The following is an excerpt from the Designer Notes for Old World. The game, a historical 4X set in classical antiquity, released on July 1, 2021, and is available for purchase here.

After finishing Civ 3, I spent a long period of time engaged with the community to learn what they did and didn’t like about the game, with an eye towards the patches and a potential sequel down the road. In the modding community, a common complaint was that our editor lacked something called “events” from Civ 2, which I learned meant a system for connecting triggers and effects that could give games a narrative arc. I didn’t immediately grasp the potential of such a system until I tried out the community scenarios. I remember two that stood out to me because my actions pushed the story forward – one recreated the journey to Moria in Fellowship of the Ring and the other was a retelling of Odysseus’s Mediterranean wanderings in The Odyssey. Neither was particularly replayable, but they both were interesting because they had functional stories built from only a layer of events sitting on top of the base game.

For awhile, I wasn’t sure what to do with this discovery because I didn’t have a clear vision for how events could make a Civ game better, but I did ensure that our Python layer for Civ 4 had both triggers (calls from C++ to stub Python functions) and effects (the stub functions could change the game state). This system led to many interesting Civ 4 mods and scenarios as well as allowing the team to write a series of events for Beyond the Sword, many of which focused on natural disasters. While these events were a first for the series, it also represented a bit of an evolutionary dead end as they were not carried forward into Civ 5.

Nonetheless, I believed that events could play an interesting role in 4X gaming, and indeed noticed that many other strategy games, including the Galactic Civilization series, the Crusader Kings series, and Stellaris, were using them more and more frequently. However, my biggest inspiration came from the most text-heavy genre of them all – interactive fiction. The genre was experiencing a renaissance in the UK, led by Inkle (80 Days, the Sorcery series) and Failbetter (Fallen London, Sunless Sea), and I began to quietly haunt the GDC Narrative Summit while also interviewing the writer/designers for my podcast to see what I could learn. I also finally found a physical copy of King of Dragon Pass, a cult hit from the 90s that was still unavailable online, perhaps akin to finding a disc of The Velvet Underground’s Loaded before mp3s. The game was a wild mix of traditional 4X strategy, clan management simulation, and dynamic narrative built around random events that triggered based on hidden factors and which had unknown effects (but which the player would slowly learn to anticipate).

I began to appreciate how important narrative could be in a video game, how it could pull players into a game world much more effectively than by simply making numbers go up, a trick that was perhaps starting to get old in 4X gaming. To be clear, I had no interest in writing a story with imaginary characters and a beginning, middle, and end (Who did I think I was? A writer?!?), and I was also fairly uncomfortable with opaque triggers and effects which kept players in the dark, forcing them to play by feel. Transparency is an important part of my design aesthetic, and while it could be violated for effect occasionally, I didn’t want to build an entire system around it.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, inspiration came to me via board games, specifically Tales of the Arabian Nights, a brilliant adventure game built around the ancient folktales of the Middle East. The game comes with a giant storybook of over 2,000 events (some by Paul Murphy, writer on Civ 3, in fact) which are randomly drawn from a deck of cards and then cross-referenced with the character’s location, the player’s decision, and the roll of a dice. Although another player would read the event to create suspense and hide the outcome of the choices, the exact mechanics of how the game chose each event was transparent by necessity as the players did the work of finding each event themselves. The readers would see how the events were constructed and what would have happened if the active character possessed a certain trait, so that they in turn would anticipate the range of possibilities on their own turn.

