Upcoming Version - Preemptive Discussion - Abode of the Impatient

[ptarth]

As often is the case I'm doing None Of The Above.

I believe my safest comment here is: No Comment. 

I think that increasing planet rage a ton would indeed be frustrating for a variety of reasons, because it would just make it feel like you are being penalized all the time.  That's not to say that we don't need more monsters and so forth, though -- that's not at all to say that.  But it is to basically say that the Planet Rage concept as a whole is dodgy at best and something I intend to rework a lot so that monsters are more of a factor.

I really like the idea behind Planet Rage. It's just that the Planet isn't doing anything about it really yet. And Yes, I do think that the planet should "strike back" when you do things that annoy it. Although, it would be cool if you could have positive Planet Rage, and get presents instead of monsters. That would take a ton of revisioning though.

1. My goal is designing complex systems with emergent behavior, and to do that I have to set up multiple quasi-related math systems that will interact with one another in hopefully funky ways, and then make other rules to stop the "bad funky" stuff that happens from that.

2. Thus looking at a specific part of it and going "that's needlessly complex" is missing the point, because the idea is to introduce chaos, but then to prevent that chaos from spilling over into Armageddon accidentally.

3. So from that standpoint, looking at part of the math is not a very informative bit of information.  Even knowing all the math, it's extremely hard to predict emergent behavior in systems like this.  Because you aren't dealing with one formula, you're dealing with a bunch of them interacting in randomized ways with unknown inputs, etc.  It becomes like predicting the weather, or worse.

4. On the other hand, if we're talking about a single formula for linearly calculating something, obviously we're on the same page.  But disease specifically is meant to be a realistically chaotic system that acts within certain constrained bounds, and hence my comment.

So sometimes, complexity is added to try to force emergent behavior. However, the emergent behavior is already present, and the extra complexity doesn't add anything. It akin to adding a sin(x) function random to some code. Sure it adds randomness, but it is just disguising noise. It is artificial and shallow complexity. In the worse case it just means you add a random() value to your prediction model and move on. It isn't very satisfying.

Go Team Barbarian!

Yeah!

[Cinth]

Added note: why have crime based on buildings AND population?  Simple: it doesn't overly encourage either style of play.  Playing with next to no buildings is not a huge advantage over playing with next to no population.

Eventually you'll just accept I'm always right and life will be easier. Well, mostly. Or, maybe just sometimes. 

Let's go with sometimes. 

Hahaha.    You guys crack me up.

Can't be Serious Sam all of the time.

You want barbarians, I don't    Hence the tricky part in balancing it.  I don't like random encounters (outside of my jRPGs).  It's one of those things that may well need a lobby option.  To me it doesn't add value to my game.  iIt's there to make me waste time and resources on something that has zero effect on the end game.  I'd rather be building/teching and playing a minimal amount of diplo to get to where I want to be.

I personally feel like barbarians are an important part of the game in terms of it feeling like a 4X, but I also respect the option to turn off barbarians in the game setup screen.

I think you're looking at barbarians how I look at the disasters in SimCity, though: all they do is wreck something that I care about in a way that is really frustrating, so I turn them off.

But looking at them from a Civ barbarians standpoint, they serve a couple of purposes:

1. Gently test my defenses in a variety of places, and remind me to put up defenses, so that when the big enemies from other races drop by I am not caught flat-footed.

2. Add some more tension and interest to the start of the game in particular.  Arguably there are a lot of things in the game that don't contribute directly to the end-game, but they are all obstacles to overcome.  Right now it's been focused on internal ones -- crime and disease being the two big ones -- but threats from external sources are just as valid and hopefully interesting.  My goal has been for it to be interesting even without those external threats, but not for the game to exist in that sort of state for most people.

3. Like crime or adjacency bonuses, barbarians help to shape your city.  They provide yet another factor for how you'll build your city, and I think that the more factors, the more interesting and unique cities become.  So a city without those external threats is a little lonely to me in some regards.

I'm looking at it from the Civ's barbarians standpoint though.  If I have them enabled, I end up with a handful of warriors that serve absolutely no purpose in the mid-late-end game.  That's only to keep them from randomly walking over a city and razing it.  I rush religion founding techs early and push my cultural boundaries out very fast and that keeps them from spawning in your near vicinity.  Stacking towns practically on top of each other keeps the needed warrior count down.  Good diplomacy keeps the neighbors happy.  First one to reach Modern Armor usually wins (me). 

