Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

Dude, where are my Women? (Wall of Text (TM))

TL;DR: Are there any women in the game appart from Heroines and/or monsters and/Sovereignesses?

Dude, where are my Women? (Wall of Text(TM))

TL;DR

Are there any women in the game appart from Heroines and/or monsters and/Sovereignesses?

If the answer is yes, which are the plans for them / what can we expect?

WoT:

Single white man looking for...

Women. Bastly ignored in games except for Amazon roles, scantily clad heroines and similar things.

I like TBSs in general and I consider cities one of the most fundamental parts of any strategy involving empire building and all that stuff. And yet, cities are always kept as simple as possible. I know it's a matter of macro/micro issue, specially if you get like some dozens of cities in big maps. But the same as combat or magic deserve some complex mechanics, I do think that city deserve that too. Yes, balance, fun and controlled micro should be a priority but it'd be nice to the cores of our empires to be something more than a gold/troops/research factories whose only drawback might be some Morale and/or Cultural problems.

To have a city we need a place where to place it (d´oh!). Once we have the location, we need people to inhabit (for which, the place must be able to sustain life of that kind... obviously). We could have a city full of machomen and no one else. Our population grow for that city would be based on inmigration of other machomen to the city and/or the magical creation of other machomen by the Sovereign, as machomen cannot naturally breed with other machomen.

And altough migrations are nice to have population moving, there will come the time in which migrations are no longer possible or not significant enough (maybe all the machomen of the world are already in your city!!!). That means that in time, your population in the city is going to stop increasing and even start decreasing as machomen get old and die. (another mechanics ignored)

So we need to find the ways to make sure that new machomen populate the world as sucesors of our current machomen. And biologically speaking that means to find another being that can allow the reproduction of the machomen: women. If you convince the machomen of the advantages of mating with women, then you are going to have the best mechanic to increase your population in your city.

So you need women. That means that women live in the city (you are not going to have them in a cave and "use them when needed" right?). Yet where are they? I'm going to ignore other games and focus in the most interesting one: Elemental.

In this sweet game each individual I take from the city, is a citizen less living and producing there. Which is fine and interesting. Problem is: only men? You know, I can take all the population in the first turn and what do I get? All men. I can keep syphoning the population each turn into troops in training and all of them are... men!!!! (you sure you don't keep women in a cave?)

I know that we still have lots of placeholders but that seems totally wrong. It makes me think that the true population in the city isn't the one told to us. It cannot be because I can spend hundreds of turns taking population into militar units and population still increases. Too many immigrations? Population not considered when taxing and/or considerating able people?

If the population we are told isn't real that means that some population isn't being counted. Which kind of population could be ignored when talking about taxes/research/recruiting? Well, kids would be the most obvious choice. I don't think we are seeing kid armies in the game. Who else? Maybe old men and/or disabled people. They simply would not make usefull soldiers (in theory...). And then we have women. They are not considered as possible soldiers (or tax payers!!!).

If women are part of the population (even if we were to forbid them to join the army), they should appear in the population count. It should matter. So if in theory you forbid women to join the army and the population in your city is of 100 (and supposing a 50%/50% ratio of male/female population), that would mean that we could only recruit 50 soldiers from that city. Which makes more sense.

Problems? If we must consider women, why not also kids and old people? (let's suppose there are no disabled people or if you feel Fallen, imagine your population being spartan in nature) For one, I'd say that at least kids don't pay taxes and it's unlikely that you are using them in war or mining iron... And old people? We suppose that no so may people reaches old age (the conditions are not like in our world, really) and those who do are not significant enough to really consider them.

Back to women again. So we take them into the population count, so what now? Well, if we are to count women as part of our mechanics then it must be meaningful. First impact of women as part of the population? Population increase.

Let's suppose that you start in a tiny island very far away from the mainland. In this extreme case, and supposing that immigrants doesn't appear magically in the island (or are expert sailors or something), the population in our city will only increase for a time thanks to migrations and then it'll stop as no more roaming people remains in the island. It'll depend from that moment in the men and women in the city to make sure that population at least mantains itself.

