Realm Management as a 4x game?

[mburr0003]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

It's really not. I'm sure there will be edge cases if used like that because I didn't build it to be used in this manner. It's a storytelling tool, not a game in and of itself.

Which is, unfortunately, why it's basically useless to me. It refuses to do the one thing I was hoping it would do, easily emulate 4x play.

Mostly I wanted to use it to replace the absolute rubbish kingdom management rules in Pathfiner's Kingmaker AP, but it's not up to that task without a bunch of work on my end, and I just haven't carried to pour the work in.

Originally Posted by ericthered

... they directed it in specific ways via City Management from pyramid...

Do you happen to remember which Pyramid that's in?

Originally Posted by SydneyFreedberg

I’d say the secret of modern capitalism in this context is “creative destruction”: There’s constant competition and threat of going out of business, which drives innovation, without the accompanying costs of actual warfare, revolution, famine, or other disasters.

I disagree, it's because we've progressed* to having a large enough, stable, prosperous, and educated society that anyone with the time and drive and try their hand at innovation.

* By "we" I'm mean globally, and I count this as having started in the Renaissance, despite innovation being a 'rich man's game' at the time. We had just enough prosperous, idle, educated people with a drive to innovate that innovation really took off. And while yes, necessity might be the mother of invention, was there really a need for over 100 uses of peanuts? No, there was not, but there was one man with an idea, time, and the education to put his himself to it, in order that his idea could be implemented... which was widespread crop rotation in the southern rural US, not peanut products. But what is George Washington Carver known for?

[Christopher R. Rice]

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Which is, unfortunately, why it's basically useless to me. It refuses to do the one thing I was hoping it would do, easily emulate 4x play.

It was never meant to do that and every time I openly talked about it before it's release I reiterated that. Sorry it's useless, but GURPS has enough of a bad rep concerning mathematical complexity that I wasn't willing to add to it. Moreover, such a book would be at least 70ish pages - probably over a 100 and cater to a small portion of GURPS proper. It wouldn't be worth the expense.

[ericthered]

Are you hoping to play the game with characters or just as an abstract 4x? The more you say the more it sounds like you want to run at a speed and scale that does not admit individual characters.

Originally Posted by mburr0003

Do you happen to remember which Pyramid that's in?

Pyramid 54. See post 4 of this thread for more details in general.

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by SydneyFreedberg

Fascinating thread. But I have a warning about technological advancement: Having spent a lot of time both studying history and playing Civilization, I can say that the classic 4x model does a TERRIBLE job modeling how tech actually progresses in real life.

In Civ and similar games, the more prosperous your society, the more resources you can put into research, and the faster you advance — which makes you even more prosperous, so you can do even more research, so you advance even faster. It’s a positive feedback loop. But in real life, societies often experience negative feedback: There’s a crisis or a problem, people are willing to risk trying new ways of doing things, one of the new ways solves the crisis, the society becomes more prosperous, people become risk-averse and stop being open to innovation. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it — especially if you’re living on the margins and don’t have much room for error, like most subsistence-farming economies throughout history.

...

A realistic model of technological progress would have an inverse correlation between social stability and technological progress: If your realm has +3 Stability you take -3 to tech advances — and vice versa, if you have constant innovation you’re also rolling constantly on the Social Disruption & Unrest table as people lose their jobs to new machinery, farmhands become factory workers, and old elites struggle with the new money.

I agree completely. Right now I am looking at ways to include factors like a community's population, political stability, and capacity to support healthy and productive forms of creative destruction.

Right now, my inclination is to use the rules for New Inventions, with modifiers to incorporate all the factors you mentioned. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by Coinage

I agree completely. Right now I am looking at ways to include factors like a community's population, political stability, and capacity to support healthy and productive forms of creative destruction.

Right now, my inclination is to use the rules for New Inventions, with modifiers to incorporate all the factors you mentioned. If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

EDIT:
I have developed a short list of modifiers:

Bonuses:
- increased population density
- increased travel / trade with other communities
- decreasing social disorder

Penalties:
- declining population density
- reduced travel / trade with other communities
- increasing social disorder

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Coinage

I am curious. Has anyone tried using Realm Management as a kind of 4x game? Maybe on a hex-based grid or something like that.

For those who do not know, 4x means "Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate". It's a game that involves building an empire. Examples include Sid Meier's Civilization series, and the board game Twilight Imperium.

EDIT: In particular, I was wondering if it was possible to replicate something like Sid Meier's Civilization. You start off with a small band of newly sentient hunter-gatherer humanoids. You build up to something greater.

