Audience mechanic

Sim City 3000* had petitioners come and make petitions to you, and give you a choice of action (usually just a yes/no choice, but I think multiple choices and even sliding bars would give a greater feel of individuality and control as a emperor). They then respond to your decision (in a block of text). You also have one of your advisors (whoever is the advisor of that department, with their own personality) offer their opinion alongside the petition before you make a decision, and the counselor/advisor also responds as well.

*The other Sim Cities might've had this too, I don't know.

I think it'd be great if you had more than one counselor/advisor chime in from time to time, and offer different advice on the same petition. Say you have 5 counselors (each with their own personalities, histories, and knowledge of different areas of the workings of your kingdom), if for every petition or report presented to you one to three counselors offer a paragraph alongside the petition, and give feedback on your decision.

Sometimes the counselors should agree with each other, other times they offer conflicting advice, or their advice partly conflicts and partly complements each other.

However, it shouldn't be black and white morality. It shouldn't be advisor A always offers the pacifist choices, and advisor B always recommends torture and executions. Every counselor should offer different opinions in different areas with no counselor being more or less "evil" than the others, so the player has to weigh the actual advice given, and not just figure out which decision the game writer (you) are advocating as moral or immoral.

For the same reason, this is why there should be occasionally three counselors offering advice at once, so there aren't just Counselor A votes 'yes', Counselor B votes 'no'.

Counselors might give poorly-thought-out advice, but they shouldn't give stupid advice - they are people of political intrigue who came into positions of great power: speaking into the ear of the king. They had to be intelligent and patient to get here, so their advice should always seem intelligent on the surface, even if it's flawed when thought out. They should, when speaking their opinions to the player, be passionate and convincing. Then, the player actually has to make a choice.

Also give the player the ability for you to execute, exile, imprison, or fire counselors and replace them with another counselor (from a pool of twenty-thirty or so).

The Bible records a couple great scenes of political decisions in the courts of emperors or kings. These are events that actually historically occurred, almost word-for-word, though also sometimes paraphrased and alot of the back-and-forth dialog missing.

One of these scenes is Rehoboam (the son of King Solomon), and how his stupid decision to ignore all his father's counselors' advice actually caused the nation of Israel to be split in two: into Israel (the northern kingdom) and Judah (the southern kingdom). You can find the scene in: "1st Kings", chapter 12, verses 1 through 24

The entire books of 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Chronicles (after skipping the first dozen chapters, which are lists of lineages), and 1st and 2nd Kings have some court dialog and scenes intermixed in between wars and other things. How David reacts (against the advice of his counselors) when his son Absalom tries to seize the throne, and later when his son Adonijah assumes kingship, and David has to rush to put Solomon on the throne (1st Kings chapter 1). David's interactions with King Saul before David became king, are interesting.

Ezra, Nehemiah (cup-bearer to king Artaxerxes), have some interactions with the king of Persia.

Daniel have some court scenes between Daniel and the emperor of Babylon and (later) the Media-persians Darius and Cyrus the Great. The book of Esther also has some court scenes between Esther (the Queen), Mordecai (her adopted father), the king (likely Xerxes 1), and Haman (the king's advisor who hates Mordecai).

Other scenes with emperors or kings in the old testament include Joseph's interactions with Pharoah. (Genesis 41 and later, though Joseph's story begins in Genesis 37)

My primary concern is the frequency. In SimCity the petitions were, very, very rare. But for this game I plan (if possible) to make an audience the core or at least major activity (a thing the player does a lot), like 5 audiences per turn. It means I can't make it too complex or with too much text to read (preferably icons maybe?), it needs to be strightforward or the player's brain will explode. Also, I don't think each audience should involve a decision, or at least not a decision hard to make.

I was thinking more like, there are many people that want to have an audience and you can't grant it to them all because you, as an emperor, have only 24h a day (and you need these for other things than audience too). So the first decision would be to whom grant the audience (mechanic like: there are 10 people who want an audience per turn but you can grant only 5).

