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The "End Of The Cycle" option- which I will remind you is one of many available- is clearly telegraphed as a Bad Idea, though. Complete with a tooltip saying "DO NOT DO THIS" and benefits that are the very definition of "too good to be true". If that's not advertising that it'll Do Something Bad, I dunno what does. A fail state for that (or something close to one, like the extinction of your entire founding species) seems entirely fair for taking that bait.
Did none of you people ever grow up reading Choose Your Own Adventure books? Never played System Shock and been punished for not paying attention or just plain tempting fate by shooting a laser at Earth?
but most will either pick it once or never, it adds NOTHING to the game, so far they haven't added anything which is an absolute game over so i don't imagine they will now.
I honestly hope the consequences are massive but not 'you're dead, thanks for playing'.
but most will either pick it once or never, it adds NOTHING to the game, so far they haven't added anything which is an absolute game over so i don't imagine they will now.
I honestly hope the consequences are massive but not 'you're dead, thanks for playing'.
At no point have I advocated for an instantaneous game over. Even the example I've used most I brought up potential workarounds for (i.e. if your entire species becomes Neutered, you could continue on by assimilating other species before yours dies off). Ultimately, though, the difference between "massive catastrophic consequences" and "you're dead" is going to vary player-to-player.
I just don't see the problem with making some choices Categorically Bad. The End Of The Cycle has already clearly been established (and treated by many forum-goers) as "schmuck bait"- This Is A Terrible Idea, Why Would You Do This?-style. The answer is, of course (and as already voiced by a few), to see what happens. Probably once. Just for kicks.
I don't particularly care as to the extent of what Terrible Things you can call down on yourself ultimately, though- just so long as its more interesting than summoning a bunch of different flavour of doomstack on top of yourself. We have one of those confirmed- let's have some variety and creativity, please dear lord.
I kind of disagree, I want there to be a negative side attached to dealing with the shroud, but in the end I want it to be worth it. If all the negatives and positives were added up I dont neccesarily want the net sum to be overly positive, but I want it to feel worthwhile. First of all you pay a big sum of energy to make contact with the shroud, second, as with the "event?" that gave the psy shield tech, it was a chance involved so it could have meant you spent that energy for nothing. Considering you get this quite late in the game and that they are supposed to "accend" you species I want it to be super strong and meaningfull.
The "End Of The Cycle" option- which I will remind you is one of many available- is clearly telegraphed as a Bad Idea, though. Complete with a tooltip saying "DO NOT DO THIS" and benefits that are the very definition of "too good to be true". If that's not advertising that it'll Do Something Bad, I dunno what does. A fail state for that (or something close to one, like the extinction of your entire founding species) seems entirely fair for taking that bait.
Did none of you people ever grow up reading Choose Your Own Adventure books? Never played System Shock and been punished for not paying attention or just plain tempting fate by shooting a laser at Earth?
End of The Cycle can mean something different from killing your founding species, which is really not fun. It destroys what you've customized, created and roleplayed as and what? Just continue the game normal after that except with the other species in your empire. It doesn't haven't to be as rushed as you describe it. I'd rather open up a chaos portal like unbidden then just kill all my founding species. It could mean your POPs freeze to what you have, not making anymore but not dying from old age at the usual 100-140 year range that your leaders do. It's a different kind of race against time, one you can actually win indefinitely. You'll no longer offer up POPs to FEs and events. You'll want to stay out any war that'll mean getting bombarded. You'll want to immediately restrict your founding species travel so they don't die in foreign lands. It changes the gameplay for the rest of the game and is more accurate to the statement of ending birth and death.
Also, the idea of elves slowly dying off and birth rates decreasing is a common trope in medieval fantasy like Warhammer Fantasy and Lord of The Rings. In LOTR after some time of this the remaining elves essentially left Middle Earth (ascending to another dimension). Another common idea is that elves are immortal. Through magic and just a naturally long life span they can live virtually forever. But most of the time death comes from other means than old age.