One fertile woman and one fertile man are needed to start reproducing the population. If you don't have at least of each you better thinking of magical cloning or to go Radagast or something. One fertile woman and twenty fertile men are as the previous case in reproduction potential as you only have one able women to get pregnant and give birth to the new generation. Twenty fertile women and one fertile man would be better than the two previous cases because the number of pregnancies are higher and the population could reproduce faster. Even then, a higher number of fertile men would be need because of genetic diversity.

This means that our city has two ways to increase population:

Immigrations: people leaving wherever they were living to join your city. It's strenght depends of people living in other places and how attractive are the conditons of your city to them to make them move (if possible). Can be strong at first but should decrease over time and only increase in puntual situations.
Births: to increase the population of a city through births we need a good balance of women/men in it. As long as we keep as many women as men in the city, the population should increase over time (we suppose that the reproduction tendencies try to increase population instead of sustaining it). Having more women than men could mean a "bonus" in population increase (let's ignore practices like poligamy, infidelities and the like, we just get the bonus for reasons not specified, ok? And not big, just a simple one) while having less women than men would make the increase not possible and would lead to a decrease of the population.

To allow women to join the army could be considered a mistake. After all, who else can give birth? As I previously said, you would only need one fertile man while women... you would need some. But there might be reasons as why women should be allowed to join the army. Be it lack of men in the city during a war, special requiriments for certain types of units (let's suppose a Unicorns' based cavalry or that the Sovereigness only allow women to be channelers) or maybe we have too many women around and don't want to affect more the population increase ratios.

New options should be open now too. When attacking a city, you may not only conquer it for example, you may be able to kidnap some of their women and add them to your population. Well, you should be able to kidnap men too but kidnapping their women could potentially hurt them more. These kind of new tactics would be quite important for civilizations like Amazons. Be them Amazons that only admit men in their ranks or in very low numbers, they would depend greatly of immigrations and the freeing (kidnap?) of other women. (or maybe the machomen trying to free the machomen trapped by the enemies!)

But Amazons would be an example of exception to the populations. If they were to get extreme and only allow women then they would need a special mechanism that reflects it in their populations. Which makes me belive that if having women in population is already a no-no, extremist Amazons are even less possible. But they must be considered.

At this point, probably even before this point, someone is asking: "If you want female units in the game, why not just have the possibility of selecting the gender of the unit when designing it but leave the population as genderless?" That would be a nice option that would make me happy (guys dressed as Valkyrjas is not my idea of epic!) but it's not what I'm really talking about (but we better be able to do that or else... ). For some people this game might be just about war and/or economy and/or magic. Sue me for desiring some social mechanics in it (don't get me started with spionage too). And whoever dares to say something along the lines of: "Go play the Sims" is going to lose some face (in my eyes). I'm, after all, just throwing some ideas out there that could improve the game... and I started this wall of text some months ago. Consider it a remix, reduced and a bit polished version (with things left out due to extension) of the original version (which I lost).

I dislike complex systems that don't really add nothing useful. Not sure if adding women to the population could really make a difference. But sure as the death of our sun one day is that cities need something more to them. If I have to write a wall of text (seems that I'm unable to write anything that isn't one, sorry) about social dynamics, cultural clashes and that stuff... that's going to hurt.

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My only plead/ suggestion with this is please keep the women modest.

I never understood games where the women wore next to nothing, for several reason.

1)It wouldn't be comfortable to fight in what some games dress women in.
2)It provides no protection from the elements.
3)It provides no armor
4)The game should sell itself, not some imodest twit on the front cover of the box.

If we have women in the game, please dress them similiar to the male conterparts. Robes, or dresses for the wizards. Armor for the warriors. Just my two cents!

I know this had little to do with the original post, but it is somewhat related and important to me. Show women respect.

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I also request reasonable modesty, I'd like to be able to play the game with my family.

