Removal of tile system

[Kobrakai]

Wiz just said at PDXCon that they are thinking about replacing the tile system and showed this prototype (attached) of something they are considering.

Personally I really like the current tile system. it's one of my favourite features in the game and I would be really disappointed if it were to go. I don't know why but going through each of my planets upgrading the buildings is what I enjoy most during peacetime, without it the game would feel so empty. Clicking the little upgrade arrow and the sound that it makes just feels very satisfying to me.

I can completely understand why some people would see this as pointless micro so I'm all for adding some quality of life options like upgrade all or auto upgrade, but please don't take the whole system away for those of us that like it. There's not a lot to do besides war, I would much rather have espionage or improvements to diplomacy first before removing what little we do have.

 

[Drinko]

I really like it the showcased possible changes, it also probably greatly helps the ai's economy.

 

[Fourthspartan56]

I would not be sad in the slightest.

I don't hate the tile system but I don't love it either.

A system like this could have the potential to be far more interesting.

 

[Madzai]

To me, it boils down to one question: Is the new system is both interesting and occupy some of your time? So you can do it to kind of switch focus from your current tasks if you wanted to? Or it's just something simple (again is NOT the same as bad\not interesting), and we basically do it in few clicks and never bother with that planet again.

I know a lot of people see the tile system as unnecessary micro so this may be an unpopular opinion, but I love the tile system. it's one of my favourite features in the game and I would be really disappointed if it were to go. I don't particularly enjoy war so managing tiles is one of the few other things to do in the game.

It was micro. But guess what? There was not enough "macro", that's the problem. People want optional (for most part, for those who don't want to do it) micro out, without anything to substitute it, if new system to be even simpler (or require even less engagement from player), you have like not enough things to do. Expanding internal politics? I doubt they can do it in a single patch, and like 1/3 of Empire types, don't have internal policy at all.

In conclusion - IMO, time will tell.

 

[James_K]

It looks like a variant of MOO2’s system to me, so that’s still within the 4X design space.

I’m a big fan of economic management in 4X games too, I find it satisfying to see a barren planet turn into a thriving colony, while war tends to variously frustrate, annoy and bore me. But the tile system is really repetitive and samey, hopefully this new approach will still give us a lot of interesting people economic management to get our teeth into.

 

[Madzai]

It looks like a variant of MOO2’s system to me, so that’s still within the 4X design space.

Don't see the buildings tab. That tab on the right is the remains of tiles and tile bonuses, that now decide overall usefulness of a planet. But no buildings yet.

 

[James_K]

Don't see the buildings tab. That tab on the right is the remains of tiles and tile bonuses, that now decide overall usefulness of a planet. But no buildings yet.

Hmm, yes. You would expect to have buildings for the planet-unique and Empire-unique stuff.

 

[Mich-666]

I heartfully agree, I don't like new AI prototype. I'm all for less micromanagement but this goes way overboard. Instead of removing core feature and visualization of planet surface, they should work on automation of this process instead, adding checkbox to each planet to let AI govern it.

They took away unique ways of travel in 2.0, added convoluted and artificial warscore system that doesn't really make sense in the vast universe and now this. They are basically remading Stellaris into GSG while removing all fun 4x elements that made Stellaris successful in the first place. Not every PDX game has to be EU4 clone.

I really don't like this developement and I really hope they reconsider.

 

[Cataflam]

Literally unplayable

 

[Madzai]

A system like this could have the potential to be far more interesting.

That's rather weak argument. Almost any system can be "far more interesting" if you put time, skill and resources to develop it. The same tile system works good in GalCiv (in times it actually working without bugs), actually provide different gameplay between races types, traits and technologies, due to different build-up, It also give you a good chance to get a great planet even of a lesser size (that almost never happens in Stellaris). IMO, it all boils down to personal preferences of a person behind the development.

They took away unique ways of travel in 2.0, added convoluted and artificial warscore system that doesn't really make sense in the vast universe and now this. They are basically remading Stellaris into GSG while removing all fun 4x elements that made Stellaris successful in the first place. Not every PDX game has to be EU4 clone.

It would be OK, if they have them enough in Stellaris - the GSG elements.

 

[pryr]

Oh no, please no. I wanna see planets, not spreadsheets. That is one of things that made me love this game - immersive planets with actual surface/population/buildings/slavery/purging to see.

 

[Drinko]

I don't like how "administration worker" type gives unity. Perhaps using multiple governmental employees could allow bonuses such as social welfare, unrest reduction, ethic attraction and so on partly based on government type and civs.

As for unity, well maybe a "cultural profession" could do that or possibly a complete rework of how unity is generated.

Spoiler: One way to overhaul unity generation

I was inspired by this thread: Unity should actually reflect Unity

My idea:

Regular empires reform their society and culture.
REMOVE unity gain from buildings.
Reduce the sources of happiness.
Planets no longer effect unity.
Increase ethics instability.
Make old unity buildings generate slight happiness and ethics attraction.
Make unity be based on average happiness of pops.
Slavers and conquerors have less happiness, smaller empires are more united.
Unrest reduces unity.
Examples
Average pop happiness 50%, no unrest = 10 unity/month
Average pop happiness 60%, no unrest = 12 unity/month
Average pop happiness 50%, Average unrest: 20 = 8 unity/month

Xenophobes get reduced unity penalty for unhappy xeno pops.
Spiritualists are good at internal stability and as a result have more unity.

Results
Currently colonizing small planets feels better.
Colonizing planet with happiness penalties feels worse.
Happiness becomes more important.
Pleasing you factions becomes more important.

