4E5 entry - working title 'Trials and Tribulations'

Table of contents

Introduction

Note: this isn't intended to be ultra-realistic, but fun. I know some of these posts seem a bit anachronistic, and perhaps artificial. I've also scootched together some posts which should be separate for ease of gameplay. I've detailed the things that the user will see (and a little into their underlyingness), then the mechanics of the user <-> game part. Then I've gone into details about how everything links together under the surface, then finally how I'm going to implement it and the goals/targets I've set myself.
(note: all this describes the final game, until the goals stage)

Single Paragraph Summary

You control a minister rising through the ranks of government in a medieval european country. You can select one of several ministers to start the game as. You then win over other ministers to your side - either the good way of doing a good job at your post, or the bad way of bribing them. Soon, you are in control of the whole government. Your aim is then to bring into cabinet ministers who are entirely supportive of you. That means either fixing the election to elect who you want, or funding and supporting who you want and continuing to run the country well. Along the way you face the many obstacles a country faces - famine, plague, war, civil unrest and others.

Details of the story, background and setting

...

Details of each department of organisation

Military

This covers all overt military forces. This includes conscription, training, funding of the military. Going to war can only be made once you're in control of the whole government. A good level of military spending fuels patriotism in the public and makes them feel safe. Too much and they feel intimidated and oppressed.

Secret Police

This option becomes available to you if you are particularly evil and corrupt. You are approached by a network of spies, informants and torturers that makes the Spanish Inquisition look like a bunch of pansies. You can use their services to indimidate and control the population. They can also help rig elections.

Agriculture

This is where you can define how much crops grow and livestock is farmed. More of this keeps your granaries well stocked and your population well fed and contented. Less of this means a leaner and so less satisfied population and so more susceptability to famine and plague. However, the more population farming, the less available for other things.

Trade

Trade with other countries keeps your population happy, as they can obtain goods not available in your country. It however costs a lot of money to travel to other countries and back. This takes up population at a low rate for convoys and such, but reduces the chances of a war as tensions between countries are eased.

Justice

This covers all aspects of the criminal justice system. This needs to be matched closely to the level of crime in the country (which is affected by the other actors). If the justice is too strict then people will feel the government is getting tyrannical and will be unhappy. If the justice is too lenient also, people will not feel safe.

Education

This becomes available to you if you are running a good government. Education takes time and people, but after a few years it results in a more educated populace - and thus more productive. It also means more political awareness, and so they are more critical of corrupt ministers. It also means plagues are less likely to happen as people are more aware of hygiene.

Medicine

This becomes available to you if you are running a good government. This costs A LOT of money, but will dramatically reduce the effects of plagues, as well as making them less likely to happen. This can only be implemented a few years after Education though.

Finance

This is one of the core activities of running a government - the obtaining and spending of wealth. This controls the level of taxes, and what you're spending the money on. It also gives you options for embezzling money for yourself, which you can then use to bribe ministers. Embezzling money gives you more options when dealing with corrupt ministers, but is also likely to get you hated by the people, or worse - kicked out of government (losing the game). You can also save money, for use in times of crisis.

Details of politics

Assassination

This is obviously an evil option. If you have the secret police available then you can assassinate any minister that you don't like the look of. This either means that there will be an election for his position, or that the election will be won by another candidate (NOTE: elections cannot be won by default - they always have at least 3 candidates). Each time you do this there's a chance you can be found out for corruption. This chance will increase exponentially each assassination, and decrease linearly with time. Thusly you have to wait longer, the more assassinations you do in a short time.

Bribery

This is also an evil option, but is available any time. Depending on the minister - his personality, your personality and his position - it will cost a different amount of money to bribe him. He will then support you if he gets elected. However, he will not support you if you become good, or if your position weakens.

Threats

This option is free. Unless you've advanced in the game, have been quite brutal and have a lot of support, no ministers are likely to cave. If you threaten a good minister, he's quite likely to tell tales. Evil ministers will laugh it off, and weak ministers will stand firm, but are unlikely to report it.

