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Cosmite Depletion Option

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I don't like the idea to make cosmite a finite resource. Other solution which would limit a snowballing problem could be changing the way the cosmite works. Instead of accumulating cosmite each of node / mine could provide a certain amount of cosmite which works like a slots. Lets say one cosmite mine gives 8 cosmite points, T3 units cost 2 cosmite and T4 units cost 4 cosmite. So for example for 8 cosmite you cold have 2 T4 units, 4 T3 units, 1 T4 and 2 T3 units and so on. You get the idea ;) As soon as you buy a unit the cosmite points are locked - symbolising its maintenance. When the unit dies the cosmite points are freed again and you could replace the unit. With such system you can't hoard cosmite and flood enemies with end game units. Of course bigger empire would still have more cosmite and more units but losing them would hurt much more. It would also take time to build / train a replacement so smaller empire which won the battles and still have its endgame units would have an opportunity to grab some land before its enemy regains power.
 
Chimaira said:
Instead of accumulating cosmite each of node / mine could provide a certain amount of cosmite which works like a slots..
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I see several problems in this solution.

First it imho would actually encourage snowballing (and weeken turtling strategies): As soon as you conquer a cosmite mine you can immediately build additional T3 and T4 units that give you again an advantage over the opponent and enable you to occupy more territories with even more cosmite. On the other hand a mechanic that allows to accumulate cosmite gives a player that is pushed back the possibitlity to recover because the aggressive player needs time to benefit from the acquired resources.

Addtionally its bad for a turtling player. No matter how many T3 and T4 units that charge into his lands he destroys the offensive player always gets the needed cosmite resources back and can start to build a new army. The turtling player can not accumulate himself a big amount of cosmite that could give him an advantage.

Besides, this type of resource system doesn’t provide enough complexity to allow economical decisions. There is no way to change mining rates, you just put a city in the sector and get maximal cosmite income. I’d prefer if the player has at least some influence and can specialize sectors into mining areas if he’ s willing to invest a lot of energy and other resources into it (of course a developed mining sector wouldn’t be suited to produce units or to generate research as an additional downside). Other options that lead to meaningful economical decisions are technologies as JJ suggested or city operations (similar to Generate Merchandise in AoW3).
 
A need for mining back cosmite or investing in mining it could be introduced alongside.

No matter how the system will work turtle / smaller empire will be at disadvantage. If the cosmite can be accumulated then bigger empire still has the advantage simply because more land = more mines so turtle will not "outproduce" him in this regard. I understand that turtling strategy should be viable, but on the other hand this should not become optimal nor desirable strategy. AoW was always about conquering more land and players should be encouraged to do and not to sit in their corner and waiting for AI to come.
 
turtling in the sense iof "I'll just sit here and wait for you to come to me,2 is al;ways a bad idea/disadvantage in ANY situation, and in real life.

@Chimaira that;s not what I'm proposing at all.

PLUS, there are literally no corners in Planetfall.

I suggested earlier upgrades to sectors, to make a single sector more productive/useful. I used a sensor tower example. Cosmite mine lvl 5 is just as good an example.
 
"Turtling" as I see it relies heavily on the opponents being distracted. While they spend their time eXpanding and eXterminating others, you can spend your time eXploiting. I'll give an example scenario:

You colonize a couple of places and put decent defenses there. Then you start on infrastructure, build upgrades, research stuff, every once in a while update your defenses. By not spending your time and other resources building armies, you can upgrade and research more (this is where flexible taxation comes in for most games - the more you tax, the more armies you can support but the lower is morale, slower is production/research). AoW1 and 2 and SM used research-mana taxation, which worked pretty well for magic-based factions. For a Dreadnaught, you don't really care about mana that much (low running mana costs), which is probably why it got dumped.

Other players colonize actively and start wars against other aggressive expanders. This means building armies, trying to beat the other with quantity (since T1/T2 are not that different in strength) and tactics. This means that places they'd like to build upgrades in have to spend their time building armies. Active warfare slows their development, but whoever comes out on top will have a massive leg up in territory and population. That means that once the wars are over, the development will probably be very fast, rapidly catching up to the turtler.

There are multiple key factors in this:

If the turtler cannot keep their defending forces updated enough (ie research is not ahead of the aggressive players or aggressive players find the resources to launch a large-scale attack against a non-aggressive player), the turtler is turtle stew. It relies on other deciding that attacking the turtler is a commitment of resources not presently acceptable, probably due to other, more imminent threats.

The turtler, if played well, will have a small window of opportunity - while they are ahead in development (towns and research) but the other players are still distracted with each other. This window is often used for Technological victory (say... destroying an Antaran Star Fortress), which keeps the combat to a minimum (unless someone tries to stop him), but can also be used for a Conquest victory (quantity vs quality - being the first to hovercrafts in SMAC/SMAX is a massive advantage as it allows for Blitzkrieg).

If the tech tree is too small or does not give strong enough advantages, turtling is DOA.
If the war commitment does not cause any slowdown in other development (say.... research), turtling is DOA. Kind of AoW3 case here.

It is not just about "wait here while they come to me", it is about keeping your home safe while getting ready to do battle on your terms with the advantage being on your side. As Sun Tzu wrote, "Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength.". Remember, strength in 4X games is not just number of units, technology is a big modifier.

Feel free to comment and correct me if I've got something wrong.
 
Not quite a 1:1 analogy but maybe what we're (or I am) proposing is more incentives to build "tall," which by definition means investing more into fewer things (cities, sectors etc) as opposed to building "wide," which is what is encouraged, arguably, in AoW.

So build tall and turtle link together in a way?
 
