We have some pretty specific things in mind for a micro-expansion that adds more diplomatic features to Sins of a Solar Empire.
But before we talk about them, we'd like to hear - specifically - what you'd imagine seeing in a $10 diplomacy oriented expansion for Sins.
New thought:
I love the concept of anomolies from GalCivII. It would be cool to see that in real-time. Could even have a flagship/enterprise-type ship that boldly goes where no one's been before.
First of all, I really like the idea of min-expansions. Thx.
What I'd like to see are a few improvements to the interface.
1. I'd love to be able to freeze the Empire Tree instead of having it bounce around while I'm trying to select. Perhaps holding down 'Ctrl'?
2. Instead of being random, I'd like to be able to choose the universe background colour. Some backgrounds lack sufficient contrast during the day.
3. A "Quicksave" button.
4. Lastly, a "quick start" option, where the new game is configured exactly like the previous.
Thanks for listening.
I kinda like this idea of making research less rtsy and more tbsy, ie no direct cost involved by slowly, one item at a time with a few means to speed it up. though I think implementing this would require huge rebalancing and is more an idea for a sequel than an expansion. also, it really, really punishes someone who has no current research item on, which one may forget if occupied with many other things.
I'm actually pretty fine with they way fleet supply and maintenance works. you can get a large fleet, get a large supply, but it really kills your income rates and you'll be in big trouble if you lose large chunks of it.
the rest has alraedy been said more or less. hm, maybe a small item: names. make the enemy factions have specific leaders with names. kinda gives you more to immerse yourself into when you can associate a particular name and face with a faction. it could also be a little preparation for an eventual, possible campaign.
Aside from the obligatory diplomatic improvements, I would be elated to have a miniature empire tree, similar to the mini Underground tree. It would be an enormous improvement for multiplayer, as the lag from having to open the management would be lessened and would allow players to concentrate on combat, yet still research. Also, neutral colonies would be neat. An AI faction that possibly aids certain players based on tasks and current events such as war, but does not necessarily have to be defeated to win a game. So they may allow your forces into their gravity wells if in a favorable trade position, but can attack if the player does unfavorable actions.
Though not too important, some new character faces would be nice.
What I will like to see them do is if a player has a large fleet but then all planets are bombed, the player should be allowed at leat 25 minutes to recolonize another and get back in the game. Also the idea of having a leader ship is a really good one and they should give a bonus to its fleet if taken into battle, like triple the hull of all of its fleets but if deystroyed they automatically loose.
Well in theory thats easy to fix, you just make it so research defaults to the next item in a given tree, so while it may not be exactly what you want, you don't ever stop researching.
I would like to have more control over the ai. Like being able to tell it to build a sb here or at my hw. To upgrade the sb instead of leaving it basic. I played a game where I asked my ally to build a vas sb at my roid where I had a pji and he quit. Well he never upgraded it and the ai didnt either. So when the enemy got there they just destroyed it and didnt engage my sb and moved on. Very annoying.
Not sure what I'd like to see with Diplomacy, as that is a more 4X type of feature typically. Best part of Sins is the way it combines RTS and 4X for a faster paced game (although you can still have long games) while maintaining the best parts of 4X play.
Culture
However, the one thing that needs an overhaul is Culture. It's useless right now. Advent can sometimes take over a planet with culture and cuase it to go neutral, but most others end up just seeing the culture top out and even out/allegience doesnt drop. Also, the bonuses for culture are quite weak in regards to how much you need to spend to spread it and not even in the slightest. For the itme and effort put into Culture, you could have just put the money into ships and dominated the opponent in half the time.
One option is to combine the various levels of culture upgrades to make it easier to get access to. Another is increase the rate of culture spred. The best option is to combine those options and add later level upgrades that would flesh out culture and allow you to convert populations without a fight. People should be in awe of your culture and oust their leaders in favour of joining your culture/empire. Simply making the planet go neutral doesn't do anything for this.
