Axioms Of Dominion: Make Rome Rome Again: Democracies, Republics, Senates, Magistrates, And Comitias(New Design Blog Post)

[MoLAoS]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...e-intelligence


This is a post about more low level mechanics and systems in the Intrigue/Intelligence gameplay. Talks about Missions, Detail Level, and so forth. Spying on characters, surveying provinces, and like that.


Here is a couple screenshots for people who care about mediocre in dev version images. Technically this shows the Intelligence Network Map Mode and Intelligence Panel but there isn't a ton of stuff displayed here since I'm in the early stages of working on it:
https://imgur.com/a/g6EGR5P


In the first shot the info panels are Provinces, Missions, Characters, Units, and Populations top to bottom. The lowest panel is Extensions, so potential characters and provinces, currently, that you could assign to a new Mission.


On the right is the Display Panel that shows what you've selected, which you'll then assign to a mission with a button at the top. The bottom right is the Mission Panel that shows info on the currently selected Mission.


This is all dev mode stuff, will get Labels, most buttons swapped to images like at the very top of the window, and will be appropriately "themed". Currently is the basic "Black Theme" that comes with TGUI.

[MoLAoS]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web

Did quite a few more posts this month including the key post above about the social simulation.

Also 4 posts on magic, all specialized magic posts are subtitled esoteric arcana because basically no other game has comparable magic.

The other 3 are also social simulation posts like the one I linked.

I am planning to move back to the strategy/map painting/economic side of the design soon, since I know lots of people are ambivalent about the character/social simulation part.

[alhoon]

I really, really like the Character consciousness. Are the "values" attached by randomness or they are a mix of randomness and "social norms" ?

[Dismounted Feudal Knight]

I'm likewise fond of the character aspect, but I/we may be a minority in that and developing the grand strategy - at least in equal measure - would probably broaden appeal.

[MoLAoS]

I really, really like the Character consciousness. Are the "values" attached by randomness or they are a mix of randomness and "social norms" ?

So on game start each Character gets a randomly generated Personality and Ideology. Same for rpg stats and other data. I am thinking about having every Character in a Province spawn with an identical Ideology, though. Or some settings options. Over time Characters and Populations should normalize and have similar ideologies based on their location and membership in a polity, like a given kingdom or some other kind of polity would have broadly similar Ideology for all characters and populations. For a variety of reasons related to game mechanics. Child Characters currently spawn with an average of the Ideology of their Parents. Their Personality is an average with some random modifiers then applied.

I'm likewise fond of the character aspect, but I/we may be a minority in that and developing the grand strategy - at least in equal measure - would probably broaden appeal.

Well the character aspect ties in to the grand strategy. Ideology impacts relationships between characters in a way similar to Personality but it is also modified by the Propaganda system. Similarly the Personalities of the Characters impact the grand strategy aspect because they are a major part of the motivation/goals/ambitions and the preferences for different Actions and methods. Plus obviously being Gregarious means that a character both wants to and is somewhat effective at social engagement and interpersonal relations. A realm can be held together by a socially active/proactive/adept leader and fall apart if their child is shy or aloof or w/e. Attention Points of course represent the ability of a single person to handle all the tasks of ruling. You can't do it all. And interpersonal relations helps define the ability to delegate. Some characters might not be inclined to delegation, sometimes a character with a less than optimal personality might not be able to motivate loyalty, although some characters are naturally loyal.

In the first post on this page, #21, you can see how the character system ties into the espionage system. Similarly there is a logistics system.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web

That is a post about planning and manage campaigns, which is a solid intersection of the character interactions and the strategy aspect. I guess it has been 2.5 months since that was posted and the social simulation stuff is a lot newer so it might seem like the strategy aspect is seconadry.

[MoLAoS]

This is a picture of a functional but not skinned/theme Genealogy menu. Basically some Menus have a small "nuclear family panel" but if you need fancy stuff you can hit the button to bring this up. Clicking the image of a Character, most of which are that default rock on a wooden background right now, centers that character and rebuilds the tree. It probably won't say "Main Character" in the final version but it gets the idea across. My plan is to have a couple different top level "formats" with some filters and stuff for each one. So you can get one that is more like CK3 or like Ancestry or w/e you like. Also all the names won't be ones that start with A but I haven't fancified the name generator yet since I just need something that has basic functions. Similar to how the map is very basic and has those weird alternating line artifacts.

That horrific looking bell with a red 0 is the Alert icon, pretty similar to how Civ works, changes when you have alerts and clicking it takes you to the place to get a basic idea of what the alert is for. Like if an Unit in an Army is short on supplies or w/e.