Would I be better using some other system? If I would be better using another system, which one's would you recommend? If you have any homebrew suggestions, please let me know.

Thanks everyone.

It's certainly possible to emulate a 4x game using GURPS, it was actually done in GURPS 3rd Edition with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. It was a licensed work and the license has long since expired, so it won't be reprinted and you would have to look at someplace like e-Bay or DriveThrough RPG to get a copy.

To refresh your memory, one way to win in Sid Meier's Civilization was to build a spaceship and lift-off. The destination of that spaceship was Alpha Centauri. The Alpha Centauri game apparently picked up after the spaceship made landfall and the different factions aboard had dispersed and set-up their initial bases.

I never actually owned the computer game it was based on, but I do own its Civilization V replacement Sid Meier's Civilization Beyond Earth, so I feel confident in saying that GURPS Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is likely what you're looking for, but you'll have a lot of grunt work to do to adapt it more broadly for 4e play. You might want to look at GURPS Uplift for its tables on ur-species developing societal traits from species position in the ecology. Ur-Species traits would be a spectrum of eight traits such as Suspicion, Empathy, Egotism which would turn into Social Parameters on a spectrum for things such as Chauvinism, with a range from Xenophilia to Xenophobia; Pragmatism; Social Cohesion and so on. The tables for the social parameters are still in GURPS 4th Edition, but not the tables deriving them from species behaviors.

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

It's certainly possible to emulate a 4x game using GURPS, it was actually done in GURPS 3rd Edition with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. It was a licensed work and the license has long since expired, so it won't be reprinted and you would have to look at someplace like e-Bay or DriveThrough RPG to get a copy.

Interesting. Do you know if GURPS Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri has a kind of Tech Tree? Or should I continue to adapt my own tech tree?

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Coinage

Interesting. Do you know if GURPS Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri has a kind of Tech Tree? Or should I continue to adapt my own tech tree?

It has a simplified version of the tech tree. Tech is divided into four paths and each individual breakthrough is given a numerical path rating and you have to get Build 3 before you can move on to the Build 4 thing.

[Coinage]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It has a simplified version of the tech tree. Tech is divided into four paths and each individual breakthrough is given a numerical path rating and you have to get Build 3 before you can move on to the Build 4 thing.

Interesting. Thank you for the recommendation. I will have to take a look.

[Coinage]

Thinking out loud again.

I have been looking into the design to tech tree. One of the concerns is that, according to Ghys, tech trees create a sense of "technological determinism". Another concern is that tech trees are, in my opinion a bit complicated. I am getting a bit frustrated.

Here is what I managed to develop, based on the Tech Level section (B511-513). Reading this, I think I have a better alternative.

Following the section Tech Level by Field, I would have several particular areas of knowledge. Tech Level by Field gives four examples: Transportation, Weapons and Armor, Power, and Biotechnology/Medicine.

Under each area of knowledge is a specific technology. For example, in Tech Level by Field, under Weapons and Armor, there are:
-Wooden and stone weapons;
-primitive shields;
-hides for armor.

I would have the player pay the cost, and roll the dice, to research each individual technology. For example, what if a player wants to research "Wooden and stone weapons." The cost is 5 points. The player can pay the points for a chance to roll a d6. On a 3 or below, they successfully research the technology.

In order to advance to the next TL1 in that specific field of Weapons and Armor, the player needs to have at least successfully acquired 1 technology in that field.

Per each successfully acquired technology, the player gets +1 on the roll to advance to TL1. So, if that player, for his next term, with only "Wooden and stone weapons", wants to roll to advance to TL 1, they need to get a 1 on a d6. However, if that player take the turns to research the other technologies, "primitive shields" and "hides for armor", then that player would then need to roll 3 or below to advance to TL 1 in the category of Weapons and Armor

Right now, looking at GURPS: Mass Combat, I am tempted to have the following categories of technology:

-Troop Strength (TS)
-Special Class (Class)
-Mobility (Mob)
-Cost: Cost to Raise (Raise); Cost to Maintain (Maintain).
-Quality

Each category would have different units or technologies at each TL. Advancing each TL would allow unlocking different units.

This could be applied to Armies, but also non-military units, like Settlers, or something else.

The idea is that it would be used on a hex-based map, like GURPS: Mass Combat, but on a larger scale. It could be on a continent, or a planet, or even a galaxy for large sci-fi games.

How does this sound? Is this viable?



Ghys, Tuur. 2012. "Technology Trees: Freedom and Determinism in Historical Strategy Games." Game Studies 12(1): http://www.gamestudies.org/1201/articles/tuur_ghys.