How to goa bout this is a question for you to answer. Maybe spies and counter spy agendas (some could use terrorist tactics while others peace rallies and advent could be psychic brainwashing or some such). The problem arises when you make this too complex / deep and the game loses the appeal of the RTS/4X hybrid.
AI
Computer AI needs an overhaul. I do most of my Sins offline against CPUs. Easy and Normal is pathetic, but a good intro for new people. Hard is barely a challenge and Unfair, save for small map Aggressors, are little challenge either. Early game is the only time they really do anything. Maybe add an insanity option for AIs for the rest of us or just make them a little smarter. Ive played Unfair CPUs that went back and forth between planets (3 phase jumps) as I assualted from both sides and ran away as soon as he jumped into the planet and he just eventually quit.
CPU Surrender
Speaking of which, CPU surrenders are good ideas, but are quite annoying as well. In large games, Ive had a CPU quit with 5 or more planets all with fully upgraded defenses, mines and star bases and no culture problems just because I killed their fleet that attacked my colony. Not a big deal, but then I have to clear out these huge defended bases that take forever to take out just to get to the bases despite him being "defeated". Defenses should shut down and be salvagable by scouts / colony ships or claimed when I take the planet. I shouldnt have to wade through them.
Also, it makes it difficult to get the achievements for Civiv and Military-only research when the cpu quits so easily in 1v1. Maybe an option to disable full surrender or let you "accept" their terms of surrender or deny them in favour of full out destruction.
Galactic Peace
To go with Culture, we could have a galactic peace or council or some kind of universal senate like other 4X games have. Not sure if it's worth for multiplayer (depends on how its executed, but people wont vote for you/make diplomatic deals that would get you elected/victory), but could be a great single player option.
Things to think of are number of treaties you have with other races (trade, shared vision, cease fires, etc worth X # of points), how far your culture has spred, # of artifacts (thats kind of random though), "diplomatic research" (if you add a new tree with diplomacy research only), maybe build "wonders" like in other games on your homeworld that take forever/get announced to enemies like artifacts/increases culture 10 fold or something, and various other criteria that add up to you eventually establishing a galactic council/declaring peace(aka victory for you) and so on.
Im not sure how to execute this, but you shouldn't have to fight a single enemy to win this game if you dont want to. Currenlty, that's impossible to do outside of rare culture wins on small maps that saw you dominate the computer early anyways.
Mission Overhaul
Missions are terrible right now. It's 5 minutes in and they demand 1000 metal or later on want me to destroy a civilization in anothe rstar system or what have you. I typically just ignore them as there is absolutely no gain from it for me. Teaming up with the computer doesn't help me in the least, even when I ping the map to ask him to help attack or defend, and I just end up playing solo even on a teamup. Small trade boost is all I get out of it.
These missions should be a little "easier" and related to what I'm currently doing. Some peace missions would be a nice touch as well. I shouldnt be forced to go wage war on some other culture just because dude wants me to. Add tariffs to my trade income if I dont complete a mission or forced compensation. Add some diplomatic envoys that are visible to all while moving and add incentives to my enemies for "assassinating" these people as they head to my allies homeworld from my own. If he makes it there fine, I get bonuses, if he dies, our relations sour significantly and enemy that killed the diplomatic envoy gets huge boost with my current ally.
Just give me a reasont o do these missions and dont force them down my throat with ridiculous demands. Allow me to give a mission as well.
New Achievements
Would like to see new Achivements added to the game. Ive just about finished all of them (cant seem to get a computer to stick around while Ir esearch every civic or military only achievements though) and would like to see a few new ones. Could add in new ones to go with the Entrenchment expac at the same time (maybe build star base in hostile gravity well, fully upgrade a star base, destroy an enemy star base, etc) to gow ith any new Diplomacy ones you add in (some kind of culture win, voted to galactic council, etc for whatever you add). Just adds some fun stuff to attempt to do with the game that aren't exactly complex to implement either.
Balance
Fix some of the capital ships. Several are quite overpowered in comparison to others. The few that are 'support' Capital ships are quite weak due to the dependancy on Anti-Matter and don't even make up for it in late game compared to a Marza or Kol, who both dominate early and late game. Other races are similar in that regard.
