Imperialism Remake Game Definition

Introduction

Imperialism
The creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination. (Wikipedia)

Setting

This turn based strategy game is about the historic era of Imperialism where nations fought for strategic dominance by all means using industrial, diplomatic and military powers.

You start as monarch of one of several grand nations which all aspire to rule the world. Your country is not yet developed: the industrial output is still low, the military is weak and the diplomatic corps is lying idle. But you have a workforce willing to contribute to the industrialization and ultimately expansion of your nation.

Industrialization

What you could as a young leader is to modernize your country. Educate engineers which develop natural resources for you (like building mines for delivering coal) or build a nationwide transportation-rail-system. Command your workforce to produce higher-valued products from these resources. Then trade these away and make profit. With the new money you can extend your factories, feed a larger work force, trade or explore new resources, feed the people and finally make even more profit. Eliminate inefficiencies wherever they occur in order to maximize this profit.

Expansion

The time will come to invest in a military. Don’t wait too long or you might find yourself to be the objective of your neighbors. Sure, they will build a military too. But with a strong industrial base, one can build a powerful military. In the end the most often sought way to expand your empire might be war. Choose your victim carefully and finally tell your generals to advance. The price will be an even larger empire with even larger industrial base and that in turn will boost your army. The sky is the limit.

Conflicts

However, going to war in a world where there are several other empires the size of your own is dangerous. Your neighbors will not like what you do and might form a hostile alliance. Be careful. Your diplomats will warn you. Either conquer them all, you old warmonger, or act diplomatic, promise enough to some of them to let them ignore your actions or make alliances too. A world full of alliances can make international relations complicated and refreshingly interesting. With the right decisions, based on the actions of your opponents, with an efficient industrial base, clever diplomatic relations and a strong army, you’ll have the best chances to build a lasting empire.

Strategizing

Typical for strategy games is balancing of different goals, making sacrifices and balancing risks and rewards. Even more, the optimal strategy dynamically depends on the behavior of the competitors thus creating a fascinating circle of strategies and counter-strategies. We therefore want to present to the player decisions that matter:

  • Either create and arm a military now and conquer something or improve infrastructure and industrial base to support higher military later.
  • Either sell goods where they give the highest profit or dominate specific markets and ensure political influence in these regions.
  • Either invest in science to gain efficiency in military, industry in the future or invest money now.

This means the player has to set constantly monitor and adjust his priorities for selling goods, for production, for research, for improvement of infrastructure and industry.

Game Philosophy

This project is a remake of the classic SSI game Imperialism in the wider sense. We want to capture the spirit of the original game by adopting a large number of original concepts but also by improving inferior original elements and by modest mixing in of elements of other successful modern strategy games or a few of our own ideas. Although we value immersion into the historical context and try to avoid anachronisms this game is no historical and economical accurate simulation. By this we want to create a unique deep strategy game that delivers a grand setting (achieving world domination) by optimal interplay of economy, diplomacy and military actions as well as a worthy successor of the original Imperialism game.

Todo

Insert link to in-depth comparison to original game.

Programming Philosophy

We aim for supporting many different operating systems as well as for easy to use and allowing extensive customizations. We will use the tools for customization ourselves during the creation. We demand the source code to be in a clean and understandable state at all times. Standard and well tested libraries should be used extensively.

Availability

The finished product of this project can be obtained for free (without any fees for the game itself). The source code will be published under a free, open source license, the art asserts under a similar license suitable for creative content.

Setting

  • 4 turns per year (seasons), earliest start 1814, usual end 1914 (400 turns) but the game continues running if players want to
  • Great powers (GP) and Minor nations (MN); defines their behavior as AI; players can however choose to play any nation; playing a MN is not recommended though
  • Limit of 10 GP and 20 MN per game

Map and Terrain

  • Map: staggered layout (every second row is shifted by half a tile, so every tile has six neighbours: NW, W, SW, SE, E, NE) and no wrapping of the map
  • Only a few basic terrain types: desert, plain, swamp, jungle, hills, mountains, tundra, coastal sea, ocean
  • The water area on a map must be connected, i.e. each sea tile must have a connection to each other sea tile. This means: no inland sea. This is follows from: trade by sea only and to simplify warfare at sea.

Victory Conditions

  • Military victory: 60% of provinces conquered (including colonies), the game immediately ends, MP or non-MP games can be continued if desired
  • Diplomatic victory: Owning less than 60% of the provinces but being so advanced that the world admires you. Can be achieved during a “world congress”. Each 10 years after the first 40 years there is such a congress where every province has one vote. With 60% or more of the votes a nation can also become winner. Each province votes with 80% chance for their owning nation (except provinces of MN). All provinces of MN (and of GP with a 20% chance) vote according to greatness of each GP. For this a normalized score is calculated for all GP (individual score = (diplomatic standing 30% (being peaceful helps here), military power 20%, owned territory 20%, industrial output 20% (smoothed over the last 5 years), tech advances 10%) divided by sum of individual scores of all GP) and the provinces vote then according to this chances.

Economy

The player needs income to pay for military, research, infrastructure and diplomatic actions. In this chapter it is detailed how to gain money by selling/trading goods. International trade is a key element of the game.

  • It increases the base of your income allowing larger investments in military and research.
  • Increased trade improves international relations (also see Diplomacy).
  • Highly specialized economies are more productive.