Barbarians don't add anything for me.  Keeping angry neighbors happy and off my doorstep provides a lot of tension because I don't want to build military until I hit that point.  Otherwise, I'm paying upkeep on units I'm not using (if I don't remember to stand them down).  I know how to deal with them, it's just their not really a relevant threat, ever.

Go Team Barbarian!

Yeah!

   

[nas1m]

I think that increasing planet rage a ton would indeed be frustrating for a variety of reasons, because it would just make it feel like you are being penalized all the time.  That's not to say that we don't need more monsters and so forth, though -- that's not at all to say that.  But it is to basically say that the Planet Rage concept as a whole is dodgy at best and something I intend to rework a lot so that monsters are more of a factor.

I really like the idea behind Planet Rage. It's just that the Planet isn't doing anything about it really yet. And Yes, I do think that the planet should "strike back" when you do things that annoy it.

Seconded! Would be a little disappointed if the planet as a "faction" would go away .
One of the interesting flavor aspects of the game for me...

Go Team Barbarian!

Yeah!

Hell Yeah!!

[x4000]

The planet as a faction is going nowhere, but the "planet rage as a number" is not the only way to handle that.

[ptarth]

How big was it?

Big enough to cause Chris to panic into making bad decisions about crime as a building limiter. (Hi Chris  )
I've attached the save if you want to load it and take a look. It is probably the single most uploaded Mantis save too, definitely the most uploaded city, if not the file. I kinda want to keep using it to illustrate Mantis entries, because it is reaching the point of hilarity.

Chris: Again with this save? Don't you have anything more recent?
Ptarth: Nope.

>D

[x4000]

That wasn't the main thing, the ICS Cheese thread in general was the main one.  Though yours certainly didn't help, heh.

[Cinth]

How big was it?

Big enough to cause Chris to panic into making bad decisions about crime as a building limiter. (Hi Chris  )
I've attached the save if you want to load it and take a look. It is probably the single most uploaded Mantis save too, definitely the most uploaded city, if not the file. I kinda want to keep using it to illustrate Mantis entries, because it is reaching the point of hilarity.

Chris: Again with this save? Don't you have anything more recent?
Ptarth: Nope.

>D

1245 buildings.  Sounds like a proper city to me 

[jerith]

1245 buildings.  Sounds like a proper city to me 

You mean a village or a hamlet?

 

[crazyroosterman]

I've actually had an idea regarding planet rage what if you could actually ask the planet to attack persifick races for you for a persifick amount of turns either by having positive planet appeasement(if Chris ever decides to implement that) or by just having a very low now granted I haven't really thought this idea through at all really and it could end up getting abused but I think it would incentivise players to devote resources into planet appeasement quite well really.

[Shrugging Khan]

Sooo...what's being worked on ATM? 

[Cinth]

Apparently power was....

[crazyroosterman]

I didn't think power even needed working on I guess Chris thought though so.

[Cinth]

It needed it.  All the advanced power options came at the same time on the tech tree.  You sat with solar/wind then bam, options that only lead you to use nuclear power.

[ptarth]

I didn't think power even needed working on I guess Chris thought though so.

That's what concerns me about many suggestions. People have different perspectives based on where and how much of the game they are familiar with. Too many ideas are focusing on a limited area and not taking into account the rest of the game (both earlier and later phases). I know that I discount much of the early game, because I don't dwell there long and I'm up trying to get 50k people organized. Whereas others are sticking with 2-5k people and think that that is already too many.

[crazyroosterman]

I didn't think power even needed working on I guess Chris thought though so.

That's what concerns me about many suggestions. People have different perspectives based on where and how much of the game they are familiar with. Too many ideas are focusing on a limited area and not taking into account the rest of the game (both earlier and later phases). I know that I discount much of the early game, because I don't dwell there long and I'm up trying to get 50k people organized. Whereas others are sticking with 2-5k people and think that that is already too many.

if a lot of my ideas seems half assed its because they tipicly spur of and moment and I don't really think them through before I share it with people.