Utopia - First Glance - Early Game *EXTREMELY* Simplified

[Larknok1]

This is just my first impression take on Utopia's early game after playing through the early game and early-mid game for about 6 hours today. Feel free to leave your own comments and respond as you see fit.

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Well, there's no easy way to say this: it was kind of boring. A lot more boring than 1.4, to be sure. Especially the first four or five hours -- on day 1 play. That surprised me.

Let's just talk about these things one at a time.

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Civics:

The new civics system is great. Right out the gate, it feels cool, unique to your empire -- I love it. It just better fleshes out what you are. My only gripes are a lack of diversity of good, interesting civics at the moment (I'd like to see at least double what's currently available.)

---

Citizen Rights:

Absolutely great. Absolutely no complaints. A massive improvement over 1.4.

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The New Ethics System (Factions included):

This part of Utopia, I must admit, is really under-developed (or seems under-developed) at the moment. In 1.4, one of the greatest hurdles of empire success is found in managing to stabilize an inherently unstable system -- your empire's ethics are diverging (with serious downsides), you can track its progress, you can try to fight back.

Perhaps I'll change my mind on this with more play -- but from what I experienced, Utopia felt more like there simply weren't any ethics at all. Militarist pop in a pacifist empire? Whatever. Doesn't affect happiness at all until joining a faction. When I clicked on a pop to see its ethics, I didn't feel like I really got a sense of its preferences. Instead, I feel like I got, at best, a "predictor" as to what faction they were going to join, which really made no sense at all.

Let's talk about factions now:

Again, maybe I'll change my mind about this, but I really don't like them at the moment. The ones you get are random, and so the game either randomly rewards or punishes you when factions pop up -- because pops seem to just move interchangeably (and ineffectually) between factions regardless of what "government ethics allignment" says. On the randomized merits of what your first leader might have as traits, your government ethics might be forced.

As far as I have seen, the factions aren't very effectual either. All three of the factions I played with are relatively happy (45-60), and nothing really seems to come of it. My ability to please them depends on how I deviate from the way I want to play -- but I don't want to do that.

The net effect (so far) is that it feels like Pop Ethics was completely stripped from the game. And another thing:

The ethics wheel now feels completely flat with a stripped out pop ethics, and the ethos-specific buildings all but removed completely.

---

Global Food:

I thought this was going to be great. I am shocked by how boring and unfun it is.

Any pleasure you once had in rapidly growing a single planet from 0 to full (glorious completion) is now completely absent. Any choice you had to make in the early game between "grow homeworld rapidly" or "expand rapidly" is now made for you: expand rapidly.

Even if you dedicate your first three new pops to all food, this will only increase the growth rate of new pops in your homeworld (assuming its your only planet) by a tiny, tiny margin.

There is absolutely no reason not to, instead, simply expand as fast as possible -- it's the only way to grow a large population, after all.

The net result of this change feels like it is now impossible to get any one planet to grow quickly. Rather, it feels like the growth rate of every planet is fixed, forever -- completely removing the player from the paradigm.

Because of Global Food, playing tall is less doable than in Utopia. Growing past 9 or 10 pops becomes an impossible task: it's exponentially easier to just pump out a couple new colonists and slap them down on brand new planets. This ends up -- as far as I see it -- the only viable early game strategy at all.

---

Traditions and Ascension Perks:

There is an interesting variety of traditions and ascensions, but the true problem just lies in balance. Anything besides Expansion / Discovery at the very start of the game is a mistake. Diplomacy and Domination seem to fit only one playstyle.

Harmony / Supremacy / Prosperity have their good parts, but half of the traditions in all three seem very unappealing.

---

Summary: Once you've settled in at the start of a new game: ignore ethics, expand quickly (because you have to due to global food), pick Expansion (because you have to) -- the game seems to play itself. That's really, really not a good thing. It plays streamlined as hell, and really lacking in strategic, meaningful gameplay decisions.

Once again, I'm open to reinterpretation on all of this. Geez, I hope I'm wrong.

 

[Velorian]

Global Food:

I thought this was going to be great. I am shocked by how boring and unfun it is.

Any pleasure you once had in rapidly growing a single planet from 0 to full (glorious completion) is now completely absent. Any choice you had to make in the early game between "grow homeworld rapidly" or "expand rapidly" is now made for you: expand rapidly.

Even if you dedicate your first three new pops to all food, this will only increase the growth rate of new pops in your homeworld (assuming its your only planet) by a tiny, tiny margin.

