[Discussion] on Early/Mid/Late Game - Chris don't read this

[ptarth]

First off, Chris, you shouldn't read this because:


• It is going to be a lot of words
• Much of it will have no useful content
• Much of it will be critical and complaints
• So you'd end up spending a ton of time reading things that will only annoy you.

You can see we like the ideas in the game, given how much we are trying to understand/break it, but it isn't quite there yet. Part of it is us and not because of the game, but because we are trying to understand your vision. And dying of diseases make us sad. We'll try to get some consensus and mantis or start a new thread when we have removed the chaff. This way it can be productive for everyone instead of traumatic. And if it gets to rowdy, we'll just delete the thread and pretend it never happened.

I'm not seeing what is intended for the mid/late game. As it stands now, I build up to about 1800 people, disease hits and then I remain at 400 people until the end of the game. I cheesed out a transcendence win this way, but it was just me hitting end turn for 200 turns while the social progress counter went up.

I feel that the tech tree is out of order. I get buildings I can't or shouldn't use early game (factories, stock exchange, luxury food) and buildings I need early in late game (Disease Control, Garbage incinerator, body disposal).

The logic behind the building development confuses me. We start with 300 people, who immediately build a bank to finance the colony. Then after that we need a new bank every 200 additional people. Further, the banks are run by criminals of the worst sort, who only behave if we build police or riot police next to them. While I like the idea of strapping a riot policeman to every banker, I'm not sure that's how it should be. Stock Exchanges are even worse. From my rough understanding of how a new colony should work is that we should start with industry, move into commerce, and eventually develop the banking industry. It seems backwards.

So how many people do you guys think we should have, at what phase of the game, and with what science and social development levels?[/list]

[ptarth]

So, part of me thinks that at the end game I should have built Paris or New York. That's not bad for a city. Insignificant when you consider we are representing and entire country or even continent sized population.

That gives us an estimate of 2-10 million people. Let's guess that each building represents a block. Google tells me that there are 72,000 blocks in New York. Ouch. That's a big map, approximately 268 tiles x 268 tiles. That's much too big. The standard map is around 130 hexs in diameter, so ~21k hexagons. If we guess the player is supposed to own 20% of the map, we are looking at ~4.5k hexes. That's a lot. Quite a few more than I think is reasonable, so perhaps my thoughts are wrong here.

[Captain Jack]

IIRC Chris estimated that in a game on the smallest map you'd need to bump off one other race in order to have enough space for your city. Not sure what the size is, but divide the size of the smallest map by seven and you have a possible endgame city.

I think you're right about the tech tree. Off the top of my head, terraforming could stand to be earlier and stock exchanges and malls need to be unlocked much later.

I think Social Progress might need a weighting system...

[tbrass]

This is my third playthrough, and I have yet to encounter any other races (on any game).

Game 1 - ~80 turns, dead from pollution
Game 2 - ~80 turns, dead from crime
Game 3 - ~150 turns - have money, science, but... no trading partners? Am definitely missing out on mid/late game encounters.

standard & small maps only. Very strange.

[crazyroosterman]

only encounter I've had with enougher species was in my krolin game were I met the zenith when they planted an injection well near my city and then decided to continually attack for reasons I didn't and still don't understand and decided I was screwed so I figured  may as well start a new game that'll be in the update.

[tbrass]

Has anyone figured out how to develop new cities? I have a civic center, but I am told that I need a "city center" before I can place one. Any thoughts?

My games have felt awfully empty. Hopefully we will have slider settings to change the number of other races present on the planet. . .

[ptarth]

I believe making additional cities are glitched at this point.

[ptarth]

So, I have a big problem with the development sequence. It currently starts with economy (banks) and then only in middle or late game should you try to build any factories or industry. Part of that I believe comes from the removal of units. In your classic 4x games, your industry is of foremost concern, because those are your units. Your income and science come second to boost production and unit quality. Here though, we don't have units. The boosts from the Social Trees are vital (without them your units do nothing). So I can see why there was a shift to economy first, but it still rubs me wrong. As it stands now, my first move every game is to get a bank, because you need money.

