OK. I am really interested in Brad's description of how large these games can be-much larger that current 4X games. But one thing I have not see discussed here to any length is this: If really large games are possible, what (if anything) might need to be considered to make these uber-games playable? Do game mechanics that make a smaller-world games wonderful directly scale to much larger games? For instance, city management that is fun for a few cities might be a micro-management nightmare in very large games. Do game worlds that are larger than we have ever seen also need game mechanics that we have never seen before? Besides the micromanagement issues, a few things that come to mind might be:
-having a tech or magic research tree that will not be completely researched halfway into the game. Alternatively of course the research rate could just be slowed down.
-having regional managers? How many cities are possible? I love the idea of a big world but I do not want to manage 50 cities without help. Do managers need to operate at a higher level in really large games?
-do monsters in the wilderness need to get pregressively harder to defeat? It would be nice to have monsters that would still be a challenge towards the end of really long games. Or making some extreme terrain types very hard for most units to move safely thought (swamps, haunted forests, dangerous sections of ocean, mountains). Maybe it might not be practical or prudent to explore or settle these regions until halfway or more though a long game. This will leave some mystery and challenge still on the map even in long games. I love the exploration part of these games so to me it would be great to leave some areas too hostile to explore until much later.
-do spells need to operate differently in large worlds vs small worlds?
-In a really really large game world-maybe other game objectives could be developed. For instance, given the potential for unit and monster variation in the game as well as excellent AI, it could be a fun alternative challenge to have a long, thin strip of a world (providing we can dictate world dimentions) and have a city at either extreme end of the world. Each player would have a certain amount of time to build up a city/nation, then gather up your 10 best units (or something like this) and move them out into the greater world outside of your nation. The first player to have his group make it to the opposite ends of the earth wins (this might include a battle when the two groups meet in the middle). With smaller games, this would not be very interesting but on a much larger map this sounds like fun to me.
-Given the collective gaming experience here on these boards, I am sure that better ideas than these could be suggested here.
Some of these issues have already been addressed by Stardock personnel, they have stated while they want the player to have a lot of freedom in Elemental they shouldn't be bogeded down with micromanagment and I believe they mentioned some kind of intelligent governor AI for cities and maybe even regions.
Here is the link to essentially Q&A for Elemental:WOM so far although I guess everything mentioned is subject to change and all that jazz.
https://forums.elementalgame.com/329219
At the same time you can design troops and stuff on a very individual basis. So in same way, there is a bit of new kinds of micromanagment. (I guess you can do that while you are waiting for other players though, or out of the game in general)
First I'd like to say that this is a much needed thread! There are defintely some problems that need to be addressed if vastly different sized maps are going to be available.
Yes! And Nooooo! Slowing down the research rate just to make immense maps playable would offend me. Somehow they need to make it so that you won't run out of things to research halfway through a huge game, but at the same it needs to be possible to make significant research progress in normal sized maps. I think the only way to achieve this well is to use an open-ended or recursive tech tree, or for individual techs to be upgradeable. I don't really like the idea of a recursive tech tree, though, and I'm not sure a good open-ended tech tree is feasible, so personally I'm rooting for upgradeable techs.
Other than tech/magic research, I think the other big issue is definitely city/empire management. There really needs to be an intuitive and powerful city/empire management interface. If there isn't, huge maps will be totally unplayable, at least for me. For example, I've never finished a GC II game on the largest map sizes because turns eventually start taking an enormous amount of time just because of planet management. And my plans for individual planets often don't get realized because I forget what I was doing on which planets and it just becomes a disaster.
Just pointing out the obvious here but (with tech speed) wouldn't they just include the slider thing in the game start up like in Gal Civ 2. So if your playing a large game and don't want to finish the tech tree quickly you change the tech speed to slow or very slow, where as if you wanted to get to the end quickly you could leave it on normal(big maps make lots of research) or kick it up to fast or very fast.
I definitely agree that this subject deserves its own thread. But I wonder if we're making too many assumptions that maps will work more or less like they do in Civ or GalCiv. The channeler (player) using personal essence to make territory available for use is a *major* innovation.
I've wondered elsewhere whether there might be some sort of cap on the number of cities to help keep 'busy work' under control for the largest maps. But maybe the 'imbued lands' thing will function as an effective and interesting constraint on city spamming. *Especially* if we will indeed be freed from the old 'need a city within 3-4 squares to use this resource' thing, which I still think sounds plausible if people will just accept the idea that not all population centers are (or will ever be) large and complex. Sometimes a mining town just stays a mining town.