These audience does not even need any decision to make, like an agent wants to give you a report on suspicious activities of some officials (granting this audience makes you immune for X turn to a "coup" event) or some influencial persona wanted just to talk about meaningless stuff (and will become unhappy if you don't find him important enough to meet) or that they ask you to participate in opening of a new starport (increases the planet's loyalty).

Another kind of audience could ask you about resources allocation. Like, they suspect an alien activity in sector X and want to send a survey squadron, you are to decide how many ships to send (these ships will be locked for Y turns). Or you could have a pool of funds to give out and there would be coming various people asking for these funds for various things/projects, of course there would be always more people who want the funds than the funds :) Every 12 turns there is a new "fiscal year" or something and you get a new pool of funds.

Traditonal "make an important decision that will shape the empire for the years to come" would be there too of course, but much more rare. Like a decision if we want to focus on training pilots or merchants (which is basicly a customisation of your "race"). These would be basicly mutually exclusive choices of permanent effects.

Note that all/most of these audiences would need to pop up over and over again, because I simply can't write so many unique scripted events (200 turns * 10 audiences = too much to be unique). Plus, it's probably desirable if these follow some pattern or the player would go insane quickly :)

What if audiences had "time limits" to them? Suppose the player sees a brief synopsis of the people requesting audiences and the reasons, limited to say, 12 audiences visible to the player each turn (so as to not overwhelm the player):

General Reng | War Effort | Requests more resources

Habil De`ack | Society | Average public health is gradually declining

Admiral Talia | War Effort | Requests permission to invade a neutral nation

Lieutenant Thompson | War Effort | Report on the Fourth Fleet on the northern front

High Engineer Vernes | Production | Report on ship production of the new ship designs

Treasurer Francis | Administration | Warning about dwindling treasury funds

...

The player only has "time" for 5 audiences a turn, so chooses 5 out of those 12 synopses, (granting 5 audiences out of the 12 people waiting) and gets the fuller text (limited to a paragraph), and the counselor opinions (limited to two sentences each, max 3 opinions).

Some of the audiences have a time-limit. Invading the neutral nation might be relevant for 3 turns. Most audiences only have a 1 turn time limit, but super-important choices may have 2 or 3 turn limit (the petition will show up for 2 or 3 days in a row hoping you'll choose him from amongst that day's 12 petitioners). After the time limit (usually just 1 turn), the petition is auto-resolved. If a decision needs to be made, it'll automatically be made (perhaps a random choice from the possible options that would've been presented to the player). If it's a warning or a report, it'll just be dropped from the queue.

Further, it'd be nice if on turn 5, Admiral Talia requested permission to invade the neutral nation, and on turn 7 he returned to report on how it went, to provide a sense of continuity.

If you have 200 turns, reduce the number of audiences the player can accept in a single turn (3 audiences?), and decrease the number of possible presented audiences (7 presented?), and increase the number of turns each audience is active for (2 turns instead of 1, even for normal audiences). Every turn the player has a second opportunity to respond or review someone's petition that he didn't have time to get to yesterday, or he can have an audience with one of the three new people requesting audiences that filled the hole left by the three he responded to yesterday.

7 possible audiences, each lasting 2 turns, over 200 turns, is 700 unique events, plus say, 300 more resulting from optional choices. 1000 total, maybe 1200 (less, when you count audiences that persist for longer than 2 turns). At two paragraphs of text apiece (one paragraph for the description, and two sentences per counselor with only 1-3 counselors commenting on it), you could probably two or three events together a day in your free time as a creative break while programming, and on days focused on content-creation, you could probably make a decent event every 15 minutes or so, with maybe 20 done as a day's work, if you make it easy on yourself by making it simple to create new events. Since the unique content sounds primarily text-related (people talking to you, you responding, the result possibly shown later), you really could create alot of unique content quickly, and even recruit a friend or sibling to help - it's not a technical thing they have to learn, they just have to be a good writer.

