I can't give a great estimate because development is a stutter step process. Sometimes you cruise through and sometimes weird problems crop up stranding you in bugville for days.
Reading your blog, I'm amazed at your ambitions - you seem to intend to include both macro strategy and micro roleplaying. I doubt the two are really compatible?
I mean you only interact with important characters generally. The character mechanics are absolutely necessary to replicate the most interesting aspects of fantasy novels, or of history if you prefer that. Population done well can certainly take you much farther than Paradox goes, but realistically, history is driven by an aggregate of personal interactions.
The US plenipotentiary hated the president of the time so we didn't take 80-100% of Mexico but only 50%.
Philip got together with some bros during his time as a diplomatic hostage and so Alexander could conquer the known world.
Venice was big mad at Byzantium so the Crusade fucked up Constantinople instead of going hard in the Holy Land.
Some random military scribe did some crimes, realized he was gonna get caught, convinced a bunch of army officers Aurelian was going to kill them for corruption, and so they assassinated him before he could. He wasn't going to, though.
CK3 makes a big deal about their game of thrones mod but none of, say, the dynamics between the Stark children that drive series in the first few books can be replicated. In fact from 0-16 or w/e you barely interact with your kids.
Compare that to the design plans I posted about raising kids.
"Macro strategy" as portrayed in typical strategy games is a myth anyway. Even the AIs, who at least aren't part of an immortal supper club with time rewinding powers trading tips and guides to world domination in 200 years or less like players are, are still Morning Light Mountain style hive minds with perfect knowledge, perfect control, and drones who execute orders perfectly.
Does it take 3200 turns or roughly 100-250 hours to play out a full average character lifetime of 80 years(counting NPC turn time)? Sure. Do you get totally unique experiences in exchange? Yes.
Axioms actually arose from other projects and ideas I had in the mid to late 2000s-2011. I was pointed to CK2 which just released in 2012 by someone who saw my forum posts. I eventually got tired of CK2 as the dev pace was slow and the cost high. EU4 ended up being my most played Paradox game. I played it as an incremental game with a map basically.
I should probably clarify somewhere that Axioms is in no way intended to be a grand strategy game, even if it takes on some of the same thematic aspects as CK2 or V2 or even EU4. If Paradox games are neither Wargames nor 4X than Axioms is neither of those nor Grand Strategy.
I've tried to come up with a concise description, earlier I called it a "Fantasy DIP Strategy" game. [D]iplomacy, [I]ntrigue, [P]olitics, but I think that doesn't convey the more RPG aspects well. Fantasy world simulator is a bit generic.
Novel main/major side character experience simulator is sorta accurate. You can have an experience similar to almost any GoT character, or someone from The Prince Of Nothing, or like Valdemar. But these are all kinda clunky labels.
Dwarf Fortress is a top down real time strategy god game with city building and combat taking place in the same frame. It also simulates every character in the city you are building. Also the DIP aspects are far less relevant.
Axioms is more like a highly complicated Academagia or King Of Dragon Pass than DF. Or even a strategy focused visual novel with map elements, though those are usually simpler and rarely have cool magic.
I have read the blog you referenced. What I'm curious about is is this technically and gameplay feasible? As things go on, will more and more agents appear, burning the CPU? Or, does the player have the ability to deal with many agents at the same time? Perhaps players are quickly driven crazy with too many agents and interactions they can't handle?
It is not intended for the number of agents to get too crazy. I'll have to tweak things in testing of course if unexpected things happen.
The player is limited by their attention points. So you simply can't interact too much. Even with the Attention Cost reduction mechanics maxed out at best you are doubling or maybe tripling your possible actions in your favored areas.
Additionally as you rise through the ranks/tiers, if you play a political/landowning character, the expectation is that you'll still interact with the same number of characters on average. Probably not all the way to Dunbar's Number, maybe capped in the high double digits. You'll have to give up micro managing counts, and focus on dukes, and similarly for your family. Did you read the post on delegation?
As far as the CPU, the game is turn-based, and unless I messed something up or misunderstood the way things work, heavily multi-threaded for the AI. So if you are running an 8 physical core CPU, the number of characters should mostly logarithmically increase turn time.
My goal is to structure the game so that any given character, especially below the top of the social order, really only has an opinion of 1000 or so other characters max, since Character Opinions are the primary RAM consumer.
People with maxed out CPUs will be able to handle bigger maps or higher character density but people with mid level or even outdated CPUs could still handle smaller maps, so 1000 provinces or something.
I finally had a chance to read most of your blogs, very interesting! I wonder how the actual development is going though? Can you give a % estimate?
