Social Simulation 4x Strategy Concept Thread

I have an idea for a game that I would love to see realized. I'm a software developer, but I have no experience with game development, so it will be slow going for me. I'm starting by trying to make a 2D version with an engine that could easily be adapted to support a 3D version. But at the end of the day, I don't care who makes this game as long as it gets made.

The working title for it is "Grip."

The idea behind Grip is to create a social simulation/4x strategy game inspired by but unlike any 4x civilization-builder that I am aware of. Similar to the Civlization franchise, the player will be in charge of managing national and local policy and overseeing the growth and prosperity of population centers and field armies to defend against foreign threats. However, the similarities end there.

NOT a god game

For starters, the player will not have perfect, real-time information about their domain and will have to use different mechanisms to gather information and stay apprised of the disposition of their holdings. This will become easier and easier as technology and wealth progress. Some knowledge will flow to you by the free movement of individuals between regions. But you will also be able to commissioning maps, order censuses, and hire networks of spies and messengers in order to determine how large, populous and prosperous your nation is, the disposition of your armed forces. And because real-time information is not available, you may learn that one of your population centers has been captured until long after the fact. Later, telecommunication and satellites gets you closer and closer to real-time, perfect information.

Decision Making

The next core game mechanic is that your people will make decisions on their own. Those decisions will lean toward things that improve their quality of life, fun and frolic as opposed to things that strengthen your hold on power or help the nation defend itself against foreign threats. In order to redirect their efforts in some other direction, you will have to employ either a carrot or a stick. Economic incentives do not incur any discontent, but will cost you resources. Using coercion will make you less popular, but will not cost you resources. Included in "economic incentives" is paying for government infrastructure and public services. Every time you want your populace to do something they don't want to do, whether that involves economic progression, technological progression, the spread of a cultural elements, etc., you will have to do that either using a carrot or a stick, or both.

There will be many things you have tenuous control over, and your population will influence what you are able to do.

Technology

Technological progression will be something you will have very little control over in the early game. The rate of technological progression will depend on the population size and certain philosophical beliefs, and will be discovered automatically over time. But critically, 1THERE WILL BE NO GLOBAL TECHNOLOGY OR GLOBAL CULTURAL ELEMENTS. Technologies will be discovered in specific locations, possibly by specific citizens, and takes time to spread to neighboring regions. And until knowledge of some technology spreads to a region, the occupants of that region cannot take advantage of it. Those regions could include regions controlled by other factions, unless you take steps to guard the knowledge by restricting travel. You will also be able to take actions to accelerate the spread of certain kinds of knowledge or suppress it.

Your people may learn technologies from neighboring regions controlled by other factions, depending on how much travel goes back and forth. By closing your borders, you prevent knowledge from spreading to neighboring factions, but you may also cut yourself off from innovations discovered by other factions. This will prevent you from being completely left in the dust technologically by neighboring factions, making it possible to reverse your fortunes. (That, incidentally, is one of the things that I most hate about the Civlization series. It is rare for fortunes to reverse, because once a player pulls ahead in the technological/cultural race, it is extremely difficult to catch up.)

Additionally, capturing regions will grant you access to the knowledge and skills possessed by that region, and losing a region could cause you to lose access to those same skills. You will be able to influence or even dictate where people with certain skills must settle, though, as with all attempts to perturb your population's preferred activities, this could get pretty expensive.

Finally, things like "brain drain" caused by emigration, or population collapses caused by diseases or disasters, could result in knowledge being lost. When that happens, the knowledge must be re-discovered or re-imported.

Cultural Elements and Philosophical Beliefs

There will be no real distinction between technology, cultural elements, and philosophical beliefs in terms of how they are discovered and how they spread. However, they will differ in what effects they have. Certain cultural elements or philosophical beliefs may make it more difficult for your government to get away with certain actions or enforce certain policies. Or they may bolster loyalty to your regime. They may result in faster technological progression, slower technological progression, greater levels of contentment or lower levels of contentment. You will be able to encourage or discourage the spread of certain beliefs depending on your strategic goals or play style.