Alot of the report-type events would mostly be procedurally generated anyway. "Your majesty, we now have %ship_count% ships in %area%.", repeated once every 20 turns is 10 audiences, and zero creativity required in writing. Most of the report-type audiences would be similar. "My lord, %mineral-type% harvesting is now at %harvest-capacity%. Your humble servant the head foreman sends his regards.". Though you'll probably want two or three stock variations for those report-templates that are repeated alot, you still cut down your "unique events" a great deal. The easier you make it on yourself to create the unique content, the more you can create. It'll be the choice-giving audiences (petitions rather than reports) that provide the most creative challenge, but even so, 20 minutes every now and then during programming breaks could probably get you two or three of them done a day.

Or maybe I'm just completely mis-estimating the requirements, or the nature of the game.

Hmm, what you wrote sounds a bit similar to my thoughts.

Time limit

Originally, I was thinking of making 5 turns limit for trivial audiences, but yours 1 turn is better since it would not hog the queue... Most of them need to be 1 turn OR there needs to be some mechanic to reject unwanted audiences early (which sounds complicated and troublesome).

Number of audiences per turn

Instead of a fixed number I was thinking about "focus points" that you can accumulate and manage a bit (resource). You can have max 15 focus points, you get +5 per turn and can use them anytime (this would not force the player to deal with audiences every single turn which might be more convenient/fun). In addition you would be spending these focus points on other things, like imperial editcs (yet the mayor use would be audiences), so you would need to skip some audiences if you plan something bigger (a reform of the empire).

When you get an assasination attempt on you, you always survive, but your health deteriorate temporarily and you get half focus points for the next X turns, so an empire might get into trouble because of the emperor "not feeling well" even through the economy and army is in a perfect shape.

Also, if you obtain "court efficiency" upgrade/project/trait you get +1 focus point per turn.

Representation of the throne room (audiences interface)

I have a trouble with that one and need advice.

Generally, I want a picture of an imperial throne and siome guards on the audience screen, that's very climatic. Then there needs to be an overview of people/audience requests. I think I can fit 2 rows of 6 each if I make it small (check the first picture, it's for another part of the game, but overall direction of the UI should be the same http://www.gamedev.net/topic/643014-personnel-strategy/ ) but I'm not sure if that's enough size to fit any info. There could be also some icon with "queue" symbol and a number of people that are still waiting (not visible on the screen at the moment because there is no space). These would be sorted more or less by importance (except for reports from previous turns actions, these need to go to the front so the player does not miss them.

The audience petitions would need some quick button to "deny" it, for quick disposal. Or maybe there should be a marker (2 buttons?) "grant/deny" and you click these and then you click "process queue" button and the granted ones pop up one by one (except for pure informational ones which would be ommited).

I'm not sure...

Misc

"Important audiences block". When there is an important unressolved audience (like a war declaration) the next turn button would be blocked (althrough I'm not sure what to do if the player has no focus points at that point...) OR make the button blocked until a player visits a throne room (this turn, therefore assuring the player sees the audience/event)?

"Free audiences". I think there need to be some free audiences (no focus points used) for pure information audiences (like a report that a fleet arrived somewhere). These could be drawn in grey (others could have different colours depending on severity or category).

it would be nice if some events/audiences gave you the option to send one of your advisors to solve the problem, removing his/her advice(/options) from audiences for X turns.
(aka you can send your general to solve a rebellion, but then you wouldn't be getting his/her (good) advice on combat-related activities for say 3-5 turns

i recommend against taking focus-points to the next turn, btw, since focus-points feel like available time, and bringing time to your next turn would break immersion.
if you want a resource you can "gather" i 'd use favours, important people, usually independent, owing you a favour for granting them this or that,

apart from having some "buffer" in times of crisis, this could also make the player think about how getting the most out of these favours, aka when to collect them.

Instead of a fixed number I was thinking about "focus points" that you can accumulate and manage a bit (resource). You can have max 15 focus points, you get +5 per turn and can use them anytime (this would not force the player to deal with audiences every single turn which might be more convenient/fun).

That does seem like it'd make better gameplay, as long as there is an upper cap of focus points (the suggested 15 max sounds good).
You could then even have certain audiences take 2 focus points on rare occasions.

