Early 2015: Unnamed Terrestrial 4X...

[Histidine]

In a fit of idleness, I once came up with a design document for a space 4X, based on various posts by people such as Cyborg and eRe4s3r on this forum as well as my own personal experiences. Since it's topical here, I'll quote some ideas for diplomacy I had (you might also want to consider them for the TLF expansion, BTW):


Favor credit (FC)
This is an attempt to add a nice bit of realism and gameplay to diplomacy. The basic premise: people will often act in a nominally altruistic manner, so that the beneficiary will reciprocate at a later date. Even if the generosity isn’t done with this specifically in mind, there is a social expectation of such.

When you give something to another faction for free, or offer a highly favorable trade with them, they’ll become indebted to you, which gives you a positive FC balance with them. Consequently, if you ask them for help in the future, they’ll be more inclined to give it without asking anything in return (an action which will restore the FC to neutral).

AI players who are on neutral to good terms with you will also sometimes give you free stuff, in order to accrue FC. If you then refuse to repay the favor, this will piss them off and make others trust you less. Factions will also be more likely to demand payment up front rather than offer a favor to people who have strong negative FC ratings in general. “Are you ever going to return that frigate I lent you?”

Meditating conflicts
In real life, neutral third parties or the UN are often brought in to meditate over attempts to resolve an international dispute through diplomacy.

How it might work ingame: Each of the two negotiating factions comes up with a list of what they want, and what they are (or aren’t) willing to give up for it. The meditator can then use favor credit, bribes or threats to get each participant to amend their list to something more acceptable to the other party. For extra fun, each negotiator could have a limited patience; they walk away if talks drag out for too long.

What do you want?
There should be a handy button to ask AI faction leaders if there’s a planet or tech they’d like to have in particular. This can help the player get them something they want.

No, really, what do you want?
Faction motivating factors should be variable and extend beyond galactic conquest. Some interesting real-world-like ones could be:

• Retaking old colonies that were lost to them
• Raising the people’s standard of living
• Becoming an economic leader in the galaxy
• Establishing the empire’s security against perceived outside threats
• Joining in on another faction’s looming technology/wonder victory

Limited conflict
The AI can be in a “limited conflict” state, where it seeks to capture or destroy a single objective (say one or two planets) It commits only a moderate number of forces; if the opposing faction sends more, they may try to match it or back down if they can’t/won’t. The faction will expand the conflict to a full-scale war if the enemy escalates by attacking other systems, or if a victory convinces the war hawks in the faction’s political system that they can gobble up more… or if the combatants just get sufficiently pissed off at each other. If it decides not to escalate, it will try to negotiate for peace once the immediate conflict is concluded.

Versailles Treaty
If one faction extorts punitive terms as part of a peace treaty, its defeated enemy may attempt to exact revenge once it rebuilds.

[Wingflier]

I think that given the boring and overdone nature of most traditional 4X games, where victory comes after 1 big battle, if a battle is even required for victory, there are several ideas I had (I'm sure you've thought of some) to promote that Arcen games "balance of power" concept that seems prevalent in most of your strategy-esque titles.

Being that it's a terrestrial 4X, perhaps if one person (player or AI) becomes too powerful, neutral aliens will began to swarm their empire, ala Starship Troopers style. This means that instead of succeeding through individual power, which is quite typical in a traditional 4X, the player must learn to conceal his power and work together to create an alliance with moderately strong but not overly ambitious factions. A faction which becomes too powerful could bring the entire alliance down. Having mechanics which *force* the player to work with the other races instead of making it into a leisurely or optional thing to do might make the game a lot more interesting. Perhaps the map would slowly be taken over by these "alien hives" which would eventually wipe out all races if not dealt with. This would give the player a delicate balance between attempting dominance over the opposing factions, keeping his own power in check, and creating alliances with others to make sure that the alien menace did not get out of control. Certain races could, for example, be less interesting to the insects or even be able to communicate with them for strikes on opponents. Perhaps the player could even play as the insectoid race, in which all of the computer-controlled races would be attempting to wipe him out while simultaneously fighting amongst each other.

Obviously, "alien insects" are a lot like "pirates" in the traditional 4X sense, but I propose that they play an even bigger role in the game than they normally do, quelling and targeting any race that gets too powerful instead of seeking an alliance with them or working for bounties. This mechanic would work a lot more like "AIP" than 3rd-party subfaction.

[Shrugging Khan]

Insectoid Aliens are the epitome of overdone, IMHO, but your ideas on Balance of Power seem pretty sensible 

[x4000]

Lots of interesting thoughts indeed, thanks guys.  One thing that is immediately going to differentiate this game is that you're a minority just having landed on an existing alien planet full of powerful other factions.  The other factions are much stronger than you, but are not allied per se.  Think Europe in the middle ages.  Things shift a lot, and wars come and go.