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to be honest i would like to make this kind of trades:

do i train/recruit female units thus weakening my economy and population growth but have a larger army or i train only expandable man have lower unit (-pool) count but my supply of soldiers/citizens would be secure.

similiar things could be done to training: elite troops take longe and cost more but a loss of a lot cheap militias would cripple your economy/population growth.

On porternielsens point: i really dislike the typical female fantasy warrior: more breasts then armor

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considering the whole family tree deal they have planned, and the importance of "daughters" that will be in that (for use on battle fields or otherwise) I can't imagine that the females and their role in population is in any way going to be downplayed. But of course, we'll see

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I can envision many ways having women and men differentiated could lead to cool civilization considerations. One is like tesb idea - trading military capacity (having men and women in the 'armed forces') with threat to the national growth rate. It's a consideration that's been overlooked in civ type games. I remember reading about civilizations who have been reduced by war to 1:10 male:female for a time. Connecting women with the national growth rate is a very "colonial" idea though!

I can see using gender roles in a civ-type game as one of those civ changing decisions. This is what I mean: In Civ4, most of the civ characteristics are just little bonuses. In Sword of the Stars, the idea of having each race with a different form of faster-than-light travel can really differentiate the races (one race needs to use warp points to hop around the stars, one race is slow until it gets warpgates up, one race rips holes in warpspace but can only have limited lanes). Gender roles could be used to shape your society - as your civ grows, are you going to be matriarchal? Have male or female or both priests? Mages? Soldiers? Essentially, you could mold your whole social structure as one of the game mechanics.

This strikes at one of the 'weaknesses' of Civilization 4 - you can discover slavery, republic, etc but for the most part, you can move between the civics without it really affecting the civ. But, in reality, there are big differences between a collection of city states, a centralize empire run by an emperor, a civ run by a circle of priests, or a slave society.

Trouble is, I see this kind of mechanic built into the fabric of the game and hashed out when the game is just a twinkle in the developer's eyes.

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I agree that it would be very interesting to have to deal with the gender proportions of your city. However, when you have a kingdom with dozens of cities, wars on multiple fronts, and several bands of heroes pursuing quests, do you really want to have to worry about having the right balance of men and women in your cities? It seems to me that it would get tiresome very quickly. I would be satisfied with simply having a percentage of my population be recruitable. And maybe if I recruit too many of these my city takes a temporary hit to population growth. These types of abstractions would keep these concerns in mind without adding unnecessary micro.

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Winter, I really think you're overanalyzing this a bit much. Although the units do appear to be all male, they are just placeholders, and it seems to me that in a world as bizzarre as EWOM's, you don't really need to follow traditional real-world population-growth laws.

As for the "skin issue", I agree that we need a bit more clothing here in cyberspace. However, sompared to, say, Grand Theft Auto or WOW, TBSs and even their "estranged cousins", RT"S"s, are fairly egalitarian.

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

Quoting Scoutdog,

reply 7

Check the unit creator: they are all men. Placeholders? I suppose that's the idea but just in case it's not, I don't think it's a bad idea to point it out. About those laws... so we should follow (medieval) real world laws in combat but not when talking about population growth? Wow. I tought that following real laws helped to envision it better and help to mold it into the game (if Stardock were to do such thing by themselves or because they read this... or if I were to mod it). Nothing else.

Quoting Ratya48,

reply 6

However, when you have a kingdom with dozens of cities, wars on multiple fronts, and several bands of heroes pursuing quests, do you really want to have to worry about having the right balance of men and women in your cities? It seems to me that it would get tiresome very quickly

Actually, as any other system of the game. Do you want to worry about what are you recruiting? What are you building in your cities? What are you researching? Control the equipment of your units? Where are the enemy armies positioned? What is the enemy researching? Who is backstabbing you with spies? Etc. It happens that sometimes you don't want to care about a part of the system and leave it to the Governor (if there is one for that part of the system) or just forget about it unless something forces you to pay attention. If a system like the one I mention (in any form) were to be used, I'd suppose that it would get a Governor-like system with it. You could use it or not but the same as you can have one for buildings and units, why not one for this? Autobattle and Tactical Battle have the same issue. Sometimes you won't want to use Tactical Battles when dealing with obvious inferior armies that can barely hurt you.

