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This might sound silly, but I think many of the problems with internal strife mechanics in a 4X are actually an issue of graphical and UI design Managing a meter or a spreadsheet of numbers is far less interesting than watching pretty map colors or looking at a character portrait. When a rebel army pops up and it's just a nameless dude with a generic black and red flag, it's like the game is telling you it's not very important. and worst of all, a lot of internal systems aren't even surfaced to the player until there's already a problem, so it feels akin to a JRPG random encounter instead of consequences to one of your many decisions
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May 15, 2021 03:07
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Beamed posted:This bodes good things for Old World I actually like Old World a lot. It has internal conflict that you have to manage, but the way you manage it is by playing the game aggressively. Every time you found a city (or conquer one!) that is an opportunity to appease one of the 3 factions. Every time you achieve a legacy that is an opportunity to make one of your houses happy. You are rewarded for expanding as long as you keep your internal infrastructure robust. It's a bit imbalanced in some of the higher difficulty levels (reminds me of the corruption mechanic in Civ3), but it's a very transparent and manageable system. Beamed posted:Paradox explicitly avoids putting internal strife in their games, and refused to allow sectors to have any internal politics at all in Stellaris, because one of their designers hates the idea of internal politics. So, I think you need to work on your examples a bit - I think the idea that internal strife is a crutch for broken game systems is in fact backwards, and broken game systems avoid internal strife to cover up shortcomings in abstraction. That's fair. I'm honestly not familiar with Stellaris, but Paradox with CK2 and CK3 and their magical armies that appear constantly are just an example of the fact that they don't have game systems the AI can interact with so they have to spawn enemy armies instead. Specifically this stuff: https://ck2.paradoxwikis.com/Event_troops I'd also say that an abstraction isn't a shortcoming. It's the only way to establish the scale of a game. I don't care that farmer bob got his field destroyed because there was a planetary invasion. That damage needs to be abstracted out as -X% food, I don't need to give bear asses to farmer bob because he is upset his field was destroyed.
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May 15, 2021 03:30
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:That's fair. I'm honestly not familiar with Stellaris, but Paradox with CK2 and CK3 and their magical armies that appear constantly are just an example of the fact that they don't have game systems the AI can interact with so they have to spawn enemy armies instead. Specifically this stuff: No one's talking about peasant revolts as an example of what we want. We're talking about the actual internal conflicts, like making sure that your Ambitious third son doesn't murder his elder brothers or that your Duke that quietly warred his way into being overlord of half your kingdom doesn't decide he wants the other half, too.
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May 15, 2021 04:29
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:That's fair. I'm honestly not familiar with Stellaris, but Paradox with CK2 and CK3 and their magical armies that appear constantly are just an example of the fact that they don't have game systems the AI can interact with so they have to spawn enemy armies instead. Specifically this stuff: I have not played CK3, but rebels armies certainly don't appear constantly in CK2 - for a civil war to happen a ruler's vassals must be quite unhappy with said ruler and there must be another claimant to the throne that they like enough to support. Vassal management is a key part of the game, a civil war means you're either doing it poorly or some kind of disaster has struck you, such as your ruler dying suddenly without a strong heir. Of course, since you seem to want to ignore all the "farmer bob's" (or great feudal lords) within your realm I can see why you wouldn't want to manage vassals, but that just suggests CK is not a series for you, not that it's bad.
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May 15, 2021 04:47
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:That's fair. I'm honestly not familiar with Stellaris, but Paradox with CK2 and CK3 and their magical armies that appear constantly are just an example of the fact that they don't have game systems the AI can interact with so they have to spawn enemy armies instead. Specifically this stuff: It honestly sounds like your opinion here is actually in accord with the rest of the thread? That sort of thing is kind of artificial, outside of the established game mechanics. But for example, if you had a governor in charge of a region and he brought that army to bear, that would be in line with mechanics AND an interesting consideration.
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May 15, 2021 13:35
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grate deceiver posted:I would actually want the opposite from a 4x space game - scale it down to just the solar system, but make it possible to act and build both on the surface and in space. Turn up the intrigue and character driven narrative ck2-style. You could control a corporation, nationstate or some other group, and you need to balance external threats and challengers from inside. Maybe make communication delay a gameplay element - so that the game tracks everything in 'absolute time', but knowledge of events propagates radially at lightspeed. Minus the roleplay elements this was basically Light of Altair. It was a little too shallow to really grab me but imo it's worth trying out for the ideas there, wish a more ambitious developer would take the colony building mechanics and really run with them A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 22:05 on May 15, 2021 |
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May 15, 2021 22:02
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ate poo poo on live tv posted:
You're telling us more about yourself and why you're constantly hassled by rebellions than the faulty game mechanics themselves. I'd like to be able to go on conquering sprees on Rome total war, loot all conquered territories and ignore all consequences of said looting and mass enslavement. The inevitable rebellions aren't a result of bad game design, it's a result of me not caring about every individual farmer Bob until there's enough farmer bobs to form entire armies.