So, I'm going to try to reorder the tech tree and possible rework some of the buildings to run some things by Chris. I'm not quite sure on the details. If anyone has any thoughts, either disagreement, agreement, or bafflement, I'd be interested in hearing them.

I'm started a spreadsheet to identify building functions and to reorder the tech tree in a way I like more here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10DrCCKWL-dL5bA7-_L_OFfoQGFN5x3dWpUrHf1BAfK4/edit?usp=sharing

[GarathJJ]

Honestly, I don't have any problem with the development sequence being different here to other games. You aren't building from nothing in quite the same way as, say, Civilization (where I would say that food is more important than industry in the early going anyway), so the fact that you don't do it in the same way doesn't bother me at all. I quite like it, even - another little thing that keeps the game different.

Therefore, I'd record a little bit of bafflement on your spread of thoughts.

On the other hand, I also doubt very much I would care if it was changed, so I certainly don't have a problem with you suggesting a rework to the tree given that it's bothering you. Sounds like Chris is pretty overwhelmed right now though.

JJ

[TheVampire100]

What me confuses are the different restaurant types. Cheap dinner produces more meals as middle-class eatery oder lager house. Why would I buy those later buildings when I can build the cheaper one much earlier and produces a lot more food per turn?
The only difference I've seen so far is that the cheap dinner produces some small amount of crime on it's location (which you can negate with a single police station)ad the other ones not (or at least not that much).

[ptarth]

• Restaurants differ in the amount of Social points, the differences in feeding number, crime, and required population. They aren't that different.
• The Recycling Center is a 4200 cost technology, it should be cheaper.
• The crematorium is a 4400 cost technology, it should be cheaper.
• The Waste-to-Power plant is a 8100 cost technology, it should be cheaper.

I really don't like crowns and banks as the first thing your colony does. Where is the private industry you are loaning this money coming from? What is this money? How do 200 people generate so much cash?

• Define Crowns as refined building material units. (e.g., X tons of iron, wood, steel, plastic, whatever)
• This would explain many things
• Why is it currency.
• Why other races are willing to trade in it
• Why it can be produced by buildings.
• Why it can be spent to make buildings.
• Convert the economy to industry based.
• Add an option to the factory to produce (Crowns).
• Initial economies would then be based on Factory crown productions.
• Add adjacency or multiplier bonuses for having different extracted material operations in your cities. This represents being able to create different types of Crown Units. So if you have access to rare metals, those require less mass to produce crowns. And if you are able to produce a wide range of materials, then your Crown Units benefit by being more versatile and useful.
• Add Lumber Mills. They would gain Crown Production based on the number of adjacent Jungle/Forest tiles or within a region of X.
• Convert the various extractor buildings to being your crown generation buildings.
• Fill out Farming as another economic line.
• Someone else, I don't remember who, had some great ideas.
• Create food and farmed products as trade items using the Market system or just as something other races want.
• Add another drop down menu to farms, allowing them to produce, not only food, but also other crops and livestock.
• Change the appearance of the farms based on what they are making.
• Unlock more crops with research, either directly via the technology tree or by building a Farms Bureau which researches them like the Inventory's Workshop.
• Create an allied Race to be their mentor/trading partner.
• The Market System is one of the Big neat things about SBR, so let's make it more focal.
• Increase one race to 5 or 6 linguistic standing, and get them to be your initial trading partner.
• This way the player is starting as an underdeveloped race that is boosting the development of their senior partner.
• The player can actually supply them with trading goods, making the entrance to the Market Item system more gradually and start very early.
• Then as the game goes on, the player race becomes the equal to, and eventually the senior partner in this relationship.
• In essence it takes a bit from The Last Federation, as you are becoming the leader of a loose Federation of races on the planet, working to develop their civilizations.
• The goods you sell them will help develop their own city in ways that match the goods you send them. Enhanced military goods will make them more aggressive, food items will make them expand, broadcast and knowledge will increase their development of research.
• I don't think they actually do research, but the point remains
• Then your Race could be known for its wondrous Weapons, Interesting Radio shows, or Pastoral Poetry.
• This would last until midgame, at which point you change your goal from surival to departing the planet.
• Possibly adding a cooperative victory condition, wherein you take all/some/one of the other races with you.
• Banks
• After all of this, then you'd move banks to later in the technology tree, either middle or late early game.
• You'd down shift the Stock Exchange and International banks respectively.
• Game Length
• In earlier posts Chris is saying the game will last thousands of turns.
• I'm not seeing it. I can cheese out a cultural win in under 200.
• Military wins are pretty tedious right now, although now that I'm more familiar with it, I can probably do it faster.
• The military strengths are too dependent upon multipliers. My aircraft do 94k damage. My barracks 10k. (After recent upgrades they are now 20k).
• The other races build so fast. I need to use ~10 buildings to keep just a single race trimmed down without killing them.
• But I'm not too worried about the military part, the balancing is yet to happen.
• The technology tree can be finished in under 300 probably pretty easily. I find myself unmotivated to get higher level technologies too quickly, because the benefits don't scale too well. For example, the Bank is far superior for usefulness compared to the Stock Exchange or International banks. I should really only build banks, but when I want uncontrolled riots, I build Stock Exchanges.
• Linguistics is taking too long. I have developed my Linguistic Cube. A 10x10 array of Linguistic Centers, You need upwards of 30k Linguistic points PER RACE. Each linguistic center produces 40-80 (depending on race and bonuses). It takes a long time to make any real progress on those.
• Actually, I think you should be generally incapable of communicating with another race until you have gotten to level 5 or 6 AND that you need to get this before your allowed access to the diplomatic actions. So getting a single race to 6 would be an early game goal. Getting a handful to 6 midgame, and the remainder an early late game goal.
• I can probably cheese out the industrial/technology wins around 300 turns or so. The major slowdown is that the buildings take so long to build.
• Population Size
• I'd be much happier if population was counted in thousands of people
• So my little city of 5,000 would actually be 500,000.
• Although it would make more sense to be 5 million, it would make the employment numbers rather crazy.
• It would make the size of your colony be much more reasonable.