Demand (consumption)

  • The population is willing to pay for up to a certain amount of goods each turn. This is the demand.
  • The demand of a single province can be normal (1.0x), poor (0.7x) or exceptional (1.5x).
  • The base demand of a province is 1 unit of furniture and 1 unit of garment (maybe also paper and tools).
  • The base demand may increase with a certain absolute value X (~0.01) per turn during the course of a scenario.
  • A marketplace is the set of all provinces belonging to a single nation including colonies.
  • For each marketplace the demand of all provinces belonging to this marketplace is summed up.
  • People will buy and consume more than 100% of normal demand (up to 150%) if sufficient supply is present, but then the price will fall next turn. On the other hand if supply could not reach 100% of the demand, prices will increase. However, prices will increase so much that by keeping supply low and high alternately gives more profit than steadily supplying on an average basis.
  • Base price of furniture and garment are ($300).
  • Starvation: If the demand is not matched by the supply during the course of several turns (less than 70% fulfillment on average of the last 4 turns) then production of goods is severely reduced (30% penalty).

Todo

Provide formula for dependency price/demand/supply.

Trade

  • Tradeable basic resources: fish&meat, grain&apple, wood, oil, ore, coal, cotton&wool
  • Tradeable advanced products: timber, paper, furniture, cloth, garment, steel, weapon, can of food
  • Each tradeable item can either be bought or sold.
  • The amount to be bought or sold (target values) is specified during each turn.
  • A minimal account balance is given, i.e. during trade the value of the current account should never fall below this limit. A buying transaction that would let the account fall under the limit is immediately canceled.
  • Each marketplace has it’s own prices.
  • The prices are calculated by trade activity (demand and supply) during the last years.
  • The prices are kept constant during one trade phase.
  • Trade is performed simultaneously (all marketplaces one after another in a random order, for new each game turn there are multiple trade rounds with a random order).
  • Trade capacity is important for sellers (sellers are responsible for delivery of the product). Selling transactions that would exceed the trade capacity are canceled. Players get an estimation how much trade capacity their sold products will approximately use.
  • Subventions (15%, 30%, 50%) can additionally be placed on marketplaces, it means that the amount of product is adjusted, not the price. So as a buyer you get less units delivered than you paid for and as a seller you must deliver more units than you get paid for.
  • Trade ends if nobody wants or can sell and buy anymore.
  • During one trade round the marketplaces are executed in some random order. Typically there should be 5 – 10 trade rounds.
  • On one marketplace, first all offers are collected, then these orders are ordered by best related nation to worst related nation, then all orders are partly fulfilled (not more than 2% or the demand per order)

Todo

Provide formula for price dependency on demand/supply of previous years. Subventions should work differently. You should get a higher market share directly but at the price of paying more.

Balance Sheet

  • Income results from sold goods and some diplomatic treaties
  • Expenses result from military upkeep, transportation network (railroad, merchant fleet) upkeep, buildings upkeep, construction costs, workforce salary, bought goods and from some diplomatic treaties

Infrastructure

Resources

  • Food Resources orchard (on a plain) delivers apples, farm (on a plain) delivers wheat, cattle farm (on a plain) delivers meat, fishing ground (on coastal sea) delivers fish (fish and cattle meat are combined into one quantity for transport and further processing: fish&meat, the same goes for grain&apple)
  • Other Resources forest or scrub forest (on a plain) delivers wood, oil sources (in swamps or deserts) deliver oil, mines (on hills or mountains) deliver ore or coal, silver mines (in mountains) deliver money (still must be connected), sheep farms (on hills) deliver wool, cotton farms (on plains) deliver cotton (cotton and wool is combined into one quantity for transport and further processing: cotton&wool)
  • Development Every resource deposit except fish has to be developed to deliver resources every turn (maximal development level is three)

Transportation

  • Every nation has one port, the port of the capital that ideally should be located at a river mouth of a river that goes through this country. This port is the special port through which all the trade goes.
  • Every resource has to be in the catchment area of a depot (capital counts as depot) or a lighthouse or a river port
  • Every resource (except fish) delivers as many units per turn as their level is (1-3)
  • Silver does not give a resource but money ($100) directly!
  • Fish needs a lighthouse next to it
  • Every depot must be connected by railway to the capital or to a port; Lighthouses and river ports are automatically connected
  • Currently transportation cannot be blocked or intercepted in any way, that may change in future versions
  • There are the following maintenance costs: XX

Todo

Provide value for XX.

Industry

Development and Construction

  • Every resource can be developed up to third level
  • On each tile there can only be one resource development (mine, farm, …) and one transport development (depot, lighthouse, river port, port)
  • You can only continue constructing railroads if they are properly connected (to another piece of railroad or to a depot).
  • You can only build a depot if there is already railroad to that tile.
  • Except for the capitals which already have a port and a depot.
  • Destruction: Improvements can be destroyed for free but it will always take 2 turns time and will only be effective if the province owning this tile isn’t captured in between (to prevent scorched earth tactics).
  • To simplify the construction of railroads you can plan ahead and put orders for railroad construction in a pipeline/queue. You only have to specify the maximum number of construction teams. Provided the money and that all rules are obeyed (like connectivity to existing network) these jobs are processed then in the order of the queue.
  • The development state of each country is completely visible by all players, it will be displayed on the big game map.

Production

Raw materials to advanced products (conversion ratio)

Paper mill (wood to ..)

  • wood (2) to timber (1)
  • wood (2) to paper (1)

Furniture factory

  • timber (2) to furniture (1)
  • Spinning mill
  • cotton&wool (2) to cloth (1)

Clothing factory

  • cloth (2) to garment (1)

Steel mill

  • ore (1) and coal (1) to steel (1)

Tool&Weapon factory

  • steel (2) to tool (1) or weapon (1)

Cannery

  • grain&apple (2) and meat&fish (1) to can of food (1)

Refinery

  • oil (2) to fuel (1)

Train station

  • timber (1) and steel (1) to transport (1)

Use of these products: sell (trade), buy ships and military, extend infrastructure and industry.