There is absolutely no reason not to, instead, simply expand as fast as possible -- it's the only way to grow a large population, after all.

The net result of this change feels like it is now impossible to get any one planet to grow quickly. Rather, it feels like the growth rate of every planet is fixed, forever -- completely removing the player from the paradigm.

Because of Global Food, playing tall is less doable than in Utopia. Growing past 9 or 10 pops becomes an impossible task: it's exponentially easier to just pump out a couple new colonists and slap them down on brand new planets. This ends up -- as far as I see it -- the only viable early game strategy at all.

Well migration still might make a good planet move ahead and it never made much sense to me for a planet to grow too much faster than normal just because they had more food.

I think the game would benefit greatly by having colony ships actually MOVE the pop from the host planet to the colony instead of cloning them. I've been using a mod that does that and it's been working great.

 

[heliostellar]

I did not find factions to be random. They actually lined up nicely with my empire ethics and my species traits. I am running a Democratic, Fanatical Materialist, Egalitarian government and a species with the Thrifty trait. My civics are Mechanist, efficient bureaucracy, and Technocracy.

My factions are: Democratic, Higher Education, and Economic. I don't think those are the exact names, but they seem entirely appropriate for my empire.

 

[Surimi]

There is absolutely no reason not to, instead, simply expand as fast as possible.

Well, other than that you'll jack up tradition cost hugely in exchange for a bunch of useless pops working a planet with no infrastructure.

Frontier outposts are still king, in my opinion.

 

[Kruos]

Traditions and Ascension Perks:

There is an interesting variety of traditions and ascensions, but the true problem just lies in balance. Anything besides Expansion / Discovery at the very start of the game is a mistake. Diplomacy and Domination seem to fit only one playstyle.

Harmony / Supremacy / Prosperity have their good parts, but half of the traditions in all three seem very unappealing.

Absolutely right! This system is a copy-past from the Civ5 policies system, with the same flaws and ugly mechanism. It's a huge disapointment for me. It marks a big direction change in term of game design, and looks very ugly compared to the rest of the game (which follow more or less a 'simulation' path like all the Grand Strategy games of Paradox).

Another aspect where this gamey approach is particularly obvious is the food management : as you hightlighted in your OP now it is very simplified, and the only strategy is to expand, the faster the better, like in all classical 4x. It's a dumb down change.

Utopia change the direction of the game, it is now more a 'gamey' game but less a 'simulation' game. It is certainly better suited for multiplayer and I am pretty sure that all the competition addicts will like it, but the old Paradox fans from the first hour will cry a little for sure.

 

[mackau]

Fast expansion means planets. Planets mean borders. Borders mean more planets, and resources.

Unless you're next to a fanatical purifier or something super aggressive just don't do anything stupid, and expand and expand and expand.

 

[Gehennas]

The net result of this change feels like it is now impossible to get any one planet to grow quickly.

Yes. But that's why migration becomes extremely important. If you have migration allowed, you can quickly populate a new planet using "Land of opportunity".

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Perhaps I'll change my mind on this with more play -- but from what I experienced, Utopia felt more like there simply weren't any ethics at all.
[...]
Again, maybe I'll change my mind about this, but I really don't like them at the moment. The ones you get are random, and so the game either randomly rewards or punishes you when factions pop up -- because pops seem to just move interchangeably (and ineffectually) between factions regardless of what "government ethics allignment" says. On the randomized merits of what your first leader might have as traits, your government ethics might be forced. [...]

There are two major changes here with Utopia:
(1) The impact of ethics has been moved from pop level to country level. This means instead of micromanaging randomly unhappy pops, you now manage their factions on a higher scope.
(2) The ethic attraction system is actually a lot more complex than before, including several new factors tied to the game state, like being at war (or winning / losing one), diplomatic relations with other empires, traits, traditions (etc). The UI isn't exactly great at communicating all of thee factors, but in short, this works a lot like the Victoria 2 issue and ideology system (which is great news for modders, since that gives you a metric TON of options for adjusting it).

There is also the interesting twist that ethics and factions are quite controllable if you are a uniform empire, but they will become significantly harder to manage as you grow in size. Be it simple distance from your capital or the integration of Xenos (via diplomacy or conquest), the monolithic blocks start to disintigrate when internal unity erodes. As soon as other factions start popping up, your political landscape will be changed forever.

A fantastic example for that is actually a MP test game I played a while back, where my pacifist/xenophile empire ended up under constant attack by two hostile neighbors, which in return created signficant internal tensions because my population started to radicalize into pacifist-militarist and xenophile-xenophobe camps.