Quark02 said:
If the war commitment does not cause any slowdown in other development (say.... research), turtling is DOA. Kind of AoW3 case here.
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Good point. Commitment to research means in AoW generally to build a few more observatories than usually. There’s no effective way to focus a whole empire on research (like being able to adapt cities to provide mostly knowledge instead of gold or production).
 
BloodyBattleBrain said:
Not quite a 1:1 analogy but maybe what we're (or I am) proposing is more incentives to build "tall," which by definition means investing more into fewer things (cities, sectors etc) as opposed to building "wide," which is what is encouraged, arguably, in AoW.
Click to expand...

You could encourage building tall by implementing buildings that add a % value to the income of a particular resource. So they are more effective in cities that generate already a lot of income.

In the end this means that tall cities would be extremely powerful in rich areas whereas in sectors that lack mines and nodes they would be just a waste of resources.
 
Probably every sector is valuable. But I could imagine that a sector that has only a sensor array and almost no other resources is a bad choice for a tall city. EG structures that give +25% on energy income would just affect the energy generated by other buildings.

What I basically want to say is that it is difficult to balance wide and tall in a way that both strategies are completely equal. Instead I’d prefer if the viability depends on the properties of the sector, and in many cases each decision (how to use a sector) will have its benefits and its downsides.
 
Yeah I remember discussions about "tall" vs "wide" in civ 3 and 4 communities and it is still a problem to balance. Both strategies should be viable but since AoW was always more focused on warfare going "wide" will remain to be better approach. With more options in economic and empire building department going "tall" can become much more appealing than in previous games.
 
Unless...going tall is how you unlock better units, and going wide gets you more resources. That way you have a drive to do both but it's challenging to make happen.

Hypothetically, you could make it so a player requires Sensor tower lvl 4 + city level 3 + x cosmite before they get a t4 unit out...

That kind of thing.
 
Related to tall vs wide discussion - The racial tech trees mean there's the option to acquire other races' techs while playing. We're still playing with how much access players get to these auxiliary trees, and at what cost.
 
Anyway, I just had a thought.

Going tall, as in develop your site's, could give you research and influence bonuses.

It's better to concentrate your scientists rather than have a scientist in various random buildings.

Ditto influence (concentrated diplomats)



Going wide gets you metal and minerals, raw materials, in this case cosmite .


And also map control.

And the strategic initiative (via scouting and physical presence.)

Plus whatever good stuff is in the sectors.


So far so good imho.


Not sure it was my idea, someone else's suggestion or developer confirmed but does claiming (attaching them to a city) or upgrading sectors cost influence?

This interplay could work well together provide incentives to go tall and wide!
 
If it's a goal to make playing "tall" a viable strategy, then the only way i can think of to achieve this is to have options to upgrade your land.
If you have the choice to either invest in your lands or in conquering new lands, it then needs to be that a small but highly developed empire is competetive to a big but undeveloped empire. The core question would be, how much development is possible. Because as soon as your small land has reached maximum development, the bigger empire will win, because it has more land to bring to maximum development. If it's highly unlikely to ever reach the maximum development though, and you have to trade-off between expansion and development, then with some math and testing it should be possible to get a balance between expansionists and developers.
Expansionist's have more mines, developers have more efficient mines. Expansionists have large, highly mobile, mixed armies, made of every conquered race; developers have small but elite armies within their highly reinforced borders.

I think something like this could have a place in a AoW-Game, but im not sure if it should.
 
LennartGS said:
Related to tall vs wide discussion - The racial tech trees mean there's the option to acquire other races' techs while playing. We're still playing with how much access players get to these auxiliary trees, and at what cost.
Click to expand...
Hmm, now that itself is actually new information. The potential partial access to other races' tech listings.
 
Vjeldan said:
If it's a goal to make playing "tall" a viable strategy, then the only way i can think of to achieve this is to have options to upgrade your land.
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With “upgrade you land” you mean buildings inside the city/improve sites? Upgrading multiple tiles around the city sounds like a lot of micromanagement.

Vjeldan said:
Expansionist's have more mines, developers have more efficient mines. Expansionists have large, highly mobile, mixed armies, made of every conquered race; developers have small but elite armies within their highly reinforced borders.
Click to expand...

Overall I agree but to clarify: I think there’s no point in this concept if tall and wide leads always to completely equal military and economical strength. AoW is a strategy game, so there should be a reason why a skilled player prefers in some situations to go wide or to go tall. Thus the map/sector quality has to have some influence on the effectivity.

One obvious factor would be food. A sector without food resources would be less suited for a tall city because its much more difficult to get the required population .

BloodyBattleBrain said:
Going tall, as in develop your site's, could give you research and influence bonuses.
It's better to concentrate your scientists rather than have a scientist in various random buildings.
Ditto influence (concentrated diplomats)

Going wide gets you metal and minerals, raw materials, in this case cosmite .
Click to expand...

I like in this suggestion that it allows reseach focus (at high costs) and that it makes wide and tall situationally viable. Some more variation in tall cities would be nice though: A pure production city (EG at a position where a particular unit type gets buffed) or alternatively a energy production center. Wide empires have still the advantage to get access to more sites, landmarcs and cosmite.

LennartGS said:
Related to tall vs wide discussion - The racial tech trees mean there's the option to acquire other races' techs while playing. We're still playing with how much access players get to these auxiliary trees, and at what cost.
Click to expand...

Regarding costs for access to other racial trees: A mechanic like racial happiness (or racial gouvernance) seems imho to fit perfectly. It should be rather hard to aquire, so the different racial combinations have something unique and are not a thing you get in every game sooner or later.
 
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