[Captain Jack]

Even if they're counted as resources, not all the races place the same value on the same resources or even use them the same way. Still preferable to a common currency on an alien planet, but I'd honestly prefer if the currency resource was energy. Everyone needs it, everyone can use it, the problem is that the game is balanced around keeping a SMALL surplus and not turning into an energy baron. Nwabudike Morgan weeps.

Speaking of Morgan, I actually like how the game is balanced around the economy rather than industry. Feels a lot closer to Sim City than Civ. On that note, almost all of the civic health options need to come online earlier, and war/combat needs work as well.

Social progress needs nuking. Badly. Points per turn is a bad idea, especially with structures that give massive numbers of points that can be acquired early in the game. One time point gains would be better, and you lose the points if you lose the structure. You keep social progress gains, just can't get a new one until you hit the level after that.

[ptarth]

There actually aren't any victory conditions for the AIs, and they aren't trying to "win."  They're already basically in a sort of stability, mostly at least.  It's kind of like feudal Europe, anyhow, in that they each have their kingdoms which are established and they are trying to maintain what they have while also grabbing bits and pieces as they go.  They aren't Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan.

This game is really focused on YOU.  You're either going to reach that sort of stability in a variety of ways, or you're going to do something more extreme.  This game is all about you finding your place in the world, not taking it over (a few side victories notwithstanding).  For instance, just because you've diplomatically or economically dominated some other race doesn't mean that that will stay the case in 100 years, for instance.  It's like the Saxons and the Franks coming to some sort of mutual agreement/truce for an extended period of time, so that both of their holdings are seemingly secure.  But eventually that's going to be disrupted in some way, it's certain.

This game is more about building yourself up from being a powerless nobody -- relatively speaking -- to being an equal player at the very least on the world stage.  Possibly you may be what we'd consider a superpower by the time you win, but possibly not.

Odd for a strategy game, no?

Not really that odd. They "win" when you loose, easy as that. When you die you have lost. That they are not working towards the victory condition does not mean that it's unlikely to loose. We have the Thoraxian onslaught on Transendence. We have aggressive races in general.
The more basic victory conditions will be diificult because of military power or missing linguistics.
Also, this is more rleaxing for most players.
Civilization forces you to hinder the other nations on building their stuff or they will become unstoppable. In SBR yoz can take a step back and just enjoy the game for itself instead of forcing yourself everytime against the other races.

