Announcing "Stars Beyond Reach," a new 4x coming in April/May 2015.

[Tridus]

Exodus of the Machine: http://99designs.com/logo-design/contests/pro-indie-game-logo-exodus-machine-206605

Now I'm sad about Exodus of the machine again.

[wwwhhattt]

And now it's on RPS 

With this in the first comment: "I think Arcen’s games are a cry for help from people who can’t stop making games they find interesting."

[Draco18s]

And now it's on RPS 

With this in the first comment: "I think Arcen’s games are a cry for help from people who can’t stop making games they find interesting."

With the reply, "I encourage everyone to further finance their self-torture."

[x4000]

 

[Cyborg]

It may be worth looking at how paradox does diplomacy. Not that you should copy them, but just to learn from what works and what doesn't. For them, they have a set list of conditions that must be met for different diplomacy events to occur, such as vassalization, and multiple victory/failure conditions and rewards/penalties depending on what happens during the game. For example, if you are in the middle of a war, your actions contribute towards a war score that you can use to achieve different victory or failure conditions. This way, there is a lot of freedom with the ways in which you can affect the warscore without it being exact prescription. This is similar to the last Federation in some respects.


I do like the idea of creating very small building blocks for cause-and-effect purposes. It might also be worthwhile to have observable or hidden motivations (for the AI, hidden from the player) which creates a game within the game of trying to identify your friends and foes.

[Mánagarmr]

My biggest issue with diplomacy in 4X games is that AI will never, ever EVER give up. Even if you own the entire universe and all they have is a rotten moon, they will fight you to the death rather than accept annexation, surrender or subjugation.


That makes for very binary play. I'd rather see races willing to surrender, for now, to survive in the short term and perhaps build power later to break free and fight for independence. Preferrably when the player is busy with another enemy elsewhere.

[Tridus]

My biggest issue with diplomacy in 4X games is that AI will never, ever EVER give up. Even if you own the entire universe and all they have is a rotten moon, they will fight you to the death rather than accept annexation, surrender or subjugation.


That makes for very binary play. I'd rather see races willing to surrender, for now, to survive in the short term and perhaps build power later to break free and fight for independence. Preferrably when the player is busy with another enemy elsewhere.

The vassal states in Civ 4 were really good at helping to make that less common.

[Draco18s]

Like i said earlier: often those options exist, but the AI will never use them. So if Arcen can pull off the diplomacy,  the rest of the game will be almost irrelevant.

[x4000]

@Cyborg: Makes a lot of sense, thanks for those notes!  And yep, those are some very good things that I like about the paradox titles that I've played (dabbled in, really).

@Mánagarmr and Tridus and Draco18s: Yep, it is frustrating that the AI never really voluntarily uses those actions.  I felt like the vassal states in Civ 5 were just kind of a band-aid, although they were super clever.  Basically it was "you've already beaten me into submission, so do you want to eradicate me or keep me?"  There's value in that in the middle game, but it doesn't solve the "last moon" scenario.  So really it wasn't so much a band-aid, I take that back.  But it was more of an early-game and somewhat-middle-game mechanic, and a late-game complementary mechanic was missing.

I don't know about the rest of the game becoming irrelevant if we pull off diplomacy, but we'll see.  That stacks AWFULLY high hopes on a type of system that I've never seen done to my satisfaction.  I'm not sure I'm keen to stake the entire game on something like that.   However, it is an important issue to me, and I think that something can be worked out there that will hopefully be pleasing.

[Draco18s]

I don't know about the rest of the game becoming irrelevant if we pull off diplomacy, but we'll see.

I meant for me.

For me, a good 4X would be a 4X that makes the diplomacy interesting and viable.  As much as I enjoy the ship design (e.g. Space Empires) I've never been fond of the empire day-to-day management (AI War fits right into the right slot in that regard: I've got resources, production, and expenditure, but don't have to get super fiddly with how X the Y is because of Z,* though a few other games have done well too, like Age of Wonders).  But you've already nixed the part I've really hated: dealing with stacks and stacks of unit stacks worth of combat and having to auto-resolve or manual-command two dozen fights a turn.

Early game I'd participate and manually command each fight, because I was smarter than the auto resolve (most of the time: Age of Wonders I would still auto-resolve ranged units because it was impossible to figure out if moving the unit this way or that way would improve their trajectory with no 'shit that was the worse idea, undo undo!' button) but as the game progressed I'd use more and more auto-resolve just to get them done and over with and rely on tech and numbers superiority.

*TLF is just the other side of the line for me.  TLF had a lot of civilization attributes with no obvious way to affect most of them with mechanics going on that you have no control over that have a greater impact.  I'm sure this has changed since release, but I feel that it was still a lot of abstract numbers, most of them hidden, buried, or poorly explained with only two levers available to the player: neither of which seems to have any impact.

