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Johan

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Hi everyone, and welcome back to another development diary. It is very exciting watching the team work hard at it, and seeing all the new features coming in. This week the guys wrapped up the military system, and I also saw the first versions of how ninjas wll work.

Since Sengoku is based on the experiences of Crusader Kings and Rome, it is definitely a character driven game. So in this development diary I'll talk a little about how the characters work in the game. The characters in the game is the core, the things that everything revolve around. In EU we have the countries as the core, in Victoria its the pops, in HoI3 its your armies, while here we have the characters.

As you may notice on the screenshot here, we are using a similar technique as in Crusader Kings 2. There is DNA that descibes how characters look like, and children will inherit those from their parents, which will make people in a families resemble each other. We've been aiming for a stylistic approach on the look of the characters, which will create a specific feeling when playing.

Sengoku has in its historical setup a number of famous characters from the period. The two big war lords at the time were the bitter enemies Yamana Sozen and Hosokawa Katsumoto who would lead the Western and Eastern armies of the Onin War. There's Akamatsu Masanori, who would become one of Hosokawa's leading generals who fought to restore his family's standing, and who starts out as a small vassal. You have the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa who is in a dispute with his brother Ashikaga Yoshimi over who will inherit the shogun title, Yoshimi or Yoshimasa's infant son.

Each character have three specific attirbutes that defines them. First of all there is the martial ability, this one affects how good a commander is in battle and how good is troops is fighting. The second one is diplomacy that affects your interactions with other characters. Finally there is intrigue, which impacts how a character performs in plots and handling ninjas.

Characters also have two resources, which they can gain or lose, and those two are honor and gold. Honor is resource that is gained by doing what is expected of a proper Japanese samurai, while you lose it from doing things which may not be perfectly proper. Gold, well, if I need to explain this.. then just send me all gold you have.

Of course, characters will also have traits. Traits are descriptive statements of a character that has gameplay effects. As an example, one character may be stressed, which impacts his abilities to perform, while another is a genius which gives some very nice bonuses to what he does. A character can have several traits at once, but some are mutually exclusive, as you can't be both quick and slow at the same time. Other types of traits include brilliant strategist, calligraphist and ruthless.

Sengoku_screenshot_devdiary_110415.jpg
 
Will traits influence the way the AI interacts with other characters?

For example, and I'm thinking about a possible "cunning" trait. Will a character with such traits be more willing to try assassination and other covert action type plots?

Can you give us examples of the effects from traits? I'm guessing strategist is straightforward and gives combat bonuses. But what about caligraphist and ruthless?
 
Can you give us examples of the effects from traits? I'm guessing strategist is straightforward and gives combat bonuses. But what about caligraphist and ruthless?

Code:
ruthless = {
	personality = yes
	opposites =  {
		bushi
	}
	
	intrigue = 2
	
	opposite_opinion = -10
	
	ai_rationality = 10
	
}
 
And with just one post with code you answered my questions regarding effects and also gave us a new trait: bushi :)

Although I don't know if I understood the ai_rationality trigger. Does it mean that the ai has several levels of rationality and that for example a possible "insane" trait would make the ai controlling the character doing less rational things?
 
Ever the tease, Johan... starting with ninjas, and then not talking more about them! ;)
 
I liked an appearance of trait icons in CK - although not sharing the style of the game era, they were clever in their minimalism, had specific humor in them, and worked well. But the new icons of Sengoku (and CK2) seem to be slightly too cartoonish to blend in with an overall look of the game. Or is this somehow intentional the icons having that tamagotchi aesthetics?


EDIT: Sorry, if that sounded too negative. Just wondered...
 
Last edited:
Gold, well, if I need to explain this.. then just send me all gold you have.

Character "Johan" just lost all his honor for gaining some minor gold. :D
Well, I guess you neither are japanese nor a samurai. So you should do well enough, hehe.
 
I'm very curious as to what 'AI rationality' does... maybe it makes the character read Richard Dawkins ;). So, might some of the actions a true and proper Samurai have to perform to gain prestige actually hamper their immediate interests?
 
I always loved the character aspect of crusader kings. I just thought it was lacking elsewhere.

Some details in the screenshot bugged me - yes, I know I may be nitpicking, but doing usability for a few semester leaves its traces:
The upper end of the character window offers some helpful choices, but I would expect radio buttons to be vertically aligned. Here they look cramped. In german for example some of the words wouldn't fit in the tiny space there is now. Also the search all/realm/vassal buttons are again radio buttons but don't look like them at all.
Perhaps it is possible to add a little toggle that lets the player collapse this whole part of the window. Then it could be made much bigger when it is shown, and still not obstruct anything when it isn't needed.
Of course words can't replace visuals, so here is a rough and very ugly sketch: http://img855.imageshack.us/img855/4128/exampleinterface.png
Drop me a line if you want it removed.

And thanks for this beautiful game :)
 
Will there be European/metis characters ? Or will they be abstracted as events ?
 
What do the different character portraits backgrounds indicate?
 
One thing I always missed in Rome, but especially in CK was an accurate date of birth (I know they are in the character file folders but) it would be nice if we can a tool tip over their age that gave a specific day.
 
One thing I always missed in Rome, but especially in CK was an accurate date of birth (I know they are in the character file folders but) it would be nice if we can a tool tip over their age that gave a specific day.

you can do that in Rome. Just hold your mouse over Birth date ;)
 
Hmm...I hadn't been paying much attention to this, but it looks like I should probably start doing so :D
 
This is looking pretty cool, I'm particularly intrigued by AI rationality.