Yep, exactly.  And yeah, honestly with most RTS games that's also the case in sandbox type modes: you don't lose while you're still alive, you lose solely by dying.  The fact that you can be alive and kicking and doing well and still lose in Civ really bugs me.  I love having to struggle to win, but I don't like being on a timer with it.

A lot of times the AI has to follow from the gameplay design, in my opinion.  When you're trying to have an AI as an equal player stand-in, it's going to be next to impossible if you want it to factor things like believable emotion.  If the game has any complexity, anyway.  When you're setting up the AI using mechanics that differ from the player, then suddenly a world of possibilities opens up.  It's a big part of why I like asymmetrical games, aside from the fact that I just enjoy the asymmetry in general.

This discussion was from one of the patch threads, and rather than continue it there to distract Chris, I thought it would be more appropriate here.
This entire line of reasoning bugs me. I don't want a casual experience wherein the AI just leaves you alone to do whatever. I want the AI to be a threat, to have its own goals (even if they aren't the same as mine) and to do something about them. Otherwise a "victory" seems rather hollow, you just failed yourself to winning. It's the opposite of Dwarven Fortress, wherein you fail yourself to death, horrible, horrible, gruesome hilarious death. Perhaps I'm just a masochist?

So, rather than just hide away after an outrageous statement, what would I want? Individual goals for AI races, and encourage them to get there.
Examples

• Thoraxians want to keep everyone under control as the planet's henchmen. They go after everyone. They give the highest priority to the race with the highest population. Ideally, they want to keep everyone's population below X. And they do so via violence.
• Acutians want to exploit everyone's economy. They will be attempting to sell everyone everything and will be constantly trying to economically dominate you. How? Perhaps some sort of devil bargain. Wherein you make a deal and then successive deals start looking better and better, so you keep making them. Or perhaps they have ways of increasing what you are paying for their services in pre-existing deals, or ways of making you accept deals without any choice (frustrating probably). Eventually you are paying them most of your annual budget.
• Burlust can be aiming for the standard military victory. The Thoraxians only want to keep people from getting to large, whereas the Burlusts want to conqueor.
• Evucks want to be left alone. That's easiest when everyone is dead, diseased, or stays away from them.
• and so on

[TheVampire100]

Nice ideas but I think this is getting more difficult with the more abstarct races like the Spire, the Zenith or even the Skylaxians.
The Skylaxians are an honorable race that only fights others when they are provoked or OTHER races are provoked so they can step in and show their "Don't worry, we're the good guys" attidude. This worked well in TFL because there were no bounds, everyone could attack anyone, you couldn't put up barricades or intercept fleets.

In SBR this does not work the same for many reasons. Building ins SBR is very limited. You can only place buildings in supply range or you can build teleporters for infinite range (which Skylaxians maybe even don't have). So when two races fight each other and the Skylaxians wanted to step in, they would have to be near them otherwise they have to stare hateful at the bad guys.
So what behaviour would you give them? Their other common trait is science. But as far as I know the Ai races don't research techs. So this falls also short. Unless they get some day techs or somethign similiar.

[Captain Jack]

Normally I'd agree with you, but here's the thing: SBR is about a fledgling nation establishing itself. All of the dominance options are really about reaching an equilibrium with your environment and neighbors. That's the reason civilization extinguishing is going to be very hard in the final release; you're not fighting for control of the planet, just your place in it. You know how you'll typically only dominate one aspect of a race? You aren't taking over them, just getting leverage. Do that to twelve races (minus Thoraxians who don't count) and you can be reasonably certain of your place for the foreseeable future*. The AI civs don't need to play your game, they've already won what you're trying to win for yourself.

The exception is the alternate special victories. Making a doomsday weapon (and applying it to recalcitrant civs), killing the planet, and leaving again? Those are about upsetting the status quo.

I'll conclude by saying the races ARE going to be doing most of the things you're suggesting. Your game from just continues when they succeed.

*(Outside the scope of this argument, just pointing it out: it's not a permanent thing. Even if you economically dominate the Burlurst, maybe ten years after the game ends your economy collapses and they'd go their own way. Doesn't actually matter since your race probably won't die out as a result, just have a few bad years with angry visitors)