No Predefined Factions

Another thing I hate about many grand strategy games is that you are forced to pick a faction at the end of the game, and this has huge consequences for how you play the game and what victory conditions you are likely to achieve. In this game, your faction begins as a tabula rasa, and although it may be expensive and time consuming, you can change course mid-game in response to changing geopolitical factors.

Contentment

Contentment will be one of the determining factors in loyalty to your regime. Protecting yourself against internal threats to the authority of your government will be almost as difficult as defending against external threats. At a certain level of discontent, a region made decide to defect to a neighboring faction, but only if the level of contentment within that faction is greater relative to your own. At sufficiently high levels of discontent, a region will simply declare independence from any faction.

Contentment will also be influenced by absolute prosperity, relative prosperity to other regions and factions, social welfare, cultural elements and philosophical beliefs, etc.

Bankrolling Your Regime

They primary means for your government to raise the resources necessary to govern will be--unsurprisingly--taxation, and the rate of taxation will contribute to the contentment of your population. However, taxes need not be paid in the form of currency. It can be paid in kind. I can even be paid with manpower, as was the case in feudal societies. You will decide which resources to extract and from whom, and face the consequences.

You will also be able to directly engage in business enterprises to fund your empire, but your ability to get away with this will depend on the cultural and philosophical beliefs of your people.

Laws and Social Policies

This ties into another core game mechanic. There will be predefined laws or policies to chose from that attempt to codify and automate certain kinds of governance choices. However, I would also like to implement a simple scripting mechanism where the player can define their own laws and policies. Of course, depending on the level of contentment, loyalty, and philosophical beliefs prevalent in a region, a certain portion of the population may choose to flaunt your laws as an act of defiance. And a certain number of more misanthropic elements will always chose to break the law if it is not in their best interest.

All Resources Are Local

Instead of having a global resource pool, government assets will be located in specific physical places. To pay for things, you will have to arrange for resources to be transported to where they will be used. This includes logistics for military campaigns. This opens up the opportunity for highway robbery, plundering by raiders, loss of resources or the gain of resources to conquest, etc.

War

As I have so far been focused on the economic/social simulation aspect of the game, I haven't yet though very hard about how war will work.

Your Faction Cannot Be Destroyed

Instead of losing if your faction is conquered by another, you begin to play a different game. At that point your goal is to foment rebellion and try to reestablish independence. I haven't fleshed out how that will work just yet.

Different Platforms and Formats

I can easily see the core functionality of this game used in several different formats. For simplicity, I intend to make the first iteration turn-based. But later I would like to see it implemented in real-time. It could also be a browser-based MMO where a game can last months and where players are idle much of the time, waiting for things to happen that they can respond to.

Edited by: snoopydaniels

I have had a similar idea for a long time and has begun working on such a game. There are some differences of course. Most importantly in my version I intend to have very little simulation, instead each "leader" is free to do whatever it wants, though there may be consequences. Furthermore there are more than one leader per faction and each leader is in control of just one unit, so it's a hybrid between a roguelike and a 4x game. If you lose your unit you will lose the game. You may want to spawn new leaders to manage your empire at times. I overall think technology is a problematic concept in 4x games so I might not include it at all.

Anyway cool idea.

Thanks for the feedback! I'm not sure I totally grasp the concept of your game, but it sounds intriguing. Let me know how it progresses! I'm making substantial progress on the random map generation logic.

Nice! Are you using Perlin noice?

Yep, I'm using a combination of Perlin noise and some simple curve functions (for example, to produce polar ice.) Here's a link to what I have so far:

Editor.p5js.org

This is roughly comparable to the project I am working on in quite a lot of ways so I'll be interested to see how it turns out.

Especially similar is the information gathering network system.