The Foundation of SotE's Gameplay

The current article pertains to mechanics that are distant from our current state of development, and thus is aspiration that we are working toward. They are therefore subject to change.

Songs of the Eons will be a grand strategy game that doesn’t know it is a game. Instead, it will be an open ended fantasy world--- with no beginning or end--- filled with thousands of self-interested agents, a few of which *might* be players. The world itself and the other agents in it are completely apathetic as to whether the other agents they encounter are a player or not. You are merely one agent among thousands. The world does not exist for the sole purpose of amusing the player. Every agent in the game will behave based on its own aspirations, objectives, and prejudices. Most strategy games involve giving orders to mindless automatons who execute your commands without question. In SotE, the player gives commands to intelligent actors who may or may not have interests that align perfectly with their own.

What is an Agent?

A hypothetical hierarchy of agents. Each agent has two way interactions between the agent above it and the agent below it. The more in keeping the interests are between agents, the more favorable their actions are to one another. Most of the ways that the player will govern is through interacting with agents.

So what is an “agent” in Songs of the Eons? An agent can be many things. An agent is an entity which is capable of setting objectives, exerting changes in the world, and is capable of pursuing its own interests. An agent can be almost anything that behaves independently in the world. It can be an independent mercenary band, a shipwright, a merchant family, a band of pirates or bandits, a pack of roving monsters, a province... In effect, an agent is any lifeform or collection of lifeforms that operates in an organized fashion and is capable of influencing the world in a consequential way. Each agent contains an AI, the complexity and options of which depends on the magnitude of the agent's influence in the world.

The way that agents influence the world is as a “consumer” and “producer.” A shipwright organization, for instance, consumes labor, wood, and cloth and produces ships. This is an obvious example, but sometimes what is produced can be a “consequence” in the world rather than a physical good. A mercenary band would be an agent as well, and while it consumes physical things like labor, food, and weapons, it produces a “consequence” in the form of directed violence at the behest of their employer (which is another agent). An agent like a monster pack consumes food and goods and produces chaos as well as more monsters.

Similarly, agents can “consume consequences” as well, though this generally comes in the form of being acted upon by the world or by other agents. For instance, a shipwright may have the option to be acted upon by a merchant family who wishes to commission the construction of a trading vessel. The monster band, on the other hand, might be acted upon by a local militia, who sets out to kill them, or acted upon by the royal rangers, who have the unique option to communicate with the monster band and steer them in the direction of a neighbor who is unfriendly to their liege. Some of these consequences will involve a reaction from the agent being acted upon (the shipwright can turn down the contract) and others will not (the monsters being killed).

All Agents Have Unique Interests and Motives

In the case of each of the aforementioned agents, each one has their own particular objectives and will actively pursue them to the best of their ability and (limited) knowledge. The shipwright organization desires to turn a profit, expand their operation, and reward their owners. The mercenary band desires to generate riches and glory for themselves as well as the society from which they hail, but may also have secondary objectives that open up regarding adventurism and independent conquest (if just the right opportunity arises, or their employer fails to pay them). The monster pack desires to survive and acquire additional resources for the purpose of reproducing and making the monster pack larger.

Each one of these agents will operate within the parameters that they are furnished with (their scope), and they will do so with varying degrees of liberty depending on the nature of the agent. A shipwright--- being a sedentary organization--- has a fairly narrow scope and doesn’t have the option of roaming around the world seizing loot and bounty. Thus its “agency” in the world is very different than that of a monster band. The shipwright interacts with the world through a set of actions such as securing supplies from merchants, acquiring contracts with buyers, and complaining to the leaders of the city within which they reside that their taxes are too high (and, perhaps, giving financial support to a pretender to the throne who promises more favorable circumstances). A monster pack has a broader scope, however, allowing them to move about the map or steal livestock and other foodstuffs. In general, the number and nature of options an agent has depends on the agents type and size, thus a small merchant family may only have the agency options to conduct trade, while a large, rich, and influential merchant family may have options open up which allow them to hire mercenary armies and participate actively in geopolitics to advance their interests.

Agent Hierarchies

A hypothetical hierarchy of agents. Each agent has two way interactions between the agent above it and the agent below it. The more in keeping the interests are between agents, the more favorable their actions are to one another. Most of the ways that the player will govern is through interacting with agents.

Most agents in the world will not be independent, and will belong to an agent above them (which will severely limit the scope of their options). For instance, a large imperial army is an agent which has many agents operating beneath it and at its behest. Within it could be agents in the form of auxiliaries from a coerced ally, an agent in the form of an elite imperial guard regiment who directly serves the emperor, and agents in the form of poorly trained conscripts raised from the empire’s countryside. The imperial army itself has a large scope and many options, but the options and scope of the agents beneath it are significantly more constrained, and thus relate to how they behave within the army (unless they were to break free somehow).