Worker pool

  • The worker pool (W) contains all workers (employed and unemployed, skilled and unskilled)
  • A labour unit (LU) is what an unskilled worker can provide per turn
  • Unskilled workers have a base productivity of 1 LU
  • With paper and money ($100) an unskilled worker can be promoted to skilled worker
  • A skilled worker has a base productivity of 2 LU
  • With paper and garment and furniture and money ($500) a skilled worker can be promoted to expert worker
  • An expert worker has a base productivity of 3 LU
  • There is a special pool, the soldier pool (or military reserve MR).
  • To add one unit (of trained soldiers) to the soldier pool take a skilled worker and a weapon and money ($200)
  • Every skilled, expert or trained soldier can always be reduced to an unskilled worker without cost or delay.

Factories

  • Paper mill (initial output CAP 4 units of timber or paper, requiring 4 LU)
  • Furniture factory (initial output CAP 2 units of furniture, requiring 4 LU)
  • Spinning mill (initial output CAP 4 units of cloth, requiring 4 LU)
  • Clothing factory (initial output CAP 2 units of garment, requiring 4 LU)
  • Steel mill (initial output CAP 2 units of steel, requiring 2 LU)
  • Tool&Weapon factory (initial output CAP 1 unit of tool or weapon, requiring 2 LU)
  • Cannery (initial output CAP 4 can of food, requiring 2 LU)
  • Refinery (initial output CAP 1 unit of fuel, requiring 2 LU)
  • Train station (initial output CAP of 2 transports, requiring 2 LU)

Diplomacy

States between two nations

War or peace are always visible to all others. Other states are only visible to other nations having an embassy in one of the involved nations. In most cases peace will be the default state at game start if not specified differently (in a scenario for example).

War

  • No trade or treaty except peace treaty possible
  • Minimum duration of 4 turns
  • Peace treaty can be coupled to a payment of max. 10% of BSP of the paying nation

Peace

Allows to trade and to seek other treaties

Established Trade mission

  • Costs $300 to establish
  • Allows to improve relations by trade and removes the trade penalty (20% reduces incomes from trades between these two nations)
  • After prolonged war (6 turns of non-interrupted war) it will be destroyed

Established Embassy

  • Requires DR ≥ 10 and costs $1000 to establish
  • Allows to negotiate NAPs and Alliances and to improve relations by propaganda
  • Makes the diplomatic states of this nation visible
  • After prolonged war (8 turns of non-interrupted war) it will be destroyed

Non-Aggression Pact

  • Requires DR ≥ 40 and an established embassy
  • Allows an assured time of peace (at least 4 turns) and a compensation payment for immediate breaking later on.
  • During the first 4 turns a certain fond (both nations paying $250 each turn, totaling $2000) is build up. Can then be terminated immediately but then the whole fond is payed immediately to the aggrieved party.
  • Can canceled with a 4 turn delay after turn 4, the fond is then dissolved gradually (reverse to the build up).
  • If automatically canceled if DR falls below 35

Alliance

  • DR ≥ 60
  • Includes a Non-Aggression Pact
  • Each nation can only be in one alliance at most
  • Gives bonus in trade (+15% revenue) and in technology (-5% costs)
  • Effects are taking place as long as the NAP holds; the alliance is automatically canceled if the NAP is canceled or broken; canceling the alliance is equivalent to canceling the NAP
  • Is automatically canceled if DR falls below 55

Diplomatic Actions

Buy shares of the press industry in a country to pursuit in propaganda activity

  • You can buy shares in the press industry of a country securing a DR positive effect but you have to pay (increasingly ever more each time).
  • Start is $100 for a certain package (10% in MN, 5% in GP) with 10% increase of the price each time and all other shares are diluted by 10% or 5%, respectively

Develop a country (only MN)

  • Lending of a certain amount of LU including a certain amount of money each turn for typically 5 or 10 turns
  • Increases DR for each turns it is active

Peaceful integration of a MN into a GP

  • Only possible if the MN is attacked and you weren’t doing it

Diplomatic feedback from AI players

  • How much they trust you because of past action (no war, no big military)
  • How much they are grateful because of trade, development of infrastructure
  • How impressed they are because of propaganda or other achievements
  • What they see in you: the villain of the game, a minor power, their potential white knight in case they are attacked?

Diplomatic goals

  • Peaceful assimilation of minor nations. This requires befriending them before and defending them against an external threat.
  • Declare war and seek peace. A peace treaty will last at least a fixed 5 years periods.
  • Seek reassurance through non-aggression treaties.
  • Seek alliances (common goals) against leaders with long duration and not terminable (or only against really high fee), they have a fixed goal (war in X year, at least Y % of territory gained, loss compensation)
  • Increase influence nations (by offering money).
  • Bully others around.
  • Treaties with fixed duration (10 years or at least 5 years with 2 years cancellation time)
  • War declaration could also need time (2 turns, but gives right to first strike)
  • Gold is not everything: you can influence your partners by money but only a bit, sometimes they won’t do it, not for all the gold in the world
  • No new treaty is allowed to contradict earlier contracts (not even potentially only) - there in the design treaties with fixed duration is preferred
  • It should be clear how each diplomatic action will influence the relations in a quantitative way.
  • Breaking a treaty is either impossible or results in serious harm, whatever this means for now.
  • Statistics are not incorporated here but in the Statistics section (however quick links between)
  • Treaties are accepted if both have agreed on them. Need to define exact timing. Probably beginning of a turn.

