Why getting rid of the wheel won't fix the problem.

peregrine23

Join Date 02/2007

+79

Why getting rid of the wheel won't fix the problem.

So, why is the wheel getting the axe? From everything I've read and heard, it's because SD designed a game the AI can't play well. This isn't totally a criticism in my mind. Paul designed this game totally with the player in mind. He was thinking about what would be best for the player without running it through the "can the AI handle this?" filter that can dictate a lot of decisions in a symmetrical 4x. This issue was compounded by the development process, where alpha/beta testers were encouraged not to worry about how effectively the AI could handle various mechanics because it wasn't really implemented yet.

So the AI is bad at the game which prevents it from being as fun as it could be. Humans can, and often do, manipulate the planetary wheel to make their planets run a peak efficiency. The AI doesn't understand how to do this and so inevitably falls way behind in pretty much every way. So the solution? Well we haven't seen it yet, but presumably it will be to hamstring the players so they can't be as efficient while at the same time creating tools that the AI can use more effectively than it can the wheel. Now while I hate the idea of taking control away from the player so the AI can catch up, I would be able to understand the decision except. . .

It won't fix the problem.

It might make a dent, but that dent will be small. The wheel is powerful, but it is only one small piece of the puzzle of interconnected systems the AI can't seem to master. Adjacency bonuses and economy star-bases are probably much bigger contributors to why the players run empires much better than the AI. The wheel actually seems like it should be the least of the AI's worries. I don't program AI, but is seems like it should be totally reasonable to have the AI say: "if this is a research world set the wheel to 50/50 manufacturing/research unless there is nothing to build, then switch to 100% research, and never have more than 60 manufacturing." this would put it not that far behind players using the wheel. The real problem seems to be that it doesn't effectively designate a purpose for a given planet and build toward that purpose. The systems of this game all encourage the player to say: "this planet will do x and every decision I make as it applies to this planet will make it better at doing x." Until the AI "thinks" like that, the problem will persist.

P.S. I know that SD has said there are other reasons to get rid of the wheel: less micro and "not in the spirit of the game." But I personally find both of those pretty flimsy. You haven't really had to to check in on your worlds every turn since they got manufacturing overflow working correctly, and I find it hard to buy that production of an entire planet is too small an issue for the attentions of a galactic emperor.

Locked Post +1 Karma

Advanced Search

Watch this post

Do not email me updates for this post Email me updates for this post

Successfully updated karma reason!

drakkos137

You can really get an idea of what I thought the priorities of GalCiv were if you go back to the 1993 version (i.e. the one that came out before Master of Orion btw). Even though it was just me coding it, we had a senate. We had political parties. You had to run for election. On planets you could send people to your colonies to LOBBY for more research or more military or more social spending. As your power grew, you could send more lobbyists to a given planet to boost it in a partciular area. But you weren't god of the planet. You could decide what got built but you didn't get to control how the people behaved to the extent you can in GalCiv III.

You never had the option to just have everything go into research or manufacturing. Not because the AI couldn't handle it (my AI would love that kind of per turn, per planet control). But because it flew in the face of the game's philosophy.

Hell, in the OS/2 version of GalCiv you couldn't even declare war without senatorial approval. Imagine seeing the Drengin building up and you can't do anything about it because you lost control of the senate in the last election?

The OS/2 version was no panacea to be sure. Its mechanics were difficult to grasp because there were no tooltips. There were no chicks (our fancy tool tip system) to spell out how doing X will do Y. But what you got in exchange was something a bit closer to a simulation.

I think there's a happy medium between gamifying everything and creating a more immersive strategy game experience.

I hate posting same stuff in different threads but do you understand that the things you posted even if extremely cool don't fit into definition of 4X Strategy in common person mind?Again, it have all traits of Grand Strategy and no one forbid to mix 4X and Grand (awesome mix, btw) and that's why people are eagerly waiting for Paradox's "Stellaris". But GC3 was sold as "classic" 4X even if on grand scale (and again there are 4X with lager galaxies with more objects) and turning it into Grand mid way will upset a large part of your fanbase.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 22

While I'm not in favor of planet by planet wheels or micro-management of planets at all, I will say, that adding some serious bureaucracy and limits to player's actions via it, is actually immersion BREAKING for myself.

Why?

Well, for one, many of these civilizations are not necessarily democracies or bureaucracies. The Yor are basically a hive mind (or close to it), the Drengin some sort of dictatorship, the Iridium corporation is likely a oligarchy. Some races, just shouldn't function with the same sort of limits and concepts we are bound by today.