Funding

Funding is simple. It covers things such as adverts, simple funding of campaigns. It's a way to simply funnel money into election results.

Campaigning

Campaigning takes money, fellow ministers and time before an election. It will influence voters to your side. It is not as effective as bribery. Campaigning becomes more successful as time goes by - slowly - and it is more effective if you have the press on your side.

Press

The press has options for both good and evil. An evil minister can censor and control the press, with almost complete control once his reign is solid. A good minister can give interviews and talk through the press and help win votes, but you need to be careful - sometimes the press can print the story they want, not the story you want.

Details of each event

These 'acts of god' will only appear once you're fairly into the game, so that with good play you should be able to get through them.

War

It is possible a neighbouring country may declare war on you. This can happen if you have a low military spending (easy target), or if you are prosperous and they are thirsting for a kill. The obvious factors affect this - population morale, military spending - as well as not-so-obvious factors. If your government is fractured and fighting, you are less likely to win. There is also a view which tells you which clans and which countries are fighting. There is a sort of random and sort of natural progression. Fighting is generally isolated, but may break out and rash towards your country.

Famine

Famine will strike if you aren't feeding the population enough, if you go through a hard winter or a dry summer, or if you just get bad luck. It's tough, but you have to deal with it. If you have saved up food and supplies from having plenty of farming then you won't be too hard hit. A famine generally won't kill off a population, but it will certainly weaken them, affecting pretty much everything else you do. A famine might also cause you to lose power if you don't do anything about it, or you weren't in a strong position to start with.

Plague

Plagues strike much like famine, but unless you have good medicine, there's not much you can do about it. If you have a healthy and happy populous it's more unlikely, but it's still fairly random. plagues will become very virulent, then slowly die off as people become more resistant. It carries on for a long period of time, and has much the same effect as a famine.

Civil Unrest

If you're being a shitty ruler and the peasants know it, there'll be civil unrest. Things don't go the way you're asking them to, low morale, better chances of your opponents winning in elections - all of that. To allieviate unrest you must either raise the population's morale, or make them fear you too much to disobey.

Peasants Revolt

A peasants revolt is BAD NEWS. The peasants rise up, and unless you want to be usurped, you had better be ready to bring them tough love. The military can put down a revolt, but at great cost. Depending on how naughty you've been it will take more bloodshed to put the revolt down. After it has been put down your country will be in a bad situation. No work will have been done, relations with other countries will be bad (they will see you as either weak or evil). Getting back on track will be difficult, but not impossible. A revolt will only begin from civil unrest, if the unrest is left unchecked.

Rebellion

A rebellion is a revolt but 10x worse. It means the peasants have support in government. You'll need to act fast to snip off their support - without the secret service a rebellion essentially spells your doom. If you're lucky or good you can stop a rebellion, but then the country is absolutely devastated and the chances are low that you could manage to stay in power without another country smelling blood coming in to take over.

Detailed summary of User Interface

The game is a series of menus - everything is done via them. That means I need to get menus DAMN PERFECT. For information on when you get which menu, see later.

Main Menu

There is no Main Menu. The game starts up initially in a default view of the Book Keeping menu (see below). After that, it starts up with the previously used savegame.

Book Keeping

This is the 4th-wall breaking menu. It provides options, save/load and other such game related things under the guise of a "librarian" doing some "book keeping". The savegames would be separate pages in a book, with the first page in the book listing game type options, which are on different pages still.

Politics

This menu contains the details of the politics in the game. Firstly, it displays a current view of the cabinet with who is on your side, in your party, and who isn't. It gives you their names on demand (so that you can assassinate them, as well as to give things a personal feel). It will list upcoming elections for any positions, and if there are any elections ongoing it will display their details. It gives options for bribing or threatening ministers, which are for the most part just a single-click action. You can also have a private talk with a minister to try and persuade him to your side.

