Mass multiplayer Civ/MOO?

Trifna · January 29, 2003, 15:42

I created this thread because I wish to explore the possibilities of a mass multiplayer Civ/MOO, should it be in 50 years I don't care. If it seems impossible to you, well it already exist on the Internet, generally mail or web-based. How could it be? How could it work? They're only STARTING to make mass multiplyer RTS and it seems to have alot of potential since it creates a real political universe. And in the case of Civ and MOO, it's more than just political, it's cultural, scientific, etc.

It could be some persistant universe where the governors are doing all the job automatically until you go change something (so you're not obliged to always be connected regularly to not lose everything). It would give an infinite map with players on it, all trying to expand, trade, etc. Of course, it would need some adaptations but could be awesome...

Now I have work so I'll continue thinking on the subject later if I want to be able to give this work on time.

Inverse Icarus · January 29, 2003, 18:45

whats the point of having an infinate map? i could own a bajillion tiles, and that would mean nothing. there would be no true sense of victory at all.

also, the tech tree presents a problem.

first off, when new people join, would they start off in the stone age? it would suck to jump in and meet some tac nukes on turn 4 of the game.

also, when the tech tree is exausted, what then? just conquer everyone, wiht no real point, as the map never ends?

if you wanted to make a REALLY massively multiplayer game, you'd have a galaxy of planets with special charastics, and you would work your way up from the stone age to space-faring civilizations. it would be interesting to see the planet versus solar system dicotemy.

imagine starting on a planet like in civ, developing up to the space-era, with several major powers on a planet, and beginning interstellar colonization / war. imagine being at war with someone ON YOUR OWN PLANET while fighting them for colonies on the outer rim of known space.

woo!

if you wanted to run with your thing though, you'd have to re-think the map thing. infinate maps seem pointless to me.

Trifna · January 29, 2003, 19:43

Yeah well my message was built very rapidly... (6 hours left to make my essay

)

I have to agree your idea of starting from stone age and going through future... seriously good game. But it seems we'd need to see QuickSilver and Firaxis join to do this, otherwise building from scratch would make something really colossal ($$$) otherwise less complete.

About technology, two options:
- We're in the future and it never stops
- We're anywhere and the game stops some day, as Civ3... (this means you don't have players joining mid-course)
- There's no technology, only improvements and else (some of these games are like this, but doesn't seem to work here)

A persistent universe is not always about winning and be the last on the map but rather like actual countries, all continuing to exist. Like EVE, which will come out some day...

If there's absolutely no official winner but only a world where people play, it's more realistic since people aren't playing only to beat others and more for their own country, it's sorta RP. You can have a game that stops after a certain time (there's an event there), and before if some allied people won (only one player winning over 20 000? Yeah, after 4 years).

PS: A very good element of comparison is Earth 2025, a mass multiplayer TBS game.

Rasbelin · January 30, 2003, 02:42

Well, at some point there was even an idea that Stella Polaris would be a MMOG TBS game (IIRC, Pande suggested it), but the idea was turned away or left untouched as it didn't get support, because it would require more work and factions. But IMO there's some potential for a MMOG version of Civ or MoO as there's people who like to have many competitors and maybe it brings more reality as normal Civ games are limited to a much smaller number of civs, than there's in the real world.

DrSpike · January 30, 2003, 06:22

It's not as pretty as what you want but there are already huge online MP strategy games like Utopia. You can play for 15 minutes or 24 hours a day.

Jamski · January 30, 2003, 06:35

I'm sorry, I was about to write about mass MP TBS games, but I realised the suggestion was for RTS games. Wow ! Big difference there. Imagine the processing power for keeping all that moving.

No, I was going to suggest a TBS system, with one turn every 24 hours. Everyone can do as much as they like during this time in the way of adjustments, managing, attacks etc, and then all the orders go into effect at once. Sure the pace of the game sounds a bit slow, so it would have to have massive depth and heaps of real-time diplomacy, dealing, trading and internal problems to solve. Now that would be good. There should also be no way to win as such, only to get better all the time, like classic MUD games. It won't happen though, probably.

-Jam

DrSpike · January 30, 2003, 06:37

Quote:

Originally posted by War of Art
I'm sorry, I was about to write about mass MP TBS games, but I realised the suggestion was for RTS games.

Where'd you get that from?

Jamski · January 30, 2003, 06:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Trifna
They're only STARTING to make mass multiplyer RTS and it seems to have alot of potential since it creates a real political universe.