[...] Because of Global Food, playing tall is less doable than in Utopia. Growing past 9 or 10 pops becomes an impossible task: it's exponentially easier to just pump out a couple new colonists and slap them down on brand new planets. This ends up -- as far as I see it -- the only viable early game strategy at all.[...]

The opposite is actually true:
Developing your colonies instead of just spamming them all over the place is more important. Excess food is divided between all growing pops, so limiting your number of colonies means that they will grows somewhat faster. The total population growth ratio might be lower, but the trick is that the demand for consumer makes developing a colony much more rewarding.

A REXing empire can easily end up in a situation where it has a lot of pops, but they are so unproductive that half or more of the total M income is spent on consumer goods (which, btw, increases in M cost as you own more planets!). On the flip side, a tall empire will have way higher efficiency, which opens a window of opportunity to either attack a REXing opponent or to transition into a unity and/or tech-focused mid game strategy that allows them to stay competetive as the REXing empire is developing its own planets.

Once you learn how to leverage the Voidborn and Master Builder ascension perks, you will notice that a tall empire is actually a perfectly viable option in Utopia.

[...]There is an interesting variety of traditions and ascensions, but the true problem just lies in balance. Anything besides Expansion / Discovery at the very start of the game is a mistake. Diplomacy and Domination seem to fit only one playstyle.[...]

There are actually no real first order tradition strategies. Expansion is rarely a bad choice, but much of your opening strategy will depend on your surroundings. If you got a lot of orbital M or E deposits, going down Prosperity can be much stronger than Expansion. If you have a lot of Science deposits, Discovery becomes a very powerful tempo tool. If you end up with a bunch of friendly neighbors, Diplomacy can turn into a fantastic unity engine AND create massive federations that would be impossible at the later stage of the game.

 

[thekaje]

I have nothing deep to contribute but I will say that the factions I'm getting are incredibly perfect for my empire. That doesn't mean they're all easy to please, but they all make perfect sense and show up in a perfectly reasonable context. My race is basically about conquest, enslavement, and making a solid buck, and it's been very cool how many different factions with slightly different interests have popped up, all relevant to those core themes (and at very appropriate timings!).

 

[mathers]

Absolutely right! This system is a copy-past from the Civ5 policies system, with the same flaws and ugly mechanism. It's a huge disapointment for me. It marks a big direction change in term of game design, and looks very ugly compared to the rest of the game (which follow more or less a 'simulation' path like all the Grand Strategy games of Paradox).

Another aspect where this gamey approach is particularly obvious is the food management : as you hightlighted in your OP now it is very simplified, and the only strategy is to expand, the faster the better, like in all classical 4x. It's a dumb down change.

Utopia change the direction of the game, it is now more a 'gamey' game but less a 'simulation' game. It is certainly better suited for multiplayer and I am pretty sure that all the competition addicts will like it, but the old Paradox fans from the first hour will cry a little for sure.

I am an old fan. Hoi 1 is my fav paradox game ever and I think traditions added to the game. And it is not that far from euiv's national ideas either.

 

[Arizal]

So, I think OP is dramatizing. I am willing to admit that the effect of global food on growth is not that clear, but I am only at the beginning of three games, so maybe having more pops more quickly can give me an edge.

About ethics, as I understand it, you get factions corresponding to your population' ethics. There never was any problem with ethics in the early game prior to Bank , nor are there now. Actually, I was surprised that my first faction appeared so fast. As the game advance, there will be other, angrier, factions. I think it is good to have factions appear gradually because it overwhelms less new players. I understand even a "small" empire should have a vivid politic system, but I'm okay with it since it is supposed to last only a few years. Interpret it like the "post-FTL awe" : everyone likes what you do.

Traditions : I actually hesitated between expansion and prosperity and I find the new system intriguing. As someone else said, expansion has an edge, but only if you have the ressources to go with it. If you are dirt poor, prosperity seems better in my eyes. And as @mathers said, traditions feel for me like a mix of Civ5 policies (not that I played much of that game) and EUIV ideas. You get a basic choice in the beginning since you have two branches to go in, but you still have to complete all in order to have the finisher, just like in EUIV ideas.

So, I doesn't feel like complaining right now, but I will play more and see.