I already covered this- the phrasing of "Ending the cycle of birth and death" can be interpreted all sorts of ways.
I never said the example I've been borrowing (that it Neuter your POPs) was the only way that could- or should- play out. Just that I think the slow but inevitable extinction of your species is far more interesting a Bad Result than "Oh, a doomstack spawned".
"Ending death" by killing everyone is actually a pretty common trope. Off the top of my head (mostly because I recently revisited it), in Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs,
Oswald Mandus and the half of his soul that became the Engineer decide to try to save 19th-century humanity from "all the horrors of the coming century" (a vividly described chain of horrors including WWI, WWII, Hiroshima, Soviet brutality, Cambodian death-camps...) by, well, killing everyone. This goal begins with him murdering his two young sons to stop them dying in the Somme.
There is a certain logic to it- so long as a species survives through the ages, countless, countless individuals will die- so perhaps it would be better to spare those future, inevitable deaths by killing a smaller number now- and thus, through extinction, preventing future suffering.
"Ending death" by killing everyone is actually a pretty common trope. Off the top of my head (mostly because I recently revisited it), in Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs,
Oswald Mandus and the half of his soul that became the Engineer decide to try to save 19th-century humanity from "all the horrors of the coming century" (a vividly described chain of horrors including WWI, WWII, Hiroshima, Soviet brutality, Cambodian death-camps...) by, well, killing everyone. This goal begins with him murdering his two young sons to stop them dying in the Somme.
There is a certain logic to it- so long as a species survives through the ages, countless, countless individuals will die- so perhaps it would be better to spare those future, inevitable deaths by killing a smaller number now- and thus, through extinction, preventing future suffering.
Yeah but that is the logic of a machine. It's far more wicked and might I add literal to leave them as immortals. Ending death by killing is quite the glaring contradiction where ending births by neutering is not.
And like it was mentioned by others, its just not fun. All your founding species die after 100 years. So you're telling me that the detailed description I gave them was for nothing? How about that time all my planets rejoiced at the completion of my first ring world. All gone? Just to play on as all these weird looking aliens I have no connection to?
To be fair I'm planning to play fanatic spiritualist xenophobes, so there'll only be a handful of slaves left after my founding species gets deleted. That is an end game for me and I'm sure a lot of people.
Yeah but that is the logic of a machine. It's far more wicked and might I add literal to leave them as immortals. Ending death by killing is quite the glaring contradiction where ending births by neutering is not.
And like it was mentioned by others, its just not fun. All your founding species die after 100 years. So you're telling me that the detailed description I gave them was for nothing? How about that time all my planets rejoiced at the completion of my first ring world. All gone? Just to play on as all these weird looking aliens I have no connection to?
To be fair I'm planning to play fanatic spiritualist xenophobes, so there'll only be a handful of slaves left after my founding species gets deleted. That is an end game for me and I'm sure a lot of people.
You're really caught up on that "All your POPs are permanently Neutered" example I used. But it was just an example- an easy one, because it demonstrates a long-term and severe consequence for taking the "sucker's option" and because I didn't have to come up with it myself.
The greater point I've been trying to make is that the game offers a lot of avenues to punish the player for incaution or challenge them after rewards are handed out- and yet I feel both the game and players over-represent combat in those matters. I would infinitely prefer a non-combat punishment for something as utterly sinister-sounding and clearly marked as a bad idea as the "Covenant: End Of The Cycle" option. I would prefer something that cannot be side-stepped through the game's lackluster combat engine and war mechanics. I would prefer something new, not just a clone of the Unbidden invasion.
I don't care if its total Neutering with some sinister descriptive text. I don't care if its Neutering mixed with immortality. I don't care if its a sweeping wave of revolts and splinter-colonies rising up against you, the populaces of your worlds just vanishing, warp-storms that cut off systems, your leaders and POPs all getting huge debuffs, weird indestructible buildings showing up on tiles and giving you negative effects- just so long as it shows some creativity with what you can do with the engine and has consequences that don't amount to more fleet battles and doomstack brawls.
