Planning for Traditions

[IsaacCAT]

Preface: In my pursuit of improvement using radical thinking I want you to consider this suggestion of planning for military traditions.

Objective: freedom of choice for the player with immersive storytelling and game-play integration.

Suggestion Implementation:

1. The game devs define the requisites for each military invention and their work cost (time) for implementing them.
2. The player produces military experience (resources) by combat, drilling cohorts or other means.
3. The player decides when and the quantity of military experience that is spent in the implementation of military traditions.

Because military tradition implementation takes time and resources to finish. The result is a Gantt chart for military traditions as the examples enclosed in this proposal.

A priori, any number of military inventions can be pursued simultaneously if requisites are met. However, I can envisage a limit on the number of concurrent military inventions that can be pursued at the same time. This cap could be increased, for example, by building military schools.

As a result, every game planning is different, as the player can decide different priorities adapted to their game. I would suggest that the game draw this Gannt Chart for the player.

Examples:
In the first scenario the player has produced 100% military experience and has distributed this experience to implement 13 military traditions in the following timeline:

In the second scenario, the work to implement the traditions, the requisites and the military experience produced are the same. However, the Gantt Graph is completely different because the player has decided to invest on different traditions with different military experience and dates.

These changes are direct consequence of the game-play, the player may not produce the same quantity of military experience every time; or the challenges he/she faces are different, thus the priorities for investing in military traditions may change.

PS: Note that none of the actual tradition’s requisites follow an historical path. If they did, they could be made a requisite like the fire of land for veterans’ event. This is not HOI4 and these are not political focus trees.

 

[Bovrick]

Not sure I'm following what the proposal is here. Is it to make the spending of Military Experience a flow-value that you can distribute between available Traditions, rather than the current approach of save-up-to-100-then-pick-from-the-options?

Suggestion Implementation:

1. The game devs define the requisites for each military invention and their work cost (time) for implementing them.
2. The player produces military experience (resources) by combat, drilling cohorts or other means.
3. The player decides when and the quantity of military experience that is spent in the implementation of military traditions.

Otherwise this is a description of what the game has now.

 

[IsaacCAT]

Not sure I'm following what the proposal is here. Is it to make the spending of Military Experience a flow-value that you can distribute between available Traditions, rather than the current approach of save-up-to-100-then-pick-from-the-options?

Otherwise this is a description of what the game has now.

Is quite different because it gives you a choice of traditions, freeing the player and the devs from the tree structure. Also, in this proposal traditions take time to implement, instead of instantaneous as they are now. This gives the player the 'joy' to decide investing more experience any time to increase the speed of this implementation, as long as it keeps producing or having military experience.

 

[Bovrick]

Is quite different because it gives you a choice of traditions, freeing the player and the devs from the tree structure. Also, in this proposal traditions take time to implement, instead of instantaneous as they are. This gives the player the 'joy' to decide investing more experience any time to increase the speed of this implementation, as long as it keeps producing or having military experience.

We already have a choice, it just comes around as regularly as you can make it. I was under the impression that most games these days intentionally go for the gratification of selecting specific unlocks over selecting long-term investments. That was definitely the design of IR at launch, but it has moved away from the click-for-gratification model to more strategic planning since then, so the proposal does fit under that I guess.

Trees are generally there to allow for differences in the power of the unlocks. By making the most powerful unlocks have prerequisites that aren't necessarily the short-term optimal decision, you make the decisions more interesting: having everything available at all times just means you are always just going for the best option for the time, without having to consider trade-offs between what is useful now vs later. Sometimes fewer options now can mean more interesting decisions.

 

[IsaacCAT]

I am championing for scarcity of military experience as the driver for choice instead of the rigid tree structure that makes sense for the AI but not for the player.

If the devs want to lock powerful inventions, they can do it behind work cost (time) and requisites that make sense. The tree structure is rigid because it forces you to step one invention after another. There are more creative and engaging requisites than past inventions.

By investing military experience on implementing inventions you are also deciding which ones will arrive earlier than others. The useful later vs now is also in the design, as you invest your scarce military experience to implement the invention you think will be most useful now, but you also can distribute it through various inventions. As such, the player has to choose between having one invention earlier or few others later, there is a powerful trade off. It is the dev design that has to balance inventions not to make them OP but interesting for each culture/game-play style.