So I went back to playing a few other 4X games, and I wanted to share a thought that came to me. Specifically, I went back and played Civilization: Beyond Earth, which came out in 2014, between Civilization 4 and 5. In hindsight, it game me a feel for what went wrong and right with AOW-PF.
It seems that 4X games appear to be a cluster of mini-games with varying overlapping effects. The most elegant, and obvious example, is the tactical game in AOW-PF. In this, you have produced units, but with combat, you have the ability to force-multiply your investments. Recall the crazy stunts of Sinsling, one of our better PVP players:
forum.paradoxplaza.com
There were good times there, particularly here:
... where Sinsling completely bailed himself out, winning fight after fight against insane odds. This was really an extreme example of force multiplication when you have the game mastered, and is extremely fun.
But there are several of the mini-games packed in, with differing polish. The second most obvious one is city/land management. In Civ-Be, this was huge. Like most civilization games, there are like 10,000,000,000 different resources, and you can go about structuring your civilization any way you like. Here, because they had not come out with the sector system, I chose to go with upgraded farms, and make farm-world, which is a fast-growing version with generally modest production:
That is a lot of farmland, dotted by cities with greatly varied resource spikes. It took a long time to get there. And as always, you start on the BOTTOM:
But as it goes, it ends with complete insanity:
For those unfamiliar, you can assume that this city is nuts.
And that was just it. I really crushed the land management on this, making the absolute most of the paltry units I got at the beginning of the game. This led to production levels that the computer just couldn't even dream of, despite the ludicrous bonuses the computer had. Note that this was on the hardest of all settings (Apollo):
Plus, I was on teams against the computer, set to a difficulty I can't imagine winning unless you have an absolute mastery of the game systems. And it was a complete blowout, despite my VERY humble start:
That was Turn 32, where I was at the bottom.
I basically had it barely reversed by Turn 58, where things came online:
And I basically ran away with it starting in the 90's. ("Normal" speed, so turns were high)
Until the end:
What got me thinking about this was how exactly each of the layers of the game worked.
What made this game winnable (and fun) was that I had to use absolutely every single one of the game's features to the maximum. That included the normal: land management, unit control and position, and resource gathering / production, which are in every game. But here, it added 3 more 'mini-games':
1. Covert Ops
2. Trade / Diplomacy; and
3. Artifacts
Suffice it to say that these are basically mini-games within the game, which allow you to pull ahead, in this case, in a truly explosive manner. My true power came from covert ops, which ARC (my faction) was best at:
On turn 133, I had 6 Special Agents (highest rank) absolutely CRUSHING IT. I mean, they stole every secret and technology in the world. Nothing was safe, and this put me in the tech lead by miles.
This was coupled with my insane trading, where I had about 10 trade routes, which with the right synergies, was netting me probably double any of the enemy teams:
And you have to stack onto this the global effects of artifacts:
Crushing all three of these little mini-games, my faction was on its way to victory.
So how does this apply? In concept, it is simple. The quality and balance of the mini-games directly determines the quality of the overall 4X game. There is no one thing that you can (or should) do to make a game like this work. You have to make the game winnable on many levels, any of which can position you better for another complex win. In essence, a master of the game, playing all the games well at the same time, should be able to overcome the massive bonuses given to an AI. That was what was good with Civ:BE and AOW-PF. In essence, you are against a timer. If you can't make your strategy work in time, you will eventually be marginalized and lose.
Thing is, there need to be pivotal points, where a clutch win can get you ahead from a losing position. That is a hard effect to generate, and really wasn't present in Planetfall. In essence, the 'comback' mechanics are weak, because they are dependent on Cosmite. In point of fact, it works more like a 'snowball' mechanic - especially in PVP, where your opponents typically don't make obvious mistakes. It's just that the computer is dumb enough to give you the upper hand.
forum.paradoxplaza.com
Past that, most of these mini-games are really superficial. They didn't give each one the same effort, causing them to feel like an afterthought. Summing each one of the big items up:
1. Land management and resources in both CIV and AOW are satisfying and frustrating. In Civ, each early-game space moved would cascade into a massive lategame effect. Problem is, like AOW-PF, land management scaled badly in the mid and late-games. Land management in the late game took hours, and did very little. In AOW, it was the same, though this was partially because of bad mechanics, as builders / workers are now gone. Either way, this is the biggest problem of almost all 4X games.
