For the Fun of the Game.... Diplo/Ideology/Other stuff

Taslios

Join Date 11/2002

+74

For the Fun of the Game.... Diplo/Ideology/Other stuff

If there is one thing that is obvious in reading these forums, it is that we all have VASTLY different opinions on what is fun.

One thing that I think we can all agree on is that it is more fun to have a challenging game that is challenging from the first turn to the last turn. It is not fun to have "won" the game by turn 100 and then spend 200+ turns "ending the game" to actually win.

Here's some things that need to be acknowledged.    The 64bit architecture gives Gal Civ 3 bones... big bones that can hold a lot of meat so to say.    Most of what I am going to discuss is in the future ideas area because i FULLY UNDERSTAND that this is not minor tweaks...

Issue 1.   Map Scaling

I think that map scaling is something that needs to be implemented sooner rather than later.     There are a lot of things that work well in bigger maps but not in smaller maps and even more that are brokenly over powered in huge maps.

Examples... Ideology.   The ideology system is in my opinion a neat part of the game that is currently VERY limited in actual implementation.      Currently it is tied mostly to random events and planet colonization events.     Each one of the paths has a 1pt every x turns building or buildings that a player can build.     However on a map with 500 planets these mean a lot more than on a map that has 30 planets.    same with the events themselves.   More on ideology later...

Research... Unlike manufacturing which is mostly planet unique, Research is an empire wide ability.    If I have 30 planets my research is going to be much less than if I have say 300 planets.      base research COSTS for new research should scale with the map size and number of habitable planets.      There are games where I have literally researched everything in 250 turns or less....   that shouldn't be possible.

The Precursor stuff...    These should be a bonus % based on the number of total possible... not the number of station mods.    If I have 4 research stations and 5 manufacturing stations on a small map that may be all of them on the entire map.    but there may be 20 or more of each type on the bigger maps.    it is game breaking when you can get 800% bonus to manufacturing or 1000% bonus to wealth.....

People have complained about the "unrealistic nature" of sensor and engine stacking.... the best fix here is simply to get the AI to use the same things to balance out the player doing it.    I'd also be cool with the #of Attacks being based on the highest tech level of your weapons.    Stinger ships get one attack a turn... Harpoons get 2 etc etc etc... then you disassociate movement from attacks.

Issue 2 Lack of balanced Victory Paths for the different Ideologies.

As I said before the Ideologies are a neat feature, but they are very very incomplete in implementation as far as how they feel in the game.
I suspect that they were intended to be much more deeply tied to the game than they currently are and this is one of the things that is greatly affected by the limited diplomacy options.

In GCII the "good" civs would often declare war on an evil warmonger civ even if they were not allies. The civs ganged up on each other... they acted like the ideology mattered.

I've said before that I do not think a Benevolent race should be able to declare war unless it is a RESPONSE to another race going to war. People have replied saying that that limits the Benevolent races ability to win the game....   GOOD. it SHOULD. at least it should limit their ability to win via conquest.    Conquest is the path of the Malevolent and Pragmatic.

Here's the thing... the current lack of espionage and true diplomacy makes the ideologies feel very shallow and lacking.
A benevolent society should be one that people Want to join or be part of.    A benevolent society should be able to STEAL population from other races through emigration...

One of the areas that GCIII is majorly weak in comparison to GCII is that the moral system is really rather weak... it does not do much of anything.    In GCII it was the limiting factor on your taxes and thus your economy. If you taxed too much and people got mad planets would strike, or declare their independence or swap sides...   a negative moral could also slow down your growth and cause your influence to retract.

Benevolent has one whole path related to keeping people happy... but to what end? what does it do that really matters for winning the game?

Also the lack of actual political parties, voting, war weariness etc is noticeable...

The Ideologies will be incomplete until a full system of Diplomacy and Espionage is implemented in the game.
In the Final expansion of GCII the unique tech trees introduced unique techs for some of the races based on which ideology they had... this needs to come back.