Hey Doc,
It was this got me thinking RTS, or am I going up the wrong river again?

-Jam

DrSpike · January 30, 2003, 07:01

I think he was just using that as an example to say mass MP was becoming more prevalent........I think his post was about mass MP TBS, like MOO or Civ. But I can see why you might interpret it your way........perhaps Trifna will check in later.

Jamski · January 30, 2003, 07:10

I hope this thread is about MMP TBS games, I'm much more interested in TBS. I don't have the nerves for controlling 1000 units and keeping my eyes open for everything. Sudden Strike makes me mad, for example. All those infantry running around, and seperate drivers for the tanks...
Give me TBS or RTS with big grouped units please !

If this thread is about RTS games, then shall we threadjack it ?

-Jam

Trifna · January 30, 2003, 12:21

I was truly talking about TBS. I mentioned RTS because everything comes on RTS first since it has more market.

About Utopia, I already now its existence. But it's not as coherent as MOO3 and such from what I've seen yet.

Leland · January 30, 2003, 15:09

Some random thoughts...

No victory conditions are possible.
MMP Civ has to make sense for new players. Some limits have to be put so that you don't get nuked after 2 turns. Consequently, small primitive nations have to have some sort of "ecological niche" where they can grow to be bigger ones, e.g. there are some things new civs can do that advanced civs can't, or that they can produce some things more efficiently. This way, the oldies aren't inclined to obliterate the newbies, but rather trade with them or find them otherwise useful.
More emphasis on diplomacy, and organizations like UN or NATO or whatever the players will figure out. Socialization is pretty much what makes MMP games tick.
Infinite map, or lots of smaller maps, or map that "grows" so that any arbitrary points A and B always move farther away from each other. I could imagine lots of islands floating in the sea, and new ones being formed all the time, for example.
Limits to growth. At least geographically. There has to always be room for new players to arrive, and it would be terribly frustrating to have tens of thousands of cities anyway.
Balancing tech trading. There has to be a real choice between researching stuff on your own, and trading techs... if current models were carbon copied to a MMP game, the first few players would research but the others would just get the techs from the established civs for free. Not fun.
Lots and lots of new techs, units, facilities, wonders, etc... maybe even let players create their own.

Nikolai · February 1, 2003, 18:33

Ah... Ideas like this have been a dream for me for a long time!

I remember reading in the List about an idea of something like this, here it is:

Quote:

Massive Multiplayer Online Civ - Bloodlines
In the context of Civ 2: The game would be played on an earth world that is much larger in size than any civ. You would build cities and civilizations to actual scale, and some players would play regions within civs, and can rebel and try to start their own civ, etc.

New benefits: Fun.

Discussion: You would play a bloodline that could marry with others and have children. If your bloodline dies out you have to restart the game.

Marrying would be the equivalent of making an alliance. Each member of your familly would be listed. Government would be such that you can tell different players, if you have completely captured their bloodline, to control a region for you, which they would do under the threat of eradication. The converse is of course also possible, and rebellion remains a possibility.

In a republic, the players in that civ would control different factions in the senate and would have to do actions to get them more popular so that they got more power. In general, play could move as in SMC’s simultaneous mode.

New players would start along the edges of civilization and in historical areas. In the game you could “launch huge realistic campaigns against others, or manage a real looking and acting civ…”

And then over to what's posted here:

Quote:

Originally posted by Leland [*]MMP Civ has to make sense for new players. Some limits have to be put so that you don't get nuked after 2 turns. Consequently, small primitive nations have to have some sort of "ecological niche" where they can grow to be bigger ones, e.g. there are some things new civs can do that advanced civs can't, or that they can produce some things more efficiently. This way, the oldies aren't inclined to obliterate the newbies, but rather trade with them or find them otherwise useful.

I don't understand why you can't start in the middle of the game? You can just start with some of the same techs as your neightbours or in the edges of civilization, can't you?

Or you can, as the idea form the List suggests, lead a revolt, and if successfull lead the new nation.

Lemmy · February 1, 2003, 19:36

I've actually been thinking about a sort of Mass MP Democracy Game.
Where you play the citizen in an empire, and can vote for other players, or yourself, to take on leader roles. I'd imagine it have to be a sci-fi and in space, sci-fi to overcome certain communication problems when voting, and in space to keep the universe infinite, allowing it to keep growing.
There would have to be something for the citizens to do while they're not voting. Maybe some sort of market mechanism. To make it possible for the citizens to start businesses , and keep 'm busy.