Late Game Turtles
In huge maps, it's quite difficult to progress in the latter parts of games. I'm talking multiple star systems or 50+ planet maps where I can expand and conquer a great deal of territory early, but am forced to then consolidate defenses or lose everything. Computer does the same thing though and then proceeds to take it even further than I do (comp usually lags in research in favour of turtles) with mines everywhere and upgarded starbases on every planet. It's just a really hard nut to crack that has me stop and start for 3 or 4 hours to finish the last half of the map / expand beyond the solar system I jus tconquered to the other 2-3.
Yes, there are siege ships and planet bombers and so on, but when there's 5 hangar bays and another 6 or so from the star base and 8 or 9 turrets, a gravity well filled with mines and the enemies army there, it's hard to get through the first time and as soon as you finish, you have to secure the base, rebuild your army and do it again at the next one and the next one and so on, even if the computer "surrenders" (see above).
If I play on a small map, resources are tighter, fleets are smaller and star bases less abundant and I can finish games in an hour or two at most. Anything above one solar system/30-40 planets and it goes to hell for a 6 hour+ marathon of defenses / fleet cracking. Cultural victories / conversions could go a long way to helping this in longer games. Surrenders could be full on joining my army types of moves too that would stop me from having to destroy their worlds and defenses while allowing me to still expand.
Trade/Refinery/Tax Improvements
Refineries are almost useless when compared to trade, especially as the game progresses. Early on,t he trade port is far cheaper than the 1300+ resource refinery, quicker to research and gives me mroe income at the same time that will continue to grow as the game goes longer. Refineries give a small % boost to resource income that is already quite small and shrinks drastically as the game goes on with fleet upkeep. Ive had games with trade easily exceeding my planetary tax incomes while refineries are capped at 3 per node and take huge hits the longer the game goes on (Ive been raking in 100'sof credits per second before fleet tax while resources are 10 or something before tax). Refineries are too expensive to set up for such small gains too.
I like the way trade works right now, but it's just far too dominating with how weak culture and refineries are. Just rake in cash, buy resources and destroy the enemy is far easier than low resource gains or trying to take over a planet with culture, making mass refineries or temples bad options. Trade routes could use a work though. Maybe let us designate the trade routes for maximum effect (no duplicate nodes/completing of "cycles" though). I hate having a long chain broken up because I placed a trade route somewhere that caused it to be changed to a smaller chain.
Finally, tax from planets is quite weak. Auxillary governmetns from star bases are useless in most cases too, so maybe make that something that increases tax rate by 1.0 and 2.0 or some such to offset the weak tax on planets while stills ecuring the planet from being capped by enemies. This wouldn't be the 14-20range income of a homeworld, but would allow you to still up the income on high population planets to ~8-12.0 range for nice gains. This could also be a diplomatic research logistics item / planetary upgrade that adds an embassy to the planet for more tax.
Some options to fix these would be to have refineries be flat, non taxable/fleet size affected structures (keep the node limits of 0/3 up to 3/3 though to prevent abuse). This would make building one refinery every other planet quite an enticing option, but could use some work. Might just have to up rate of income instead of removing tax, as I dont havethe numbers on handto make / claim a change like that wouldnt be broken or not. Fixing culture like I mention above (or at least looking at some form of cultural benefit/win beyond my options) could make building temples a better option than the 3-5 trade ports perplanet that evenw ith full fleet penalties saw me making 200+ credits per second in some larger maps and never having to worry about minerals.
There is some awesome stuff here! Keep it up!