The game had an interesting system for linking events via loose connections based on skills, traits, or treasures the character picked up over the course of the game. A character might become Ensorcelled early in the game, have the result of a later event change based on being Ensorcelled, and finally have the opportunity to remove the trait with a further event. None of these events were necessarily going to happen during a single playthrough and, often, potential narrative arcs were left dangling without resolution. Nonetheless, when a cohesive series of randomly chosen events do come together to tell a real story, it’s a magical feeling. What appealed to me about this system was that it was robust; there was no intricate event tree that could fail if one node was changed or stopped working. Furthermore, loosely coupled events could be written by a large group of authors who could work in parallel without close coordination. One writer might add an event which results in your leader becoming a Drunk, and a different writer could add an event that requires the leader to be a Drunk (or, if so, forces the player to take a certain option), and these two writers have now created a little story without having discussed anything. Indeed, they could have been working years apart and perhaps not even know each other. I am very excited for the potential of community event packs which can co-exist with our 3,000+ events (and with each other) to create new narrative possibilities.

Thus, I had the basic blueprint for an event system – it would be a virtual deck of event cards which each had a potential trigger (such as meeting a new nation), a set of requirements (a childless leader), and possible effects (a foreign spouse). When a trigger occurs, the game finds all events in the deck valid for the current game state and then chooses one randomly based on the weight, probability, and priority values of each event. The backbone of the event system are the subjects, which are a set of game objects randomly chosen for each potential event. Subjects can be anything from a character to a city to a family and even to a law or technology. Each subject can have multiple tests to find the perfect one – an adult child of the leader who is NOT the heir but IS a bloodthirsty schemer is a good example of a very specific subject that might mean bad things for the current heir. Further, the system can test for relationships between subjects, such as two nations that are at war with each other, the religion of your spouse, or a character who is vengeful against another. The event options can affect any of the subjects and can also be unlocked based on the current ratings or traits of the leader.

There are many other wrinkles to the system – for example, it is possible to link subjects together for multi-step events such as a duel – but this basic architecture enabled the writing team, led by Leyla Johnson, to create a wide variety of events that fundamentally change the flow of the game. Dynamic random events disrupt the steady flow of a 4X game, which can often devolve into deciding which bucket should fill up and at what speed. Perhaps an event provides a sudden burst of Orders that allows the player to move enough units to defend a city that was just about to fall. Or, perhaps sending one of your children out to explore the world leads to the founding of a new world religion. Or, perhaps a severe combat injury means that Alexander will need to abandon the field and become the Learned instead. A common theme of Old World’s design is avoiding predictable and boring games where the same actions lead to the same results, and the event system is an important tool to ensure no two games are ever the same.

The following is an excerpt from the Designer Notes for Old World. The game, a historical 4X set in classical antiquity, released on July 1, 2021, and is available for purchase here.

One of the defining features of 4X games with an Eternal China Syndrome is that the conflict primarily comes from external sources, from barbarians and rival nations. With certain random maps or diplomatic situations, players can often be in a position where they are largely unchallenged, and without any other pressure, the game slowly slides into auto-pilot. Old World addresses this problem by adding internal pressure from families and religions, each of which have their own opinion of you, just like a foreign power.

Making internal opinions matter requires a pair of mechanics – how the opinion is determined and how it affects the game. Designing the latter was the easier task as family opinions could simply affect cities and units if they each had a specific family type. Thus, each new city would be assigned a family, and units produced by that city would also be attached to that family. Then, each city and unit could get various bonuses and penalties depending on the opinion of the family itself. Cites belonging to a friendly family have reduced Maintenance, units of an angry family have a combat penalty, and so on. Perhaps most importantly for family opinions thematically, an unhappy family has a chance of producing rebel units which are capable of capturing cities if not defeated.

Attaching units to a family was a much debated topic as doing so made it even more difficult to differentiate units of each nation and tribe. There are only so many team colors available, and using a secondary color for families was only partially effective. Thus, we added a distinctive banner shape for each of the ten family classes and also did not show the family of opposing nations to simplify the mix of colors. Communicating family type is still difficult, but without assigning units to families, it would be impossible for family opinion to affect units, which risked dulling the entire system.