Trifna · February 1, 2003, 23:00

I think that the concept of Earth 2025 could be very well applied here. Earth 2025 DOES have technologies and it's dealing with all this mass multiplayer stuff.

Maybe this kind of game could be run on a server, a little like Ultima Online, with as little as 15 players to as many as the server supports. Or maybe even by some sort of "multi-computer uncentralized server", each computer able to overtake it having some tasks. But I'm no computer geek to know if it'd work...

Lemmy · February 2, 2003, 06:10

Unless Earth 2025 has significantly changed in the last 2 years, the tech model is a lot different then your basic civ game, it isn't tree like for example, and the game doesn't last untill there is a winner, but ends after a fixed amount of time.

Trifna · February 2, 2003, 14:19

Quote:

Originally posted by Lemmy
Unless Earth 2025 has significantly changed in the last 2 years, the tech model is a lot different then your basic civ game, it isn't tree like for example, and the game doesn't last untill there is a winner, but ends after a fixed amount of time.

Well it's this ending... Done well, it could be done the same with a Civ in mass multiplayer. Should be done elegantly by some way...

Leland · February 2, 2003, 16:23

Quote:

Originally posted by Nikolai
I don't understand why you can't start in the middle of the game? You can just start with some of the same techs as your neightbours or in the edges of civilization, can't you?

Or you can, as the idea form the List suggests, lead a revolt, and if successfull lead the new nation.

If the game has a persistent world, after a while pretty much all the civs will have reached modern tech. If new players automatically get the same techs (or even part of them) that the existing players do, then they are missing out on the joy of discovering stuff by themselves. This kind of defies the point of having technological development in the first place.

Of course, a game could work out where people can choose their own starting level... some start with modern high-tech society, others with pointed sticks. But in that case you'd definitely need some balance between the two, so as not to make one superior to the other in every way.

Trifna · February 2, 2003, 22:05

http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=15103

Hey, I've just lurned it seems as the next "Galactic Civilization" will be some sort of massive multiplayer! I dunno really at which extent, but seems so (follow link). Something called Stellar Frontier is gonna be that multi player part of GalCiv (in the future) but I wasn't conscious it was MMP. Info on Stellar Frontier is at www.drengin.net

Mathemagician · February 13, 2003, 18:53

good to see that others are dreaming of such a game too.
the main thing that is missing currently in massive multiplayer games is that they dont have a common map, they just use territory as a number and not a 2-dimensional locational object.
more on my opinion later.
im first gonna read through this thread.

Mathemagician · February 13, 2003, 19:05

Quote:

Originally posted by War of Art
I'm sorry, I was about to write about mass MP TBS games, but I realised the suggestion was for RTS games. Wow ! Big difference there. Imagine the processing power for keeping all that moving.

yeah, me too. what i was dreaming of was a MMP TBS game of course.

i'll explain some ideas of mine later on.

Mathemagician · February 13, 2003, 19:40

okay, i read through the thread.

ive been thinking about a concept to realize a MMP TBS game for a long time now.
let me first ask you:

under which circumstances would you be interested in playing such a game ?
it surely cannot include all suggestions here, since some of them are rather contradicting. is it mainly the general concept of MMPedness that you are interested in, or will you like such a game only if lives up to your personal ideas ?

also, would you rather have such a game browser-oriented or would you download a software.
could you imagine paying money for it ? from the beginning or only after a test period ?

the point is, im really considering to deal with that issue, maybe even on a commercial level one day. that depends on how likely the idea is to be productive.

so, please could you go more into how you would imagine a realization of such a game ?
id be very interested in hearing about that...

Trifna · February 13, 2003, 20:34

Such browser games already exist. Earth 2025 is I think the most known of them all (search google, you'll see).

The thing would really be a game like MOO or GalCiv put to MMP. What I see as essential in such a game is:

- Intellect is what counts, player against player
- You're able to make political/diplomatical moves (help someone against another, etc.)

Sometimes, the problem in games as Earth 2025 is that most of the game is in chatting session since it's alot of diplomacy. Thus, in some way, to not let the REALALITY diplomatical skills of players show up and let it to the game itself, players need the option to not be able to contact each other. When it becomes the player who makes diplomacy, it can take alot of time in a week and it's a reaaaally different game (trust me

).