Representation of the throne room (audiences interface)
I have a trouble with that one and need advice.
Generally, I want a picture of an imperial throne and siome guards on the audience screen, that's very climatic. Then there needs to be an overview of people/audience requests. I think I can fit 2 rows of 6 each if I make it small (check the first picture, it's for another part of the game, but overall direction of the UI should be the same http://www.gamedev.net/topic/643014-personnel-strategy/ ) but I'm not sure if that's enough size to fit any info.
...
The audience petitions would need some quick button to "deny" it, for quick disposal.

Here's a possible layout:

(Note: the thrones I just stole from Google Images as placeholders - they are almost certainly copyrighted)

You could even color-code each audience box based off of department category (blue = civil service, green = military, white = science, etc...).

Hmmm, indeed horizontal audience cards can fit reasonable amount of text.

About grant audience button, maybe fit there a list of possible choices as well? It's kind of repetitive to first click grant audience and then a new screen/window pop up and asks which option you choose...

I wonder about the throne picture, somehow I find it annoying... Maybe it's because of the black background and it should be inside a border+background (as a big picture at the top?) Or maybe drazw this throne as a screen background and it will become fully visible after you get rid (deny or grant) of the audiences for the turn? Or maybe make the throne picture part of the interface (some buttons representing guards that you can click and change your preferences to security or icons of your advisors?) I'm not sure, maybe that's just my personal feeling only...

i recommend against taking focus-points to the next turn, btw, since focus-points feel like available time, and bringing time to your next turn would break immersion.

I don't know... I like the mechanic that does not force the player to grant audiences every single turn (with +5/15 max it's one big audience per 3 turns if you want). Favours sound complicated and, well, I want it to feel like the personal time of the emperor.

Hmmm, indeed horizontal audience cards can fit reasonable amount of text.

About grant audience button, maybe fit there a list of possible choices as well? It's kind of repetitive to first click grant audience and then a new screen/window pop up and asks which option you choose...

You might still need to "grant" the audience (you only know a synopsis of what an audience contains until you grant it), which then shows the paragraph of text containing the actual petition/report and the advisors' advice.

I wonder about the throne picture, somehow I find it annoying... Maybe it's because of the black background and it should be inside a border+background (as a big picture at the top?) Or maybe drazw this throne as a screen background and it will become fully visible after you get rid (deny or grant) of the audiences for the turn?

It was just a mockup for showing the concept. Your sci-fi game certainly shouldn't use a 1700 AD throne, and you previously mentioned you'd like guards visible around the throne. The scene background is a great idea, uncovering the picture more, and might look good with a gathered crowd of courtiers in semi-silhouette looking towards the throne from the bottom, with the audience panels partially covering them.

Quote

I wonder about the throne picture, somehow I find it annoying... Maybe it's because of the black background and it should be inside a border+background (as a big picture at the top?) Or maybe drazw this throne as a screen background and it will become fully visible after you get rid (deny or grant) of the audiences for the turn?

It was just a mockup for showing the concept. Your sci-fi game certainly shouldn't use a 1700 AD throne, and you previously mentioned you'd like guards visible around the throne. The scene background is a great idea, uncovering the picture more, and might look good with a gathered crowd of courtiers in semi-silhouette looking towards the throne from the bottom, with the audience panels partially covering them.

Yes, I know. I just think than no matter how polished the front view throne image would still look odd...

I think 2 solutions are possible here:

1) top down full screen background with the throne room picture, as explained before

2) Small/medium interactive icons at the top, the biggest one would be the throne (with stars as indicator of focus points left), smaller icons of guards (when you mouse over it shows the chance of surviving assassination attempt), a chancellor with a number on it which shows how many people are waiting for audience (if they don't fit on the screen), maybe portraits of ministers (you get a report after clicking) or some advisors (with advices).

How about ressolving audiences after the turn? During a turn you can only select "grant audience" or "reject" (if non of these selected the audience rquest simply carry over next turn or expire waits too long). When you click the end turn you are presented the decisions for each audience one by one (you can't come back, just a seriest of decisions), audiences that do not require decision are not presented after the turn, just carried over.

