.

And problematical, as well - for example, you either have to assume that the same person is using the game all the time (which would be unfair if a friend played and got beaten up because the original player was a right bar-steward); or you'd have to have a system of player accounts, a la Black and White, which kept track of each player's personal honour and infamy - but then what's to stop a player just creating a new account?

[Spaced Cowboy]

My 2 cents:

1. I agree with Bigrich, we need not to have this honor/infamy switch happen at 0. How about a slider between -20 and 20 such that at 20 or above you are completely honorable. At -20 or below you are completely infamous. At 0 you are neutral and gain half the benefits and negatives of being both. Research at 5% more cost. Only 50% of the influence point make it to ya. etc.

2. We could also consider even more of a slider of benefits as you move even higher in each direction. Say for instance -50 infamy gets you 15% more research costs and even more gold from the dead. On the other hand, more honor gives you more as well, like 50 honor gets your gained influence increased by 20%.

R:PM

[moomin]

Originally posted by Chowlett
A player behaviour record is all well and good, but it would ideally need to carry over between games. I was kind-of assuming that the AI would take account of your honour/infamy when dealing with you, much as it does with reputation in SMAC. Having it take your honour in previous games into account would be much more interesting.

More interesting - perhaps. Certainly less strategic, since it would prevent you from playing the game you want to play every single time. Not that it's much of an consideration - you make the point about how difficult to implement it would be yourself. Anybody solving that particular problem can probably earn a whole whooping load of money selling that solution to e-bay.

But even in-game it'd be valuable. What a good behaviour history ensures is that the AI can access the _trend_ of your play. Honestly, gentlemen, who hasn't abused AI stupidity by building a huge amount of good rep and then stabbing repeatedly at the right times in the safe knowledge that your sum was still way positive overall? And on the other hand you've got the revesed situation in Civ3 where a 3900 BC war will have an AI furious with you for six thousand years even if you give it gold, techs and resources forever after?

A good karma system should enable the AI to send a messenger to tell you "Lord Ironbolt, my Divine master is concerned with the fact that your exemplary record has been considerably tarnished lately. We'll have to reconsider our non-agression pact if we don't see a marked improvement shortly and an return to your former, laudably honourable ways". An in-game history makes trend analysis possible, thereby outshining all other strategy games where rep/honour/karma is just a number.

[Velociryx]

Some truly astoundingly good ideas here! Awesome....I am now more than convinced that making the request for our own forum section here was of incalculable value to the game....this just rocks!

Rich - LOVE the idea of a cooperative victory! I'm thinking that we could incorporate a...something...some mechanism to weld the union of two nations together (much like a royal marriage in EU, but with an upkeep cost)...perhaps X gold and X influence per turn (gotta get the church involved in the "wedding" and in exchange for that, each member of the union got +1 honor....if the alliance was dissolved...egad...LOL...I shudder to even think about what penalty might apply, but you're right...the word Draconian would be apt in this case!

Chowlett/Trooper: AWESOME! The notion of using player profiles to track both in-game and intra-game behavior just...ROCKS!

Seems to me there are a number of decent ways we *could* enforce that (and make it such that the player could not simply make a new profile), but the question is...do we really want to?

If we DID wanna, we could:
a) tie the user's profile to the license # of the registered copy of the game

b) for the MP game, we could host a game server that checked IP addys and only allowed one account per IP addy to at least make it harder to have dupes.

c) had one...lost it cos the phone rang...damn...LOL

-=Vel=-
(more later)

[Chowlett]

a) and b) are essentially the "One person plays per copy rule" - which personally I don't like.

I would suggest that perhaps the players can create as many accounts in their own SP game as they like - so if they want the computer to remember what they did they can, and if they want a fresh start they can do that as well. It's either that or not at all really, unless your 3rd idea is absolutely top-notch.

However, the honour profile would not be used in MP at all then - and we'd just assume that word would get out that "That RPM guy is a real arse - don't trust him" or somesuch. Admittedly, this is less likely to happen if IP games are matched up randomly, but I don't think that does or will happen a lot - generally you play within the same group of people, who will get to know how you play. Sure, the AI will be a bit lost, but you don't usually play MP for the AI.

[Cyclotron]

Sorry, but I disagree with the idea that the AI learns from you between games. Somtimes I feel like being a vicious warmonger and take the infamy, or be a peaceful builder and keep the peace. Add to that the fact that I won't always be the one to play games on your computer... a game is an independent entity, as far as I am concerned. Things you do in the game should remain in that game, the computer should not be learning from you as a whole. I like the idea of AI learning, but keep it in the current game.

[moomin]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
Sorry, but I disagree with the idea that the AI learns from you between games. Somtimes I feel like being a vicious warmonger and take the infamy, or be a peaceful builder and keep the peace. Add to that the fact that I won't always be the one to play games on your computer... a game is an independent entity, as far as I am concerned.