Military

This menu controls the options you have for control over the military. There's a set of options for controlling the menu, as well as an overview of the current situation. This means a map of europe, with the different clans and conflicts ongoing. The options that you have for military spending are: whether conscription is on, what ages conscription is over, how many recruits to conscript, how much is spent per recruit and how much is spent overall (this spending increases as the size of the army does, naturally). You can also control the military's presence in the country, and it's type. This means the military can either intimidate the populace, or inspire them. You can also set the military to train for war.

Secret Police

Here you can control the secret police. Depending on the politics options, you get different options here. You can select people for assassination, intimidate the populace or control the press. For intimidating the populace, the same options as the military intimidation exist. For controlling the press, there are several options: You can get the press to cover up an assassination, write a fake article to compliment you, badmouth your opposition, or just downright print propoganda. This menu also has an "intelligence" tab which every so often brings up information which you might find useful (advance warning of rebellions or war, for example).

Agriculture

In this menu, various "agriculture" type options are available. You can control the amount of livestock being slaughtered per day, as well as the breeding of livestock. This is represented as a percentage of livestock to slaughter each day and a percentage to set aside for breeding. This requires a balance to keep the livestock at a constant rate. If the livestock is being bred up, the population won't be eating much, but you'll have more backup meat. The same applies for the seeding and harvesting of grain. You can also implement rationing.

Trade

This menu allows you to set options for trade with other countries. The way this works is that as you trade, you get more trade options, which in turn open up more trade options, each with more value than the last. This is specifically on a per-country basis.

Justice

This gives relatively coarse control over the justice system in the country. It provides information about the latest criminal activities (boosted if you have the secret service). The closer you can match the justice to the crimes, the better the system. There is no direct indication of the level of crime, so it's a bit of guesswork and a bit of logic. ie. if you change it, and a week later you're getting reports of increased levels of crime, you might want to increase the justice, etc.

Education

This menu gives information on the state of education in the country. It can also determine what percentage of the population is educated and how. This means either more people can be educated (up to a maximum), or people can be educated faster.

Medicine

Again, this menu doesn't give anything other than information on the state of medicine normally. However, when there is a plague, this screen allows you control over how the medicine in the country is distributed, and how much time and money is poured into the healing efforts.

Finance

This allows you to control where money is going, and optionally siphon it off for yourself. It gives options for government offices wages, wages of farmers, doctors and lawyers. The income for this money you are dispersing is also controlled - taxes. There are two types of taxes, income and VAT. Income tax affects middle and upper class people more, and VAT affects lower class people more.

Press

Any options for controlling the press subvertly are given elsewhere. Mostly this screen tells you news about what's going on in the country, and about the government. Occasionally (for example near an election or other significant event) you can interview with the press.

Advisor

Your advisor lives here, and will give you context-sensitive help based on what the current situation is.

Details of the Mechanics of the game

This section explains how everything goes on under the hood, including formulas and specific numbers.

Book Keeping

...

Politics

There are 100 ministers in cabinet. At the start, 70 of them are on the opposition, and the ministers on your party aren't friendly towards you. A minister has a friendliness to you, from 0 to 1. The initial settings are between 0 and 0.1 for ministers on your party, and 0 for others. When a minister reaches 0.6, he is on your side and if he's at 0.8, 0.9 or 1.0 his performance improves. 1.0 is hard to reach. They also have a loyalty, which if you are "good", roughly follows the friendliness. If you are "evil" it is inversely proportional. i.e evil actions increase loyalty, but decrease friendliness. An unfriendly but loyal minister is likely to be a fair-weather friend. Each minister has a name (obviously), and an age. Ministers can die of old age, and the initial ministers are all over 50. Ministers also have a moral standing, from 0 to 1, and a power level from 0 to 1. The prime minister has a power level of 1, and the weakest minister has one of 0. A minister with < 0.5 moral standing can be bribed, a minister with 0.5 - 0.75 will not be bribed, but will not lose anything but loyalty and friendliness to you. A minister with moral standing of over 0.75 will report a bribe, and you will lose loyalty with all ministers. If the ministers in your party lose all loyalty with you, you lose the game.