[alhoon]

I don't want to be a dick but I think your interface needs work. Steam reviews will rip up that game based on the interface alone.

[MoLAoS]

I don't want to be a dick but I think your interface needs work. Steam reviews will rip up that game based on the interface alone.

If you read the post you'll see that this is using the basic "black theme" from TGUI. That's why I referred to it as unthemed/unskinned. I'm just doing the UI work necessary for me to check if things work and find bugs and so forth. The UI is in flux until pretty late into development so no point in fancifying it now. Similarly the map generator is just enough to be functional. Of course it isn't going to look as pretty as a Paradox or Creative Assembly game even then. More like At The Gates or Distant Worlds or something, visually. Mechanically I'd expect it to compete even with Paradox, though, if not surpass them.

[MoLAoS]

So I've spent the last week mostly doing optimizations and a little bit of refactoring the AI code. Performance is way up for turns even with 6 digit character counts. Additionally basic multi-threading is enabled. The NPC AI "Planner" is almost totally thread safe, which means it can run on the Player Turn and with a dynamic number of threads based on hardware. An 8 thread implementation, plus the main thread and other programs is rougly 80% faster than a main thread and a single thread for the Planner. And of course the speed up is enormous when you run it on the Player Turn since that is free processing time. 20 seconds for a special simulated version that represents ~1mil NPCs plus some relatively high computation data processing. Additionally for convenience some moderately intense code is run in the second AI step instead of the planner which could be moved. This causes roughly 2-4 second turn times when you hit end turn but I want to wait till later on for fancy optimizing.

For people with 8P/16L Core CPUs a top bound of 10 seconds on turns seems, currently, to be reasonable. Especially with heavy computation done on Player Turns.

[MoLAoS]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...tter&sd=pf&s=w


This is a new post about Friends, Partners, and Social Stuff in Axioms. It expands on and connects to my previous posts about Social Occasions, Opinion, Attention Points, and Desires/Interests/Personalities/Ideologies.


I've linked the post mostly because the formatting of the intra-substack links to relevant posts detailing specific things I talked about doesn't work on reddit for obvious reasons. I'm going to excerpt some sections here though as well as include some new thoughts.


Axioms Of Dominion is a strategy game I've been working on for a while. Maybe 3 years if you elide long breaks. One of the, many, unique things about Axioms is the in-depth character/social simulation. I looked at strategy adjacent games like Academagia, King Of Dragon Pass, and Kudos, and I tried to figure out how I could aggregate their systems while adding unique and more elegant stuff on top. My goal for Axioms is to more faithfully recreate the experience of being a protagonist, antagonist, or major supporting character on either side, of a speculative fiction story. Fantasy, science fantasy, historical fiction, etc. On top of a strategy layer that allows for more precise simulation of plausible alt-history or a fantasy equivalent. What is the difference betwee feudal vassals and the Roman Socii and can they be represented as meaningfully different in the same game?


Of course much like medieval aristocracy some of the most important and iconic parts of Roman society and history are the interpersonal dramas.


In Axioms you have to manage your "Attention", with the Attention Point system, such that you can cultivate a few key relationships, many more casual relationships, or even focus primarily on your family. Creating and intergenerational lattice of connections between you and key retainers or allies is both possible and meaningful in a way it isn't in games like Crusader Kings, much less more abstract 4x style games. Attention Points are also used for actual management type decisions and military ones, not just interpersonal stuff. You can't just micromanage every single thing every turn, and neither can the NPCs. Unlike GalCiv or Stellaris delegation is both necessary and typically effective with larger sized domains. Of course you can play a non-landholding character as well. Get a little Patrician 3 or Theory Of Magic in your strategy game shell.


As noted in more detail in the linked post maintaining regular relationships, real friendships, and also romantic connections is both important and nuanced. Characters have Interests that you want to be in sync to get the maximum relationship bang for your Attention buck. They have Personalities that make them studious and introverted or extraverted and prone to carousing. They have often specific desires. A father may want his daughter to marry a supportive spouse or a princess may want to be allowed to engage in meaningful non-domestic activity.


An important section of the post is about how if a Character already has four friends he does weapons training with becoming the fifth is hard but if he also has zero friends who study philosophy or magic you can find an opening there if you have the talent and inclination.


You can also do stuff liek break up a friendship by hosting a key political event the night of a party that two characters would otherwise attend and hang out at, making one character feel unimportant and creating a gap in the social circle of the other you can wiggle into.


Also unlike many games with "characters" if you murdered some guy's son he won't be willing to be a loyal general, giving you the power of his 44 martial stat, just because you gave him 40 gold. Or maybe he will? His son could have been a disappointment and he could be avaricious.