2. Trading was extremely two-dimensional. Trading was completely based on exploration, and if you explored properly, trading worked. If not, it didn't. If it worked, you force-multiplied your way to a comfortable win. If not, I don't know how you would do it against these odds.
3. Covert ops, like in most games, looks like an optional detail. In practical effect, this was so grossly overpowered, I think you might just pull off a win simply by the tech advantage alone. This was one of those conditions that felt like AOW-PF's Vorpal Snipers when the game first came out. It was almost like cheating - and definitely has the sensation of an abuse - as happens with 4X with some regularity.
4. Artifacts felt like gambling. You could go 10 expeditions and get nothing. Or 10 of the best artifacts, which be absolutely massive. In Civ, if you focus hard on early-game expansion, you could almost guarantee a major advantage over the computer, just like in AOW-PF.
So how does this come together now?
Simple. Flagship, next time you start a game like this, you need to carefully examine the nature of your mini-games, and treat each one as its own world. Let's take covert operations. Instead of having AOW-PF's terrible spell-point and alliance bonus system, which are impossible to make work for you, make each one its own world.
forum.paradoxplaza.com
Instead of this, make it a wonderland-style IQ test:
That is from Exapunks, and is a decent display of how this can be done. Not sure if they want to go that way, but I think that there may be a middle-ground. Imagine just a second battlefield, where your netrunners square off against the enemy netrunners in a virtual battlefield. Like your real army, you 'outfit' them, and then depending on how badly they win/lose, they apply incremental buffs / debuffs in the 'real world.'
Obviously you don't want it to over-whelm the actual game, but this type of game-within-a-game is exactly what is needed. The thing is, both Civ and AOW have never gotten this right. So my basic thought is to look at this more globally. What would happen if they took this aspect of the game a bit more serious? Is it time to focus more on the underlying mechanics of the game? How would it go if the covert ops, diplomacy, and land management were truly balanced and even games on their own? I think it would really help.
It seems that 4X games appear to be a cluster of mini-games with varying overlapping effects. The most elegant, and obvious example, is the tactical game in AOW-PF. In this, you have produced units, but with combat, you have the ability to force-multiply your investments. Recall the crazy stunts of Sinsling, one of our better PVP players:
Sinsling v THE WORLD - Post Mortem
In short: I told him so, even if he told me so. Let me explain. The video ended with a bit of a cliffhanger. I think it is very likely to go Sin's way... with maybe 75% likelihood. Here is the deal: Sinsling wins if he takes out 4 of the 12...
There were good times there, particularly here:
... where Sinsling completely bailed himself out, winning fight after fight against insane odds. This was really an extreme example of force multiplication when you have the game mastered, and is extremely fun.
But there are several of the mini-games packed in, with differing polish. The second most obvious one is city/land management. In Civ-Be, this was huge. Like most civilization games, there are like 10,000,000,000 different resources, and you can go about structuring your civilization any way you like. Here, because they had not come out with the sector system, I chose to go with upgraded farms, and make farm-world, which is a fast-growing version with generally modest production:
That is a lot of farmland, dotted by cities with greatly varied resource spikes. It took a long time to get there. And as always, you start on the BOTTOM:
But as it goes, it ends with complete insanity:
For those unfamiliar, you can assume that this city is nuts.
And that was just it. I really crushed the land management on this, making the absolute most of the paltry units I got at the beginning of the game. This led to production levels that the computer just couldn't even dream of, despite the ludicrous bonuses the computer had. Note that this was on the hardest of all settings (Apollo):
Plus, I was on teams against the computer, set to a difficulty I can't imagine winning unless you have an absolute mastery of the game systems. And it was a complete blowout, despite my VERY humble start:
That was Turn 32, where I was at the bottom.
I basically had it barely reversed by Turn 58, where things came online:
And I basically ran away with it starting in the 90's. ("Normal" speed, so turns were high)
Until the end:
What got me thinking about this was how exactly each of the layers of the game worked.
