Know what would be awesome? You walk through a town in Skyrim and it would come under assault by another faction. This would be under control of the AI that will randomly spawn these scenes of battle that give a real impression Skyrim is in a civil war. I want it to feel like Half Life 2, when you were back in City 17 and the rebellion began where you felt like something big was happening as you walked through the city.

Of course it will not be like Half Life 2 because its not scripted and you can change the tides of the battles. If there were political factions like in Morrowind you could support and fight with a certain faction a la Mount and Blade. It would be even better if like Mount and Blade you could capture a city, but I think that may be wishful thinking, and that creates complications where if you were part of a faction you could not access towns that were owned by another faction.

But how could cool would it be if you could alter the political landscape of Skyrim by participating in the most exciting part of politics, the fighting? I once read an article in PC Gamer that says Open RPG comes today lack something big to make the game world more real, and thats politics. Screw the new quest system governed by radiant AI, thats not entertaining, being able to lead a war is.

What do you guys think?

I do get were you are going at with the civil war battles thing. One thing though the Radiant A.I. thing is going to be a big selling point for Skyrim. What if in the beginning of the game you already picked your race and all of a sudden a certain faction sieges the city where you are being held at and you have to fight or sneak your way out?

I agree that something along the lines of OP would be cool.



Is that a problem? Sounds like fun! :flamethrower:

Dude.. I'd have to be on peyote to even begin to consider anything you just mentioned as remotely feasible

They did it on a much smaller scale in Oblivion where the guards would constantly fend off creatures from Oblivion. Maybe they can do something similar here, I admit I had exaggerated on my first post.

How about this? There would be sequences where towns and cities would be under siege or under attack, and these sieges are part of the civil war that can spawn and they can be affected by a player's negotiations with faction leaders. Now wouldn't that be something? The economy could also be affected by sieges etc, prices would obviously go up when a place is under siege, or after a particularly bloody war prices go up because the faction has to raise taxes to pay for the war debt.

If this were made to work this would be so much better than radiant AI.

i think wars is a good idea...not so sure about random ones though

You haven't studied much economics or anything of that nature, have you? Current countries that are in civil war, or any war for that matter, have extremely low prices, because war makes people poor. The main exception is the United States entering WWII ending the Great Depression. But the fighting wasn't done here. War destroys businesses and kills people, makes citizens have to work for less, makes prices go down. Funnily enough, if America were to pay off the trillion dollar debt, the value of the dollar would get so high that other countries couldn't afford to trade with us, which would in turn cause the economic collapse. Ironic.

Alright, so war lowers prices. My idea is that instead of rendering the game world to become more dynamic with the Radiant AI system you render it more dynamic with a AI system that features a country at war in a bigger scale. I don't suppose different factions would have different economic situations? Because that could have made an interesting premise and basically what I'm trying to get at is that this system could be better Radiant AI if it could change buying and selling prices, ei the economy based on the situation of the war. The economy is something the Radiant AI hasn't touched on probably because random NPCs who buy things are just too random, if you based an economy based on a larger situation it would make more sense.

Again I'm just pointing out something I would like to see Bethesda do. I'm not saying they're necessarily doing anything wrong.

This would actually make a ton of sense considering the radiant story. If dragons can attack random towns and destroy parts of them and kill residents, then why couldnt there be attacks by other factions?

I only hope I dont bust my butt getting to a city then finding everybody dead.