Elections happen for positions every year, but they are staggered. No more than 2 positions will have an election at any one time. An election lasts for 3 months, with the last week being off-limits for campaigning and funding (although not for bribes and threats). If a minister is assassinated, the governments suspicion goes up by 5. Every month, it goes down by 1. If the suspicion goes over 12, an investigation is called which has a 30% - 10% * (secret service level) + 10% * (suspicion-11) chance of finding you out. The population has a separate suspicion which goes up by 3 each time a minister is assassinated, and decreases by 1 each month. If it goes over 10 then civil unrest starts to grow at 0.1 per suspicion over 10. There is also a measure of public support for a minister, from 0 to 1. If an election is rigged or voters are bribed to swing an election with public support of 0, no-one will notice or care. If he has a public support of 1, public suspicion will grow by 8.

The aim of the game, for good or evil, is to get a 70% majority in the house.

Military

The military has a number of recruits which varies depending on the situation, as well as an average skill level (affected by age with a bell curve around 25, and average spending per head). The details of conscription obviously changes this. If there is a war, it's a fairly simple risk-like numbers weighted random game. Morale of the population also factors into it, as if the army has the support of its home country it performs better. The military can also patrol to increase the public morale, or oppress the populace, and lower their morale but make them less likely to rebel. Training the military for war increases their average skill, but also makes the populace worried (no-one likes a war) and means the military cannot patrol to increase the patriotism and morale of the population.

Secret Police

The secret police mostly aren't an entity in and of themselves, they simply affect other sections, and so are detailed there. However, their information gathering is closely linked to the press, but they get information 1 week to 1 month earlier, and will often get news the press doesn't. the union of SP news and Press news = all news.

Agriculture

Livestock has a constant amount of 'food' it produces, as does grain. A person eats 0.1 livestocks and 0.2 grains per week. Any excess livestock and grain is stored, for up to 10000000 livestock and 20000000 grain. Livestock and grain over this amount is waste, and if not traded is thrown away. Stored livestock and grain lasts forever. People can survive on 0.75 livestocks and 0.15 grains, but below that they start losing morale, and below 0.5 and 0.1 they start dying and losing a lot of morale. Livestock breeding works exponentially (as a normal population model). For every 2 livestock set breeding (ie unavailable for food), 1 livestock is produced every 9 months. Breeding also requires 2 people per 100 livestock. Grain simply increases depending on the number of people farming, at a rate of 100 grain per person.

Trade

Trade is specific per country. You start off with 2-3 countries with relationships. You must keep up trade to keep these relationships. If you lose all relationships with all countries you will not regain them until you have at least 500000 livestock and 1000000 grain to trade, or 100000 doubloons. Trade raises the populations morale, as they get fine goods, but it requires a lot of manpower and resources. You can trade livestock, grain or doubloons as well as people to match. 1 person per 10 livestock, 50 grain or 125 doubloons. The options for trading are largely inconsequential, each simply costs more livestock/grain/doubloons and provides a higher morale boost

Justice

There is a specific level of crime in the country, from 0 to 1, and a justice level to match. There are 20 levels of crime, which produce different noteworthy crimes for the press. If crime is virtually 0, someone stealing a cake cooling on a window is front page news. At 1, jack the ripper gets pushed to an insert on page 5. The justice level must be within one of 2 bands of the crime for positive effects. If crime is 0.5 say, a justice of 0.6 or 0.4 would be acceptable, and there is no morale loss in the population. If the justice is outside that, it is either too lenient or too stringent, and there is a morale boost. Crime goes up if justice is too lenient and remains the same if justice is too strict (people figure that so many innocents are found guilty, they shouldn't bother stopping criminal behaviour). If justice is within 0.05 of the crime level (ie 0.55 or 0.45) then crime is very well matched, and reduces by a random amount from 0.001 to 0.005 every week. This means the justice must be closely monitored if crime is to continue to fall. This means with perfect play, crime can be reduced to 0. There is a celebration if this happens, and morale is lifted significantly.