Furthermore, the technology available to them, and that I believe the future will be largely dictated by, really suggests finer control of civilizations WILL be possible. Intelligent cities that aggregate all data and can respond to the needs and commands of a single authority are going to be quite possible very soon... can they shift from ALL research to ALL industry on a dime? No, not yet, but by GalCiv's time frame? Well I think nano-bots and fully automated factories won't be BAD at it either.

Either way though, the immersion aspect isn't as important as the fun aspect. Player's play these games in part, to feel like a godlike manager... being told "Sorry you can't do this, the senate doesn't agree" reallllly breaks that feeling. Games are escapism, usually healthy, so making things more realistic often damages that.

Not saying it can't be done well, but it is going to be a challenge and require a deft touch. Some of these elements do work well in the Total War franchise, the possibility of civil wars is always cool.

But, personally, I'd rather the game focus on the diplomatic features, THAT is a area where it totally makes sense to me that I can get "no you can't do that" experience, where my allies and enemies can frustrate me. A little role playing mini-game of using the right dialogue options, in the right order, for the right race, is key to getting the best deal or something. Just a thought.

Thanks for the hard work Brad, Paul, and others.

Have never understood the less is more design paradigm when so much more is already missing. Why cut features when there are so many more to add yet, missing? If only because it would make coding AI on a level playing field, well with the "tremendous" "unbelievable" success of GC3 to parody the "Donald of Stardock" maybe it is time to hire some programmers who can build an AI with the existing framework. People complain about the micromanagement which is substantial but that is because what else is lfet for them to do. There is no tactical combat game to focus on, there is no AI capable of resisting any human game on their second attempt and there is a lot to be developed in other areas of the game which would add more to do and focus on. But hey I'm not running the game or its various fixes just was hoping for more. As for moving onto something else I'll be happy to do that and share that sentiment with my friends too. Many were interested in GC3 as the game that finally gave us a MOO multiplayer experience but unfortunately its just too broken to start setting aside weekend after weekend aside to buy and play against each other. http://i.imgur.com/T0zWmxs.jpg

Successfully updated karma reason!

Tetrasodium

Join Date 03/2006

+17

Quoting Kreissig,

reply 24

@ Tetrasodium - To be honest, the United States began preparing for a major war way before most people are aware of. Read the Washington naval Treaty of 1922. The particulars are very telling about where the US wanted to be positioned in the new global situation - industrial, powerfully interconnected world that it was becoming.

But, I see Frogboy's point. He is not being illogical at all....and I find the complexity he described as immersive for sure. A galactic empire should feel hard to manage, regardless of technology. Competing idea's and personalities are what he describes, and it makes perfect sense. I for one am excited to see what he and his team formulate along these lines.

Years I know Eisenhower started laying groundwork a couple years prior and there were desires much earlier that further influenced things.... but it's notable because fora few years, the us economy was the war and the people mostly hive mind like fell in line with it because it changed so much for the better for so many

On the flip side of that , you have the complete collapse of the German economy for lots of reasons

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 7

What we do want, however, is for players to eventually setup a vast federalized government that allows them to run their civilization very well but doesn't require them to set the actual local spending for a particular world.

I just want to focus in on this line. In particular, this bit:

allows them to run their civilization very well but doesn't require them to set the actual local spending

Doesn't require =/= cannot do at all.

I think we all want to see obsessive micro reduced. I think we'd all like to see a better balance being achieved between specialized worlds and non-specialized worlds. And I think we'd all love to have some kind of larger macro-scale ability to manage the empire as a whole when we have 500 planets, rather than having to do it on every planet individually.

But those things do not preclude the ability to dig in to the micro. The trick to making me cut down on micro is to make me not want to do it - offer me a choice between a reasonably competent automated governor vs doing it myself, and after the first dozen planets I'm going to start using the governor. But I'm going to be looking to handle a few 'pets' myself regardless of how big my empire is - that Class 25 world with 150 population and those 7 wonders on it, I want to deal with myself regardless of how good a governor might be.

Removing the wheel, at least at this stage, is taking away our control over the planets we care about. Filtering it through the dire governor system reduces our options to 'either put this idiot in charge or have it stuck on global settings'. It's a choice between punishments. Would you like your colony to be useless because it's stuck at empire-level settings, or would you like it to be useless because it only has a slight offset to those settings and has a buffoon who'll tear out your carefully-planned adjacency system for the sake of sticking an extra farm in at the wrong time?