Just saying. At this point we know more of the Tactical Battle part of the game than the population one.

About clothes and such... well, I considered that was an obvious and that didn't need to be mentioned. From a certain point of view, I'd like to be able to have barely dressed people (men and women) so I could create Deathseekers with a proper high damage weapon but no armor (or any kind of clothes that could hinder them). But in the 99(.99?)% of the occassions, I'd prefer local clothes and practical armour.

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About those laws... so we should follow (medieval) real world laws in combat but not when talking about population growth?

Who ever said anytrhing about real-world combat laws being a good thing?! In any event, I certainly don't consider biology/sociology to be as inviolateable as Newtonian physics, especially with magic in play.

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

My comment about real world laws in combat was a broad one. You that have been in these forums for "some time" should get the (twisted) reference. But as I said, I use what should be simple to understand (and implement if it were the case). I have said it many times, I want a whole system for the game and not just war+magic(+research+economy?) with a bunch of subsystems as streamlined as possible not to annoy the wargamer types. (sorry if someone feels somehow offended, I like battles as much as anyone)

If I bother with a thread like this is not because I have nothing better to do (er... you know what I mean?) but because I truly think that cities are understimated in their importance and mechanics and that what I mention (in any final shape it could take) could really add something interesting (which is not the same as something that everybody will like... I'm not such a fool yet). A different matter is if Stardock considers it but they decided they cannot actually make it work (or simply don't want to bother). Then it's fine.

And with magic involved, nothing is (in theory) inviolateable (what a word! ). Only a matter of essence/mana. And not sure what has to do normal population growth with non natural meanings like cloning or "The Book of Erotic Fantasy". Having a normal model (ours) of population growth would be a good base to mod/create new models that differ from it (so we could create truly... er... alien races and not just the usual mammals). Magic is always there to alter what is natural.

Altough I wouldn't mind a Cloning Factory to mass produce soldiers for my army...

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(long post)

I get where you're coming from here, and I agree with you. However, remember that complexity should be implimented from the ideda of what would be fun, as opposed to what would be realistic, then "justified" through lore to make it realistic. I just don't think that maintaining a male/female ratio identical to real life would be that fun (especially at an abstracted city-based level). And the good thing is, you don't really have to, since the societies we are talking about here are for all intents and purposes wholly alien to our existance.

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what you have to consider is that adding those complex elements do not have to translate into tedious micromanagement and endless charts ect. Also fun for some people is not fun for others i for one would like a more complex game (if the mechanisms/ui are done well).

As for the women populations you could really make some nice events like a last ditch militia when the enemy forces are to extinct your people then all take up arms ect. (with a short vid for example).

Realism can really help get you immersed and this after all is fun, when you care about your troops, because loosing them would make you really suffer on the strat map (-population growth) and because it´s a whole people fighting for their lives (gameplay aspects+drama).

Take an other example you are playing an evil necromancy faction and when conquering an peacfull village you don´t just kill some knights, no you kill their families as well: their women and children and raise them from the dead this would really make you feel like you are playing an evil faction (=fun).

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

Quoting Scoutdog,

reply 11

(long post)

I get where you're coming from here, and I agree with you. However, remember that complexity should be implimented from the ideda of what would be fun, as opposed to what would be realistic, then "justified" through lore to make it realistic. I just don't think that maintaining a male/female ratio identical to real life would be that fun (especially at an abstracted city-based level). And the good thing is, you don't really have to, since the societies we are talking about here are for all intents and purposes wholly alien to our existance.