Improving relations

Relations can be improved by:

  • Every kind of trade
  • Subventions for developing their infrastructure (only towards minor nations)
  • Existing peace and alliance treaties
  • Propaganda (by secret organizations or by influencing the press)
  • Fulfilling wishes of minor nations

Diplomatic Influence

  • Is kind of diplomatic currency, can be used for various things
  • Is gained by trade

Role of Minor Nations

They could actively choose sides. They should not react too erratically but also there should be clever tactics that might change their course. Difficult.

Relations

  • improve when extending their infrastructure
  • improve when trading (effectively not only offering)
  • improve upon fulfillment of wishes, being useful for them
  • improve for treaties like a peace treaty and keeping them
  • worsen if military is large enough and common border or many ships

Peaceful assimilation

  • Relation must be very good over a long history (maybe additive for whole history = trust) by trade or diplomacy
  • No immediate threat: long running peace treaty or far away
  • How peaceful you were in general, they like peaceful and cultural (large culture rating) nations
  • Become status of close friend (public visible)
  • Have a strong enough military, they feel attracted to very powerful nations, however first repelled
  • Defend upon aggression of others, a threat by another nations give a big boost
  • Trade and fulfill all demands wishes
  • Buy any excess exports
  • After certain time is gone -> assimilation festivities
  • Secrete turnaround should be possible to pursue (not see with whom they trade maybe?)
  • They could have special abilities (military, cultural, economic) that they give you, when you assimilate them.
  • Invasion of new territory after assimilation should take some time.

Research

General aspects

  • Research is only a minor aspect of the game
  • Techs can be researched by investing money, the research of a tech takes 4 turns to complete
  • All Techs require the current date to have passed a certain year and can require the research of some precursor techs
  • After the starting year of the tech, the cost get exponentially cheaper with a half time of 20 years
  • At most 2 tech projects at the same time, unless the College is upgraded to a University (then 4 tech projects at the same time).
  • Techs are not tradeable, there are additional discounts (~20% if all players have the Tech already)
  • Exploring the country for minerals is also a research project – it will reveal some random resources. Can only be researched if there are resources to be discovered left. The resource to be discovered will not change upon reload.
  • Different categories: Military (M), Economical (E), Diplomatic (D), Naval (N), Land units (L), Resources non-food (R), Food (F). Each category gives a symbol on the Tech sheet and can be used to sort the table of available Techs.

Todo

Random resources must be balanced somehow and must be preserved upon reloads

Techs

  • M+N Light warship II
  • M+N Light warship III requires Light warship II
  • M+N Heavy warship II
  • M+N Heavy warship III requires Heavy warship III
  • M+L Militia II
  • M+L Infantry II (“Breech loading rifle”, IY 1848) [image of a Dreyse needle gun as background]
  • M+L Infantry III (“Machine gun”, IY 1880) requires Infantry II
  • M+L Artillery II
  • M+L Artillery III requires Artillery II
  • M+L Cavalry II
  • M+L Cavalry III (“Tanks”, IY 1900) requires Cavalry II
  • M+L +1 Militia per province
  • M+L +2 Units per battle
  • M+E -10% Upkeep (“Nationalism”)
  • M+E-10% Training costs
  • M 5% trickle back of casualties
  • M +5% experience of trained soldiers (“Military school”)

Possible names: Streamlined Hulls, Bessemer Converter, Rifled Artillery, Steel armor plate, Gunpowder, Canon, Artillery, Geography and map making, Construction of turbine propeller, Colt gun, Morse code, Rifles invented, Internal combustion machine, Diesel machine, Telephone (better communication, efficiency)

  • E+N Light merchant ship II
  • E+N Light merchant ship III requires Light merchant ship II
  • E+N Heavy merchant ship II (paddle-wheel)
  • E+N Heavy merchant ship III requires Heavy merchant ship II
  • E+F Apple resources II
  • E+F Apple resources III requires Apple resources II
  • E+F Wheat resources II (“Windmill”)
  • E+F Wheat resources III requires Wheat resources II
  • E+F Meat resources II
  • E+F Meat resources III requires Meat resources II
  • E+R Wood from forest II
  • E+R Wood from forest III requires Wood from Forest II
  • E+R Oil well II
  • E+R Oil well III requires Oil well II
  • E+R Ore mine II (“Square set timbering”)
  • E+R Ore mine III requires Ore mine II
  • E+R Coal mine II (“Coal extraction”)
  • E+R Coal mine III requires Coal mine II
  • E Silver mine II
  • E+R Wool&Cotton resource II
  • E+R Wool&Cotton resource III requires Wool&Cotton resource II
  • E Railroad possible on swamps and hills (“Iron railroad bridge”)
  • E Railroad possible into mountains (“Dynamite”) requires Railroad possible on swamps and hills

Names: Jenny Speed invented: Wool from sheep, Better transport wagons: More efficient wagons, Better pump for mines: More efficient mines, Steam engine, high pressure: Enables railroad building, Seed Drill: Improve grain farms and orchards to level 1, Cotton Gin: Improve cotton plantations to level 1, Iron Railroad bridge: Cross swamp, enable forester who can improve hardwood forest to level 1, Feed Grasses: Enables rancher who can improve wool farms and livestock ranches to level 1, Industrial revolution, Better canned food, Gas lamps: better mines and workers more efficiently , Cement improved, Electric generator: town upgrade?, Chemicals for farmers, Sewing machine, Elevator: mines to level 3, Oil drill, Dynamite: Improved railroad, Electric light: Mines and city upgrade, Car with combustion machine.