[alhoon]

I like the concept of "Attention" and "you can't be besties with everyone AND run an empire buddy".


Now, the example with the general brought to my mind a different suggestion:
I believe it would be better if the player didn't actually know exactly the stats of his people. I.e. I think there should be like 6-7 brackets ranging from "very poor" to "one of the best in the world!" for some generic info but you would have to actually figure out yourself if Sir Talksalot ("good" in talking!) is actually better than sir Speaksalot (also "good" in talking). I.e. you would know that A is in the 20-30 bracket but not whether it is 21 or 29.

[MoLAoS]

I like the concept of "Attention" and "you can't be besties with everyone AND run an empire buddy".


Now, the example with the general brought to my mind a different suggestion:
I believe it would be better if the player didn't actually know exactly the stats of his people. I.e. I think there should be like 6-7 brackets ranging from "very poor" to "one of the best in the world!" for some generic info but you would have to actually figure out yourself if Sir Talksalot ("good" in talking!) is actually better than sir Speaksalot (also "good" in talking). I.e. you would know that A is in the 20-30 bracket but not whether it is 21 or 29.

So depending on the level of information you have on a character that would be roughly how it works. For much higher info you know the actual stat. To some degree "stats" have *always* been somewhat abstract/vague in games. Hence RNG and other stuff.

[MoLAoS]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...utm_medium=web

Post about the more RPG-esque adventuring aspect of the game, but also on non-landed noble strategy type characted options generally. Mostly about magical non-mass-military combat stuff.

Had a lot of going on personally sadly so I haven't got much coding done outside the month I spent on the map generation. Still needs a couple weeks to finish rivers and new province generation. Taking a break to work on magical combat stuff as a cleanser. Don't wanna get stuck in a rut.

[alhoon]

Interesting concept, to be able to play a landless character, at least at first.
Still, I am concerned this will have a steep learning curve. May I suggest you invest time, when possible to a good tutorial, or better, 3-4 short tutorials. I am not sure what makes a good tutorial, but in my experience the tutorial should not be too long, too boring, too complex or too difficult. That's why I suggest 3-4 tutorials. One for the very basics like "that's how you move your camera, zoom in and cling cities" that people could feel free to skim, and 2-3 for the other concepts.



PS. You got me with the Martyr joke.

[MoLAoS]

Interesting concept, to be able to play a landless character, at least at first.
Still, I am concerned this will have a steep learning curve. May I suggest you invest time, when possible to a good tutorial, or better, 3-4 short tutorials. I am not sure what makes a good tutorial, but in my experience the tutorial should not be too long, too boring, too complex or too difficult. That's why I suggest 3-4 tutorials. One for the very basics like "that's how you move your camera, zoom in and cling cities" that people could feel free to skim, and 2-3 for the other concepts.



PS. You got me with the Martyr joke.

I'm very focused on the best way to present the UI and UX and what a good tutorial would do. I played many recent 4x games including recent betas like AotSS and I was not impressed with any of them. Maybe my tutorial will also suck, you never know till you publish but I have thought a lot about all the problems. Just recently the UI and tutorial for Farthest Frontier, think Banished with some combat and some more detailed stuff like crop rotation, which I was really hyped for had a very painful tutorial experience. I still managed since I am a city builder veteran and also had the settings on a pretty forgiving level but wow. Ended up refunding because while Windows 7 currently works the devs told me on the Steam forums they weren't gonna monitor that and didn't even have access to a Windows 7 machine.

I'm eventually going to write a blog post about this when I get closer to completion but I think most 4x, city builder, and general strategy games fail the "Three Reads": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YISKcRDcDJg

Additionally many games in this genre, even after accounting for their sandbox nature, fail to provide a sort of groove for players. What are some common goals, what parts of the game mechanics do you spend the most time on, how do the UI/UX and tutorial acknowledge this and help the player with those areas/mechanics of the game.

I had a phase where I was playing Dune inspired games, some similar to Crusader Kings and some not. Stellar Dynasties, Stellar Monarch 2, Alliance of the Sacred Suns, Terra Invicta. They all failed in most of these areas. Read lots of their beta feedback from other players. I also dug around the Steam forums for all the games I could find in genres adjacent to the components of Axioms to see about complaints, especially UI, somewhat UX, and especially new player/tutorial complaints and feedback. Read lots of Steam reviews also. Hopefully that will help me avoid many of those issues, especially since Axioms is arguably more detailed and intense than almost any similar game. Feel pretty bad if I did all that research and still blew it, heh.

But I am definitely thinking about that stuff all the time.


Gonna post a few of the new menus, although this was phase 2 and looking cool is not until phase 4.

