Noblesse

I'm horrible with names. The first game idea has the working name of Noblesse.

Civilization and Total War are probably the two largest influences on my view of computer gaming- aside from RPGs, they probably dominate my gaming time over the last few years. One thing that's always been lacking, though, is the dynastic politics that make European history so interesting (well, if you're into that sort of thing).

Feudalism, with its kings, dukes, and barons, is replaced by nearly omniscient gods directing mortal armies to destroy each other. It's nice to see games that openly acknowledge this, like Dominions 3, but that's making your game more honest, not more realistic.

So, let's talk about modeling politics in games, specifically an empire-building game. There are simple ways to do it and complex ways:

The simplest way is just percentage approval- what you see in Total War. You have a number of factors that influence how likely the peasants are to riot, of which the most important are religion, garrison size, and taxation level. It's a pretty hideous simplification, but it works- it rewards spreading your religion, it rewards having garrisons, and it requires you to invest in order to get higher tax levels (without spawning enemy armies).

But that's just dealing with peasants. What about local nobility? What makes them loyal to you, instead of defecting to neighborhood kingdoms? Historically, there was a significant difference between, say, ducal levies and royal levies, but most empire-building games ignore that for simplicity's sake.

So, the more complex ways involve simulating all of the power groups and how they interact. If you raise corn taxes, the nobles are happy but factory owners are unhappy, since that's the noble's revenue and the factory owner's expense.

Minor nobility also become more important- there are a number of battles where barons and their armies switched sides, betting they'd be better off with the new king than with the old one. Machiavelli discusses in The Prince the difference between a locally-governed and nationally-governed state; the locally-governed state is easy to take pieces out of, since there will be someone willing to open the door for you, but is hard to digest- the locals are attached more to the baron than the king, and if you try to replace the baron that betrayed his king for you, there's a strong chance he'll betray you. The nationally-governed state is difficult to conquer, since you fight the unified might of the state; but once taken, everything quickly falls into place since who is at top was already easy to change.

The problem with nobility is that they're harder to model well than power groups. Power groups can be predicted fairly reliably because of their composition- the clergy chose to be clergy, and all face similar problems and have similar desires (with respect to the things that make them clergy, at least). It's also difficult to make good AI, especially if I'm running a one or few man show- AI designed by multiple people who have been working in the field for over a decade can still be hideously simplistic, and is beaten trivially by a human who knows what they're doing. If the game centers around politics, there needs to be a way to make the politics real.

So, why resort to artificial intelligence? You can get real intelligence easily enough. There are already hosts of multiplayer empire-building games- it shouldn't be that hard to make one where there are multiple levels of nobility that interact. Higher rank nobles get to tax everyone below them, raise armies using royal funds, and set policy for the kingdom (which the lower nobility can flaunt at their risk), and everyone controls some small segment of the world, building things and such. The games I talked about tend to already have systems like this- Battledawn gives you a percentage of the income of everyone you've conquered, but doesn't have a hierarchy (either you're a conqueror or you're conquered- there's no tree) and is fairly simplistic.

Essentially, a "build a nation, conquer the world" clone with a lot more emphasis on politics. It brings to mind this- it's more fun to be the emperor taking over Europe than it is to deal with politics, but games based around politics instead of just strategy (Diplomacy, for example) have their niche.