The trickier question is what should determine family opinion. Some modifiers were easy to add – families prefer having more cities, like having their cities closer together, like having members in the royal succession, and dislike having cities with high discontent. However, to keep things understandable, we didn’t want to add too many modifiers, so we split them up between the different family classes, which also added to their flavor: Champions prefer having the largest army, Clerics dislike cities without a religion, Patrons like having cities with Wonders, etc. A diversity of family opinion modifiers also makes it more likely that each family will have a different opinion of you, which makes for more interesting gameplay as angry families could become jealous of pleased ones, fertile ground for the game’s dynamic events.

However, although families now had opinions with inputs and outputs, the system felt very abstract; it’s harder to relate to a family than to a specific character. Further, we had a separate problem that although characters had opinions of you, the opinions didn’t seem to matter all that much unless they were in the court. We addressed both problems by creating family heads whose opinions were directly applied to their family’s opinion – if the head had a +100 opinion of you, then his or her family’s opinion would be modified by +100. Now, if a player wanted to change relations with a family, all game systems that involved a character’s opinion could now apply; for example, the player could improve relations with a family by conducting an Influence mission with the family’s head. Conversely, the event system could give an option that might offend the family’s head which would then reduce the family’s opinion.

Another important vector for family opinion would be religion. Characters adopt religions local to their family’s cities, and once enough family members follow the same one, a family officially adopts that religion. After that happens, the religion’s opinion is applied directly to the family’s opinion, so now all missions and events affecting a religion could also potentially affect a family. I added religion to Civ 4 primarily to create a reason why one rival nation would like you and another one wouldn’t. Religion serves a similar purpose in Old World, except that it now applies to tribes and families as well. Religions also have heads that work similarly to the heads of families; the opinion of the head would be applied directly to the opinion of the religion, which would then be applied directly to the opinion of nations, tribes, and families that follow that religion. Thus, religion heads are very important characters that touch multiple levels of the world, a new way that a character’s opinion could matter.

I began to use a river network as a metaphor to describe how opinion flowed throughout the game. More specifically, opinion only ever flows in one direction, a fact I discovered when the game crashed after a character’s opinion boosted their religion’s opinion which then boosted their family’s opinion which then affected the original character and continued in an infinite loop. Thus, character opinion flows into nations, tribes, families, and religions, and religion opinion flows into nations, tribes, and families, but the opinions never flow in the opposite direction. Understanding this flow is key to learning who to favor and who to ignore, which is important for keeping families happy. Further, putting characters at the origin of the river keeps the opinion system inherently fluid and dynamic as fortune’s wheel has its way with the people of Old World.

The following is an excerpt from the Designer Notes for Old World. The game, a historical 4X set in classical antiquity, released on July 1, 2021, and is available for purchase here.

Veterans of Civ communities will recognize the acronym ICS (Infinite City Sleaze) as it has haunted the series since the beginning. However, there is another acronym that is less recognized but just as big a problem and, frankly, a lot harder to solve – ECS, which stands for Eternal China Syndrome. The term refers to the tendency of nations that have gotten over the hump of early expansion to maintain a level of internal stability that is both ahistorical and, more importantly, not much fun. (Of course, students of Chinese history will know that the term is an exaggeration of the country’s actual internal stability.) Most of the pressure applied to the player in Civ comes from external sources, meaning other nations, and the internal pressures (including unhappiness) are really just different flavors of taxes. Furthermore, although new abilities and powers are unlocked throughout the game (via laws or techs or Wonders), they are accretive, meaning that they are only given to the player, never taken away. Strategy games are built from players adapting to their current situation and making difficult decisions along the way, but in most 4X games, these decisions are front-loaded to the initial exploration and expansion phases. Once stability sets in, the path ahead for the player becomes very predictable, which is an important reason why 4X games become such slogs – the path to the victory (or defeat) gets more and more predictable the longer a game continues.