Some people don't find the economy model in which everything is a resource fun. Or like many people opposed to any kind of spionage system because "it has never done well" (aka "don't bother wasting resources trying to be the first ones making a good system that we might like" as I understand it) and therefore it cannot be made fun. *shrug* Sometimes I feel like if modders had to make all the innovations and have the developers copy them. At least modders can allow themselves such task as they do it for free. Also, the idea I comment is just an overview. Wouldonly need some more details (to make it more complex) but with what I said and little more, you could add some more complexity that at the same time it's still simple. If I haven't mentioned nothing about periods, pregnancies and the like is because including women in the ecuation isn't the same as adding "The Sims" into Elemental.

People can suppose that what I say cannot be fun. I can see the bad points. But when you consider an idea, you don't just try to find the bad points but to see the good ones too and then weight them. Example? SD=GO. And in that example, that mechanism is non-negotiable so those who don't find it fun are only going to play modded games that bypass it somehow. But to actually know if it could be fun or not, we should see how it could be implemented, which problems it would cause to implement it, what should it really do, etc.

Adding women to population counts should add a layer to population growth mechanics (that could extend in a limited way to other parts). That is what it should do and should do it in an interesting way (and yeah, fun... for some at least because no 100% is possible for any system). If not possible (or too much for Stardock) then I have no problems for not having it. As I won't have problems if the SD=GO somehow fails so hard that even Frogboy must retract and have it only for the campaign (not even sandbox).

If you prefer my whole post and thread in a single word, here it is: Brainstorming.

I have always found this interesting: http://www.writing-world.com/sf/hordes.shtml A bit out of topic and at the same time a bit in topic.

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We're not knocking you for bringing it up. We're just debating whether or not it would be fun to add it. More power to you for thinking of something like this.

(However, I stand by my original point.)

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

I know you are not knocking me for bringing it up (one of the reasons to mention this topic is to have people say good and bad things about it), so don't worry.

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I hope they do specify between the sexes when it comes to city population. This way the Slave population can be broken down to be more efficient. Male slaves get sent straight to work/death camps or maybe conscripted right into military service. The women and children are kept as personal slaves to increase population growth....mwhahahah.

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Sometimes limiting detail is important so you don't learn too much about other players.

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This is something that should be abstracted if it's put in at all. A single manpower stat and if it gets low/over drawn you get the negative effects. Loss of productivity (ie pulling men out of mines and into the army) and after that loss of population growth (ie drafting women).

Really they should just concentreate on the core concepts, few enough good turn based strategy games out there right now, no need to add lots of exotic concepts that add few, if any, benefits.

And yeah, there is the sims if you want a social simulator .

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

Quoting Quellist,

reply 18

Really they should just concentreate on the core concepts, few enough good turn based strategy games out there right now, no need to add lots of exotic concepts that add few, if any, benefits.

And yeah, there is the sims if you want a social simulator .

About the first paragraph I can agree and disagree at the same time:

I disagree because I don't want the current situation of (fantasy) tbs limit the potential of Elemental. If I want a fantasy Civ IV, I have a famous mod out there. I feel the need to be offered something that try to push the limits and increase our possibilities in the game (no, don't use the argument of "fun", "balanced" and such because they are already implicit). Maybe I'm just spoiled by Dark Avatar and Twilight of the Arnor.
I agree because I don't want the game to failt and/or include clutter that serves no real purpose but to generate complains (no, SD=GO doesn't count ). Fear to another Master of Orion 3 (was that the game?) situation is not of my liking (altough I doubt very much it will happen as Stardock has the money and the spirit to avoid that).

About the second paragraph... hehe. Yep, obvious.

But maybe I should add (just because) that including sexual differences in the population and apply some rules to population growth are no social simulatorish (does that word even exist?) in the same sense as the Sims. There are no implied periods for the women, pregnacies, love affairs, death by old age, unemployment... Just numbers and bonuses/penalties.

And you won't see suggesting that troops, being picked from the city, should age and die. Not that it could not be somehow interesting but THAT would be a hell of micro. And add very very few (positive) to the game. Neither that men and women in the army could have effects in the population growth (limit it to the city and maybe a few other mechanics related to it but always focused in the city).

In any case, I'd like to mention that if this thread isn't in the Ideas subforum is not by mistake.