Just having aliens in your Empire (with equal rights) should make the Xenophile Action Comitee happy. Wich in turn makes a lot of your pops happy (Faction happiness = Pop base happiness).
Going back just a little to wondering why anyone would want to pass up the potentially immortalising ascension paths: it looks like each path takes up two perks, as does going full megastructure. That means that if you're willing to pass all of these up you get to carry on playing a "vanilla" game, but with potentially eight whacking great one-off bonuses (like the big damage bonus against Fallen Empires show in the dev diary). These may well not be as game changing or exciting as the Shroud, robotic bodies or whatever super-evolved shapeshifting body horror the genetic path gives you, but it does mean (since Wiz said there are more than twenty perks and still adding more) that there's going to be a ton of options AND, if some or lots of them are ethos-specific, these options will add the focus of your government and ethos rather than being in spite of it.
So we sort of get a lot of option 1 with a little bit of option 2, a great deal of which we won't even experience until after a few whole games in which we first want to do all the ringworld-building and psychic ascending that we're drooling about at the moment. So I'm not really making any point except that this is freaking awesome.
Oh, and considering all the random events you get just by invasive observation or infiltration, can you imagine all the horrible business that's going to go down over the many-year process of uploading, Shroud-bothering and Enlarging Your DNA With This One Weird Tip?
Off the top of my head, because increasing base leader skill level and using a build that provides high Influence income would have a similar end result.
i.e., for the same reason people choose not to play Venerable species or use Theocratic Oligarchies- immortality, on its own, just preserves your current set of leaders indefinitely. An ongoing flow of leaders can have its benefits- for instance, as Scientists die off, you'll recruit new ones who will likely have other traits and expertises, giving you a wider range of boosts.
Home system becomes a black hole called "the Abyss", and neighbouring systems are slowly cooled down and destroyed, forcing you to desperately colonise and conquer your way to safety?
Off the top of my head, because increasing base leader skill level and using a build that provides high Influence income would have a similar end result.
i.e., for the same reason people choose not to play Venerable species or use Theocratic Oligarchies- immortality, on its own, just preserves your current set of leaders indefinitely. An ongoing flow of leaders can have its benefits- for instance, as Scientists die off, you'll recruit new ones who will likely have other traits and expertises, giving you a wider range of boosts.
Oh yeahhh... and immortal robot overlords are a particular bummer if you can never build another slightly oversized ship or station or get rid of a certain short-fingered vulgarian who reduces your naval cap and makes other species laugh at you.
I'm surprised that they didn't make it so that unity would be tied to ethos (as well as buildings).
For example, pacifists gain unity at peace and through settlement but lose it at war.
Militarists gain unity at war and conquest but lose it at peace.
Spiritualists gain unity through building temples or spreading ethos.
Materials get unity from buildings or from science research.
Xenophobes from having pure empires or enslaving xenos
Xenophiles from having ethnically diverse empires or abolishing slavery in other empires.
Egalitarians froms outlawing slavery purging etc in other empires and from everyone having high consumer goods
Authoritarians from having slave pops and strictly stratified societies with differing consumer goods.
Yeah but that is the logic of a machine. It's far more wicked and might I add literal to leave them as immortals. Ending death by killing is quite the glaring contradiction where ending births by neutering is not.
And like it was mentioned by others, its just not fun. All your founding species die after 100 years. So you're telling me that the detailed description I gave them was for nothing? How about that time all my planets rejoiced at the completion of my first ring world. All gone? Just to play on as all these weird looking aliens I have no connection to?
To be fair I'm planning to play fanatic spiritualist xenophobes, so there'll only be a handful of slaves left after my founding species gets deleted. That is an end game for me and I'm sure a lot of people.
There's a reason the trope is called a Literal Genie. The most common users are wish granters, genies, spirits, gods and other such beings that give you things that you've asked but not the stuff you want. In other words, beings you could expect to live in the Shroud.
