Game rules: configurable game over condition

[tywinzo]

How about the possibility to define the goal of your game when you start it? CKII is obviously a sandbox game and while you can formulate such a goal for yourself (other than ending the game in 1453 with as much score as possible) it would be convenient to have the game help you enforce them.

As of now, there are just two game over conditions: dying without an heir and losing your last title.

Imagine you could express your house rules:
- Make Norway Paulician before 1243 (or lose)
- Hold HRE through five generations (or lose)
- Each ruler gains zealous before his death (or lose)
- Dynasty size never falls below 30 (or lose)
- Your children are always bastards (or lose)
- Law changes in kingdom are controlled by you, as duke (or lose)
- Your dynasty controls 3 kingdoms (or lose)
- Keep all your marriages within your realm (or lose)
- Hold kingdom of France (or lose)

Those examples are quite silly and I'm sure people have better real-life examples of their actual house rules.

These rules should be possible to add to a list and whenever they evaluate false, you get the game over screen with some explanation of which house rule that you broke. The two existing rules could potentially be default pre-added rules. While it is hard to fully express complex relationships, even simple expressiveness like "Hold kingdom of France" would, in my mind, be a great addition.

 

[aono]

I disagree, because even if I haven't anything against idea as it is, it's very tasking for scripters (not this is hard scripts, but you need A LOT of them), and it will burden a game. It's working ok in games like HoI 3, but a hundreds-years dynasty simulation? I don't think so.

 

[Kayden_II]

A Victory-Condition or its Opposite contributes Nothing into the Game and more over, this Feature (in Comparision to a Victory-Condition) is frustrating ...

There exists a better Aproach ...
Instead to (simply) end the Game, You could get Rewards (or in your Case - Punishments) in the Progress of your Game, Which are related to your chosen Victory-/Game-Over-Condition and after That, the last Reward/Punishment should be the Victory-/Game-Over-Screen.

 

[Rags17]

Actually, to flesh this out further maybe you could create some sort of "bidding" system where you create a goal and the game creates a reward/punishment for achieving/not achieving it. Something like "have 100 gold on hand" might be dead easy to achieve, while "have 1,000 gold on hand" might be a lot harder.

I really don't know how this could be implemented though.

 

[Ferrumius]

Actually, to flesh this out further maybe you could create some sort of "bidding" system where you create a goal and the game creates a reward/punishment for achieving/not achieving it. Something like "have 100 gold on hand" might be dead easy to achieve, while "have 1,000 gold on hand" might be a lot harder.

I really don't know how this could be implemented though.

It sounds like basically more ambitions to me.

 

[tywinzo]

I disagree, because even if I haven't anything against idea as it is, it's very tasking for scripters (not this is hard scripts, but you need A LOT of them), and it will burden a game. It's working ok in games like HoI 3, but a hundreds-years dynasty simulation? I don't think so.

I don't think cycles needed to check for it is a problem.. would not need to take any more power than any random event. And of course only the ones you activate should be running.

 

[tywinzo]

A Victory-Condition or its Opposite contributes Nothing into the Game and more over, this Feature (in Comparision to a Victory-Condition) is frustrating ...

There exists a better Aproach ...
Instead to (simply) end the Game, You could get Rewards (or in your Case - Punishments) in the Progress of your Game, Which are related to your chosen Victory-/Game-Over-Condition and after That, the last Reward/Punishment should be the Victory-/Game-Over-Screen.

Well, by no means am I against that. My suggestion is not specific in that sense. The point was to have something configurable. How it's carried out is another matter.

 

[Ternega]

It is not really feasible to create a game system that allows you to define your own victory/failure conditions, since the amount of effort to do so is tremendous whilst the benefit is negligible.

 

[tywinzo]

Actually, to flesh this out further maybe you could create some sort of "bidding" system where you create a goal and the game creates a reward/punishment for achieving/not achieving it. Something like "have 100 gold on hand" might be dead easy to achieve, while "have 1,000 gold on hand" might be a lot harder..

Yeah, sure. Sounds interesting.

However, I just want to point out that we also have achievements, so any of these ideas would have to be made in such a way that they're not overlapping with that.

 

[tywinzo]

It is not really feasible to create a game system that allows you to define your own victory/failure conditions, since the amount of effort to do so is tremendous whilst the benefit is negligible.

That depends on how high you set the bar! Of course, if you demand very detailed expressions, sure, it might be.

But part of my point here is that even quite simple forms of expressions could be nice. Some (well, nearly all I suggested at least ) them are nearly trivial, like "hold title X before year Y".

Also take in consideration that you can add them to a list. That means you may combine several of them to build something more complex. It has the benefit that you can easily make the game harder (if you are a seasoned player in need of challenge).

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

So basically a ui driven interface for building custom event triggers.
It's not so hard to envisage how it'd be done, just look at formulae building wizards in modern spreadsheet applications.

And there's already a precedent for it in the ruler designer.....

Though creating such a feature toward the end of a game's life seems like wasted effort when, with a little adaptation, it could have been useful in the development of the game itself!

 

[tywinzo]

So basically a ui driven interface for building custom event triggers.
It's not so hard to envisage how it'd be done, just look at formulae building wizards in modern spreadsheet applications.

And there's already a precedent for it in the ruler designer.....

More or less, yes. The difference from an event is that it's decided by the player when creating each game and active within that game until the game dies. And that the effect is something that is unscriptable at the moment (of course an alternative would be to have a game_over = yes scripted effect available for modders, but then you still don't have the first part about deciding a different house rule set for each game).

Work-wise, I suppose you'd need to translate some well-chosen script conditions and hook-them in more or less like any other event as an on_action:ish thing, or whatever equivalent internal thing they have. Big thing there is probably to instantiate/bind the user-values. UI-wise you need to show that list somewhere (start/in-game/game-over), and being able to edit on game creation. How much work it is? I can't say of course. It seemed to me like a rather small thing. But obviously it also depends on how much you appreciate having this ability.. and if it'd be a big thing to do, then obviously it might not be worth it. Then we're back to only-worth-it-if-very-descriptive, and that's probably too much.

I personally like the idea of taking the house rules I sometimes use. For instance I never allow myself to not join the Crusade. Joining the Crusade isn't really a smart thing to do game-wise though, since you're better off saving your resources at home. Potentially also waiting for war-drained Crusader fools to return home to attack them. However, if I knew for sure that I'd lose unless I joined the Crusade, it wouldn't be a question. So it's just a help to align incentives with whatever you're roleplaying. For those who are used to not roleplaying so much (because it means self-harming strategic choices), a tool like this could perhaps be helpful to help push yourself a little bit.