I agree. I go through phases where I try radically different approaches with most of my games... and having different strategies "tainted" by previous ones wouldn't be cool. Ingame, however, would rock IMHO.

[Velociryx]

Hmmm...I dunno if this is gonna really be a hot button item or no. The more I think on it, the more I'm seeing that particular option as a love/hate thing. The people who love it would prolly really love it, but those who would hate it would prolly despise it.

(and, the two possible ways I came up with re: profiles is admittedly pretty harsh)

-=Vel=-

[BigRich@home]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
Sorry, but I disagree with the idea that the AI learns from you between games. Somtimes I feel like being a vicious warmonger and take the infamy, or be a peaceful builder and keep the peace. Add to that the fact that I won't always be the one to play games on your computer... a game is an independent entity, as far as I am concerned. Things you do in the game should remain in that game, the computer should not be learning from you as a whole. I like the idea of AI learning, but keep it in the current game.

Easy - have two installs of Candle'Bre then - one for each mood

Rich

[moomin]

Originally posted by BigRich@home


Easy - have two installs of Candle'Bre then - one for each mood

If you could have your player history as a save/load function, perhaps. People could swap their histories then. "Check out this brutal m*th*rf*ck*r!"

But here are still some practical problems... How would a "load" a player that's always been perfectly honorable and has - over time - achieved 40.000 honour point into the 250 honour-point cap?

[Cyclotron]

Whoa... you're proposing that honor should stack from previous games???

It strikes me as silly that annything would carry over from one game to another, aven AI knowledge. When I start a new game in Candle'bre, it's form the beginning... each time I play, I am rewriting history. It would be odd to play a WWII scenario as the English and decide to ally with Germany and gang up on Russia, and the next time you play Russia happens to hate you because you attacked it in a previous game.

Does anybody else see how incongruous this seems?

[moomin]

Originally posted by cyclotron7
Whoa... you're proposing that honor should stack from previous games???

No, compadre, I'm all with you on this one. I, personally, wouldn't like game histories to strech more than one game.

But since this honour thing is roughly equivalent to SMAC rep I can't see how they could avoid storing it somehow if long-term history was to be saved.

[Velociryx]

Yep...the comments here thus far have pretty solidly convinced me that bein' able to save honor/behavior histories such that they span games wouldn't be a good thing....neat idea, but I don't see it workin' out for this one....

-=Vel=-

[Velociryx]

The maturing of the idea - an Honor/Infamy spectrum

I've been giving this a lot of thought since reading Rich's and RPM's posts on it, and the more I think about it, the more I like it!!!

See...in the commercial release, when we introduce the other dominant religions into the game (and, I've been *tinkering* with the notion of allowing players to start their own religion as well...sort of a God-King thing...but more on that another time), each of the Religions have a variable "buy off rate" - some religions aren't as influential as others, and so intercessions cost more, in terms of raw influence.

Now...add to that equation the notion of the more honorable you are, the cheaper the price in influence for the Church to come to bat for you...yeah...that sets up some really groovy in-game dynamics that happen totally behind the scenes, but set up a VERY intriguing in-game environment.

So....just to put some numbers behind it, let's say that we've got the following 'Ranks' according to your honor:


81 to 160: Lord protector of the Realm (Church Intercessions cost you 70% normal rates and you gain a 20% boost to research rates)

41 to 80: Knight protector of the Realm (Church Intercessions cost you 80% normal rates and you gain a 15% boost to research rates)

21 to 40: Honorable Lord (Church Intercessions cost you 90% normal rates & you gain a 10% boost to research rates)

20 to -20: Peer of the realm. Church Intercessions cost you 100% (baseline cost).

-21 to -40 Brigand (No influence gained, normal intercession costs, -10% research rates, 10% Pillage rate, may raze 1 provincial build in a captured territory)

-41 to -80 Vagabond (No influence gained, 120% intercession costs, -15% research rates, 20% Pillage rate, may raze 2 provincial builds in a captured territory)

-81 and beyond Evil Ba$tard )No influence gained, 150% intercession costs, -20% research rates, 25% pillage rate, may raze 3 provincial builds in a captured territory)

* - Research rate bonuses and penalties were added based on the safety and security that "honorable" lands provide to their researchers...contrast this to the notion that ruffians tend to kill their sages and scholars if they make unpopular pronouncements)...or something like that.



-=Vel=-
(More! More! I'm loving it!)

[Cyclotron]

I am assuming the percent intercession rates stack with each dieties' own intercession rate, right?

[Velociryx]

Yes indeed, Sir Cyclo...yes indeed....

-=Vel=-