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May 15, 2021 22:42
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Beamed posted:It honestly sounds like your opinion here is actually in accord with the rest of the thread? That sort of thing is kind of artificial, outside of the established game mechanics. But for example, if you had a governor in charge of a region and he brought that army to bear, that would be in line with mechanics AND an interesting consideration. This is sort of a tangent from your point, but I feel like a region magically spawning an army from nowhere when they rebel is also an important part of the immersion-breaking, and wouldn't be automatically solved by putting a face to the governor. You could probably do something with like a fraction of your army mutinying (or even keep track of which troops are from which region of your empire, so you'd better appease the governor supplying most of your army, etc etc) but it seems like it'd make this a much bigger mechanical addition.
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May 15, 2021 22:59
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Clarste posted:This is sort of a tangent from your point, but I feel like a region magically spawning an army from nowhere when they rebel is also an important part of the immersion-breaking, and wouldn't be automatically solved by putting a face to the governor. You could probably do something with like a fraction of your army mutinying (or even keep track of which troops are from which region of your empire, so you'd better appease the governor supplying most of your army, etc etc) but it seems like it'd make this a much bigger mechanical addition. I think to take this particular sub slice of the discussion further we'd need to draw on specific games and the things they did wrong vs. right and what the issues therein are. For example, Stellaris sectors having assigned fleets under a governor would have accomodated maintaining immersion here, and Imperator with levies vs. generals at least attempted making this an interesting decision.
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May 15, 2021 23:46
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Clarste posted:This is sort of a tangent from your point, but I feel like a region magically spawning an army from nowhere when they rebel is also an important part of the immersion-breaking, and wouldn't be automatically solved by putting a face to the governor. You could probably do something with like a fraction of your army mutinying (or even keep track of which troops are from which region of your empire, so you'd better appease the governor supplying most of your army, etc etc) but it seems like it'd make this a much bigger mechanical addition. That's how the kind of rebellions I'm talking about work in Crusader Kings. You piss off a powerful vassal enough (or they're just ambitious enough) and they raise their personal levies plus those of their vassals and any other nobles they can get to join them. No event-spawned troops, but it can still be a serious problem.
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May 16, 2021 00:47
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The big problem in CK's case is the governor's levy and the levy you get from your governor are completely unrelated to each other; it used to be they were one and the same, but Paradox didn't have any other solution to the Roose Bolton strategy.
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May 16, 2021 01:34
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i know hes from GOT and i dont like him but idk what that means
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May 18, 2021 12:43
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Roose Bolton deliberately got the men under his command (not his own men, the forces of other Stark vassals that he had been given command of) killed to weaken his liege. Though I think Beamed means the converse here, sending your vassal's levy on a suicide attack to get rid of them.
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May 19, 2021 01:57
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That actually sounds neat, I've never played CK2 or whatever but I own it and have been wanting something to kind of amble through
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May 19, 2021 05:01
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Simple-ish solution would be having vassals get angry if their troops take disproportionally high casualties during war. Just need to make the relationship penalty last longer than the time it takes to get those troops back.
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May 20, 2021 08:35
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 Stellar Monarch 2's space dukes have got style 
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May 20, 2021 09:06
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Banemaster posted:Simple-ish solution would be having vassals get angry if their troops take disproportionally high casualties during war. Just need to make the relationship penalty last longer than the time it takes to get those troops back. There's also the problem of it being a game and things happening instantly. It was really no fun to be a vassal fighting your own wars then suddenly have your army vanish in a poof of smoke because your liege called them up. Having the liege-callable troops be a separate pool from the vassal's own-use troops was really the best solution short of making it an entire new system where you are called to provide troops but can manually sent them along (maybe with excuses on being short handed or turning up late to avoid the big battle and the liege reacting to all this in an appropriate way).
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May 20, 2021 16:49
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Slipways is out, and is good.
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Jun 6, 2021 01:05
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From the description on the store page it sounds more like a connect the dots puzzle game than a 4X strategy game, especially the part where each game only takes about an hour to finish.
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Jun 6, 2021 10:04
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It's definitely more of a puzzle-ish take on the game, though honestly that's how most 4x building is anyway.
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Jun 6, 2021 11:25
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And you can zoom in on a planet and watch the little ships go through the slipway gates with a cool noise.
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Jun 6, 2021 14:10
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Benagain posted:And you can zoom in on a planet and watch the little ships go through the slipway gates with a cool noise. THOONK
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Jun 6, 2021 14:17
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If you enjoy the trading/connecting of Slipways but want more of a 4x game, check out Star Ruler 2 - you also level up your colonies by connecting trade networks between them, but you can also send warships to explode your rivals. There also a very interesting card-based diplomacy system which I never fully got the hang of, but it seems cool.
