Preview Wishlist

[Yelü Dashi]

Here are a series of topics or 'featurettes' we could cover in the forthcoming previews ( in no particular order):

• Intro: History of Southern Song, Overview of faction strengths and weaknesses
• Infantry units: unit descriptions & screenshots
• Cavalry units: unit descriptions & screenshots
• Siege weapon units: unit descriptions & screenshots
• Religious building tree: icons and building cards
• Military building tree: icons and building cards
• Neo-Confucianism (incl. screenshots of White Deer Grotto , Zhu Xi models)
• Song Navy: ship model descriptions & screenshots
• Trade: overview of resources, tea for horses (+other innovative scripting ideas ?)

There are some other minor things I'll add later. But we need to divide up what goes with what to constitute one preview.

[Augustus Lucifer]

Okay I agree with all of those except the military tree. Our military system will be about the same across the board so there's nothing that special about it to show off for Song. It can be its own preview once it has all been decided(you can see I posted more musings about the recruitment system in the coding area).

With the trade thing, I've been reading some about the Song treaty with the Jin, and it seems like it provided for:

• A sum of around 300,000 units of value to be paid to the Jin each year. This is but a fraction of the Song income however.
• Border incursions are to be prevented and curtailed if possible.
• Lucrative trade across the border is to be permissive(trends benefit Song more than Jin).
• Treaty re-negotiated depending on the political situation. For example the invasion of Prince Hailang of the Jin in 1161 resulted in a re-negotiation that favored the Song. It was restored to the former amounts once the Song breached the agreement later on.

Based on this I would say a good way to present the Song political atmosphere at the start is one of complacency. Much of the 1160s was spent attempting to regain central authority in the south. This failed on most counts and the Emperors reigning after 1190 were increasing inefficient and incapable.

At the start we can have local leaders with varying causes have a chance to rise up and challenge the central authority. War party factions that want to regain the central plains, bandits who want to take advantage of the instability, and religious leaders like a Yang Yao/Zhong Xiang figure. Ideally we don't want all of these to happen in every campaign.

What I think would be cool is if we set up a political party system for the song, War Party and Peace Party. Based on decisions the player makes it effects the party support of the general populace and the ruling bodies(potentially separately?). The Song starts with a huge Peace Party bias, culled from the policies of Chief Councillor Qin Gui and the recent Treaty arrangement. Efforts taken by the player to re-arm the country for war and advocate a war policy will be met with stern opposition, making it tragic for a player to try and bring the force of their faction to bear which was well and truly divided.

Later on the Song are plagued with increasingly incompetent Emperors. National tax revenues can be greatly reduced, because the amount of money generated in the Song that didn't get fed into public works and was actually expendable was minute compared to their vast income figures. Maybe allow extreme war party adherents to coup d'etat the Emperor and put a new one on the throne. Essentially I think the key to making Song hard to play is giving them hell to do anything outside their own borders from the start, in the meanwhile AI gets stronger and later on when the Song can start expanding on their huge base there should be strong opposition.

[Augustus Lucifer]

I was thinking, why split it into 3? I've been playing with ideas of what to split in my head and how we could divide it or etc. but nothing ever fully added up. Splitting it into 3 just feels piecemeal, rather than intentioned. It made sense back when we first proposed it because the goal was to get previews out in time to allow us to work on the next ones so we could maintain a fluent preview schedule.

It's pretty obvious though that we aren't going to be able to conform to any notion of preview scheduling so can only do it by feel. This is mainly my fault naturally, but nevertheless I think we're better off just making one massive preview that people can drool over until our next massive preview. If you think about it our preview will be so big if we make it all in one that no one can really complain. We can still dot small previews in between big previews, but I think due to the fact that we have 2 different factions being worked on at the moment(Danova on Tibet, you on Jin, stefan kind of on Goryeo) we will at least be quicker in the future.

Let's just go with one whopper as soon as we can manage it to satiate everyone and make it feel like it's all part of the same whole. It just feels weird to me trying to cut it up when everything is interconnected, can't talk about cavalry without military and surely the lack of it and trade are involved and etc. etc. etc.

No particular order.

Overview/Introduction (Done)
--- Map?
--- Unaffiliated Strat Buildings
Ethnography
Military (Done)
--- Infantry (Done)
--- Cavalry
--- Siege
--- Battle Officer/Battle General/Battle Heir/Battle Leader
--- Strat General/Strat Captain/Strat Heir/Strat Leader
(are both the same? I don't know)
Civil
--- Emperor/Regent Relationship
--- Service Examinations
--- Regent Education
Economic Overview
--- Resources
--- Sea Trade
--- Treaty of 1141
--- Strat Merchant
Diplomacy
--- Peace/War Party
--- Jin-Song Relations
--- Strat Diplomat
Religion
--- Religious Buildings/Religious Strat Buildings
--- Religious Conversion
--- Strat Priest
--- Fanatics/Sects
Music & Other
--- Couple of Song-esque pieces?
--- Unit Cards/Unit Info Cards (sud commander seems to be pretty far on these)
--- Portraits? Saw a few
--- Signatures (can slap one of our 2D guys to make some)
--- Notice about team needs
--- Credits

Not sure where to put Navy. But yeah I think we'll be better served if we make it all one massive preview, and it might also help us get a picture of where we're going with all the aspects of the faction, which are kind of assembled piecemeal at the moment.