If you really make it, you may ask me any question any day and I'll make myself a pleasure to answer

I have quite some experience on the field. Other things you wanna know?

Mathemagician · February 13, 2003, 20:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Trifna
Such browser games already exist. Earth 2025 is I think the most known of them all (search google, you'll see).

i know. i played Utopia and Earth2025 and saw a dozen similarly made games. but all of the miss not only complexity, especially in diplomatic options, but also the feel of a civlike map, where territory and neighbourhood is actually open for diplomacy and relevant in a lot of ways.

Mathemagician · February 13, 2003, 20:52

Quote:

Originally posted by Trifna
If you really make it, you may ask me any question any day and I'll make myself a pleasure to answer

Other things you wanna know?

well, still the same questions.
how does the game have to be ? i mean both ingame feel and browser/software reliance.
what could/should it cost ?
how do you estimate the market chances for a game that is complex like civilization, but open to many more players ?
how close does it need to be to civ, or any of the suggestions made here.

things like that is what i would like to know first, before i deal more explicitly with the idea.

Trifna · February 14, 2003, 09:27

How should be the game, this cannot rely on me only. But it has to be somewhat mainstreamed but without beeing TOO mainstream or it'll lose its depth and most of its serious player bases are the ones you'll see in Earth 2025 and so. It has to have an incomparable diplomatical/political depth, since THERE is really all the intelligence field (in player vs player) and not in tactical non-sense. This is where there's a player vs player thing, where people like to be acute, sharp or machiavellic. Maybe Galactic Civilizations will show the way. It is someting said in military fields that tactics are for starters, but strategy and political stuff around is what's higher, twisted and mental. What counts in my opinion is macro-management, since details always follow the general lines (as Napoleon said).

The ingame feel should be the one that gives the player the impression of ruling, where he sees what he gets ad loses. Like someone playing Civ or other TBS and having the impression of beeing a ruler. The rest has to be seen maybe by polls done to see people's opinions.

Cost? Well the cost depends on how big it is. If it's bigger, you can ask more. So it really depends. EverQuest Live (last version) costs soemthing like 30/month while some little unknown half-commercial game may cost 5. Average is between 10 and 15 USD.

About beeing civ-like, I'd say you want things to not be simply "who's tactically the best" (where having other players or not changes little) but "who's strategically the best" (where the intelligence/habilities of the opponents is what counts the most and you SEE the most. When you have humans instead of AIs, you have to use such an intelligence potential at its best, since there is where MP get its strenght). All micro reduced to minimum as much as possible. Doesn't has to be exactly civ-like, and has to be adapted to MMP.

The other aspects to be looked at are up to be seen.

Mathemagician · February 14, 2003, 16:12

i mostly agree with you, Trifna. at least there is no point where i actually disagree.

for my ideas now:

it should have civ character in that you build up a civilisation from the very core, maybe even earlier than the real civilisation, like from the first people who live together in a village and have an undisputed leader.

it should then be mostly a matter of decisions the player makes, where no decision can be seen as absolutely right or wrong in the beginning.

i imagine then more of an economical game where you have to manage your territory, its cultivation, a lot of ressources, not so narrow as just production, gold and food. maybe lumber, stone, iron and some more specific ones, but that goes into detail already.

i also want to keep micromanagement low, with the focus being to make the basic decisions where your civ goes and later on, if you meet others, how you treat them.
i want mainly the source for conflicts as realistical as possible (in addition to all of the game's other aspects of course

).
that is, for example, some territories with valuable deposits, a strategical outpost for trade into distant colonies, alliances that contradict each other (like in WW1) and cause dilemmas when a war erupts somewhere else.

all these little tactical, strategical and psychological things that make a crowd of neighboured nations tick.
detailed long-term interests should rule the politics of the game. thats the main thing im enthusiastic about.

as for the game, it should of course be more detailed than in CTP, CIV whatsoever. if detailed factors are to be important, a civ cannot just unimpeded expand over 1000s of kms by building settlers all the time.

my ideas for newer joining players are plentifold:

1.) they start as a rebel faction, or in-country opposition to some existing player who isnt making his people content enough.

2.) they start out in a sparsely settled region (like in a dynamically growing world, think: drifting island idea) and "grow" into the existing world by not being extincted by the established civs for reasons that have be thought of yet. in the worst case, they might just stick together, form an alliance of small nations to defend against 1 or 2 bigger ones.

Mathemagician · February 14, 2003, 16:14

...continued...