  • D +5% influence creation with minor nations
  • D +5% efficiency of propaganda (“Radio”)
  • E +5% efficiency of research (“National elite university”)

Higher tech efficiency, higher cultural ranking, more diplomatic influence

  • Propaganda: Increases influences, gives special unit spy?
  • India discovered: Bonus for first
  • Radio 1901
  • Better relation favors nations in trade

Military

Philosophy: The role of the military in this game is quite large, but not dominant. We should not forget that the game is also about industrial development and diplomacy, not only about war. Therefore battles must be complex and offer diversification, but on a simplified level. The battle and army model of Imperialism 1 needs to be extended without making it too complex. Some ideas from other games (like unit promotions) should be incorporated. The main points here:

  • A strong military needs a strong industrial base for paying high upkeep
  • It can be either defensively or offensively aligned
  • Battles can take more than a turn, delaying action and allowing reinforcement.
  • The number of units taking part in battle is limited (due to limited organization and area) but should seldom be reached.
  • Healing is not for free, it may also take time.
  • Battles are carried out on a detailed hex map and can take several turns per game turn. Panzer General like feeling.
  • Terrain is determined by defending province (and specific for each)
  • Maybe add training time (cheap units, short training time, long units, large training time) - during training will be shown in barracks of ministry of defense, deployed right after training
  • Fortification should be expensive and less useful, so artillery orgies are not necessary.
  • Militia might actually only be present in the defense case and tied to the province. This could be reflected by the naming also.
  • Light and heavy cavalry (move and attack or heavy artillery attack only, or move attack and move on, light cavalry)
  • Health status is displayed as a bar with green yellow and red (red is casualties, green is full morale) or so
  • Movement capacity and speed depends on development of railroad system.
  • Military garrisons can only be seen by neighbored provinces with some degree of uncertainty depending on how many units (especially officers) you have for yourself.

Todo

Provide details of how capacity and speed depend on development of railroad system and make this information available to the player.

What if two neighboring powers attack each other in neighboring provinces or even in a triangle. Who becomes priority? The one with largest, fastest army?

Todo

Solve this problem.

Land Units

5 types of units

  • militia (stationed in provinces, number is limited per province, only good in defense)
  • infantry (cheap, slow, short distance, good in defense and city attack)
  • cavalry (expensive, fast, short distance, weak against cities)
  • artillery (expensive, slow, large distance)
  • officers (at most one per army, increases moral and attack of surrounding units)

Unit properties

  • attack strength (IN 0 – 20), no separate defense strengthen: how strong a unit attacks
  • unit strength (percentage 0 – 100%): relative amount of soldiers present in this unit
  • range (IN 2 – 8): firing distance to target in tiles of the battlefield
  • speed (IN 2 – 10): movement speed in tiles of the battlefield
  • creation cost ($): amount of money to create from the soldier pool
  • upkeep ($ and FN units of fuel): payment per turn for upkeep of this unit, also including fuel costs
  • experience level (IN 1-5): experience increase efficiency and is gained by taking part in combats, is lowered when the unit is refilled

Production and Refilling after combat

  • units can be produced from the soldier pool and need each one unit of soldiers and the indicated creation costs, next turn they are available at the capital province
  • units with less than 100% unit strength can be refilled from the soldier pool without delay but at costs (equal to production costs of such a part of a unit plus a deployment fee ($20)) and experience is reduced
  • units with less than 30% unit strength are liquidised to manpower pool

Land Units Strengths:

Type Attack Range Speed Creation costs Upkeep
Militia I 6 2 3    
Militia II 8 2 3    
Infantry I 8 2 4 1.0 1.0
Infantry II 10 2 4 1.4 1.0
Infantry III 12 3 6 1.8 1.1
Artillery I 14 4 3 1.5 1.3
Artillery II 18 6 3 2.0 1.5
Artillery III 22 8 4 2.5 1.7
Cavalry I 12 2 6 1.5 1.2
Cavalry II 16 2 8 2.0 1.4
Tank(Cav III) 20 4 8 2.5 1.6+fuel
Officers 8 0 4 1.0 1.0

Additionally:

  • Artillery -50% when defending
  • Cavalry -50% when attacking a city area
  • Officers only defending

Creation cost is a multiplier on the base creation cost ($500).

Upkeep (per turn) is a multiplier on the base upkeep ($50)

Todo

Upkeep multiplier depends on experience level of unit. Define how.

  • Special defence multiplier: Entrenched (Militia, Infantry +2 if it hasn’t moved the last battle round)
  • Promotion of Officers: Base is Lieutenant (attack +1 for 3 random units), then Colonel (attack +1 for 6 random units), then General (attack +2 for 8 random units)
  • Earliest time of introduction: Type I from 1814, Type II from 1850, Type III from 1880, introduced by techs
  • Strategic movement limited to 2-3 provinces per turn, faster with railroads?

Todo

Specify how much faster movement is with railroad, specify how overseas transport is done.