It will simply say: Unity
Happiness: +10
(possibly) unrest: -2

Hive minds and robots empires
Evolve their collective and/or pops.
Hive minds and robots empires get "evolution" points each time a new pop is created.
Making them forced to expand.
Alternatively robots empires get "upgrade" points from tech.

 

[treb]

First FTL, now tiles

if i wanted provinces that feel exactly the same and warfare based on forts and point to point railroaded moment id have stuck to EU4...

The tile system made each planet unique and i gained an immense amount of satisfaction from tweaking them to get the best outputs I wanted from them.

Was it perfect, no but it its a huge upgrade from practically all space RTS in terms of depth and immersion

You're rapidly destroying what made Stellaris unique and stand out from the crowd...

 

[Fourthspartan56]

That's rather weak argument. Almost any system can be "far more interesting" if you put time, skill and resources to develop it. The same tile system works good in GalCiv (in times it actually working without bugs), actually provide different gameplay between races types, traits and technologies, due to different build-up, It also give you a good chance to get a great planet even of a lesser size (that almost never happens in Stellaris). IMO, it all boils down to personal preferences of a person behind the development.

You seem to be confused, I was not making an argument in its favor. Merely expressing my opinion on the possibility of this change.

Thus whether you're right or wrong about the tile system is irrelevant.

 

[Tim_Ward]

I don't hate it. Glad they're thinking about this topic.

It's worth noting that you can still have tiles per say but have something like this as the main economic model for planets.

See those things on the side? Ore rich caverns, fertile plains, that sort of thing? Put those on a map/grid style layout, do some graphics indicating blocked/not blocked/exploited... it looks like the 'tiles' on the right determine how many of each type of worker you can have so you can do some graphics on each one showing what population lives in each region. Bing tiles! But without the bullshit

But also keep a layout like in that screenshot, for ease of reference.

 

[Madzai]

You seem to be confused, I was not making an argument in its favor. Merely expressing my opinion on the possibility of this change.

Thus whether you're right or wrong about the tile system is irrelevant.

Well, it' not a possibility, it's already our reality in half a year in future. If not that exact system, but the tiles are out. I'm not advocating the tiles system either (even if i prefer major improvements over major overhauls). A i said, we need a system that both interesting and engaging, because unlike this change they already showcasing, the changes\improvements on "GSG level" are nowhere to be seen.

 

[Jin_Cardassian]

As someone who always enjoys playing multi-species empires, the worst part about managing the tile system is having to drag each individual pop to the right tile all the time to get an optimal distribution of their talents (Strongs to fortresses, Engineers to labs etc). Decoupling pop units from tiles solves that. Then you only have to make sure they're assigned to the right category. It looks like the changes are going in that direction.

 

[Eelectrica]

Not really a fan to be honest. Looks like Excel the game.
I like my planets to feel and look like planets. This is too abstract.
Prefer to have a way of placing my buildings then auto upgrading them when new tech comes online.

 

[Blodo]

The interface might be very early, but it looks very unclear at the moment, there's no final yield shown on that screen (probably should be), no applied percentage bonuses and stuff like that. But maybe that can be fixed with iteration?

My beef with this comes from a "game feel" perspective that raises a whole bunch of questions:

• It used to be tile yields that made planets different, but if tiles are removed then so are tile yields. What are we going to get instead? Modifiers? Unless the plan is to make them extreme in terms of benefits/problems, I don't think they'll do the job considering they can currently be basically ignored for the most part. Stellaris had so many patches now during the development we repeatedly asked to 1. make more use of adjacencies to make planet planning a real thing, and 2. make modifiers have more impact. Why is this not something to be looked at to make the tile system more interesting instead? Two simple changes that change the tile mini-game considerably.
  
• Tile blockers in a system with no tiles? Why would we need to clear a blocker to build a certain building in addition to building that building? Seems like pointless micro that can be eschewed for something else at least?
  
• And the most important for last: What happened to the idea of differentiating of planets? I see nothing there at all that would make planets different from each other, each planet is reduced to just four sliders that you instinctively want to "max out" and a bunch of "checkboxes" (buildings) that elongate the slider. Is that all? Sliders replacing tiles also remove each planet's uniqueness. More abstraction is not necessarily good if the game relies on stimulating the player's imagination, which IMO Stellaris does considering the focus on exploration events and race design.

Modders already proved that AI can learn to use the tile system including adjacency bonuses, and they did it using only events scripting and not even direct engine access. If AI not being able to currently handle tiles is the only reason to remove tiles rather than try to improve them, then it looks like this will be a bad change. If Paradox can't fix the AI on their own, why not give modders access to its code, and it will be demonstrated that it is more than possible to nudge the AI in the direction of understanding how tile yields work.

As someone who always enjoys playing multi-species empires, the worst part about managing the tile system is having to drag each individual pop to the right tile all the time to get an optimal distribution of their talents (Strongs to fortresses, Engineers to labs etc). Decoupling pop units from tiles solves that. Then you only have to make sure they're assigned to the right category. It looks like the changes are going in that direction.

Game not being able to choose which pop goes in the right tile does not necessarily mean that it will be able to choose which pop goes in the right slider either. We can only assume sliders will have limits for pops, so if a strong pop grows on a planet that has a full slider of mineral workers and 1 slot free for food, will the better mineral pop get exchanged with another pop in the mineral slider for food automatically? It would be the same mechanism as an AI governor exchanging pops positions on tiles based on best tile yields. For all we know this issue might continue regardless.

 

[ross-g]

I think there are some interesting conversations to be had here around removing the tile system in favour of something else.

For me the only real appeal of the tile system over the "jobs" type system shown on stream is the visual one. All of the tile and building art is actually quite nice and seeing your planet fill up over time is satisfying. But having a 1 pop, 1 building per tile restriction does limit the development of planets even though buildings are upgradable.