3.) newer player start out as other characters, such as traders, mayors, local barons or such and have to obey certain orders from the great kings, but are free in other regards. this would allow to hand over the micro-management to these subordinated once your civ gets better and bigger.

4.) when the world/planet reaches a certain threshold of nations or a specific tech level, whichever comes first, newer players start a new world/planet. this would also allow for several planets competing later on. WAY later one !

i guess it will end up with a mixture of these.
i like both points 3 and 4. point 3 could possibly draw some role-players as well. but it should be way more complicated to implement too.

about the timing.
- for the game to be massive multiplayer, all turns have to be done synchronously. so it would have to be kind of tick-based.
- for the micro-interests (NOT micro-management) to be relevant, the turns have to be plenty, so that long-term planning is really interesting.
- for the year counts to be realistic, the turn lengths (in game years) have to be short.
- for the game to be playable, the real turn lengths have to be big enough, like one day.

quite contradicting, isnt it ?

yep !
but such a beautiful game of open-end would be long-term anyway, so how about this time-scale:

12 hours = 1 turn meaning 2 turns per day.
1 turn = 1 game year meaning 2 game years per real day.
730 turns per year = 730 game years per real year.

if the game runs for 5 years (for the more interested players) this makes 3500+ years of civilisation with plenty of details.

considering that many players only want to make movements once per 2 or 3 days, 4-6 turns of the game would have to be possible to plan somehow in advance, like with goto options, queue lists. this should be possible i think.

also, i would like to move away from the totally city oriented game structure of previous civ games.
i'd prefer to mark each map square as 1 of several states:
- undiscovered (totally black)
- unexplored (viewn from outside, not entered yet)
- explored (but not inhabited)
- claimed (a few troops patrolling it)
- settled (small settlements)
then 2-4 settlement levels

production wouldnt be focussed on cities anymore (trivially, since cities dont 'exist' anymore), but are rather a matter of areas. global civ-wide production i dont like too much cause that would imply that all ressources are gathered without difficulty, but maybe im getting to much into details here.
maybe i will come up with some way in between later on.

troop movement
troops wouldnt just defend the square they're sitting on. they would have a radius or some other measure of activity range, where they can automatically defend territory. on the other side, the surveillance/visibility system would have to be slightly adjusted.

well, i have many more ideas where it should go away from classical civ games.
im aware that many of them will be
a) hard to invent/think of.
b) hard to implement.
c) hard for the players to understand.

c) can be compensated with lots of advisor-type auto-mechanisms to reduce micro-management.
b) i still believe to be possible, provided there is enough server power (im not familiar with hardware requirements or possibilities, so im not sure)
a) is the main reason i put it up to discussion here, in the hope of getting some ideas.

back to the realization stuff again:

economical aspect:

means of making money:
- advertisement like in most current ("simple") online strategy games
- selling software that is required to play, probably only after a test time of 3-6 months.
- selling software to improve the macro-management/overview tools, or for example to get away from (probably slow) browser-reliant gaming
- donations of players

means to save money:
- establishing a network of participating servers all over the world that each have rather specialized tasks or handle a part of the (massive) player number.
these could either be provided for free by enthusiastic players or they could be compensated by a share of the ad revenue calculated from the number of players on their server.

Trifna · February 14, 2003, 17:06

Well the game can start anywhere... And games can be started with all players starting at same time, and new ones beeing incorporated from the parts of territory that are breaking apart for exemple. But I don't see what I said that was contrary to what you wrote.

One thing, I wouldn't get into specific stuff such as having "lumber", "stone", "iron" and so on. Otherwise, will you name 346 988 different existing ressources? Better say that someone has an economy with this about energy, water, food and categorize each ressources. Two different economies can get more optimized one with eachother, and if one is stronger than the other it can take control of the other. Stuff like that, conceptualized at the simplest possible.

Mathemagician · February 14, 2003, 17:09

Quote:

Originally posted by Trifna
But I don't see what I said that was contrary to what you wrote.

well, what i said was that there was NO point where i disagree with you.

Quote:

One thing, I wouldn't get into specific stuff such as having "lumber", "stone", "iron" and so on. Otherwise, will you name 346 988 different existing ressources?

maybe, but i would like to make it feel as detailed as possible without it getting too complicated, especially with ressources, cause they could be the main reasons civs would fight for some terrain.
i dont mind having many automated tools so that it is more intuitive for the player and he cannot calculate all things back to the roots like in CTP...