more planetary culture stats!

from GalCiv3 Forums

I would love to see more flavor around the planets and my overall empire.  For example, if I'm human and conquer an alien planet, what percent of my population is human vs alien?  What percent is my empire's culture vs the one next door? And how does this change over time as people migrate around the planets?

Also... What impacts do these mixes have on production, civil disobedience, etc?  Perhaps multi-cultural planets have better research, but mono-cultural planets have lower unrest. 

And can I influence these rates through policies or the local dominant political party?  Maybe I can encourage multi-culturalism through civil rights programs, or maybe I can discourage aliens from living on my planets by creating different citizenship classes.

But if nothing else, more stats on literacy, racial composition, lifespan, etc... even if they have no gameplay impact, they're very fun for the imagination.  =)

23,611 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

YES.

This is the thinking that makes me happy.

And mad at a lot of 4X games. So many games want to reduce the amount of micromanaging, so many people who claim to like 4X games call adding things like this "feature creep", as if doing anything but Extermination is undesirable.

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting kengrant3000, reply 1

YES.

This is the thinking that makes me happy.

And mad at a lot of 4X games. So many games want to reduce the amount of micromanaging, so many people who claim to like 4X games call adding things like this "feature creep", as if doing anything but Extermination is undesirable.
End of kengrant3000's quote

 

I do personally want to see less micromanagement.  But what that actually means is, less micromanaging the things I don't care about.  So the game can have tons of detail that you can dig into, as long as you can skip that and entrust it to "governors" when you want to.

I appreciate that the game can't be all things to all people, but I trust Stardock to do some great design that enables high resolution of gaming detail where you want it, and low-fidelity where you don't!

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Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I hate to say this but sometimes you really can satisfy both camps at the same time.

I think it'll be important for players to load up GalCiv II and look at it critically from a UI standpoint.  It didn't have the rich tooltip system like we have in say Fallen Enchantress. 

Rich tooltips mean that you can keep a game from being full of micro management extreme detail for most users but those who really really want to know why something is the way it is, they can get into the details.  And because we can convey those details for those who are interested, we can make the system a lot deeper.

One of the falacies in game development is that people want their games "dumbed down".  No they don't. They simply want their games to convey what they are about clearly and specifically.  But most developers (cough cough like me) don't have the patience to develop UI technology to clearly convey things so they are stuck either dumbing down the game OR just making various mechanics ridiculously difficult to understand.  

Luckily, we've been able to bring in some great game developers who focus on UI.  I have to say, as a guy who made the original GalCiv on his own in a dorm room, it's amazing and awesome to have developers who are focused on things like user interfaces and networking and ship design and fleet battles and that kind of thing.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I agree.Race population should mean something rather than Borg style pop with no internal issues or racial pop bonus.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting kengrant3000, reply 1

YES.

This is the thinking that makes me happy.

And mad at a lot of 4X games. So many games want to reduce the amount of micromanaging, so many people who claim to like 4X games call adding things like this "feature creep", as if doing anything but Extermination is undesirable.
End of kengrant3000's quote

Note 'more stuff to do' does not necessarily mean 'more fun'

 

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

As long as they don't "dumb down" the game compaired to Galactic Civilizations 2 I'll be fine, in fact I would love to see more depth in several areas, however, with that being said, have the option to turn micro managing off (governors) if possible, now like Frogboy said he can't make everyone happy and patience is a virtue and as time goes on, something just want to get done, and detail, depth might get left out on certain things, but I'm sick of buying a $50-$80 game and getting enjoyment of a $10-$20 yahoo game because once you play it for an hour it's just repetitive and you stop playing after a few hours because it's just the same crap on a small map (okay I'm ranting because of SimCity).  Keep up the good work Stardock and Frogboy :)

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I wonder if anyone remembers how it was handled in Master of Orion II -- units of population were treated as something like actual units, you could move specific units of population between worlds (gobbling up your transports) , they kept their racial identities and in fact their racial bonuses (so if you conquered a Psilon planet, for instance, it was generally good to keep the psilons you control about and put them on your research worlds because of their bonuses to research).