Faction politics and diplomacy, cultures

[Senusret]

1. Faction diplomacy - Factions form alliances, defense pacts, trade agreements, and have sworn enemies. The Player faction should also be able to get involved in alliances, trade agreements, etc.

2. All factions could have a specific leader or leaders depending on the type of faction, such as Theocracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy. These leaders conduct diplomacy with the player if they are sufficiently powerful (enough faction money or faction size)
(Theocracy factions could practice religion and build temples and shrines as was suggested in a previous thread about Religion)

3. Some factions could have strongholds, the seat of their power. Perhaps a building in a town or some lone tower in the mountains.

4. Different towns and parts of the world should have different items and clothing, reflecting different cultures in different regions. Also this would make every town more unique.

Seems like a natural progression for Factions, maybe this is already planned. I must say, I love this game and have already spent many hours enjoying it as it is. It has that mystical feeling of wonder to it.

I feel like the fluff that gets added later will make a big difference too. With such an open sandbox world it seems natural that there should be a large variety of different clothing, armor, character looks, faces, hairstyles so you can perfect that feeling of a vast and diverse world to explore.

[CalPal]

For me, and I've mentioned this in one of the religion threads, political and religious factions should operate a bit differently from each other.

Political factions should obviously have cities, territories and armies to defend their lands. Religious factions, however, are a little more different, at least for me. Most religions don't have "boarders"; they may dominate in a certain region of the world, but what gives religion power is the number of worshipers they have. The more people that have faith in their doctrine, the more likely they can use that influence to shape the world in their favour. So their influence doesn't stop at the political border; if they have even one or two worshipers deep in another religious faction's territory, there's still influence that can be exerted on the other worshipers. Thus, religions have the potential to either be supremely powerful to the point of potentially being unstoppable, or unable to organize everything that's going on; an extreme hard mode, if you will, with unimaginable profits if done right.

Here's an example I would envision in Kenshi. You have two regions, both controlled by a different religious faction and with multiple political factions doing their usual thing. As I said before, religious boarders aren't the same as political boarders, if they exist at all. So you may have one settlement that began killing certain worshipers to strengthen the control of a random political leader for some reason. Those that survive might run to the supporting religious leaders and plea for help, to which they might influence the settlements within their sphere of influence to go and punish the political faction that did the culling. As a response, you'd then have the other religious faction see this as an attack on their faith, to which they then respond back. Boom: you just got yourself a crusades-esque war between two fictional religious factions.

I still agree with everything you said - especially the parts regarding diplomacy and different appearances of people - I just think religious factions need to play on a whole different level than political factions, SAVE for those religious factions that appear and act more like the Holy Roman Empire, which had a more distinct presence on the world and had their own standing armies.

[Senusret]

Religions/Cults should have AI rituals that they perform often.

Now tell me you wouldn't enjoy busting into some evil cults temple to rescue a beautiful virgin from human sacrifice!!

[CalPal]

Cults would also be great to have, especially if they're very small but numerous. From my perspective, they would also operate along the same lines as religions, although they're a very weak, starters version of religion. In fact, the game should start out with nothing but cults competing against each other, with the victors growing into full-fledged religious institutions.

I think it would be just as fun to kill a cult and save a maiden as it would be to control said cult and undermine a nearby settlement, either for luls or for more grander purposes of expanding and influencing all the people.

[iSuck345]

Religions/Cults should have AI rituals that they perform often.

Now tell me you wouldn't enjoy busting into some evil cults temple to rescue a beautiful virgin from human sacrifice!!

Y'know, it could be racism. And no, I don't mean black, asian, native american and all of that caucasian crap. I mean REAL races. For example, a lizard or bug-like species, or maybe even a species that has a hive-mind consciousness and is hunted because people are jealous of them, or think that by killing them they are the NEW wonder species, or they just hate that kind of thing.

And the list goes on.

In other words, it's not just that. What about a non-virgin male saved by a woman? Nothin' wrong with that, just sayin'. Also, how wold you save her? All alone and by yourself?

[CalPal]

Well, sneaking is going to be a skill in this game...

And on the bright side, if you do fail to get out alive but the intended victim is saved, you could always continue playing as him/her! And s/he would stand outside of the cave entrance, looking around and thinking "S**t... now what?" And it starts all over again...

[PnzrNorm]

Bumping this thread because...

My 3rd +1 to Chris sharing his thoughts on the expanded diplomacy system

I'm going to link several threads here that fall under similar topics, for thoroughness sake:

• Trade Relations, Embargoes, and Privateering -- http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... acy#p36111
  
  Government Types -- http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... ion#p26028
  
  Factions Emerging and Falling -- http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... ion#p27713
  
  Big List of Economic, Military, and Faction Ideas -- http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... ing#p35494
  
  Religion (since it is a subset of Culture and greatly affects diplomacy, in my opinion) -- http://www.lofigames.com/phpBB3/viewtop ... t=religion