This does not however mean that the agents in the army are entirely passive. Aside from evaluating whether to follow the orders given to them by the imperial army, they would still need to reconcile their own interests with what the army expects of them. For instance, the imperial guard agent is well paid and loyal, so their interests align with the agent above them, resulting in their interactions with the world being beneficial for the army as well as their own personal glory.

The coerced auxiliaries, on the other hand, are only an agent of the army by way of threat. The options they will have to interact with the world will involve insubordination, desertion, defection, betrayal of the Imperial Army agent that presides above them, etc. How pronounced and likely these options are will depend on how strong the army’s loyal agents happen to be relative to the auxiliaries. If the army wins incredible spoils for the auxiliaries while suffering low casualties, the auxiliaries might re-evaluate their options to be more favorable to the army, despite their geopolitical misgivings (everyone likes a winner).

The conscript agent has nuanced conditions as well. They are from loyal, core territories but should their homelands be attacked while they are out on campaign, they may either behave less heroically on the battlefield and also pursue the option of petitioning the commander of the army to return home (with the subtle implication of mutiny if their request isn’t granted). Conversely, if the conscripts win great victories and spoils, they might return home after the campaign is over and--- upon investing their gains into their farms--- have the option to interact with other agents to encourage them to flock to the banner of the army in the future.

When considered in total, the imperial army is a complex, living entity containing many other living entities. Were the player to take them on campaign, the player would not only need to determine how to use the army to meet their objectives, but also how to manage the army’s internal politics. A massive army that outnumbers the enemy greatly might look powerful on paper, but if it’s filled with discontented agents who chafe at the notion of mobilization, they will likely fall apart the moment it faces hardship. On the other hand, a small army filled with agents who are highly motivated and defending their homes will punch far above their weight, as it will be a far more cohesive and easily managed entity. Much of the time, the player will likely be faced with an army somewhere in the middle, with some agents who are less than thrilled to be on campaign accompanied by loyal, motivated agents acting as the army’s center of gravity.

Events Arise From Organic Interactions Between Agents

What’s more, “events” during the army’s campaign won’t result from some random number generator deciding that it’s time to throw the army a curve ball. Instead, “events” will arise as a result of agents acting out on their own personal, perceived interests.

For instance, the Imperial Guards might decide to storm ahead of the army without orders in pursuit of personal glory and engage the vanguard of an enemy army. A pyrrhic victory in which your professional soldiers are killed might cause the auxiliaries to start agitating now that there is no one to keep them in line. If the campaign season gets late, your peasant conscripts might become concerned that their crops back home will go unharvested, causing a drop to their morale.

If the campaign goes well, the agents of the army will share the word with other agents outside the army, causing them to flock to your cause during your campaign or in future ones. If the campaign turns into a casualty ridden quagmire of disease and defeat, many of the agents of the army might believe that they are better off facing the consequences of desertion, and the army will begin to fall apart.

All Societies in Songs of the Eons are Composed of Numerous Agents

When all is considered, a society in Songs of the Eons is ultimately a massive web of relationships between agents and their ability to act upon one another. While the imperial army of our example is the overlord of numerous agents, the imperial army is itself subordinate to the imperial court, who themselves are agents. The imperial army can produce consequences with the imperial court (raise our pay or we storm the palace) and the court can act on the army (go conquer that land over yonder).

The structure of territory operates in a similar way. The capital of an empire contains numerous provincial agents beneath it, and each one of those provincial agents has agents subordinate to it as well (nobles or peasant councils ruling over the peasants, merchant families, a cloth weaving guild, a band of privateers who use the province as their homeport, etc.)

And while a chain of fealty among agents may make one agent subordinate to another which is subordinate to another which is subordinate to another, each agent--- in the end--- is looking out for itself. A society succeeds when all of these agents are moving in the roughly the same direction toward mutually beneficial interests. A society collapses when most of those agents decide not only that they are better off on their own, but when they determine they can also get away with it.

The job of the player is to take control of one of these agents at the top of a society and then organize and interact with the agents beneath them in a constructive and beneficial direction. Instead of controlling mindlessly loyal subjects who unerringly bend to your will, the player instead interacts with this web of agents in an attempt to reconcile your own objective as a governing body with the interests and objectives of each agent.

The Player is an Agent as Well

The player, in fact, merely assumes control of an agent in game, just like all other agents. Typically, the most exciting role for most players will be playing as the highest geopolitical authority of their society, but it's very probable throughout the course of the game that the player ends up subordinate to another agent, most commonly if your society is conquered and annexed. It's possible, in the course of SotE development though, that the player may be able to hop into virtually any agent in the game: a dragon clutch who lives atop a volcano and extorts tribute from a nearby town, a merchant family that begins to amass riches and builds for themselves a merchant republic, a band of pirates who dominate commerce at the cross roads of the world, a group of feral elves holding out against the deforestation of an advancing civilization, or whatever other agents may arise during the development of the game.