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Although I appreciate SR 2010, among some things which I didn't like were that the AI was not made to work for a long time and the lack of moddability options for AI and other things, thus having very few mods for the game. I wish and pray that SR 2020 being a strategy game would be created in such a manner that there is a huge scope of mods, the AI would be programmed to work properly for at least 100 years thus giving the game longer playability and the game would not just be an all out war; just build the military and take over the world. I would like it to have more emphasis on strategy, diplomacy, infrastructure, foreign politics, internal administration, social policies etc. like some other well known strategy games out there. If I enhance the strategical, economic, diplomatic, social, foreign, infrastructure, internal adminsitration, social position of my country I should have enough time to enjoy the fruits of my hard work and see the results. Also there should be ethnic and religious groups in every area of the world represented by pie charts and more management options for the immigration and emigration of my population. BG please take all this seriously. We need a game which we could play for a much longer time period and improve every aspect of our country, not in a hurry to just conquer the world.

Do you even need to ask?

All good comments, and no big surprises. I won't answer everthing now (much of the current decisions could change radically so there would be no point) but two things I can comment on...

100 years; not likely. Having done a large part of the work on the tech tree and equipment file for SR2010 and my continuing work with SR202, even if we could get the AI to manage its economy that long, other areas would run out. It takes lots of development time and research to expand either of those areas by just 5 more "years" of play. Will SR2020 be balanced for longer play than SR2010 was? Likely, but I would not expect us to set a target of a full century. Maybe something more in between... we'll see

Religion; that has been discussed a few times already in studio and there is some data structure for religion built into the old engine so this is a very reasonable request, the question is usually how should religion be modeled and with what effects? We'll probably have more discussions on this as development continues but with the nuances involved it's a hard one to decide if it is worth the development time to solve. After all "Muslim" or "Catholic" are extremely vague labels when look at the difference between a moderate and a fanatic. Another "we'll see" answer

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

Thanks Balthagor for your reply. I am pleased to note that you will consider the requests to make the next game more interesting and I hope that in SR 2020 we would also be able to do the task of nation building along with wars which would give great satisfaction to most of the fans of Supreme Ruler series. You are right to point out that a century is too difficult a task; and also you give us hope to make the time period something in between, which I assume would be a reasonable time period to conclude our games with satisfaction. As with the religious groups of the population I would like to point out that many games are being created along religious line for example, Medieval 2: Total War, Europa Universalis III etc etc. which you must be knowing. So I don't thing adding religion would cause any problem. Also I would suggest you to include ethnic/cultural groups. For this I would provide you the examples of two game I know although there many be more. First is Paradox's game i.e. "Victoria" and the second one is both the "Superpowers 1 & 2" created by Golemlabs. I am confident that we would see SR 2020 as one of the greatest global grand strategy games produced ever!!! Meanwhile I would be informing you with my other suggestions as time goes by. With best wishes.

I am familiar with them, but these two would be a poor example since in those examples there is much less difference in the types of religion to be found and the areas they cover (centralized around Europe mainly) have one or two dominant religions. The trick is figuring out what religion should affect and making sure it adds to gameplay.

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Chris Latour
BattleGoat Studios
chris@battlegoat.com

well a simple effect is 2 regions with differnet dominate religions could hate each other to the point of going to war. There is several examples of such in history. Yes mainly the major religions caused most of them. Also like minded religious regions will help one another just to get rid of the differnet religion. Maybe it be a way around build cap as the prime way of getting a cause for war. Just a thought.

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In war destroy everything even the livestock.

I'm afraid this is "headace" issue.....
I don't see how you (the player) could have an religious influence in the game....
Maybe by sending missionaries instead of bombs...

Imho i think that the Goats first have to implemend other (more easely programmable) things in the game..... like -environment-.

Just my two cents...

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NO MORE NOISY FISH [unless they are green & furiously]
I HAVE STILL A FISH IN MY EAR

..., by -environment - what are you looking for? If it's weather, for SR2020 the answer is, it won't be in the game.

And that is exactly how it should be. Having to check the terrain of each hex that I plan on fighting over is more than enough work for me. If I have to weigh those variables against the weather variables of each hex, then I would be a very frustrated individual (I'm looking at you, Hearts of Iron 2!)

Those CPU cycles could be better invested elsewhere.

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In a world without sound, dancing... falling... I was snow.

Another few quick comments on points raised in this thread:

- Religion - as has been mentioned, we are planning something here. The original SR2010 design had a complex religion model, but among other problems was the fact that it was, well, too complex.. It just really didn't fly as a gameplay element. We've hashed out some plans to bring Religion back in a more straightforward way, so we'll have to see how that ends up working. We do understand that Religion is an important component in World politics and relationships, and we want to model that.

- Immigration/Emigration - We discussed this recently as well, and in general we feel that for gameplay this is not an area that works well as a 'micromanagement' item. Again, the original SR2010 design had lots of tweaking planned here (such as 'restrict immigration except for skilled', 'allow/disallow refugees', etc.), but all of that really had a very minor gameplay effect. One big change to this in 2020 is that the world we be a properly 'closed world', so that people will move between countries in a 'zero sum' sort of way. But we don't plan a lot of control to restricting immigration and emigration.

- 100 year games - We have noticed that some people like playing very long games. So we've discussed what manners of death we can apply to leaders that stay in power too long But we also understand that, especialy with the Sandbox mode, some people will really want a loooooong game, regardless of the tech tree issues. This is something we are looking at, and of course it involves a lot of elements (tech tree, AI, economic model, human lifetimes, etc).

-- George.

We've been discussing that although you can't customize immigration / emigration controls, we'll base them on government types. For instance, Democracies will have some limits on immigrants but no control of emigrants, while Dictatorships and Communist governments will have more control on emigrants and less so on immigrants.

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- David

Hahhahahahhaha.
Wait ummm, isnt cloning a tech advance ?

Cant we just clone the "great leader" every 40 years or so

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

It might not help. Watch out for the random event that places an intern alone with the leader -- instead of "my kingdom for a horse" the new saying would be "my kingdom for a b........," well, let's not go there.

Regards,
Feltan

Hhahahahhahahahahahahahah

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This post approved by Tkobo:Official Rabble Rouser of the United Yahoos
Chuckle TM

one problem with cloning. That is if they don't perfect it in 13 years is that u have to clone 100's of times just to get one that is right. So if ur going to clone the leader he/she will have 100's of defected clones running around. Imagine 100's of George W. Bush running around. Some more unstable than the orginal. Scary thought there.

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In war destroy everything even the livestock.

I don't know if 2020 will be using the same facilities as in 2010 or
that the production will be expanded with lets say steelworks,reffineries
(nitro)chemical industry etc...
But placing pollution industry (and airbases in urban territory) should have a bigger impact in the game.
If you don't spend on environment you should see it directly on your Dar
and diplo ratings with other regions.
Same thing for culture.....

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NO MORE NOISY FISH [unless they are green & furiously]
I HAVE STILL A FISH IN MY EAR