Does it make sense? Should I go for this mechanic or is there a better one?

2) Small/medium interactive icons at the top, the biggest one would be the throne (with stars as indicator of focus points left), smaller icons of guards (when you mouse over it shows the chance of surviving assassination attempt), a chancellor with a number on it which shows how many people are waiting for audience (if they don't fit on the screen), maybe portraits of ministers (you get a report after clicking) or some advisors (with advices).

Sounds good - I guess the only way to know is to try it out and fine-tune it.

How about ressolving audiences after the turn? During a turn you can only select "grant audience" or "reject" (if non of these selected the audience rquest simply carry over next turn or expire waits too long). When you click the end turn you are presented the decisions for each audience one by one (you can't come back, just a seriest of decisions), audiences that do not require decision are not presented after the turn, just carried over.
Does it make sense? Should I go for this mechanic or is there a better one?

It might get confusing if you choose which X audiences you want, and later on actually see those X audiences, because you might mix up in your mind which audience is which.

I'd personally prefer click-to-grant, and then immediately get to view and decide (for audiences that require a decision). Click "grant audience" for the general's situation report, view the report, then make a decision, before granting any other audiences. Imagine an audience that is a report only with no decision-making.
"Lieutenant SoandSo is here to brief you on the economic state of your empire." -> Grant audience -> "Great! You'll grant this audience... at some future time, after you've ended your turn, when you've already forgotten (or stopped caring) about it."

What if I wanted to be briefed on the economic state of my empire specifically to decide whether to even grant audiences to the politicians requesting funds for a new satellite colony?
As a player, if I say "grant audience", I'd want it granted immediately. Imagine using Photoshop: "Apply motion blur to image." -> "Photoshop: Sure! I'll apply the motion blur sometime in the future, perhaps when you next minimize the window."

It'd be very irritating, which would be semi-acceptable if it had a good gameplay reason why it should be that way. But I can't think of any way it benefits the gameplay.

It'd be very irritating, which would be semi-acceptable if it had a good gameplay reason why it should be that way. But I can't think of any way it benefits the gameplay.

My thinking is like this: you have 3 focus points, you decide to grant audience to the general (click), to the banker (click), then to your researcher (click), then to the diplomat because there is a war (click - BEEP, action impossible, no focus points left), you stop and think, OK, the banker can be dealt with later (you unclick the grant audience button or reject audience). Then, after end turn all audiences that require a decision are ressolved (alternatively there could be "make decision" button that appears after audience is granted (if it requires it) which would allow you to make a decision instantly (but you still can ignore/change it later by ungranting/rejecting audience, the actual effect is always carried on after the turn)).

Two step audience is bad for details/outcome of the audience but good for managing whom you wish to grant the audience. It would work best if most audiences were just bonuses (like: grant audience to a governor and the morale on planet X improves by +2 and overall empire corruption falls by -1) or an instant decision (the survey ship encountered a planet with an ancient relic machinery, by granting the audience you tell them to investigate it further - also granting the audience locks 5 scout ships for X turns).

As for granting audience to get a report... well, I think (or rather, I'm quite sure) it should not use any focus points and therefore would not need any button at all (just "more details" button). Generally, I hesitate if I should put reports in audience mechanic in the first place... Maybe it should be done some other way?

Two step audience is bad for details/outcome of the audience but good for managing whom you wish to grant the audience. It would work best if most audiences were just bonuses (like: grant audience to a governor and the morale on planet X improves by +2 and overall empire corruption falls by -1) or an instant decision (the survey ship encountered a planet with an ancient relic machinery, by granting the audience you tell them to investigate it further - also granting the audience locks 5 scout ships for X turns).

It sounds reasonable. It would depend on the presentation though. You'd have to present enough information in the "audience requesting" phase for playings to make an informed decision. It can't just say, "General Grahm is requesting an audience", or you won't know what makes Grahm's audience of more worth to you than Grand Minister Sam's audience request. It has to say, "General Grahm is requesting more resources for the war effort in the Alpha Centauri system."