 

[Aquilegia]

There are two major changes here with Utopia:
(1) The impact of ethics has been moved from pop level to country level. This means instead of micromanaging randomly unhappy pops, you now manage their factions on a higher scope.
(2) The ethic attraction system is actually a lot more complex than before, including several new factors tied to the game state, like being at war (or winning / losing one), diplomatic relations with other empires, traits, traditions (etc). The UI isn't exactly great at communicating all of thee factors, but in short, this works a lot like the Victoria 2 issue and ideology system (which is great news for modders, since that gives you a metric TON of options for adjusting it).

There is also the interesting twist that ethics and factions are quite controllable if you are a uniform empire, but they will become significantly harder to manage as you grow in size. Be it simple distance from your capital or the integration of Xenos (via diplomacy or conquest), the monolithic blocks start to disintigrate when internal unity erodes. As soon as other factions start popping up, your political landscape will be changed forever.

A fantastic example for that is actually a MP test game I played a while back, where my pacifist/xenophile empire ended up under constant attack by two hostile neighbors, which in return created signficant internal tensions because my population started to radicalize into pacifist-militarist and xenophile-xenophobe camps.

The opposite is actually true:
Developing your colonies instead of just spamming them all over the place is more important. Excess food is divided between all growing pops, so limiting your number of colonies means that they will grows somewhat faster. The total population growth ratio might be lower, but the trick is that the demand for consumer makes developing a colony much more rewarding.

A REXing empire can easily end up in a situation where it has a lot of pops, but they are so unproductive that half or more of the total M income is spent on consumer goods (which, btw, increases in M cost as you own more planets!). On the flip side, a tall empire will have way higher efficiency, which opens a window of opportunity to either attack a REXing opponent or to transition into a unity and/or tech-focused mid game strategy that allows them to stay competetive as the REXing empire is developing its own planets.

Once you learn how to leverage the Voidborn and Master Builder ascension perks, you will notice that a tall empire is actually a perfectly viable option in Utopia.


There are actually no real first order tradition strategies. Expansion is rarely a bad choice, but much of your opening strategy will depend on your surroundings. If you got a lot of orbital M or E deposits, going down Prosperity can be much stronger than Expansion. If you have a lot of Science deposits, Discovery becomes a very powerful tempo tool. If you end up with a bunch of friendly neighbors, Diplomacy can turn into a fantastic unity engine AND create massive federations that would be impossible at the later stage of the game.

It would be helpful to know how much of an ethic attraction comes from established factions, and how much from other factors. I somehow ended up with a high materialist attraction as a xenophobe/pacifist/spiritualist, with only a visible modifier from being natural physicists.

Also seeing how much ethic divergence happens on a certain planet would be useful.

For food, you're partially wrong: http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum...mal-stockpile-early-on.1010054/#post-22633742

'Growth' does not depend on amount of currently growing pops. Only on food surplus/total pops in the empire. This results that for maximum net growth, you want more planets. (Even if you didn't take into account the higher growth cost for more populated planets). However there indeed severe costs for this strategy. Production (+fleet strength)/Unity/Science will suffer harshly. In one playthrough I have got a good unity gain, but I desperately need allies for fleet strength and science income is zero until I start switching my economy.

How does the Diplomacy path work? Why can't you take it later and make a federation as big as when you do it early?

 

[ashbery76]

Fiddling around with food at this scale never really fits or is very interesting so I don't miss it.I do think factions needed better feedback about how the system works.

 

[Kayden_II]

I think traditions added to the game.

And it is not that far from euiv's national ideas either.

The actual Thing with Traditions is, that You don't have to make any strategical Decisions since You can unlock All of Them ...
The only Exception is the One, in which Sequence You do It.

 

[mathers]

The actual Thing with Traditions is, that You don't have to make any strategical Decisions since You can unlock All of Them ...
The only Exception is the One, in which Sequence You do It.

Can you produce enough unity?

 

[GAGA Extrem]

[...]How does the Diplomacy path work? Why can't you take it later and make a federation as big as when you do it early?

Relations between empires tend to polarize as the game goes on (mostly due to growing border friction). So if you can bring people together early, you can forge alliances that would be impossible at later stages when the border friction has increased to a level where friendly relations between some members would have become impossible.

 

[monsterfurby]

It seems to me that global food is just the groundwork for a future expansion to logistics. The way "space pirates" work right now is very stop-gap - I can see their function and the need to actually move food between planets rather than drawing from a global pool of perfect supply being something that might be built upon.

My guess is that they might include a trade efficiency modifier that determines how much food from the central supply actually reaches planets, possibly dependent on distance, buildings and safety of the route between the homeworld and the world in question.

