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[maxicaxi]

whats up?

[Lord Dullard]

Wee bit of downtime on coding. BFBC2 has been eating my free time lately. I can't resist putting my new system to use.

[mr. macduggan]

In dwarf fortress, different races have different ethics and traditions. It would be really cool if Cult could randomly generate a culture that had new, strange opinions and cultures that aren't from a template (or at least, combine many small features from a template) and produce things along the lines of prayer at certain times, how the culture goes about warfare, their opinions about what is the perfect family, etc.
It could give the game a ton of flavor if you didnt know that (like in DF) a human is a human and their culture is roughly the same wherever you go and no matter how many times you regen.


I dunno. Having a group of Peaceful, cannibalistic, cave-god worshipping, tall humans that live on an island would be much cooler than encountering an uppercase U.

[Cthulhu]

That probably wouldn't be that hard.  Assign creatures, elements, etc. various keywords related to their traits (Mountains could have like earth, strength, and the like) And then when compiling a nation's culture, have them tend to pick various aspects with similar traits (But not always, there should be outliers) so the cultures are highly varied while still maintaining internal consistency.

[mr. macduggan]

Yes, I agree. The real challenge is making the different cultures feel different to interact with every time.
A good example of how not to do the cultures is the space stage of spore if you've ever played it. In that game, there are thousands of other cultures in the galaxy, but only 3 real "attitudes" that they can have: (warlike, peaceful, economic) and it feels like those 3 attitudes are the different cultures instead of each planet feeling radically different in customs and stuff.
Having the generated culture affect more than the formulaic lines they say in greeting and the friendliness level of the group is where it would get hard, but also where the rewards would be. Also, it would be a good reason for various countries to war against each other (if their traditions or religions were radically different.)

If a real religion/culture/traditions/attitude generator featured in cult, I think it would become my favorite game for quite a long time, just because I wouldn't know what to expect.

[EagleV]

I'd like to see stuff like a (very) long list of actions, many of which an adventurer can take, and the cult has a certain stance towards them. And more than just murdering/stealing/lying, for instance there is a small jungle tribe that honors strength and the personal merit of a warrior, so when you try to administer first aid, they see it as an insult to their personal toughness. Of course you wouldn't know that as an adventurer, untill you either talk about it or try it.

Maybe you could make 20 or so groups, like Cthulhu said, for instance Mountains, which implies the race likes Strength and Wealth, and then for each group a list of aspects (eg doesn't like first aid) with a chance they have that aspect, or a grade in which they have it. And every culture is a combination of one or several of these groups. And then eventually, after those aspects are chosen, they get a few more aspects that aren't directly related to their group, but don't interfere with already chosen aspects. This could, for instance, make a Flower culture (Peaceful and Nature) warlike where most Flower cultures are against war. But they would fight without damaging the nature around them.

[mr. macduggan]

THIS. SO MUCH THIS. That's what I meant in the first place.

[Lord Dullard]

Awesome input and ideas, guys. I will definitely be incorporating some of this into civgen.

Of course, I think the key will be making the list of possible cultural nuances/beliefs EXTREMELY long. As in, the likelihood of finding two cultures in a game with more than two or three shared nuances should be almost nil. Otherwise cultures will just begin to fall into the same cookie-cutter mold that ought to be avoided.

[EagleV]

True, or you could work with grades for every cultural belief, or even a floating value. And still make the list extremely long :p

[Mephansteras]

True, or you could work with grades for every cultural belief, or even a floating value. And still make the list extremely long :p

This is probably a good idea. After all, certain factors *are* common across all civilizations to some extent. Pretty much all militaristic cultures are going to prize bravery, for example. Although they may have different ideas of what constitutes bravery.

Samurai, for example, felt it was braver to commit suicide than to be killed in combat by an enemy. Other cultures found suicide to be the coward's way out.

Maybe take broad concepts like Bravery and break it down into lots of sub-categories and have cultures made up of different flavors of these categories.

Same for stuff like music. Is it a deeply religious activity? An integral part of all walks of life? A past-time of the rich?

[Hugehead]

Posting to watch development, this looks really awesome.

[Diablous]

Posting to watch development, this looks really awesome.

Same here. This is an interesting idea.

[mr. macduggan]

How's the coding coming along? I am curious about this awesome project!

[Outcast Orange]

How's the coding coming along? I am curious about this awesome project!

[Lord Dullard]

Semi-steadily, but I've been hitting snags mostly caused by RL business. Progress is likely to remain somewhat stilted until January-February, when I have two months off of work. Aside from a Caribbean cruise at some point in January I don't have any plans other than to finish getting licensed as an insurance producer and do a ton of work on code.