[x4000]

Makes sense!

[topper]

It may be worth looking at how paradox does diplomacy. Not that you should copy them, but just to learn from what works and what doesn't. For them, they have a set list of conditions that must be met for different diplomacy events to occur, such as vassalization, and multiple victory/failure conditions and rewards/penalties depending on what happens during the game. For example, if you are in the middle of a war, your actions contribute towards a war score that you can use to achieve different victory or failure conditions. This way, there is a lot of freedom with the ways in which you can affect the warscore without it being exact prescription. This is similar to the last Federation in some respects.

I was reading through this thread and had come to the same conclusion just before I read your comment.

The way relationships work in TLF is already pretty similar to how they work in EU4 (though I think the display of modifiers is a little better in EU4), but where it really shines is in the diplomacy of resolving wars. The granularity allowed is pretty awesome, and the peace terms you choose also affect how other countries view you. Extending the EU4 peace negotiations to general diplomacy (where both/all sides  can give and take) would be awesome! Having a virtual currency (like warscore or diplomacy points in EU4 or some of the various racial currencies in TLF) as  opposed to cash (like in Distant Worlds) would probably be preferable.


Edit: now for my own questions
Are there likely to be any local/neutral buildings not related to a specific race like barbarians/huts or city states in Civ5?

[x4000]

It may be worth looking at how paradox does diplomacy. Not that you should copy them, but just to learn from what works and what doesn't. For them, they have a set list of conditions that must be met for different diplomacy events to occur, such as vassalization, and multiple victory/failure conditions and rewards/penalties depending on what happens during the game. For example, if you are in the middle of a war, your actions contribute towards a war score that you can use to achieve different victory or failure conditions. This way, there is a lot of freedom with the ways in which you can affect the warscore without it being exact prescription. This is similar to the last Federation in some respects.

I was reading through this thread and had come to the same conclusion just before I read your comment.

The way relationships work in TLF is already pretty similar to how they work in EU4 (though I think the display of modifiers is a little better in EU4), but where it really shines is in the diplomacy of resolving wars. The granularity allowed is pretty awesome, and the peace terms you choose also affect how other countries view you. Extending the EU4 peace negotiations to general diplomacy (where both/all sides  can give and take) would be awesome! Having a virtual currency (like warscore or diplomacy points in EU4 or some of the various racial currencies in TLF) as  opposed to cash (like in Distant Worlds) would probably be preferable.

Excellent extra information, thanks -- I will be sure and play that some and get a feel for it, I appreciate the tips.

Edit: now for my own questions
Are there likely to be any local/neutral buildings not related to a specific race like barbarians/huts or city states in Civ5?

It's not something I had thought about much, for whatever reason, but on reflection the answer is "of course."  Thanks for reminding me, though, or else the answer might have been "oops, no."   Probably I would have remembered at some point, but my focus has been elsewhere thus far.

[x4000]

It may be worth looking at how paradox does diplomacy. Not that you should copy them, but just to learn from what works and what doesn't. For them, they have a set list of conditions that must be met for different diplomacy events to occur, such as vassalization, and multiple victory/failure conditions and rewards/penalties depending on what happens during the game. For example, if you are in the middle of a war, your actions contribute towards a war score that you can use to achieve different victory or failure conditions. This way, there is a lot of freedom with the ways in which you can affect the warscore without it being exact prescription. This is similar to the last Federation in some respects.

I was reading through this thread and had come to the same conclusion just before I read your comment.

The way relationships work in TLF is already pretty similar to how they work in EU4 (though I think the display of modifiers is a little better in EU4), but where it really shines is in the diplomacy of resolving wars. The granularity allowed is pretty awesome, and the peace terms you choose also affect how other countries view you. Extending the EU4 peace negotiations to general diplomacy (where both/all sides  can give and take) would be awesome! Having a virtual currency (like warscore or diplomacy points in EU4 or some of the various racial currencies in TLF) as  opposed to cash (like in Distant Worlds) would probably be preferable.

Excellent extra information, thanks -- I will be sure and play that some and get a feel for it, I appreciate the tips.

Actually, are there any LPs about this, or video tutorials at all?  I have EU4, but it's a bloody beast to get into.

[topper]

Actually, are there any LPs about this, or video tutorials at all?  I have EU4, but it's a bloody beast to get into.

I actually learned mainly by trial and error and partially by the game wiki after running through the basic tutorial (which just describes the buttons).

For some reason, the game suggests starting as a big country (France, etc). But I started my first game as Brandenburg at the default start date and I think it is a nice introduction to the game since your options are constrained at the start.

Pay attention to the notifications at the top of the screen (I never dismiss them since they remind you of outstanding conditions). If you choose the mission to take Neumark then you can get into a war almost immediately to get a feel for it.

I can take a look later if I find any decent Lets Plays showing off the features I was describing.