Then, in the "audience granting" phase, it'd have to remind you (using the exact same text snippet) why you granted the audience.
[General Grahm is requesting more resources for the war effort in the Alpha Centauri system.] [Grant Audience]
[Another person you already agreed to give an audience to] [Grant Audience]
[The third person you agreed to give an audience to] [Grant Audience]

As for granting audience to get a report... well, I think (or rather, I'm quite sure) it should not use any focus points and therefore would not need any button at all (just "more details" button). Generally, I hesitate if I should put reports in audience mechanic in the first place... Maybe it should be done some other way?

That makes sense. Maybe you can show all the reports first, before accepting audiences, breaking it into two distinct phases.

Have you tried the game Long Live the Queen? In it you play through the first year of the reign of a new queen and have to deal political conspiracies, rebel forces, war, and a cult of evil wizards.

Half of each turn is training skills and the other is dealing with events and petitions.

You'll get a petition like a noble has invaded the lands of a neighbor and the they want you to resolve the situation. The game gives you choices based on your skills and additional in formation during conversations if you the right skills. For instance if you have high enough knowledge of internal affairs then you will see extra text explaining the relationship between the two nobles.

There are many ways to resolve the incident such as:

• Send the army
• Buy off the noble who has lost land
• Convince the invader to leave
• Threaten with magic
• Force her to marry some to satisfy the invaded party

Your choices will determine if one or both nobles join the conspiracy against you, it may cost valuable funds, or weaken your army all of which will have an effect on the resolution of future events.

I could see how an approach like that could work with your game idea. Your minsters my offer additional information during a petition or offer their suggestions on how to deal with it, you could even delegate things to them.

I like the idea of seeing the headline of their petition then you click on the one you want to get involved in and a dialogue begins where you hear their problem your minsters offer advice or solutions and you decided how to deal with it. Maybe you can also delegate other petitions to a minister who will deal with it how they feel best. There might be some danger in this as it increases their influence and too much influence means you can't control them or they rebel.

Say you have two petitions

1. Vega Colony has discovered a vast network of caves filled with giant crystals.
2. The Martians are staging independence protests

You choose the first hear the suggestions and decided to make them a tourist attractions. But you don't care about the martians so you assign your military advisory to deal with it. He sends in the troops and causes a small rebellion but his influence over the military and domestic affairs increases.

Later on as his influence grows to high he may enforce his own choices. So when the finance minster comes calling asking what to do with the big revenue boost Vega Colony has introduced your military adviser tells you not worry and he automatically takes charge of the petition.

I think the focus or time point system could be good in this game where you can only do 2 or 3 actions a turn so you have to choose carefully. Do you use them hearing petitions, training, visiting potential empresses, or indulging.

Have you tried the game Long Live the Queen? In it you play through the first year of the reign of a new queen and have to deal political conspiracies, rebel forces, war, and a cult of evil wizards.

An interesting take on Princess Maker mechanic. The thing is it's meant for different audience. Princess Maker clones are played more by jRPG lovers, what I try to make is turn based strategy, for people who play Civilization, Master of Orion, etc. Also I strive for higher replayability. Also, as you said, this is great for a game where you can only do 2 or 3 actions a turn and I'm not trying to make that kind of game (althrough, maybe I should :D).

But.. .the scripted thematic audience there indeed is appealing... How about exactly one audience (after you click end turn)? It would be a full screen with only just this one petition, so you can have all choices with explanation of consequences and even advisors. These audience could be based on semi random chain of events (like at the start of the game there are randomy decided what kind of scenarios will be played "ancient ruins", "lost brother wants to usurp the throne", "plague", "military coup", "mad researcher causes the sun to blow up" and then these events will be presented as audiences with following events/audiences depending how you handled the previous ones) also there could be regular standard events (like imperial senate gathering once per 10 turns, tax collector's problems, corruption of planetary governors).

There would be exactly one such audience per turn.

Now, about the previously discussed "spend focus points to decide which audience to grant". Should I:

a) choose the "spend focus points to decide which audience to grant"

b) choose the "one audience per turn" (a bit like in the Long Live the Queen)

c) do both