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Jun 6, 2021 16:11
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Darkrenown posted:If you enjoy the trading/connecting of Slipways but want more of a 4x game, check out Star Ruler 2 - you also level up your colonies by connecting trade networks between them, but you can also send warships to explode your rivals. There also a very interesting card-based diplomacy system which I never fully got the hang of, but it seems cool. It's also open source now and the devs are goons. Great game that didn't catch on, possibly because it was a little too complex. Slipways demonstrates what they were doing in SR2 in a way that's accessible.
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Jun 6, 2021 16:58
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Yeah, Star Ruler 2 was a great game and I always felt bad it never got any publicity.
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Jun 6, 2021 18:53
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i'm no good at this slipway thing but i think it's got something cool going so i'll stick with it.
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Jun 6, 2021 19:00
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uber_stoat posted:i'm no good at this slipway thing but i think it's got something cool going so i'll stick with it. I feel like I never get to do anything cool because the game just ends before I get any of the cool techs. To be fair, that is 99.999% because I am bad at the game so my science growth is slow. But I tried playing on Endless Mode and it's just very relaxing and pleasant compared to constantly being booted out of the game when you reach the timer.
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Jun 6, 2021 21:22
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Clarste posted:I feel like I never get to do anything cool because the game just ends before I get any of the cool techs. To be fair, that is 99.999% because I am bad at the game so my science growth is slow. But I tried playing on Endless Mode and it's just very relaxing and pleasant compared to constantly being booted out of the game when you reach the timer. This is mildly amusing to me, because I just played a game of Endless Space 2 on the Endless difficulty and I wouldn't call it 'relaxing'. (Still pretty easy though, the AI is *poo poo*.)
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Jun 6, 2021 21:34
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I don't have high hopes for it, but Galciv4 early access is now available on epic, and they are still doing the $10 coupon.
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Jun 11, 2021 22:14
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Darkrenown posted:I don't have high hopes for it, but Galciv4 early access is now available on epic, and they are still doing the $10 coupon. Explorminate did an early access review of it on YouTube this last week, and surprisingly it looks... not bad? The endgame seems to mostly be a wink and a prayer at this point, but that's hardly new for the genre. It at least has some interesting ideas that are only half stolen from other games.
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Jun 11, 2021 22:26
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I'd be tempted if it was on Steam.
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Jun 11, 2021 22:31
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orangelex44 posted:Explorminate did an early access review of it on YouTube this last week, and surprisingly it looks... not bad? The endgame seems to mostly be a wink and a prayer at this point, but that's hardly new for the genre. It at least has some interesting ideas that are only half stolen from other games. Oh, I'll take a look. By a weird coincidence I just did a podcast interview thing with the same guy yesterday (For Old world's meet the team).
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Jun 11, 2021 22:54
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How is Endless Space 2? I'm tempted to grab it on sale, but reviews say that the AI is apparently pretty bad, and that seems like a dealbreaker in a big huge 4x game.
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Jun 25, 2021 11:19
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It's pretty, has nice sound design and was pretty fun. The AI isn't going to do much more than crush you with numbers but it's not really worse than anything else I played. You'll enjoy it if you like medium-light difficulty and just want to play through once or twice. If you want a harder game after that, it gets kind of dull. I was happy with my 50% off purchase, it was fun for a couple weekends.
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Jun 25, 2021 13:47
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Omi no Kami posted:How is Endless Space 2? I'm tempted to grab it on sale, but reviews say that the AI is apparently pretty bad, and that seems like a dealbreaker in a big huge 4x game. The AI is bad once you figure out how to min-max the game which still takes dozens of hours. And once you do that for one faction you'd still have to spend ages learning how to play the other factions to their max potential. It's a good game and well worth it on sale. I'd skip the DLC though.
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Jun 25, 2021 13:59
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Omi no Kami posted:How is Endless Space 2? I'm tempted to grab it on sale, but reviews say that the AI is apparently pretty bad, and that seems like a dealbreaker in a big huge 4x game. Fair warning, it imposes pretty hefty penalties for building wide. It definitely wants you to build tall.
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Jun 25, 2021 15:33
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Ooh this sounds really tempting- thanks guys!
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Jun 25, 2021 22:05
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Old World is now fully released on Epic 
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Jul 1, 2021 15:16
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LLSix posted:Fair warning, it imposes pretty hefty penalties for building wide. It definitely wants you to build tall. That sounds more like space that ends.
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Jul 1, 2021 18:38
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Darkrenown posted:Old World is now fully released on Epic Looks nice, I'll grab it when it exits EA in 6 to 12 months.
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Jul 2, 2021 12:40
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