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I disagree because I don't want the current situation of (fantasy) tbs limit the potential of Elemental.

If I want a fantasy Civ IV, I have a famous mod out there. I feel the need to be offered something that try to push the limits and increase our possibilities in the game (no, don't use the argument of "fun", "balanced" and such because they are already implicit). Maybe I'm just spoiled by Dark Avatar and Twilight of the Arnor.

When has a game ever been limited by being a fantasy TBS? You could possibly even get steampunk in there without too many raised eyebrows.What they don't need to do is "push limits" when it comes to exotic concepts, they need tight gameplay with lots of depth. "Easy to learn, hard to master" comes to mind, same concept as with the CCGs. And fun & balanced aren't implicit in any way imaginable, it takes lots of time to polish and balance a TBS. To be honest, neither of the Galcivs did anything for me. But look at Sins for example, they got their core concept working very well, at the cost of such basic things as diplomacy and the game was a hit.

Fear to another Master of Orion 3 (was that the game?) situation is not of my liking (although I doubt very much it will happen as Stardock has the money and the spirit to avoid that).

Yes, that is the one, and they didn't really lack money and they even had Alan Emrich on the team, and he liked those spaced out concepts and they went into the design if not into the final game.

There is no need for it, it doesn't add anything to the gameplay, the computer will have a hard time getting it right and basically you can abstract it into one number, "manpower".

In any case, I'd like to mention that if this thread isn't in the Ideas subforum is not by mistake.

Sure, but I'm assuming that the subforum is here for the discussion of ideas, and I think that this one is a poor one.

edits: The damn quoting.

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Wintersong

Join Date 07/2006

+235

Quoting Quellist,

reply 20

the computer will have a hard time getting it right and basically you can abstract it into one number, "manpower".

That is an argument against it that I can like (as negation of my idea).

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Quoting Wintersong,

reply 8

Just saying. At this point we know more of the Tactical Battle part of the game than the population one.
.

Personally ... I hope tactical battles become the most important element of the game by FAR .... other than perhaps mod-ability

I mean ... without a really cool tactical battle-screen plus really REALLY good AI (total war has horrible AI methinks) ... then it would just seem like another re-hashed TBS.

I mean sure, its nice to be able to use spells and such ... to terraform ... oh wait! I could just play Lords of Magic! I mean ... if the tactical battles are crap Im not buying the game ... I'll just play MoM and LoM when I feel the craving for "that" kind of game.

simple addition we can draw from this however ... is to allow a unit to be based on either a male or a female model ... and heck, perhaps if you add a gender-based civics system (although I think population should still be considered unisex) ... then you can only recruit different porportions of your city into a certain unit type. Matriarchy -> you can have more female wizards/warriors ... Patriarchy -> you can have femal troops but you cannot build very many.

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Personally ... I hope tactical battles become the most important element of the game by FAR .... other than perhaps mod-ability

I mean ... without a really cool tactical battle-screen plus really REALLY good AI (total war has horrible AI methinks) ... then it would just seem like another re-hashed TBS.

I mean sure, its nice to be able to use spells and such ... to terraform ... oh wait! I could just play Lords of Magic! I mean ... if the tactical battles are crap Im not buying the game ... I'll just play MoM and LoM when I feel the craving for "that" kind of game.

I can't disagree with you more.

There are already loads iof games with oversized tactical battles. Why do we need yet another one?
Why spend so much money, brains, and time on a relatively minor feature that many people will never even use?

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Perhaps because most tactical battle games are extremely linear, get quite boring, and more often than not have terrible AI?

I could mention a few more reasons, but I think the availablity for your custom-made, experience point driven units, perhaps plus the sovereign, battling enemies in a good system ... is something you will find NO WHERE else.

Personally I shrink away from the Auto-Calculate with more celerity than a wheezing homicidal leper.

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Hooray for moral progress! Instead of stripping the clothing off our fantasy women, we're turning them -- literally -- into the reproductive organs of the state.

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