I think an espionage system is a good idea. I would also like to see diplomacy screens like the ones in Civilization IV, with little movies, and advanced trading. I think something like religion and government types, like in Galactic Civilizations 2, would be a good idea. I think a ship customizer, again, like in Galactic Civilizations 2, would be a nice addition. But, this might be a bit much for a $10 expansion.\
Edit: Some more things, that have already been said, would be
depending on what exactly is implemented (different governements, more economic options, spying or sth like that) I'd like the current diplomacy interface double as an intelligence report window. so, next to the information of treaties, 'like you' % and treaty options, we could have a little summary of what we currently know about that player, be it via scouts, shared vision or a possible spying (or some existing tech). I'm talking some very basic stuff like number of planets, number of capships, approximate number of ships (observed) or rather current fleet supply level, current tech level in civic and military (observable via type of ships, their hp/shield, abilities etc.). that screen could also incorporate the race's diplomatic status to other players.
so, as I said, a summary of what we already know about that player, but concise, in one place. that way I don't necessarily have to constantly observe or count or backtrack, but always have nice statistic of my most recent intelligence. not really an addition per se, but an additional help in the game. and if diplo should play a larger part in the game, it may be a good thing to have lots of information about all the possible players at the ready, so you can decide who is a potential threat, who would make a worthy ally, etc.
also, some mentioned showing each player's treaties with other players. I think it may be an even better idea to show the allegiance % or whatever it will be replaced with. it really depends on the new system, but my point is: even without a peace treaty, an ai might still be willing to help a player it 'likes', and that I think is the big point to consider if you pick a target: do I have to expect other players to aid my pray? can I even count on some support by players who dislike my target? considerations like this make diplo fun in that type of games and not knowing another about players' mutual disposition would render those considerations more or less obsolete.
I would really like to see the economic system improved, being able to sell and buy stuff from particular empires, and there being a finite ammount of stuff avaialble on the black market (because otherwise all you need is money)
I've said it before, but I think a few more items on the market that affect play would be cool.
Antimatter. Make this most easilly produced in orbit arround suns (+25%), but also Gas Planets might be good for them(+10%). Ships would gain antimatter bonuses when closer to a friendly antimatter station (benefits falling off as they got further away). Antimatter stations would be very well armored (10000+ points) but destruction of one would damage everything in the gravity well. An antimatter ship that can only be produced by an upgraded antimatter station would benefit fleets that it traveled with, but destruction of one would have an area effect damage to ships near it.
Food, terran planets of course would be best for this, as long as you had a surplus of food, all you planets population would grow, low food and populations shink. Planets that produce food can share it with others that don't if they build trade stations (or a new station type), this would work similiarly to culture, the further from a food surplus planet, the lower benefit surrounding planets get. This makes Terran or other food surplus planets very beneficial to capture because the economic benefit of higher populations on multiple planets is very important.
All resources should come from specific planets or locations so that capture of stored resources can be possible. With storage facilities being new structures that can be built in orbit arround planets that use those resources. Travel of resources to planets producing things (ships, structures, starbases, etc) should reduce per star lane they go along, making some locations, closer to high resource planets more beneficial to build production facilities at. To build something, you should have access to enough resources IN THAT GRAVITY WELL to do so. Storage facilities to prevent laps in production would be necessary.
A soft cap on maximum resources and economic shifts (bull and bear markets) should affect your overall access to resources and cash, hog too much cash and your economy dives because civilian firms have low access to loans, hog too, hog resources and other nations fill the market with their own (also driving your own firms out of business, and reducing the production in your own nation). Having good relations with other nations will benefit your markets. You shouldn't be able to store too much cash or resources however without building storage facilities. Which again, would be captureable. You can even sell or buy resources from nearby nations, those resources coming from specific planets so political or military changes can affect neighbors. Good trading partners can even buy ships from their allies (at a steep price hike).
Leaders:
These would be either political, military, scientist, or economic leaders, they would benefit specific planets ships or starbases they were associated with.
Political leaders would benefit planets, but not orbiting structures, economic leaders would benefit orbiting structures except for starbases, military leaders would benefit starbases or specific ships they were associated wtih. (Including non capital ships). Once assigned, leaders would not be changeable from the specific thing they were associated, some might have negative as well as positive quirks, and they could also gain levels and powers based on specific goals. (eg an economic leader might gain levels based on the overall output of the orbit they were in charge of. Leaders could be removed, but that results in the destruction of that leader.
Production of Universities and Academies (orbital structures) increase the likelihood of leaders arrising.