You're almost like a Romani settlement or something, except you don't stay that way and your nomadic days are behind you.  In some respects this is kind of a cross between AI War and TLF: you are in a David vs Goliath situation as in AI War, and you ARE a major faction in the same sense you are in AI War; but as in TLF, there are multiple sides that all have shifting alliances and whatnot that you can mess with, and they aren't just concentrated on beating the snot out of you.

Having a neutral third party faction come in and wreck things is something that I experimented with in Skyward, and the AI Progress in AI War kind of manages that.  I'd like to have a counterbalance, but I'm not sure that's really the way.  We'll see.



Also, we're still tossing around names internally, and my current favorite is Ruins of Valor.

[x4000]

There's now a related thread where you can see all the naming stuff: http://www.arcengames.com/forums/index.php/topic,15715.0.html

[Histidine]

Lots of interesting thoughts indeed, thanks guys.  One thing that is immediately going to differentiate this game is that you're a minority just having landed on an existing alien planet full of powerful other factions.  The other factions are much stronger than you, but are not allied per se.  Think Europe in the middle ages.  Things shift a lot, and wars come and go.

You're almost like a Romani settlement or something, except you don't stay that way and your nomadic days are behind you.  In some respects this is kind of a cross between AI War and TLF: you are in a David vs Goliath situation as in AI War, and you ARE a major faction in the same sense you are in AI War; but as in TLF, there are multiple sides that all have shifting alliances and whatnot that you can mess with, and they aren't just concentrated on beating the snot out of you.

Ah, so it's sort of like the 1632 universe then? Excellent.

[Draco18s]

To chime in on the "simultaneous/synchronous TBS" thing:

I've always always hated it.  Namely because the AI never moves first.  That is, the only moves it will ever make are ones that are in response to your own moves.  It will never move a unit into range of your units unless you move that unit first, then it'll attack (because it gets the attacker bonus).  But if you make no moves at all and hit "end turn" then it'll react to that and perform a whole bunch of moves that if it had done those before you said you were done you'd have had Words to Say About That.  But nope, all those unused actions are wasted, better luck next turn (oh wait).

Basically, the AI cheats by not being forced to take less than ideal actions.

[x4000]

To chime in on the "simultaneous/synchronous TBS" thing:

I've always always hated it.  Namely because the AI never moves first.  That is, the only moves it will ever make are ones that are in response to your own moves.  It will never move a unit into range of your units unless you move that unit first, then it'll attack (because it gets the attacker bonus).  But if you make no moves at all and hit "end turn" then it'll react to that and perform a whole bunch of moves that if it had done those before you said you were done you'd have had Words to Say About That.  But nope, all those unused actions are wasted, better luck next turn (oh wait).

Basically, the AI cheats by not being forced to take less than ideal actions.

In Civ V, the AI will move first at various times.  Not always, but a lot of the time.  Anyway, the worries you have are not expected to be an issue in the design I have in mind.

[Draco18s]

In Civ V, the AI will move first at various times.  Not always, but a lot of the time.  Anyway, the worries you have are not expected to be an issue in the design I have in mind.

Oh good.

And yes, the AI will move first in some instances, but usually where moving first and moving last are equally beneficial.  But it would never move an army into a position where your (unmoved) army could then attack it.  It would wait for you to either: a) move in first or b) hit end turn.

[chemical_art]

One think from playing Distant Worlds is that the game presents victory by generally your rank of certain key attributes. They are all competitive, and successful players gradually gain a large % share of the attributes that reflect their lore. The result is that as the game progresses it is known which players are closer to victory, and by what amount.

Anyway, what I find really interesting is that the game can be setup so that difficulty rises as the player needs completion...but only if they are number 1. In short, it is a dynamic difficulty but only if you are winning.  From what I read here it doesn't seem feasible, but the idea of a dynamic difficulty but only if the player is on tract to win sounds great.

[x4000]

That's pretty sweet from DW.  In this particular case, again I'd see the difficulty as being somewhat self-adaptive by similar mechanisms that AI War is.

[MaskityMask]

Huh, is there official source of info on this game? I'd like to know what we are at moment supposed to know about this project xD

[topper]

Huh, is there official source of info on this game? I'd like to know what we are at moment supposed to know about this project xD

I don't think there is anything out there at the moment other than they confirmed they are planning on making it for early next year and a few ideas about the gameplay.

On the other hand, if Arcen thought the amount of pre-release interest in them making a new strategy game was large for TLF, I think they will find that the appetite for teasers to be much higher for them making a 4x. 

[x4000]

This thread really has everything about it.  We're barely in preproduction on this one, and are still focusing mainly on TLF and AI War at the moment.  Main prototyping will start in July.

[MaskityMask]

Oh, okay ._.; So how did OP know about this game then?