Dev Journal #7: Culture & Influence

[p]Soft Power. Strategy games favor focusing on warfare, but culture and influence have mattered far more in shaping the world. While this may seem, to some, to be a change in the post-World War II era, it has been true going all the way back to the Bronze Age: culture and influence matter.[/p][p]Civilization IV lead designer Soren Johnson made cultural influence a major focus of Civ IV, forever changing 4X strategy games. In fact, when we teamed up to make Offworld Trading Company, we wanted to make a game in which you had to achieve your ends using what amounts to culture and influence.[/p][p]Now, when Ara: History Untold shipped, it included a religion feature. The goal, successfully achieved or not, was to use it as a means to get more prestige. As a player, I want multiple game mechanics to choose from to achieve my strategic objectives. When they put me in charge of Ara, I was adamant that we find a way to get culture and influence in the game. Moreover, it could not be a DLC or expansion. As a premium, first-party Xbox Games Studio title, the new features involved deserved to be a part of the base complete experience, no matter how large.[/p][p]So here they are in Ara v2.0![/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Adding Culture and Influence without Redesigning the Game[/h2][p]To do it right, we needed to implement it so that it feels like it was always part of the game design. So, how do you do that? Well, we already have the concept of religion allowing you to pick verses that give your nation various buffs and abilities; we already have the idea of obtaining "claims" when cities level up; and we already have a 'Quality of Life' system: Happiness, Health, Security, Education, and Prosperity. I'd argue that this game was ready-made for culture and influence.[/p][p]Therefore:[/p]

1. [p]Cities should generate Influence points just like they generate Research. The bigger the city, the more Influence it generates.[/p]
2. [p]You add a new quality of life stat: Culture. High Culture greatly increases Influence generation; low Culture reduces it.[/p]
3. [p]Influence becomes a currency that you use to buy and sell claims and new traits. I feel dirty writing that, but it's true![/p]

[p]As part of this, we were also able to address two long-time requests from players:[/p][p]First request: Cities shouldn't be stuck unable to expand simply because they don't have enough local food. Las Vegas is a thing.[/p][p]Second request: Slow down the city leveling up speed as you end up with a massive city before the end of the Iron Age![/p][p]Before Culture and Influence, we didn't really have any game mechanics to solve those two requests. Now we did. Nations focusing on culture can buy claims and expand cities out in the middle of the desert if they want and we could also make it so that city size (in terms of regions) was a balance between food availability and culture.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Cost of Claims and Traits[/h3][p]Each time you buy a claim or trait, the cost goes up. As your nation grows and generates more influence, the cost of enhancing it will also go up. Additionally, 10% of the cost of a claim or a culture trait is based on how many other nations have done the same. So, while not overpowering, there is a slight inflation in cost based on how much other players are doing it.[/p][p][/p][h2]But what about Cultural Conquest?[/h2][p]But what about using influence as a tool of conquest? This was a lot trickier. Because Improvements are built per region and are not simply part of the city, we couldn't implement this like Civilization IV did. We needed a way to nibble away the edges of someone's nation where the two of you are bumping up against each other, but we needed this to be a pretty big deal. After all, you might have the Pyramids in one of these regions, and having it get taken over by cultural influence would be extremely frustrating.[/p][p]Therefore, we needed cultural conquest to be a deliberate act rather than a passive expansion of cultural influence. This dilemma led to the creation of a new unit. . .[/p][p][/p][h3]The Agitator[/h3][p]We struggled a lot with what to name this unit. We liked Agent Provocateur, but no one can spell that word. It's like restaurant. No one can spell it right. Well, I can't anyway. So, we eventually settled on Agitator.[/p][p]The Agitator can be sent into a region and then spend a claim's worth of Influence. The Agitator shows up with the new tech called Revolutions. This comes at the end of the Renaissance era when normal region claims start to matter less because most of the regions that matter are claimed.[/p][p]Now, using the Agitator will make computer players very, very angry. In fact, it makes them angry enough that they will potentially declare war on you even if you're stronger and they're busy with other wars. Like I said, it makes them really mad and they will tell you, but they won't necessarily go to war with you either. It depends on your relationship history.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h3]Not so fun when it’s done to you[/h3][p]Initially, we had it set up so that you would put the Agitator in a region, press the incite rebellion button, and if the region was adjacent to your territory, it would flip. However, we then had the AI utilize it. Well, obviously, then we learned this is a stupid game for jerks. After a few minutes of insisting that I was taking the game "back to the store," we came up with the idea of it taking 10 turns and sending notifications to let you know it was being done to you, so that you could react.[/p][p][/p][h2]Fleshing out gameplay[/h2][p]Having Culture & Influence gives players an additional set of tools to execute their strategy. It also helps us with our long-term goal of ensuring that each Act of the game plays differently. You don't want Turn 500 to play the same as Turn 50. You want the gameplay in a game like this to evolve and grow over time.[/p][p]Hopefully, you find this mechanic as fun and interesting as we do. We will, undoubtedly, have to tweak some values over time as someone, probably you, figures out some way to exploit it in an interesting way. I say to you: Bravo. Good job! Because soft power is the most exploitable power.[/p]