Education

This is a simple number game. A certain number of people are set aside for education. In an initial society, only a small number of people are educated (and can so re-educate). As more people are educated, more people can be educated (or, education goes faster). You can assign either 1 educator to 3 people, or 3 educators to 1 person. In an initial society only 1000 people are educated. Every person costs 2 doubloons per month per educator*2 (both costs only while educating/being educated). A person takes 6/(educatorsperperson*1.2) months to educate.

Medicine

If the number of educated people is over 30000, medicine becomes available. The level of medicine is directly related to the level of education. It reduces the chances of plagues, and helps control their effects (see plagues).

Finance

The average upper class salary is 50 doubloons a year. The average lower class salaray is 1 doubloon a year. The initial government wage is 60 doubloons a year. VAT is initially 10% and income tax 5%. The taxes are simply the amount of yearly income covered by tax. Upper class people are more pleasead the more money they get. Ditto lower class. They have caps at different levels.

Finance

The press picks up various randomly generated news stories every week, that indicate in a non-numerical fashion the state of the country. There are sections for every part of government.

Population

The population has a morale value which is affected by just about everything. The morale only affects you when it goes below 0.3, in which case the population will start phasing in civil unrest. At 0.1 there is a revolt, and possibly a rebellion depending on your standing with the rest of government. There is initially 5000000 people in the country, increasing at a rate of population/210 people per year (this includes birth/death/immigration/emigration).

Plague

Plague begins by killing 1% of the population each month, then decreases by a factor of 0.6 each month. If you have an active health service then it decreases by a factor of 0.6 / (max(1.0, medical staff/1000)) each month instead.

You

You have a public standing from 0 to 1 which indicates how much the public supports you. If it is less than 0.1, their suspicion is doubled, and increases by 1 each month when below 7. If it is more than 0.8, their suspicion is halved and decreases by 1 each month when over 2. It also affects how the press writes about you (assuming they have free reign over what they write). Public standing will decrease by 0.02 each month when it's under 0.3, if left alone. A sustained propoganda campaign by the press will increase your standing by 0.05 each month while it continues, but if the press uncovers a scandal, it decreases by 0.4. Your initial public standing is 0.5. In an election, the person with the highest standing wins.

Advancement

This section explains how things progress, and what options are available when. Initially, you choose between minister of finance, minister of agriculture and minister of justice. You are newly elected to cabinet, and you have an advisor (tutorial). You learn the various tasks of your post (shouldn't take long), before your advisor tells you about an election for one of the other 3 ministers of choice. You then learn the basics of politics, and get him elected. If you don't manage the first time, the third minister has an election. If that fails, you lose the game. You then learn his post. You do the same again for the third minister (or the second minister again) with a tougher election. After that, you're left on your own to govern, raise your standing, and elect friendly ministers to your side on the other posts. The advisor is available for help at any time.

Once you have all the posts elected, the advisor suggests that you begin to work on the other ministers. The aim of the game then is to get a 70% majority in the house. Along the way, various options are given to you. If you won either of the initial two elections by evil, the secret service will offer itself to you. If you won either of them by good, you get the opportunity to create an election for an education minister. Other than that, you get additional features each time you get a position. If you get the secret service, your advisor will become evil.

Elections

In an election you have several options for trying to win (on behalf of someone else). There are options common to good and evil. An evil person in control of the press can discredit the other person and lower their public standing by 0.0 - 0.3. He can also do the reverse and print propoganda to increase his candidate's public standing by 0.0 - 0.3. He can bribe the vote counters, although it's not guaranteed that he'll get the result he wants. It will reduce his opponent's by 0.0 - 0.n and increase his by 0.0 - 0.n and then recount, depending on the amount of money bribed.. He can also take his chances and assassinate one of the other candidates, hoping that whoever replaces him will be worse - but that's a gamble. A good person can campaign on behalf of the candidate. It costs money and people, but it will increase the candidate's standing by a random amount (not known until after campaigning is over) from 0.1 to 0.5. He can also publically back the candidate which means that the average of his standing and the candidate's standing is used instead of just the candidate's standing. Either good or evil can also go on a debate against the opposing candidates, and hope that he comes out looking better. Whoever wins the debate wins 0.2 * difficulty of debate.