Points on this...   If Moral was actually a stat that mattered and did something quantitative Higher moral Civs should gain population from lower moral civs.   Higher moral civs should have an easier time stealing technology from other civs...   Higher moral civs should get bonuses to tourism income...

1. The game is not going to be fairly balance for Victory Paths until Conquest is not the only means in which the AI can win the game.

2. Benevolent civs should help each other it is in the nature of benevolent to give for the greater good.
2a. To this ends Benevolent Civs should have technology paths such as "Missionaries, or "Foreign aid" Which can be used to boost influence and promote an influence flip.
2b. Benevolent Civs should not be allowed to declare war except in reply to an invasion, or major event... GCII had the assassination event... perhaps in the future the ideology linked major events can be something that with espionage other civs can learn.. OMG the Humans are Malevolent and they just murdered 2 million people for profit... we should reprimand them... if they don't change we will save their people from them as no one should suffer.. etc etc etc..
2c. Benevolent Civs should get defensive bonuses when they are being attacked much like the tech trees from GCII
2d. Bene Civs should not be able to do terrorist acts once Espionage is available

3. Pragmatic Civs should be able to do everything without penalty but with lesser individual bonuses..
3a. Pragmatic should have really good bonuses to all forms of espionage.

4. Malevolent Civs should have a moral penalty if they are NOT at war... like reverse war weariness
4a. Malevolent Civs should not be immune to culture flip... they should be immune from population loss or artificial influence.... if I have a huge civ and the Yor build a planet on some class 4 civ... It should flip cause they shouldn't have built a colony there in the first place...
4. Malevolent Civs should get bonuses to Terrorism and Sabotage.

But the biggest thing is that Ideology should be untied to the colonization events. Honestly it should be multiple actions chosen before the first Ideology is chosen... I think races that have a tendency to evil.. like the Drengin should have building options like Slave Pit (5pts Malevolent if built) or Factory (5pts Pragmatic).... Once they Unlock Malevolent the Factory option goes away and they can no longer build it.

Rush building before one has tech should be Pragmatic and give Pragmatic points...    Forced rush (slavery) should be even faster but give Malevolent...

I think that the ability to game the game and on huge maps get all the Ideologies at once is broken beyond measure and should never happen... Once you choose Malevolent it should completely lock out Benevolent Ideologies/research options...    the Mega events that once gave Benevolent bonuses might still be available with some additional other bonus but not Benevolent.

In this option Pragmatic should still be open for purchase but at much higher costs and possibly a completely new tree compared to the normal tree.

If a civ is Pragmatic they should get either reduced Bene/Malev options or their second choice should lock them from the third.

The point is that the three Ideologies should not be equal.. they should not play equal...   Conquest/Malevolent should be the easiest option to play with the most short cuts but the least bonuses long term.

Cultural/Benevolent should be harder but with the biggest bonuses long term...

Right now there is on this forum a general agreement that X tech tree with X bonuses is the best way to play...       I don't think there should be a single best way to play. I think GCIII has big enough bones to make a game that can really play shockingly different depending on which path one chooses.    It is just not quite there yet.

I look forward to the day that it gets there.

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Larsenex

Gauntlet03

Join Date 01/2004

+139

To clarify my idea, I was saying each given category would be locked to a ideology, but merely each and every perk level.

So within one category, such as say "governance" level one, you could pick Malev, Level 2 Bene, and Level 3 Prag. And I agree Seilore, that we would want more total perks, to give the player a nice "longevity" for picking perks. But that is a rather easy and simple issue to rectify.

That isn't more strategy, its less. Choosing what you need and when, and knowing that you CAN'T choose an alternative afterwards, that, that is a harder choice to make, and therefore, a harder strategy game experience.