Combat

Land combat

Battlefield

Province battle board in staggered layout of tiles (as in the main map) with 24 tiles side length, 3 tile (capital is 6 tiles) wide city

Time

  • 5 battle turns per game turn at most
  • If the city is occupied at any time during the battle, the attacker has won. Battle is over
  • If all attacking units are destroyed or fleeing or the player aborts the attack, the defender has won. Battle is over.
  • Otherwise (city not taken but attacking units are still present), the battle continues the next turn keeping the actual strategic position but with reinforcement possible

Damage model

  • Two units are in combat with attack values \(a_i\) and strengths \(s_i\)
  • Damage dealt is then \(d_i=\mbox{max}(s_i, c(s_j a_j / a_i + \Delta )),j\neq i\) or in words: a constant modifier (\(c\) about 0.1) times the weighted strength of the other unit (weight is ratio of attack values) plus a noise term math:Delta with variance approx. 0.2 but which cannot be higher than our own strength in total
  • Damage is calculated for both units and then subtracted from their strength
  • Units with less than 30% strength will not attack anymore but flee automatically

No auto resolution of battle

  • Actually there is auto battle, you can let an officer take over which will use AI routines. But apart from that the real model is used – no other calculations.

Special bonuses

  • Encirclement factor of provinces = Number of own surrounding provinces minus Number of provinces of the enemy divided by the sum of both gives up to 50% bonus for attacker or defender. Reason: avoid isolated provinces in foreign territory, favor straight front lines
  • Sea invasion ignores Encirclement factor but gives fixed 20% penalty to invader because it is more difficult.
  • How to add all bonuses? Additive? Multiplicative? Limit?

Strategic Combat

Tactical Combat

  • Move and/or attack. Attack ends movement.
  • Responsive fire maximally two times per turn.
  • Entrenchment (defending bonus, if not moved last turn, only for infantry)
  • terrain hills, mountains, cities and across river give a +1 bonus each (cumulative) on defense strength (i.e. attack value when in defending position)

Scenarios

Europe 1814

  • Great Powers France, Great Britain, Prussia, Austria, Sardinia, Ottoman Empire, Russia
  • Minor Nations Portugal, Spain, Catalonia, Morocco, North Africa, Sicily, Egypt, Greece, Serbia, Switzerland, Bavaria, Hanover-Brunswick, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Poland
  • Spain united but weak
  • North Africa split in Tunisia and Algeria, ready for colonizing

Statistics

We want that clever players can find out about their opponents plans and status to some extent if they are willing to read the stats. Also people love stats about their own empire and so on. So here is the place to think about what to give and when.

History for each turn in the past for each statistics?

General stats about your empire

  • Number of provinces, Treasure, Military force, Tax rate
  • Working population, Industrial output/productivity, infrastructure

Special stats about your enemy

  • Rankings without absolute values every x years
  • Diplomatic relations, what they think of you, how likely war is

Artificial Intelligence

General requirements

  • Three difficulty level: easy, normal, challenging
  • Moderate thinking time
  • Include elements of chance, but also predictable
  • Some central switches: peacefulness, ruthlessness (diplomacy), special affections (technology, navy, …)
  • Memorize past actions during a game (maybe also between games but then can be turned off)
  • Should communicate reasons for its actions

Minor Nations should

  • act defensively (never wage war, not even on other minor nations)
  • sell resources and buy consumer goods

Requirements

  • Should have optional a personal flavor for each grand nation, definable by some sort of sliders (peacefulness, greediness, …)
  • Should have aims/goals like assimilation in X years, war in Y years and act according to these goals but also redefine them from time to time
  • free parameters not determined by the goals are maximized for certain general criteria (money, military, industry)
  • Military AI: takes roles (defender, attacker) but never defends completely, always at least tries to counter-attack
  • Military AI: single provinces: rather defend (aggressive, cautious), rather attack(aggressive, cautious)
  • Declare War, Beg for Peace and then shortly after Declare Ware again without rebuilding phase – this should not happen!
  • As a inferior Nation an A.I should basically try to not attack meaningless but also not give in. Just concentrate on defending and surviving.

Rapid feedback

I would like to test AIs fully automatic against each other. This means that I can adjust parameters and then let them run against each other. Ideally I would also get online feedback from players playing against the AI, probably more detailed than just who won. Possible benefits:

  • Improve AI performance
  • Find optimal parameters (preferences) depending on country and starting value
  • Get fast feedback on new algorithms.

Multiplayer

Requirements

  • Soft time constraint (like a game clock that gets added a fixed amount for each turn)
  • Slow mode like one turn per day (but how is tactical battle then incorporated?)

User interface

We start full screen and expect at least 1024 x 768 (see base/constants.py)

Conventions

  • Style: Water color or pencil drawings
  • Standard graphics format is Portable Network Graphics (png) because of wide adoption, lossless compression and transparency
  • More editable files (PhotoShop, CorelDraw) including all layers can and should be saved too

Screens

Start Screen

Actions

  • Enter the Game lobby (start or continue single-, multiplayer game)
  • Change Preferences
  • Open help browser
  • Open the Editor
  • Exit

Main Map Screen

  • Default Tile size is 80 x 80 pixel (square tiles)
  • Terrain view as background (showing provinces, units, military movements)
  • One right side: mini-map
  • Selected unit function box
  • Menu toolbar (all the different dialogs and help)
  • Transport Dialog
  • All, the dialogs (Transport, Industry, Trade) run in one Frame with top toolbar for other dialogs and help
  • Listing for each commodity currently connected to transport network, slider bar representing the amount of each commodity to transport vs. total amount

Sound effects

  • Click on a button
  • …

Various things

  • There will be a real time clock in one corner of the screen, allowing even to set an alarm or a timer. But it also can be turned off if wished.
  • Do we want to have customized mouse cursors? Easy to implement, but is there any real benefit? Mouse cursors should indicate possible actions.
  • Save games should have a pre-view screen shown always.
  • Inbuilt functionality to make a screenshot.