Activities

In order to spice up the dry menu interface, some actions have some sort of interaction more than just clicking buttons, sliding sliders and menuing menus.

During debates, it is necessary to keep a "calm meter" near the centre of a square. It randomly moves out towards the edges, and you have to keep it centred. The randomness increases, and the point is to hold your calm for longer than your opponent. When either dot touches the edge, that person loses.

When assassinating someone, it is necessary to (within a certain time) tap a key fast, like the old mortal kombat 'test your strength'.

When a plague strikes, you might catch it, in which case you have to do similar to the IK+ bouncing balls thing, on the level of germs.

When trading, you can choose which items to trade by dragging and dropping. Not really a game, but more interaction than nothing.

When stealing money, there is a random patrolling guard, who moves back and forth in front of a pile of gold erratically. Initially he is patrolling but the more you steal, the faster he moves. If your mouse is in front of him and close enough, he will suspect you, but you can get out of it by indicating that you were returning all this gold you 'found'. If you have gold in your hand you lose. Your hand moves slower with gold.

Schedule

Now for the schedule I (hope) to keep to:

1. 21/06/2006: Finish up this document, clean it up and organise it better.

2. 25/06/2006: Implement a menu system with the widget toolkit. Minimum textured windows with alpha and 3D behind, buttons, sliders, checkboxes, optionboxes, number input, labels.

3. Milestone 1: Bare-bones menu system set up.

4. 02/07/2006: In a text mode, have agriculture implemented, with the population reacting to it. This means all properties of agriculture, population morale and your status with the population.

5. Milestone 2: in a text mode, A very simple balance for one of the departments
   
   End of feature creep: Here ends any feature creep, unless the game is seriously lacking in fun, or something similar.

6. 09/07/2006: In a text mode, have justice, military and finance implemented, with all suitable interactions with the other departments, the population and you.

7. 16/07/2006: In a text mode, have trade, education and medicine implemented, with all suitable interactions with the other departments, the population and you.

8. 23/07/2006: In a text mode, have war, famine, plague and the revolts implemented, with all suitable interactions with the other departments, the population and you.

9. 30/07/2006: In a text mode, have the press implemented, with all suitable interactions with the other departments, the population and you. The press will have relevant stories for most events that can happen.

10. Milestone 3: in a text mode, the full game without saving/loading or politics.

11. 06/08/2006: Implement saving and loading for the current game.

12. 13/08/2006: Implement a view of parliament, and randomly populate it with ministers.

13. 20/08/2006: Implement the secret police.

14. 27/08/2006: Implement elections, with the non-interactive options.

15. 03/09/2006: Implement elections interactive options, with stub minigames

16. 10/09/2006: Implement elections interactive options, with minigames

17. 17/09/2006: Implement other minigames

18. Milestone 4: Full game, minus graphics, advisor, plot and polish.

19. 24/09/2006: Implement menus with programmer art for the departments (anything up to milestone 3)

20. 01/10/2006: Implement menus with programmer art for the rest (anything up to milestone 4)

21. Milestone 4: Full game with graphics, minus advisor, plot and polish.

22. 08/10/2006: Implement the basic advancement of the game up to the point of your first election.

23. 15/10/2006: Implement the advancement of the game up to the point where you are left on your own.

24. 22/10/2006: Implement context-sensitive help for most of the game.

25. 29/10/2006: Finish up remaining holes and anything missing.

26. 5/11/2006: Polish.

27. 12/11/2006: Polish.

28. 19/11/2006: Polishing based on feedback/Bug testing on my system.

29. 26/11/2006: Bug testing on as many systems as I can find.

30. 29/11/2006: Submit, as close to 24 hours early as GDNet allows.