Whether that is something you want or not, well, hey, we all got our fancies. For example, I'm not a big fan of mutually exclusive technologies, which is in essence exactly what I'm suggesting for ideology, but its more immersive with ideologies and less immersive with technologies... inventing the pencil sharpener X4000 does not somehow negate the inventing of the Pen Mk 8000. But, Feed the Orphans and Enslave the Orphans are pretty hard to sell to the same populace at the same time.

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I was a little dispirited to see such a well thought-out post from Gauntlet be used as an opportunity for everyone to sort of say what they do and do not agree with. It really goes to show, we're nowhere with this game. It's not that I think anyone's opinions are bad it's just that it seems like none of us are able to separate what we see this game COULD be from what this game actually IS, and we, therefore spend post after post sniping at each other and sniping at the developers.

It seems like everyone agrees that GalCiv3 has tremendous, tremendous potential and everyone agrees the game is not great as presently constituted or, if they think it is great, it's not as great as it could be. The specific prescriptions for what would make this game better then seem to vary wildly from that moment forward, as you, Gauntlet, succinctly pointed out in the beginning of your posts.

That the first response said that the ideology system works fine as presently constituted really, to me, demonstrates that these differences might be totally incommensurable. The ideology system falls so far short of what it could be that it never even occurred to me that someone would disagree with the assertion that it should be vastly improved and/or changed in a substantial way. I mean the Civilization ideology system is not perfect and it's five years old and I would consider it much better implemented thatn GalCiv's. But therein lies the rub.

Making large-scale adjustments to the base game without is, clearly, not possible without upsetting a large portion of the fanbase (as the whole wheel controversy demonstrated). Path dependency is a powerful drug, and a lot of these ideas - ideas whose initial implementation seemed to be provisional and subject to change as I'm pretty sure the ideology system was meant to be - have become calcified into player's conception of the game over time. People will become comfortable enough with and maybe even grow to like a flawed system and then, it actually becomes controversial to change them. I think the need to adjust how ideology points are accrued and how deeply embedded they are in the flavor of the game is plainly obvious, but it's clearly less obvious to others.

I agree with you. I thought the ideology system was better implemented and way more flavorful in GalCiv2. I think limitations actually breed creativity and make the game more fun. Clearly, most people don't agree with you, which means they don't agree with me.

Clearly then, to me at least, the game's moddability is the key to making the game more fun for all the players. When the ability to mod the game in a massive way is easy to accomplish, distribute, install and uninstall then petitioning the developers for something we think is more fun is a lot less of a concern because we can have our fun without impacting anyone else. Unfortunately, the modding seems to be the part of the game the developers have made it really obvious is not a priority.I don't really understand why. Maybe it's a pride thing. Maybe they feel weird farming out improving the game to an unpaid force. I don't know. But on launchday, Cities Skylines was, arguably, not a better game than SimCity in really any way other than modding support but the way that game has grown is a testament to how communities grow and create when they're given the institutional avenues to do so.

I probably posted a thread every six weeks in the beginning asking "OK, seriously, we're going to get workshop integration, now, right?" and every response from the devs and the other players alike were "there are more important things to prioritize first." The game's been out nearly a year. There's been seven updates, paid DLC and an expansion. By the time the developers actually get to implementing a lot of this modder-quality-of-life stuff the modding community will already be mostly dead. Present company obviously excluded.

I think, unfortunately, we're going to look back at GalCiv3 as a promising but ultimately lackluster waypoint on the place to something better. Maybe that something better is a really killer expansion to GalCiv3 two and half years from now or maybe that something better is that the basic architecture will have been used as the foundation for an ironed out and streamlined GalCiv4.

But, either way, we're all spending so much time bickering and there are so few dimensions along which we, as a community, agree that it just feels like we're all going to end up with a camel. I just think we're all lost as to how to move forward, and since the community isn't speaking with one voice on really anything, the developers probably feel equally lost.

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Seilore

Join Date 10/2006

+154

Quoting rynebrandon,

reply 27

I think we all agreed that map scaling needs to be expanded and go further than what it currently does based on number of planets/factions, not simply just galaxy size.