Ideas

Unincorporated ideas

  • Do we need a newspaper or advisers? Do they add to the game experience? Should not be only text, but also lots of graphical information.
  • Military and Combat: Do we need it that complex? Is morale really adding to game experience? Is it balanced?
  • Some educational/historic input. Additional to newspaper articles also great scientists (special specialists), great generals taken as historic figures. Maybe even historic database articles when clicking on a country or a province city?
  • Should leaders provide special abilities? Use historic names and several choices per country. In order to be important this should have a distinct effect on the game, otherwise it would just add to complexity.
  • Do we want to have products with different kind of qualities or only competition over price? In general it would it more realistic but also unnecessarily complex. Quantity as sign of dominance is enough.
  • Small gimmick: special currency (just the historical name) for each nation?
  • Different way of doing culture: having cultural background/predominance for each province and this then helps.
  • Revolt risk in each province right after occupation, lowering productivity, destroying improvements, being suppressed by military presence.
  • Define provinces as core provinces. Focus points for tension/aggression. But also ask for help others to regain your provinces which you would finally get, even when it is conquered by others.
  • When signing an alliance (planning war against somebody) already divide the territory. This will be the plan for division later regardless who conquered what?
  • Helping allies by sending troops to them and fighting or sending as a loan. (but not for free)
  • Military: Units: Does automatic upgrades make senses? If the number of units gets large this would mean a lot of work for the user but the best way of upgrading is not clear.
  • Resources appearing/disappearing by random?
  • Railroad routes to neighbors necessary in order to have trad capabilities?
  • Do we want Population as a real number? Currently only the number of provinces important for demand…
  • Prestige staff like special buildings (Panama canal, Suez canal, Expeditions to South Pole, North Pole, Himalaya, Exploring Africa, .. giving a cultural boost.
  • Instead of council of governors having a different score measure based on real assets.
  • Enable power blocks: maybe by having open markets giving trade advantages only if there is a peace treaty of all member for at least X years.
  • Statistics with bars (relative numbers) or real numbers (absolute numbers)
  • Have another extra consumer good next to clothes, furniture, tools.
  • Have special infrastructure improvements for each province (like industrial zone, university, military academy, trade zone, shipyard, …) giving bonuses and specializing this province. They need a yearly budget to operate. This would make the provinces even more valuable. More to gain in war.
  • Diplomacy: Specific contracts like junior/senior partner in alliance or give province X or war
  • Diplomacy: Send Ambassadors to foreign countries giving special bonuses gaining experience with every action they can perform
  • Diplomacy: Peace negotiations including money etc.
  • Should towns grow with radius on map?
  • More workshops: stone (to cement). salt (for canned food)
  • Transportation system with capacity (goods / turn) and different kind of transport ways (road, rail, …).
  • Peaceful assimilation should units be taken over from assimilated nation?
  • Diplomacy: Minor Nations: Maybe having the chance to deal with them exclusively for a certain period of time.
  • With experience use resources more efficiently.
  • Diplomacy: Minor Nations: Instead of assimilation give them state of colony - only limited influence. Supply workers, raw materials.
  • Spy as special unit
  • Privateer as naval action possibility
  • More buildings to be placed on land tiles that give bonuses?
  • If two GPs start war on the same Minor Nation and somebody wants to defend them he should end up in war with both. (bug from the original game)
  • Intro movie – I would like it.
  • Limit on how many units per battle/map.
  • Industry: Improve towns to give free stuff depending on character of the province. Do we want that? Alternatives: Increased efficiency of main factories, free workers, increased resources, increased demand. = Industrialization of provinces
  • Include weather conditions?
  • Trade routes? Do we really need them? Do we need to obey them? See trade possible without port? What happens if all sea ports of a nation are conquered? Sea trade possible? (What ports to minor nations use? Is land route preferred?) Do we want to make the game so complex at this position.
  • No corruption, happiness, province improvements, religion or government types, civics as in Civilization and we like it.
  • More internal, social modeling? More influence of historical leaders?
  • Trading territory, buy or sell provinces?
  • National meter for each province, also religions and bad economic state or nearby war have effect on social order or tax burdens. Finally can lead to revolution.
  • Different types of government: Communism, Capitalism
  • Naming Austria-Hungary also Habsburgian Empire? Event scripting to rename it and show it in a newspaper article?
  • How long should it take for a unit to level up? Quite long. At least one or two wars? Maybe going down with time?
  • Special unit: Medic/Field Surgeon (improves recovery?) or a hospital in the province or the general gets an upgrade.
  • Upgrading a unit must be much cheaper than buying/training a new one!
  • Should technology or general progress change unit abilities, e.g make cannon less good after trench warfare is invented?
  • Military-Combat-Naval: Manual Naval battles? How many ship types (merchants, warships) and symbolized as symbols (if used for warlike actions) or just as a number (if used as trade capacity).
  • If he end up with morale, do we want army wide morale like losses of provinces…
  • Minor/Major: Only difference is that Minor is much weaker, cannot be elected in government council. However Minor can become Major and vice versa.
  • Historical scenario: should they have historical aims?
  • For world scenarios: other resources like silk, oil, spices (different names of factories too)
  • Cultural victory via governors council? Increases your influence more and more? Or different victory?
  • If several turns per year - need to write down the names of each turn (and localize them) like Seasons or months.
  • What to do with isolated provinces???
  • Automatic retreat from battlefield as convenience, immediately ending the battle but always resulting in losses. Every retreating units suffers a certain damage (either absolute or relative).
  • Escape points on the battlefield? Or entrance areas? Fixed entrance areas?
  • Height on each terrain tile during combat, influences bonuses?
  • Special bonuses in terrain? Ambush possible in forest. Artillery not in mountains, no entrenchment in mountains or yes? Swamp reduces movement, less defence and attack? Cities ambush.
  • Minor powers cannot negotiate alliances or other important treaties or at least not as leading power?
  • Diplomacy: Treaties secret or open to everybody or what should be secret? Or secret for some period?
  • Diplomacy: Treaties only between two power, however include third power like being neutral to this power. Similar to Crown of Glory.
  • Traveling with soldiers through friendly territory? Teleportate back in case of sudden war?
  • Technology: Tech tree means that some will just look for the shortest route to some military techs. So not too many prerequisites.
  • Number of Techs somewhere between 35 techs (Imp1) and 108 (Imp2).
  • Diplomacy: Spies could have a great potential. For trading relations but also for spying on military. To not abuse load/reload, a mission should always take several turns before a result is shown.
  • All units: specialists/civilian, workers, military should use food.
  • Diplomacy: Possible spy actions: steal money, mess troop movements, destroy improvements?, act as counter-defense, invoke rebellion?
  • Random events like good harvest, harsh winter, earthquake, mining accidents, economic booms, nationalistic surges
  • Selling of troops as an alternative to sending them to alliance partners.
  • Recovery of units after battle takes long unless you have a medic/hospital nearby.
  • Bonus if you hold all provinces from a certain territory.
  • Instead of units of coal have real units: 1000 tons of coal?
  • Kind of opinion of population: like is a war popular or not, is a decision popular – clear ways to get the approval of your own people, like having a good casus belli? Maybe as kind of popularity measure. Considering your power basis. Improve by payments or secret police?
  • Multiplayer: Allow rejoining after crash, save always automatically to have entry points again, chat system
  • Multiplayer: Should player be able to play minor nations. What is the limit of number of multiplayer players? Just the number of nations? What if someone quits?
  • Scripting to have special events? Lua binding?
  • Use nice open source font? Liberation or so?
  • Modability: Make sure the engine works with any number of terrain types, military units, …
  • Diplomacy: Can we tie economic power more closely to diplomatic power? Should be so that it would work also with human players, not only AI, so have to be automatic factor. For example during trading.
  • Trade solely by merchant marine. Transport solely by railway transportation system.
  • Cool historical regimental names instead of “1st Infantry Regiment” (for historical nations). Perhaps fictitious regimental names for random generated nations (Hackensack Regiment of Foot).
  • In seaside towns and provinces could also be an opportunity to build coastal defenses to prevent the port blockades and invasions. Build time should be long-term and expensive.
  • Splitting of nations, maybe as diplomatic mission, maybe as random event if national cohesion is weak (war) or maybe as scripted event (to achieve historical accuracy)
  • Mobilization: costs time and higher keep-up costs but also higher effectiveness, clue is that other nations get to know if someone mobilizes but do not know against whom…
  • If long periods of peace, culture and art flourishes in the capital and across the country – peace dividend
  • Bonuses like free units for special achievement, even of industrial nature, when and how many…