All that time you spent describing you species and playing the game was definitely for something. ...Until You decided that the best option was to take the devil's offer about massive power and expect nothing bad to happen. Player Punches may be rare in strategy games, but that doesn't make them unwelcome. That said, I wouldn't expect it to be a total game over, just a practical one. If you manage to go full CRREEEEEEEED, maybe you could still pull off a victory.
A game doesn't need to be fun, it needs to be compelling. It might not be fun, but considering how the game very clearly points out just how bad an idea the deal with the End of the Cycle is, I don't think it's out of place.
I'm surprised that they didn't make it so that unity would be tied to ethos (as well as buildings).
For example, pacifists gain unity at peace and through settlement but lose it at war.
Militarists gain unity at war and conquest but lose it at peace.
Spiritualists gain unity through building temples or spreading ethos.
Materials get unity from buildings or from science research.
Xenophobes from having pure empires or enslaving xenos
Xenophiles from having ethnically diverse empires or abolishing slavery in other empires.
Egalitarians froms outlawing slavery purging etc in other empires and from everyone having high consumer goods
Authoritarians from having slave pops and strictly stratified societies with differing consumer goods.
It wouldn't be suitable if you had angry dissenting factions, though. If you're pacifists dealing with a large and angry warmonger faction, 'more peace' wouldn't exactly help bring the empire together.
Guys now Purge the Xenos is exclusive for Xenophobe, authoritarian can only displace them, and you are the only one that can proced them. So currenly is quite a good reason for going Xenophobe, get asthonishing grow for your original specie throw processing the other empires in the galaxie.
Really? Interesting. Does this mean the other Purge options/policies are unavailable to other Traits or is it just this one?
I second something more than Doomstack fighting. Doomstack fighting is already in the game plenty. Give us something far more interesting. Yes, a text box with lots of flavor text is far more interesting (then again, my opinion)
Will have to remember that strategy of multi species empires just in case now. Players seem to want to avoid anything that punishes them even if they were given explicit warning not to do something and still go ahead and do it. Just because you're willing to trade (this kind of trade should be more consequential than minerals, influence, or EC) for a huge bonus doesn't mean it should be all well and good for you.
Immortal POPS is just one interpretation. Personally, I'd hinge on the end of Psionic Ascension being your POPS ascend to another plane (similiar to GalCiv2 Ascension ending; though I'll take more interesting options too). This plane could even perhaps be The Shroud itself as we've seen it's clearly inhabited by some form of beings that can be communicated with by your species. We also don't know how the Immortal Leader trait will work. For all we know it could be another random trait chance (albeit, a high chance since going down Psi Ascenion).
Going back just a little to wondering why anyone would want to pass up the potentially immortalising ascension paths: it looks like each path takes up two perks, as does going full megastructure. That means that if you're willing to pass all of these up you get to carry on playing a "vanilla" game, but with potentially eight whacking great one-off bonuses (like the big damage bonus against Fallen Empires show in the dev diary). These may well not be as game changing or exciting as the Shroud, robotic bodies or whatever super-evolved shapeshifting body horror the genetic path gives you, but it does mean (since Wiz said there are more than twenty perks and still adding more) that there's going to be a ton of options AND, if some or lots of them are ethos-specific, these options will add the focus of your government and ethos rather than being in spite of it.
So we sort of get a lot of option 1 with a little bit of option 2, a great deal of which we won't even experience until after a few whole games in which we first want to do all the ringworld-building and psychic ascending that we're drooling about at the moment. So I'm not really making any point except that this is freaking awesome.
Oh, and considering all the random events you get just by invasive observation or infiltration, can you imagine all the horrible business that's going to go down over the many-year process of uploading, Shroud-bothering and Enlarging Your DNA With This One Weird Tip?
I'm very curious to see the final listing and effect of these twenty odd perks as I can see lots of fun things more than immortal leaders. Definitely like restricting the amount a player can get in one go around. Interested to see the other Ethos tie ins and if they are just as intersting and unique.