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Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 26

The problem as I see it there is that some of them naturally build on each other - you don't get brutal, slave-like working conditions alongside a generous and well-provisioned welfare state, for example. Getting the higher-tier ideological perks often requires picking up a few crap ones to get up the chain. That's lost if we can pick the 'best' T1 perk, then the 'best' T2 perk from a different tree, then the 'best' T3 ones etc. It invites power-play hodge-podges of ideology which don't make much conceptual sense and ultimately drains any character out of the ideology system because you just grab your favourites regardless.

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 26

What is more difficult is the idea that you are being limited in choices. Not to go all Zen on you, but really, the point of choice is that while you choose to do something, you are choosing NOT to do something else. The game's opportunity cost is simply too low to matter, in effect, in any game in gigantic maps or above, your ultimately not choosing ideology perks, as much as you are the Timing of perks. Because ultimately, you'll get every perk.

That isn't more strategy, its less. Choosing what you need and when, and knowing that you CAN'T choose an alternative afterwards, that, that is a harder choice to make, and therefore, a harder strategy game experience.

Whether that is something you want or not, well, hey, we all got our fancies. For example, I'm not a big fan of mutually exclusive technologies, which is in essence exactly what I'm suggesting for ideology, but its more immersive with ideologies and less immersive with technologies... inventing the pencil sharpener X4000 does not somehow negate the inventing of the Pen Mk 8000. But, Feed the Orphans and Enslave the Orphans are pretty hard to sell to the same populace at the same time.

This I all agree with entirely.

Quoting rynebrandon,

reply 27

Now, GalCiv3 is not as big a community as Cities Skylines but it is the biggest 4x game to have been released in 2015. I don't think it's particularly crazy to think that the modding community could have been much, much more robust.

I probably posted a thread every six weeks in the beginning asking "OK, seriously, we're going to get workshop integration, now, right?" and every response from the devs and the other players alike were "there are more important things to prioritize first." The game's been out nearly a year. There's been seven updates, paid DLC and an expansion. By the time the developers actually get to implementing a lot of this modder-quality-of-life stuff the modding community will already be mostly dead. Present company obviously excluded.

As I recall, a few months back Brad more or less said that a lot of mod stuff simply won't be workshop-deployable ever (which seemed to imply basically anything that involved modding an xml file was never going to be workshop-able). I think SD's vision of the mod scene was pretty much based on the areas which are already very tightly integrated with the workshop - ship design and races - which is not really of interest to serious modders. The serious mod scene was pretty much DOA; we've had maybe 10 mechanics-altering mods in total, most of them prior to about October last year, and which have maybe 10k downloads between them over the last 9 months. And new mechanical mods have basically fallen off a cliff in terms of both number and complexity. Being told you're never going to be able to distribute it via the channel where 90% of players will looks for it makes it quite hard to be bothered putting the effort in.

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Taslios

Join Date 11/2002

+74

Quoting rynebrandon,

reply 27

sigh...   no love for original post... (I'm teasing here... it's all good. I'm glad we are having the discussion we are having)

Honestly, I was hoping people would add additional points as to what they feel the game needs in the future expansions...     Brad has already said that Espionage won't come until the Expandalone late this year or next year.   And that is Cool. I agree with what they are doing.

I also feel that until we have that and the balance in the Diplomacy, they will not be able to fully implement the Ideologies so that was were my Ideologies thoughts came from.

But beyond proper scaling of many things based on size of map, and number of planets/items    and the eventual inclusion of Espionage...    what are the major improvement areas you guys are looking forward to?

Lets focus a bit on what we are looking for... and not so much on what we disagree with from others.

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Gauntlet03

Join Date 01/2004

+139

1) I don't feel sniped at by anyone. Forums online are what they are, a barely constrained stream of conscious of numerous individuals. This also explains the lack of love for the original post lol (sorry man, it was a GOOD post!).

