Choices and branches
Learning paths through this topic
Check a patrolling threat always leaves a window to slip past
A watcher that walks a loop is only fair if the player can see a gap and use it. This entry finds every start time that works for a crossing of a given length, including windows that wrap around the end of the loop, and adds room to react.
Find the best peace terms the defeated side will still accept
When the player dictates terms after a victory, asking for everything makes the other side fight on, and asking for too little wastes the win. Here is how to let the enemy weigh each package by how much it hurts, and how to pick the strongest one it will sign.
Choose whose petition the ruler hears so small groups are not ignored
A ruler can hear only one petition a turn. Always taking the biggest group makes the small ones invisible, and always rotating makes the crowd furious. Here is a way to give groups turns in proportion to their size and still let the smallest be heard now and then.
Let citizens petition the ruler without a new petition every other turn
When approval hovers around a threshold, a petition event fires, closes, and fires again, until the player stops reading them. Here is how to make a threshold behave like a switch with a gap, so each unhappy spell raises one petition, and a quiet period is needed before the next.
Put the player's own name into the story without ugly surprises
Letting the player type a name makes the story feel personal, until someone enters nothing, a very long string, curly brackets or a name that ends in s. Here is how to clean the input, fill the text once, and fail loudly when a placeholder has no value.
Preview how a stand-and-fight choice ends, with both sides losing men each turn
Before the player chooses to hold the line, the story can say what is likely to be left. The simple way, one side hits and then the other, quietly favours whoever goes first and can leave both armies standing forever. Here is a fair turn-by-turn preview with a clear end.
Build a dialogue question menu that unlocks, repeats and ends cleanly
A conversation where you pick topics to ask about can trap the player with an empty list, hide a question forever behind a circle of conditions, or let them leave before the one thing they had to ask. Here is how to build the menu and check it.
Show the day famine hits when the player changes the ration
Cutting rations feels like a clear choice until the stores run out a day earlier than anyone said. Here is how to look ahead day by day, include a later change of plan, round the daily need the way hungry people count, and warn at a sensible moment.
Turn a long list of build orders into a short chronicle of the reign
At the end of a long game the player would like to read what their reign did, not three hundred lines of placed and torn-down buildings. Here is how to merge the orders into what really changed, set apart the plans that were dropped, and write short lines that count correctly.
Stop players from rerolling a story risk by reloading the save
A risky choice succeeds on the third reload, and the tension is gone. Yet a fixed result for everything feels wrong too. Here is how to make an outcome depend on the save and the decision, not on the moment, and still allow a deliberate retry.
Let a deed change how neighbouring factions feel, and stop it spreading forever
Helping one faction should please its friends and annoy its enemies, but a naive version loops through alliances, counts a faction twice, or pushes standing past its limits. Here is a bounded way to spread an effect that the player can predict.
Choose which stranded squads to rescue before their time runs out
Several squads are cut off, each with its own deadline and a rescue that takes time, and the player can save only some. The obvious plan, going for the biggest prize first, often saves fewer people overall. Here is how to find the order and the set that really saves the most.