I'm all for being able to build a fantastic bureaucratic machine that just works. But for those times that it doesn't work, I need to be able to crack open the hood, dig around in the machine's guts, and fix the machine manually. This is doubly true when the machine keeps having parts upgraded by a third party - yourselves, in patches. What happens if you release a patch that breaks the Research governor? The game becomes unplayable until you isolate the bug, repair it, test it internally and then release it. Instead of me just not using that governor and dealing with my research planets manually until the patch comes, I'm now off looking at other 4Xes that allow me to control the game myself when I don't like what the automatic systems are doing.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Kd7, last warning. If you continue to troll or grief the forum you'll be shown the door.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 31

Kd7, last warning. If you continue to troll or grief the forum you'll be shown the door.

Go ahead wise ass.

No self respecting gamer would put up with this bullshit. No self respecting developer would purport what you are either.

Successfully updated karma reason!

MottiKhan

Join Date 04/2007

+152

Quoting KD7BCH,

reply 32

B-RAD

Go ahead wise ass.

No self respecting gamer would put up with this bullshit. No self respecting developer would purport what you are either.

Actually, he's not talking about disagreements. Brad and I have bumped heads before and we both have bruises there to show for it. But we can disagree without being assholes about it.

That's pretty much it. Quit being an asshole and your arguments might be heard. As it is, you're just whining.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 7

In GalCiv II, you could go to the details of any planet and get all kinds of information about it. Stats, a little history, man on the street, etc.

This! I miss this aspect of GCII, and other little details.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting KD7BCH,

reply 32

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 31

Kd7, last warning. If you continue to troll or grief the forum you'll be shown the door.

...On no, and lead me to make a 3rd account an post it online to show what a jerk you are and how the reviews are not representative of the program you guys have and that you are pulling features while missing outhers and how you don't tolerate anybody not echo chambering your points, be my guest B-RAD

Go ahead wise ass.

No self respecting gamer would put up with this bullshit. No self respecting developer would purport what you are either.

I think there's a MOBA looking for it's missing player.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Gauntlet03

Join Date 01/2004

+139

Brad, the authenticity in your posts is refreshing.

Luv it bro.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 14

What I want to see GalCiv III evolve into is a game where you have potentially thousands of planets and you're dealing not just for foreign enemies but domestic enemies as well. Recruiting (or bribing talent), scandals (the OS/2 version of GalCiv had scandals), public opinion. You could lose control of the senate.

Hell, in the OS/2 version of GalCiv you couldn't even declare war without senatorial approval. Imagine seeing the Drengin building up and you can't do anything about it because you lost control of the senate in the last election?

If senates and a functional government system are implemented well with these ideas in mind, I might pee on myself. Then I'll sue Stardock for... something

In all seriousness, this sounds great. The game would certainly feel much more immersive. I love having the controls over every little thing, but it doesn't feel like I have an empire running at all; It feels like a generic 4X game. Having competition within your own empire that can either inhibit or even help your control over many different aspects would make "running an empire" (which is what this game is) feel like you're actually doing just that, and not playing 4X spreadsheet simulator 2015.

Now it would be great IMO if you could still potentially have control over almost every single little thing, but realistically would never get to that point, as there would be some governance aspect that would prevent that. In my mind this means if you really want to have control over the military, you will gain favor within the right portions of the government to have great control over military production, units, and strategy. However if you favor diplomacy, then you gain favor with a heavy emphasis on that portion of the government. Gaining control over the senate should give you great freedoms with everything, but you should need to do a little more to have full control over a specific part of the empire, IMO. Means you constantly have to work internally and externally, which in my mind would definitely be quite immersive.

Successfully updated karma reason!

It makes picking a race depend only on what their traits are and what victory condition I feel like going for in that game and eliminates all pretence of role-playing. If you are going to introduce this "senate" type thing then it should apply only to those it makes sense to apply too - the Terran's. Then each race would need it's own form of government for immersion purposes, much like Crusader Kings 2 has - feudalism, republic, pagan, tribal, muslim etc.

Successfully updated karma reason!

@dark, I think you could have many different types of governments.

in our design meeting today we discussed how the Drengin form of government might be very different than say the Yor and how that might be represented in the game via I teresting game mechanics.

Successfully updated karma reason!

That's fantastic news and hopefully something that finds it's way into the game Frogboy! It would be fantastic if choosing your race not only affected your portrait and race traits, but fundamentally changed what you were able to do and how the UI looked. Perhaps the Terran's can't 100% control their planets and have to use governers but the Drengin can and do 100% control them. Perhaps the Iridium Corp functions much like a senate but their decisions are purely focused on profit rather than people.... Whereas the Terran senate want's what is best for the people the Iridium "cartel" follows the path of best profit.