Characters were not introduced to Old World to alleviate ECS; they were added simply because more and more games (Crusader Kings being the obvious example) were adding characters in meaningful ways and, in doing so, appealing to larger and larger audiences. Turns out that people like playing games that are about people, and a game that lasts 6,000 years is more about gods than humans. The benefits of adding characters to Old World could be spun out into multiple new articles, but to some extent, the lessons learned are not particularly interesting as the benefits were largely free, a simple result of human empathy and vengeance, of our sympathy and our avarice. Adding flesh-and-blood humans to a game is somewhat akin to adding realistic physics; it adds instant depth, but the depth is going to be the same across all games that do a good job representing the human condition. I’ll do my best to avoid getting carried away here and not end up quoting Anna Karenina and simply move on to how adding real characters improves the core 4X gameplay.

Simply put, characters add a dynamism to Old World that prevents it from reaching ECS, the usual fate of most 4X games. The most obvious way characters disrupt the game’s stability is via diplomacy. Simply having foreign leaders actually change – from death or abdication or even deposition – over the course of the game makes a huge difference. Perhaps you have a great relationship with Phillip of Greece but not so much with his heir, Alexander, because you offended him at a dinner years before? The latter’s eventual ascension (unless, say, some unfortunate accident might come to pass) will mean that your diplomatic status with Greece could go from good to bad. The amazing thing about this outcome is that it flows completely naturally from having real characters who age and die; players aren’t shocked when relations change and, indeed, expect them to change.

It is hard to articulate how significant a departure this is from a tension that has always bedeviled Civ games – that players expect diplomacy to be predictable, but predictable diplomacy inevitably becomes boring. Players will frequently rant over “unpredictable” or “random” AI leaders who suddenly go from being a friend to an enemy. These shifts are necessary for games to not slowly calcify from their earliest diplomatic states, but there are few ways to make these changes thematically palatable when the leaders never change. Civ games have experimented with all sorts of opinion modifiers that give a reason why a leader might change their opinion of you, but the most natural reason is that there is now simply a new leader who has a new set of relationships, memories, and opinions.

However, the biggest gains for dynamism are not external (like diplomacy) but internal, changing how your own nation works. As mentioned previously, one problem with unlocking powers over the course of a 4X game is that they tend to be accretive, a nation slowly adds new and better abilities over the course of the game. Players don’t like losing their powers, and Civ has only dabbled with this, such as the Civ 4 civics system where a player might give up one power but only to unlock a better one. When powers are accretive, designers have to be careful not to make them too strong, or else they could dominate. Give the player a giant hammer too early, and the rest of the game is a nail.

Instead, what if powers were attached to leaders via their unique archetypes, and these powers disappear when the leader dies? Then, the powers can change how the game works significantly but not permanently – for example, Builder leaders can add new Urban tiles to cities, Orators can hire Tribal troops as Mercenaries with Legitimacy, Heroes can Launch Offensives to allow units to attack twice, and Tactician Leaders can Stun their targets as Generals. Each of these powers fundamentally changes how the game feels, but attaching them to the Leader’s archetype means that each power is mutually exclusive and will be active less than 10% of the time. (There are ten archetypes, and young leaders don’t always even have archetypes.) Further, because these powers are attached to characters, players don’t have complete control over when these powers are turned on and off. If they were attached to Laws, for example, players might abuse the ability to switch between them whenever desired. Instead, players have some, but not total, control over the archetype of their heirs and have to navigate the natural flow of their dynasty. They can still make long-term plans for when their current Builder leader is succeeded by his Hero daughter, but they can’t pick the same pattern, game after game.

Perhaps the best thing about all of these new dynamic elements that flow from characters is that they are simply a natural extension of human nature and regular lifespans, of which all players bring an understanding to the game. For example, if a game spanning 6,000 years tried to implement our archetype system, it would need to tie itself into knots justifying why these powers are constantly changing, why the player doesn’t always have control of them, and why they are all available and viable at both the beginning and the end of the game. A game’s theme has its own gravity which puts limits on where the design can reach, and games about people provide natural affordances for an environment that is constantly changing, always a good thing for a strategy game.