Frankly I think it would be a terrible idea to place a hard limit on the number of cities you can settle, on any sized map. There is no point in being able to play on a massive map if you're going to be a 50 turn journey away from your nearest neighbor. I also don't think the essence investment needed to start cities will prevent you from starting more cities on a huge map than on a small map - because I'm assuming that your channeler will build up essence over time, from various sources - and thus the number of cities that you can effectively found would depend more on how long the game is. I'm hoping that's the way it is, really.
I'm generally ok with the clossic distance limit. The thing that says cities are not allowed to be within X spaces of each other. It seems balanced enough and you can tweek it to allow for 'wilderness' between towns if you really want.
What a hard limit would do is cause players to rush the first few settlements to get stratigic placement, then wait on the last few so that they can be in the apposolutly best possible location. While this sounds like 'strategy' it also sounds like un-needed game-lengthening and frustration.
now now, you know what we get when we ASS-U-ME, pigeon. I'm not really sure how 'essence' is going to work out, but I'm excited to see. I figure if there was a hard limit on the map as per how many cities can be placed, it wouldn't be labeled 'hard limit on cities' it would be a hard limit on essence, which could be spent to create cities or on other equally producting things.
I guess that I am against limiting cities numbers as well. But after that, micro-management sooner or later becomes an issue. At some point in a really large map when you have a gigantic empire, it might be nice to hand much of the production, city building and trade control over to the AI (supplying it with a few guidelines) and concentrate on things that would be really fun to do on a big map --moving massive armies, concouring the wilderness or next nation, diplomancy, putting together the things you need for the next world-changing (perhaps game-ending) spell, or focus on a band of heros you really care about. If and when you hand over control to your alter-ego AI (it sounds like Brad is making some of these anyway) would be up to you. Then you could deal with as much or as little micromanagement as you like and still enjoy the epic feeling that is possible from massive games.
Anyway, that would be my solution for the management of super large games.
When I said "some sort of cap," I should have said "some sort of cap, other than a fixed number." Especially because I really hope that the essence-for-turf thing will indeed provide some interesting ways to limit city sprawl and any related micromanagement. garysax's wilderness thread really caught my eye because I think that especially for the fantasy genre, the game really does need to make wall-to-wall cities impossible. And I dont mean sprinkling the map borders with a few frosty/fiery regions that can produce almost no food.
I am sort of sad that no one has commented on one of my ideas. It was at the end of the post and so maybe did not get as much attention as the first part. Or maybe it was just a bad idea! But even tearing this idea apart would feel better than neglect.
Please forgive me posting this again but I would love some feedback on this:
In a really really large game world-maybe other game objectives could be developed. For instance, given the potential for unit and monster variation in the game as well as excellent AI, it could be a fun alternative challenge to have a long, thin strip of a world (providing we can dictate world dimentions) and have a city at either extreme end of the world. Each player would have a certain amount of time to build up a city/nation, then gather up your 10 best units (or something like this) and move them out into the greater world outside of your nation. The first player to have his group make it to the opposite ends of the earth wins (this might include a battle when the two groups meet in the middle). With smaller games, this would not be very interesting but on a much larger map this sounds like fun to me.
Peace Out
I didn't comment on that idea because it doesn't really interest me. If it were an option, I don't think I would ever use it. On the other hand, we've been told that one of the ways to win an Elemental skirmish game is to complete your channeler's "Master Quest," whatever that is. I get the impression that it will vary from game to game, though. But this seems like it'll somewhat fulfill your desire for alternate objectives.
I would also like to be able to set the map dimensions. Playing on a long, thin strip of land could be a lot of fun even without special goals like you suggest.
I'm sort of like pigeonpigeon. Your thread title and Big Picture subject really caught my attention, and I didn't have anything to say about the strip-map concept because I've barely started thinking about how quests might play into the game (I've been mostly playing GalCiv2 the last couple of years, no quests there).
I don't have nearly as detailed an imprssion of the 'Master Quest' as pigeonpigeon seems to--in particular, I haven't caught any dev talk about a skirmish mode at all. I thought it would be something new in comparison to GC2 where you could have a sandbox game with one win option requiring you to meet a set of scenario goals. I suppose, given my fuzzy picture of the Master Quest win, that perhaps the quest details would benefit from some strong variations based on map size. Not sure odd-shaped maps would need to be involved, though.
personally I have only really considered quests like the Sins of a Solar Empire quests or AoW quests. Quests that you use to make AI personalities happy, but don't have any real other baring on the game.
I support your idea bleeba. I think it would make multiplayer games much more interesting. I fear I mave little to add as well. no comment doesn't mean we don't like it.
Hey! Thanks all for the arm-twisted comments I wrung out of you . Maybe another topic should be what sort of quests (included or modable) might be fun in have (and maybe not too hard to code) especially in larger game worlds. The ability to have quests leading to other quests could be kind of neat and I imagine that a very creative person could put a really nice additional story/flavor/adventure on top of an already great game.
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