2) Naselus, good point, but many ways to work with that such as scaling cost in ideology points or some such to go off chain or some such.

3) So to honor the original point. Things I want to see in general:

A) Governors/Admirals you can hire/assign to your fleets and planets. This is likely coming in Legends DLC.

Massive diplomacy overhaul and moderate overhaul to ideology (they dovetail together a bit)

C) Pirates and Minor Race expansion, giving them a "quest" system to get certain awards from them, as well as methods to incorporate them into the empire, and gain special equipment or building types upon doing so peacefully. Ability to sick the pirates on nearby planets, and such.

D) Endgame threats and Superweapons. As you approach any given victory type, opposing horrible events should be incurred, as obstacles. This would occur to the player (enemy AI approaching victory have no such worry) and of course, an optional feature you can toggle on and off. Also superweapons, such as planet killers, etc.

E) Wormhole Gates, stable wormhole points that can be constructed to connect distant parts of an empire/etc. Possibly neutral points that work for everyone unless captured and built on by a race. Lots of options here.

I'm avoiding stating anything like "more mod tools" or such. These are just ideas for the Game itself. Not support.

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Seilore

Join Date 10/2006

+154

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 31

Yes, give them a chance to become valuable as a friend, not just a nice planet to go and conquer because they never will be a threat and they never will develop a good reason to establish diplomacy with them (other than abusing them in the current diplomacy system).

Quoting Gauntlet03,

reply 31

Should find a way to incorporate this in MP as well to effect any human player.

F) Larger Tech Tree

H) More unique planetary resources there are many options not used yet as far as potential bonus's

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Taslios

Join Date 11/2002

+74

F so much F... The tech tree just feel small... I also miss the incramental improvements that GCII had with weapons engines and armor. There should be way more types of weapons and armors... such that the "doom Ray" or other end weapons are really special once you get there.

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Quoting Taslios,

reply 30

But beyond proper scaling of many things based on size of map, and number of planets/items and the eventual inclusion of Espionage... what are the major improvement areas you guys are looking forward to?

Lets focus a bit on what we are looking for... and not so much on what we disagree with from others.

1) Massive Diplomacy rework, as mentioned by Gauntlet. Diplomacy is something that affects every game at every difficulty level, regardless of what strategies players use. To have it so common sense broken and exploitable is really a shame in such a great game. It railroads players down 2 paths - research diplomacy to be friends with everyone (and the easy alliance win you have to willingly stop yourself from achieving), or don't research it and deal with unnecessarily poor relations and wars that ensure from it (the warmongering Ai that all the newer players complain about). I made a lengthy post called Suggestions to Improve Diplomacy on these forums. Maybe I gave it too much thought lol.

2) I'd like to see the Ai actually try to win, or at least expand its empires after colonization. Every game right now reaches a certain point where it's the human vs X number of smaller empires that can be mopped up 1 at a time. There's no alliances to combat larger empire threats, and there's no empire growth through conquest, culture or any other means. It's like they just stop expanding after they colonize their first X planets. Basically, every victory strategy relies on empire growth (ie planets). If the human is the only one growing its number of planets effectively, the outcome is pretty obvious. I want a galaxy that evolves and changes as the game goes on, not one that's static after colonization.

3) Militarily competent Ai. Sort of ties into #2. Send more than 1 fleet at a time, more than 1 transport in a fleet, situational awareness of enemy ships, invade more than 1 planet at a time, prioritize which planets are important to invade based on the opposition's strengths, invasion troops based on the planet size its planning to invade (ie don't send 2.5 troops to defeat a 40 pop world), actually garrison and hold captured territory, have a conquest plan. Stuff like that, where the Drengin (or whoever) might actually be able to expand their empire the way they are supposed to, and 150 turns later it's a 'whoa that's a problem' moment for the human player who ignored it for the whole game.

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