Current Phase Two Map Generator, Gonna Go Back To This In Late September:



Water Map Mode:


Old In Game Province Map, From 2015 Version Of Map Code:


Very Early Phase Two Map Generator:

[MoLAoS]

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...lderness?sd=pf


Rambly post on exploration, expansion, societies with a feeling of frontier or wilderness and a bit on scaling up as the player becomes more powerful and minimizing micromanagement.

For people who aren't as interested in the RPG stuff I've been discussing lately.

[MoLAoS]

Probably not a super interesting post for TW fans since they like fancy graphics and real time combat but I spent about 2 weeks programming a prototype for the turn based magical "Adventurer Combat" system and I'm getting pretty close to done. Just writing some complicated functions for the fancier spell effects like spreading the afflictions/maladies on one unit to the other units on the same team nearby. Gonna finish up the simple enemy AI and then define abilities for a few dozen 4 ability magical Aspects for the adventurer side to pick from for character building. Then I'll play test some battles and maybe do some short/basic "AARs" for the rpg/tactical tbs forums I post on.

My plan will be to get back to the strategy layer of the game after that, maybe finish up water features/rivers for maps and some stuff like that and then get back to gameplay. Basically if you count the map and combat stuff I will have been off the actual strategy layer gameplay for about 3 months. Part of that is because of my grandfather dying which both kept me from working due to family/funeral stuff and was also generally demotivating but I also got stuck in a rut on Rivers right before his death which is why I swapped tasks for a bit afterwards to freshen my perspective.

[MoLAoS]

I got a bunch of work done on side stuff like adventure combat in September but I've been busy a ton with non-dev stuff sadly... Got Covid for like a week, real bad, couldn't sleep well even with lots of pain killers and other stuff. Sore throat and full body ache and a moderate fever. Grandpa died last week of July as noted and his brother just recently.


I also did a bunch of politics stuff for like 45 days. US Election was not supposed to be close so I thought I was safe from that, but no.


Currently working on a bunch of the basic character interactions. Specifically giving money to other characters currently. Having a dynamic and stackable gift system, which will also later apply to gifts of materials or other things, is actually a bit of a pain. For Paradox fans you know they generally have a cool down on gifts, they don't stack, and you often can't decide on your own how much to send. This simplifies a lot both for when the AI wants to give gifts and when they receive them. Of course in a turn based game like Axioms we can do better.


Currently the opinion boost of a character to character gift is based on the current wealth and income of the character. This will probably be more detailed later on as more game systems come online. There's a natural devaluing of many gifts because you get less opinion as the target has less need of wealth. So if you give 1000 to a guy with 1000 you might get 10 opinion but if you give 1000 again you'll only get 5 since he has more existing wealth. There's a modifier based on income so it won't quite be that big a drop but still decent. If only you gave 2000 at the same time! Then you'd have got 20... Whereas you get 15 for the two combined gifts. These are of course example numbers only.


In any case I'm hoping to get to a point where you'll combine various actions to achieve a goal, and the AI will as well, soon. Perhaps giving gifts and chatting someone up and then asking them to be your subordinate.


Of course Axioms simulates much more than ruler to ruler interactions. So I'll also have to grind out some Interests and Desires for characters to have so they can connect with each other more individually.


I'm still doing some deep thinking about a sort of official relationship vs personal relationship layer. So a rich king may love you to death but he won't be giving you 100000 gold just for that. That is one area of the design most open to potential exploits.


Actually there will also be some sort of consideration in the final game for how much wealth the gifter has. Not a ton. I expect a strong personality impact as well. Greedy and/or ambitious characters will care only for how much a person can give them but loyal or friendly characters will care a bit more about how much the giver had available.

[MoLAoS]

https://open.substack.com/pub/axioms...utm_medium=web

New blog post about UI and especially the uses and misuses of maps. Maps are not used effectively or efficiently in many more complex map staring games, imo.


New pretty rambly post about Administration and also government offices and stuff.

https://open.substack.com/pub/axioms...utm_medium=web

[MoLAoS]

I talk a lot about how Axioms represents simulation data on the map here and specifically how the game represents, and determines, where the player, or NPCs, have "control" over provinces and populations.

Axioms is designed to be played with a lot of dynamic swapping between map visualizations with a "core set" but not a "primary visualization". Almost the way you interact with menus normally. There is however, for players who want to rule, a "first look" map visualization which is currently designated the "national" map visualization which provides high level information of various kinds only in provinces where the player or their subordinates have authority over the majority of province populations. But this is more of a "look at this 20% of the time" visualization rather than something you spend the majority of your time engaged with.

I also talk a bit about relevant parts of intelligence networks and how military stuff works.

https://axiomsofdominion.substack.co...autonomy?sd=pf