Under this assumption, I'm personally fine with the global food supply system for now, but in general, I do agree with your assessment that it is still somewhat flawed.

 

[Kayden_II]

Can you produce enough unity?

That's not the Point - You haven't really a "Tradition", Which defines your Empire since You will unlock All of Them in the Future ...
That's Streamlining a Game like the Difference in Diablo-II and D-III in Regards of their Character-Skills.

 

[Ezumiyr]

In 1.4, one of the greatest hurdles of empire success is found in managing to stabilize an inherently unstable system

I'm sorry to be that guy, but if you really had problem with stability in 1.4 you were just bad at the game - even worse than the AI, in fact.

Perhaps I'll change my mind on this with more play -- but from what I experienced, Utopia felt more like there simply weren't any ethics at all. Militarist pop in a pacifist empire? Whatever. Doesn't affect happiness at all until joining a faction. When I clicked on a pop to see its ethics, I didn't feel like I really got a sense of its preferences. Instead, I feel like I got, at best, a "predictor" as to what faction they were going to join, which really made no sense at all.

There is. It's called attraction.
Depending on how you play and which kind of empires you play, factions can have very different roles in your empire. I've got a friend who played fanatical spiritualists + authoritarians with no conquests, and for him factions were either free influence boosts or slaver sympathizers until very late in game. He developped his worlds instead of conquering them.
I played an empire that was spiritualist/egalitarian at the beginning, but I kept illuminating and conquering alien populations, so I got 8+ factions very fast + unrest in some of my worlds. As a consequence, I had to manage my factions (so I could get influence and avoid unhappiness) and even to switch ethics. Currently this empire is fanatically xenophile and egalitarian and I'm having a fun and dynamic game.

I feel like you simply don't fully understand the game. You need either to play more, or to watch/read tutorials before posting rants like this one.

 

[harpyeagle]

There are two major changes here with Utopia:
(1) The impact of ethics has been moved from pop level to country level. This means instead of micromanaging randomly unhappy pops, you now manage their factions on a higher scope.
(2) The ethic attraction system is actually a lot more complex than before, including several new factors tied to the game state, like being at war (or winning / losing one), diplomatic relations with other empires, traits, traditions (etc). The UI isn't exactly great at communicating all of thee factors, but in short, this works a lot like the Victoria 2 issue and ideology system (which is great news for modders, since that gives you a metric TON of options for adjusting it).

There is also the interesting twist that ethics and factions are quite controllable if you are a uniform empire, but they will become significantly harder to manage as you grow in size. Be it simple distance from your capital or the integration of Xenos (via diplomacy or conquest), the monolithic blocks start to disintigrate when internal unity erodes. As soon as other factions start popping up, your political landscape will be changed forever.

A fantastic example for that is actually a MP test game I played a while back, where my pacifist/xenophile empire ended up under constant attack by two hostile neighbors, which in return created signficant internal tensions because my population started to radicalize into pacifist-militarist and xenophile-xenophobe camps.


The opposite is actually true:
Developing your colonies instead of just spamming them all over the place is more important. Excess food is divided between all growing pops, so limiting your number of colonies means that they will grows somewhat faster. The total population growth ratio might be lower, but the trick is that the demand for consumer makes developing a colony much more rewarding.

A REXing empire can easily end up in a situation where it has a lot of pops, but they are so unproductive that half or more of the total M income is spent on consumer goods (which, btw, increases in M cost as you own more planets!). On the flip side, a tall empire will have way higher efficiency, which opens a window of opportunity to either attack a REXing opponent or to transition into a unity and/or tech-focused mid game strategy that allows them to stay competetive as the REXing empire is developing its own planets.

Once you learn how to leverage the Voidborn and Master Builder ascension perks, you will notice that a tall empire is actually a perfectly viable option in Utopia.


There are actually no real first order tradition strategies. Expansion is rarely a bad choice, but much of your opening strategy will depend on your surroundings. If you got a lot of orbital M or E deposits, going down Prosperity can be much stronger than Expansion. If you have a lot of Science deposits, Discovery becomes a very powerful tempo tool. If you end up with a bunch of friendly neighbors, Diplomacy can turn into a fantastic unity engine AND create massive federations that would be impossible at the later stage of the game.

I almost wish this could be stickied somewhere. Especially the information about how simply having more pops may not necessarily mean more productivity (though I take it this only applies to materials since the sole mechanism is consumer goods?).