Semi-Random History
An interesting option for replayability, without resorting to completely random history would be semi-random. Basically, the general sequence and effects of major events (world wars, economic crashes, etc) would stay the same. However, it can be tempting not to plan for these things...
Rather than reprogram all the wars and so forth, basically have them unfold in the same cities and so forth, but just introduce them at different times. So WWI happens, but might be anywhere between 1911 and 1920 before it's triggered. Similarly, Black Tuesday might happen anywhere between 1925 and 1934, for example. Even relatively narrow windows (if it affects other aspects of the game) would be interesting.
This would introduce some interesting player challenges, since things like deciding how far to push your luck in the pre-crash market inflation would become genuine risks. Same with wartime planning possibilities.
Anyhow, interesting idea. Not sure if this would be complex or not, but would add some tension to the larger scenario.
(Eric: Ya, I know, throwing a lot of suggestions out there in the last couple of posts. Apologies. Kind of build up a backlog after many hundreds of hours of play, figured I'd write them up since in that kind of mood). Keep writing lists, and forgetting them, but in a game right now, so it's mostly fresh in my head. Probably got most of them anyhow)
Posted Dec 29, 2019, 4:28 AM UTC
Semi-historical games were actually going to be implemented, but was dropped in open beta (v1.0 - v1.13) due to how we implement turn events in the game.
They probably won't be coming back, but there is still a slight possibility. I still have some of the prerequisite variables in the code.
Thanks. Interesting. Was hoping it might be more accessible due to the "random history" feature existing. Uses a different mechanism, or is it tied to the newspaper timeline?
Edit: There's a no wars feature. Is that an entirely alternative timeline setup or is there a way to switch them on and off from within the timeline. If those and market crashes aren't global changes, just not knowing whether the wars or black tuesday is going to happen or not would be an interesting alternate history option. I'm guessing this is neither practical or easy to implement, still, worth asking.
The game uses a turn events files, you can read more about it here: http://wiki.gearcity.info/doku.php?id=modtools:turneventseditor
But the TLDR of it is, the events that happen for the turn are read from the file when that turn begins.
Random History does not use the turn events file. Instead it generates events randomly.
A Semi-Historical system would need to read forward in the turn events file, store the data, and then launch those events on a random date. The are a few problems that could generate, which would need hackish work arounds, so I dropped the concept rather than implementing it.
It could still be a possibility in an expansion. Although I imagine scenarios will be a higher priority for the community.
Alright. Will spend some time wandering around the wiki. Interesting.