Planning out which planets to colonise, deciding how to develop them as the population goes, seeing them grow from empty balls of rock into thriving metropolises. This may not be what you're after, but I prefer it to mashing big balls of ships into each other.
Fair enough, I may have been distracted by your excellent pun.
Do you play multiplayer? I play single-player and I don't really think of the AI as a "player" but rather as an obstacle to be ignored or attacked as I feel like.
What did you have in mind? I'm interested to hear your thoughts.
The same can be said of almost every other RTS or 4X game out there. Some throw in token espionage but it's usually more of a pain than it's worth to deal with. Offworld Trading Company is the only game I can think of that's different, but that one is *entirely* focused on economic competition.
What kind of other interactions would you be looking for here?
Sorry for the tardy response to you both, I got distracted by stuff at work and really wanted to fully flesh out my thoughts in this thread. I'm struggling to put my thoughts into writing, which almost certainly means I would struggle to put them into action too.
I have the opinion that good gameplay means dynamics and interaction, I don't think the peacetime economy offers that in Stellaris.
I do play primarily single player, and I see the AI as a valid player/actor/doer/mover-and-shaker, which has the potential to have a real impact on the game-world and take the initiative from the player. I feel that the AI isn't just an obstacle, but an unknown part of the simulation which can be interacted with. The same goes for human players of course.
I agree with you,
@LeanneKaos , when you raise the very valid point that most, if not all, RTS/4X games on the market do very well at telling a story where the only way a society can interact with others, both rivals and friends, is through war. In truth, as a game marketing itself as a grand strategy, I expect Stellaris to do more than that.
There's an article by RockPaperShotgun which starts with the idea that a game can say something about a subject such as progress or society, then makes the argument that the 4x genre has grown stagnant because they are games about progress without having anything at all to say about the subject. It introduces two games which have said interesting things about progress, one of which is Victoria II by Paradox. The reason Victoria II is in that article is because "progress reshapes societies around the new needs it creates".
Let's say that a game can say something about society. Don't people cooperate, coexist and compete with one another without necessarily exercising hard power? You can exert soft power too, and that’s something which is sorely lacking in Strategy games. If you examine the process of establishing a political hegemony, it’s not always clear-cut military might which wins the day. There are times where it is economic power which establishes the hegemon, there are conflicts which occur which are purely in the political or economic domains rather than military domain, and I would like to see those represented as well.
I think there should be various domains players can interact with each other on, that these domains should be present on one map, not hidden under a menu or behind events, and that these domains should be represented as much as possible by actual pieces on the game board. Further that these domains should offer the ability to both cooperate, coexist and compete. Each domain should be able to be invested in for asymmetrical advantage when compared to other players as well. And in the ideal case, establishing a presence and progressing in one domain would require investment costs, but wouldn't exclude you from other domains.
To facilitate greater interactions with the AI, I would like the ability for various parties in the games to have demands and offer missions to other factions, at a minimum, so you can choose to pull-strings to manipulate the galaxy in your favour. I think this is the best way to represent being able to cooperate with AI players. I also think that colonies should have their own agendas and feel like living, breathing worlds where pops with agency live.
through different gameplay mechanics !