Successfully updated karma reason!

I haven't yet seen 1.3 so don't know how well the governor system will work but it does seem to be most unlikely in the first couple of iterations to be nearly as good as the wheel.

So perhaps I could suggest a compromise.

SD and in particular Frogboy don't like the wheel micromanagement and feel that "it's against the spirit of the game". Obviously when you have only one planet you do effectively have a planetary wheel. Perhaps on the governance line you could have techs that unlock more planetary wheels up to a maximum of seven say (it could also be a percentage of the empire which techs increase).

As Naselus pointed out, you really only want to play obsessively with about that number of prime planets and this would allow you to do so while preventing the tedious micromanagement of the rest. You could designate a planet on settling as one of the seven and presumably not undesignate - or that would effectively give you full control of another. In terms of "pseudo-reality" it doesn't seem so far fetched that you could put more time and effort into your favourite planets and so have a more responsive elite bureaucracy there.

Maybe there should also be a grace period of 10 turns say on first settlement when you have full control to get it started (presumably at 100% production) - it's still tiny and needs setting up. The decision as to whether it was one of the famous seven could then be deferred till after the grace period.

I wonder what other people think?

Jon

Successfully updated karma reason!

marigoldran

Join Date 06/2013

+41

I'm wondering why you can't designate planets upon colonization and have a fixed (but separate) production wheel for each planet.

Successfully updated karma reason!

Quoting marigoldran,

reply 42

I'm wondering why you can't designate planets upon colonization and have a fixed (but separate) production wheel for each planet.

Sorry, what do you mean by fixed?

Successfully updated karma reason!

Tetrasodium

Join Date 03/2006

+17

Quoting Darkscis,

reply 38

As others have already stated, I don't see why forcing all empires in the game to adopt a realistic Earth approach to it's government (in regards to the inability to directly and 100% control it's members - not to mention it's not even realistic for all countries on Earth!) helps with immersion. If anything, it completely and utterly destroys it for me. Why would the Drengin have a senate and not be able to war without said senate approval? Why would the Yor *SINGULARITY*, an AI collective, be unable to switch it's focus 100% at will - they are physical platforms running advanced AI, not organic beings with a mind containing years of dedicated training in one field.

It makes picking a race depend only on what their traits are and what victory condition I feel like going for in that game and eliminates all pretence of role-playing. If you are going to introduce this "senate" type thing then it should apply only to those it makes sense to apply too - the Terran's. Then each race would need it's own form of government for immersion purposes, much like Crusader Kings 2 has - feudalism, republic, pagan, tribal, muslim etc.

If you read the stuff the yor say about themselves & others, that's not entirely accurate (or inaccurate)

* individual Yor absolutely are individuals who "get bored", become "unhappy", or directly execute happiness in their AI matrix (wording probably off on that last one).

* while it's anybody's guess what sorts of diversions Yor enjoy, the fact that meat species enjoy them through tourism as explicitly stated in research too suggests that they can't be

*too* far into the starfish aliens axis they live on http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StarfishAliens) even if they have a number of traits that unquestionsbly put them at least partly across that realm's border.

** a big part of why they have at least one foot on the mearly rubber forehead side of the starfish aliens borderis obviously a result of a lack of context to compare themselves to leaving them still figuring out the whole machine consciousness/artificial sentience thing.. on that note, they or are conscious and sentient rather than simply -existing at the lower "intelligent" bar, what team do they prefer & what kinds of philosophical debates do they have ?

* it may r may not be easy for an individual Yor to reskill as we would, but we do know that the reeesrch, manufacturing, interstellar navy , etc Yor all explicitly have things pointed out about optimizations and the addition / alteration of limbs/sensors to brtter specialize in their roles.. depending on the extent of the physical alterations , this it be far from trivial & I'd guess probably would shiftforever upward in efficiencies there, but run into a point pretty quickly where the gains are almost immeasurably small...of coursr, if they are at the point of a technological singularity all bets are off.

One of the biggest differences between yor& non synthetic logic Imo is that while the Yor talk about the extinction of biological races with the misunderstanding of itoften viewed as as a threat akin to the Drengin 2orld about eating and in slaving them... while the Yor simply state it as a fact since they are able to plan on geological timescales and expect (rather than just hope/imagine ) to still be around then while their biological counterparts expect/hope some distant offspring will be around then. From the Yor PoV, add enough distance and the original species will eventually be extinct through simple genetic drift and speciation

Successfully updated karma reason!