ThriveSociety.pdf (82.4 KB)
I’m starting on a design document for the Thrive Civ stage, but I wanted to put it to the community to see if it agrees with my design thoughts before diving into them (also to ensure the community has it if I get distracted).
Brief summary here: Diving into planning the civ progression, I realized the common sentiment of “make it like a 4x game” really is re-inventing our game from the ground up, and am looking instead at abandoning a lot of traditional 4x design concepts and instead focus on expanding tools we already have that would make a far more unique experience that can’t be provided by traditional 4x games while still existing in that 4x game-like space, but potentially creating a whole new sub-genre that is only possible by approaching a 4x game concepts by using (and expanding) our existing tools.
Should be noticed that Spore development took a similar vein, focusing on real time 4x/RTS blend with building your own implements. However, Spore’s execution was horrible with this, and we can see far better examples in games like Factorio, and can take inspiration for our ability to invent from games like Kerbal Space Program.
I think it would be better to directly write on the forums (rather than a separate pdf file) so that it would be less friction for people to read, and reply to specific points.
I briefly read most of the document and I agree with most points at the start, but then I’m not so sure about “The splitting of cultures and revolutions has a lot in common with the evolutions of species.” and the later leave it to the players to figure out what is possible, parts.
I don’t have time to really discuss all the points, but I’ll bring up one more thing: “Actually inventing inventions.” is actually a discussed thing, the tech editor, which I think should have various existing discussions already available about it.
And finally “governance sliders” seems a pretty similar discussion to what’s been on the community forums:
(and that thread in general)
The reason for the pdf was simply to not have a ridiculously long sequence of posts. If that’s preferred, I’ll keep that in mind.
As for what I mean with cultures & revolutions being like evolution of species, I mean in the fact that a species can go through speciation into two species that start with similar traits but diverge, splitting the population, and over time compete, or sometimes one completely replacing the other… countries do the same, having a revolution, colonies or sub groups splitting off from the mainline, diverging in properties over time, and the two groups later competing.
I hadn’t seen discussion on the tech editor, I’ll have to dig around for it. But yea, combining that with an “achievement-style” tech advancement seems the ideal system for a game like Thrive.
You do raise some good concepts of “people complaining we get their favored government types wrong” in the community forums, and that’s a valid take. Any set of sliders will likely have that problem. We could take a cue from Democracy 3, and instead of using sliders at all, we could implement a pure policy & effect system, but broaden it past just democracy, including decision types and methodologies of governance into available polices.
Thanks for the great insights!
Each post can be 32k characters in length, so I don’t think it would have been that many posts.
I see. That is a strong parallel.
I like the parallels you’re suggesting. One addition though: Species can only diverge. Cultures can diverge AND fuse. Most often a culture doesn’t wholly replace another culture when it comes into contact with it, but instead a new combined culture is created through the contact. I’d suggest you look at how cultures are handled in Crusader Kings 3. They’re of course much more simplified than they ought to be in Thrive as CK3’s focus is more on individual characters. But CK3 has two main ways new cultures are created: Divergence and hybridization.
The addition of hybridization to this proposed “diverge and compete” model would imo prevent a crudely social darwinist reading and portrayal of history and make our portrayal of societal “evolution” more truthful.
Plus, it would make the societal stages feel more novel compared to the preceding stages, and that novelty would hopefully add to its excitement. For the first time in the game, the interaction with the non-player entities (before it was other species, now it is other societies) wouldn’t be wholly antagonistic. Now, if you successfully subsume a non-player entity, you could under the right circumstances unlock/adopt the inventions they have made. For the first time, the entities you best would be incorporated into the new “higher level” (in game terms) entity you are “evolving” into/creating.
I love that idea! I’ll try to keep that in mind in my design process.
In other news, I’ve been digging around for inspirations.
Here’s my current list:
Governance: Democracy 3
Interface: Empire Earth & Rise of nations with sub-windows that open for editors (Governance, Tech Editor)
Combat: Again Empire & Rise of Nations
Tech progress: Achievement based (generally via tech editor), with each invention unlocking its own ‘research facility’ which allows improving of the invention’s statistics
Logistics: Inspired by Factorio, Satisfactory, and Dyson Sphere Program but with capacity for foot (or fin or wing) powered transport, action & production.
Diplomacy: Fate of the World, also, Reigns & Reigns:Her Majesty, Cultist Simulator, Magic the Gathering, Twilight Struggle, (Newly Added:) Crusader Kings 3
Intra-society characters : Rimworld, Dwarf Fortress
One thing I’ve realized in that in the society stage, with the amount of custom content players are going to be generating and flying around, things are going to get real complex real fast. In this regard, to allow complexity without it coming to just staring at a bunch of graphs and keeping it accessible, I’m thinking having a zoom & out system. So we zoom in close, we’re presented with an interface inspired by Rimworld and Dwarf Fortress, zooming out further, we see what looks like a 4XRTS like, zooming out further, we see more of a tactical overview for country management with units reduced to dots, zoom out further, we’re in pure abstraction, using a card system for Diplomacy.
(Rough mock-up attached, buttons & designs not finalized, just for examples)