Military

Specialization

  • Each unit can have one special trait, cannot be undone
  • Unit must have at least a certain level of experience or there is a certain fixed chance after each kill/battle action to develop a special trait
  • Upgrade anytime (not during combat) after the conditions are fulfilled
  • Infantry: City attack (bonus on attacking in cities), Tough (bonus on defense)
  • Artillery: Slow down (every attack slows a unit down one movement (not cumulative)), Defender (bonus on attack, penalty on movement)
  • Cavalry: Blitz (bonus on first attack), Fallback (certain chance of withdrawal instead of attack), Scout (can sneak through enemy lines)

Glossary and TODO list

Glossary

$ <number>
Amount of money, in the game a small icon will be used instead
AI
Artificial intelligence
CAP
Capacity
DR
Diplomatic relation
FN
Fractional number with one position after the decimal place
GP
Great power
IN
Integer number
IY
Initial year
LU
Labour unit
MN
Minor nation
MP
Multiplayer
MR
Military reserve
NAP
Non-aggression pact
SP
Singleplayer
WP
Worker pool

TODO list

Todo

Provide formula for dependency price/demand/supply.

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/economy.rst, line 28.)

Todo

Provide formula for price dependency on demand/supply of previous years. Subventions should work differently. You should get a higher market share directly but at the price of paying more.

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/economy.rst, line 55.)

Todo

Provide value for XX.

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/infrastructure.rst, line 32.)

Todo

Insert link to in-depth comparison to original game.

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/introduction.rst, line 69.)

Todo

Provide details of how capacity and speed depend on development of railroad system and make this information available to the player.

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/military.rst, line 30.)

Todo

Solve this problem.

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/military.rst, line 36.)

Todo

Upkeep multiplier depends on experience level of unit. Define how.

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/military.rst, line 97.)

Todo

Specify how much faster movement is with railroad, specify how overseas transport is done.

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/military.rst, line 105.)

Todo

Provide details how naval defense blocks or delays sea invasion.

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/military.rst, line 118.)

Todo

Provide details how this scouting works and on what it depends.

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/military.rst, line 128.)

Todo

Provide costs

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/military.rst, line 163.)

Todo

Provide costs and re-balance

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/military.rst, line 178.)

Todo

Random resources must be balanced somehow and must be preserved upon reloads

(The original entry is located in /home/docs/checkouts/readthedocs.org/user_builds/imperialism-remake-definition/checkouts/latest/documentation/definition/research.rst, line 20.)

Definition build on Jan 23, 2018