What made this game winnable (and fun) was that I had to use absolutely every single one of the game's features to the maximum. That included the normal: land management, unit control and position, and resource gathering / production, which are in every game. But here, it added 3 more 'mini-games':
1. Covert Ops
2. Trade / Diplomacy; and
3. Artifacts
Suffice it to say that these are basically mini-games within the game, which allow you to pull ahead, in this case, in a truly explosive manner. My true power came from covert ops, which ARC (my faction) was best at:
On turn 133, I had 6 Special Agents (highest rank) absolutely CRUSHING IT. I mean, they stole every secret and technology in the world. Nothing was safe, and this put me in the tech lead by miles.
This was coupled with my insane trading, where I had about 10 trade routes, which with the right synergies, was netting me probably double any of the enemy teams:
And you have to stack onto this the global effects of artifacts:
Crushing all three of these little mini-games, my faction was on its way to victory.
So how does this apply? In concept, it is simple. The quality and balance of the mini-games directly determines the quality of the overall 4X game. There is no one thing that you can (or should) do to make a game like this work. You have to make the game winnable on many levels, any of which can position you better for another complex win. In essence, a master of the game, playing all the games well at the same time, should be able to overcome the massive bonuses given to an AI. That was what was good with Civ:BE and AOW-PF. In essence, you are against a timer. If you can't make your strategy work in time, you will eventually be marginalized and lose.
Thing is, there need to be pivotal points, where a clutch win can get you ahead from a losing position. That is a hard effect to generate, and really wasn't present in Planetfall. In essence, the 'comback' mechanics are weak, because they are dependent on Cosmite. In point of fact, it works more like a 'snowball' mechanic - especially in PVP, where your opponents typically don't make obvious mistakes. It's just that the computer is dumb enough to give you the upper hand.
How well did the big decisions work?
It would appear that AOW-Planetfall has come to the end of its development cycle, and possibly another AOW will be developed. I am wondering what you all think about the big decisions that were made with this AOW, and if they were worth it...
Past that, most of these mini-games are really superficial. They didn't give each one the same effort, causing them to feel like an afterthought. Summing each one of the big items up:
1. Land management and resources in both CIV and AOW are satisfying and frustrating. In Civ, each early-game space moved would cascade into a massive lategame effect. Problem is, like AOW-PF, land management scaled badly in the mid and late-games. Land management in the late game took hours, and did very little. In AOW, it was the same, though this was partially because of bad mechanics, as builders / workers are now gone. Either way, this is the biggest problem of almost all 4X games.
2. Trading was extremely two-dimensional. Trading was completely based on exploration, and if you explored properly, trading worked. If not, it didn't. If it worked, you force-multiplied your way to a comfortable win. If not, I don't know how you would do it against these odds.
3. Covert ops, like in most games, looks like an optional detail. In practical effect, this was so grossly overpowered, I think you might just pull off a win simply by the tech advantage alone. This was one of those conditions that felt like AOW-PF's Vorpal Snipers when the game first came out. It was almost like cheating - and definitely has the sensation of an abuse - as happens with 4X with some regularity.
4. Artifacts felt like gambling. You could go 10 expeditions and get nothing. Or 10 of the best artifacts, which be absolutely massive. In Civ, if you focus hard on early-game expansion, you could almost guarantee a major advantage over the computer, just like in AOW-PF.
So how does this come together now?
Simple. Flagship, next time you start a game like this, you need to carefully examine the nature of your mini-games, and treat each one as its own world. Let's take covert operations. Instead of having AOW-PF's terrible spell-point and alliance bonus system, which are impossible to make work for you, make each one its own world.
AI covert operations are broken
I was going through the doctrines with TreborTheTall (good work by the way), and noted that there weren't any covert operation threads in the top few sheets. My guess is that this is because on the scale we typically use for most games, they are...
Instead of this, make it a wonderland-style IQ test:
That is from Exapunks, and is a decent display of how this can be done. Not sure if they want to go that way, but I think that there may be a middle-ground. Imagine just a second battlefield, where your netrunners square off against the enemy netrunners in a virtual battlefield. Like your real army, you 'outfit' them, and then depending on how badly they win/lose, they apply incremental buffs / debuffs in the 'real world.'
Obviously you don't want it to over-whelm the actual game, but this type of game-within-a-game is exactly what is needed. The thing is, both Civ and AOW have never gotten this right. So my basic thought is to look at this more globally. What would happen if they took this aspect of the game a bit more serious? Is it time to focus more on the underlying mechanics of the game? How would it go if the covert ops, diplomacy, and land management were truly balanced and even games on their own? I think it would really help.
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