I can't give a great estimate because development is a stutter step process. Sometimes you cruise through and sometimes weird problems crop up stranding you in bugville for days.
Could be anywhere from 55-70%?
Reading your blog, I'm amazed at your ambitions - you seem to intend to include both macro strategy and micro roleplaying. I doubt the two are really compatible?
I mean you only interact with important characters generally. The character mechanics are absolutely necessary to replicate the most interesting aspects of fantasy novels, or of history if you prefer that. Population done well can certainly take you much farther than Paradox goes, but realistically, history is driven by an aggregate of personal interactions.
The US plenipotentiary hated the president of the time so we didn't take 80-100% of Mexico but only 50%.
Philip got together with some bros during his time as a diplomatic hostage and so Alexander could conquer the known world.
Venice was big mad at Byzantium so the Crusade fucked up Constantinople instead of going hard in the Holy Land.
Some random military scribe did some crimes, realized he was gonna get caught, convinced a bunch of army officers Aurelian was going to kill them for corruption, and so they assassinated him before he could. He wasn't going to, though.
CK3 makes a big deal about their game of thrones mod but none of, say, the dynamics between the Stark children that drive series in the first few books can be replicated. In fact from 0-16 or w/e you barely interact with your kids.
Compare that to the design plans I posted about raising kids.
"Macro strategy" as portrayed in typical strategy games is a myth anyway. Even the AIs, who at least aren't part of an immortal supper club with time rewinding powers trading tips and guides to world domination in 200 years or less like players are, are still Morning Light Mountain style hive minds with perfect knowledge, perfect control, and drones who execute orders perfectly.
Does it take 3200 turns or roughly 100-250 hours to play out a full average character lifetime of 80 years(counting NPC turn time)? Sure. Do you get totally unique experiences in exchange? Yes.
Axioms actually arose from other projects and ideas I had in the mid to late 2000s-2011. I was pointed to CK2 which just released in 2012 by someone who saw my forum posts. I eventually got tired of CK2 as the dev pace was slow and the cost high. EU4 ended up being my most played Paradox game. I played it as an incremental game with a map basically.
I should probably clarify somewhere that Axioms is in no way intended to be a grand strategy game, even if it takes on some of the same thematic aspects as CK2 or V2 or even EU4. If Paradox games are neither Wargames nor 4X than Axioms is neither of those nor Grand Strategy.
I've tried to come up with a concise description, earlier I called it a "Fantasy DIP Strategy" game. [D]iplomacy, [I]ntrigue, [P]olitics, but I think that doesn't convey the more RPG aspects well. Fantasy world simulator is a bit generic.
Novel main/major side character experience simulator is sorta accurate. You can have an experience similar to almost any GoT character, or someone from The Prince Of Nothing, or like Valdemar. But these are all kinda clunky labels.
If so, how is it different from Dwarf Fortress?
Dwarf Fortress is a top down real time strategy god game with city building and combat taking place in the same frame. It also simulates every character in the city you are building. Also the DIP aspects are far less relevant.
Axioms is more like a highly complicated Academagia or King Of Dragon Pass than DF. Or even a strategy focused visual novel with map elements, though those are usually simpler and rarely have cool magic.
I have read the blog you referenced. What I'm curious about is is this technically and gameplay feasible? As things go on, will more and more agents appear, burning the CPU? Or, does the player have the ability to deal with many agents at the same time? Perhaps players are quickly driven crazy with too many agents and interactions they can't handle?
It is not intended for the number of agents to get too crazy. I'll have to tweak things in testing of course if unexpected things happen.
The player is limited by their attention points. So you simply can't interact too much. Even with the Attention Cost reduction mechanics maxed out at best you are doubling or maybe tripling your possible actions in your favored areas.
Additionally as you rise through the ranks/tiers, if you play a political/landowning character, the expectation is that you'll still interact with the same number of characters on average. Probably not all the way to Dunbar's Number, maybe capped in the high double digits. You'll have to give up micro managing counts, and focus on dukes, and similarly for your family. Did you read the post on delegation?
As far as the CPU, the game is turn-based, and unless I messed something up or misunderstood the way things work, heavily multi-threaded for the AI. So if you are running an 8 physical core CPU, the number of characters should mostly logarithmically increase turn time.
My goal is to structure the game so that any given character, especially below the top of the social order, really only has an opinion of 1000 or so other characters max, since Character Opinions are the primary RAM consumer.
People with maxed out CPUs will be able to handle bigger maps or higher character density but people with mid level or even outdated CPUs could still handle smaller maps, so 1000 provinces or something.