I'd like the numbers of capships and frigates by type you've destroyed to appear on the rival empire's status screen, as well as the intelligence report that was suggested. Perhaps the overall number of casualties taken over time could also harden hostile diplomatic stances?
It seems that an ice planet might have little to trade with another ice planet, and asteroids wouldn't export unless they contained special minerals? Trade could be either boosted or restricted by the type of planet that the ships travel to. If there was a trade treaty, shouldn't this be to the advantage of the faction with fewer trade ports? Though it would require adjustment to trade, perhaps so that the trade ships were produced at he factory when it wasn't busy with military ships, opening your ports to the trade ships of another empire would then allow them to take over your trade routes if you hadn't enough ships to operate them... a sneaky use for pirates?
If espionage is added, I'd like it to be mission style rather than abstracted.
How about an artifact victory condition, where you win by possession of all the artifacts when all have been discovered?
The capital ships need further balancing, once a couple of missile barrage ships appear in a single player game it's over. Also, it seems wrong to have to pay for returning fleets and mines twice over, isn't there another method to make these abilities less effective?
hm, I dunno. I never particularly like the idea of storage facilities in rts. seems like an unnecessary complication.
what do you mean by 'available in that grav well'? do you mean that there has to be some kind of supply line with resources? that would not be such a bad idea. or do you mean that you have to have a certain amount of res. in that particular grav well? that I would not like, because it would effectively split your resource pool across planets and make the overall one meaningless.
I do however like the idea of antimatter as an addition resource. it would be at least interesting to toy around with a new balance that drastically reduces am regeneration, but a) also adjusts am consumptions rates of jumps and abilities and provides new ways of replenishing it like am stations and am resupply ships. something like the supply concept of conquest: frontier wars. probably not what you meant, but an interesting idea to tinker with. maybe even some mods attempt that, I'd have to take a look.
another idea would concern planet taxes and such. maybe add a few things like happiness of population, tax rate, population growth rate, food supply. then, the amount generation would depend on population size and tax hight. tax hight would be under your control, but limited by population happiness. happiness could in turn be influences by stuff like culture, food supply, tax rates, ships in orbit, stance with other players, trade, local phenomena. the big problem here of course is that in large empires, tax income plays a smaller role as trade ports slowly take over. but then again, some rebalance could alter that and make tax income more important again.
My only input is for multiplayer. There should be a game mode where alliances are allowed but ultimately only one player can win. As it is now, playing with unlocked teams is just asking for a few people to form an alliance at the beginning and, once one alliance has the majority of players in it, to steamroll the rest for an easy and unfair win. Requiring that only one player can win encourages backstabbing and forces players to use alliances strategically. Trade agreements should also be limited to players who are at least in a cease fire, otherwise in a multiplayer game it is pretty pointless as more or less everyone signs a trade agreement with each other from the start.
One possible way to make multiplayer diplomacy interesting would be to require diplomatic research to form alliances. Same race alliances could require embassy research. Allying with a different race would require some race relations research be done. A multi-party alliance would require even further research, in addition to each player having the appropriate race relations research done.
In a more complex setup, this could be accompanied by an alliance voting system, wherein certain actions could be proposed and voted on by the alliance. Such things could be relatively simple, like imposing a trade embargo on a player.. or more complex like voting to outlaw certain kinds of weapons. In this way an alliance could work to limit the power of one member or impose restrictions that favor some members over others. Since the alliance will eventually have to break up anyway, this would encourage fracturing. Weaker factions could vote to impose restrictions on a stronger member, or a stronger member could try to strong arm weaker members into unfavorable trade conditions or to work in his favor.
I think that giving rescource should be more profitable in a war time economy. Right now, the missions are too one-sided towards the player and if the player can grant the same type of missions, it can be exploited easily. How about turning them into treaties? For example, if an empire request/demands 1000 metal, you can give the metal and the recieving empire must pay back the metal plus interest over time. If the payment drags down your income, you can halt the payments with s decrease in relation and a black mark.
How about some variance in planet population like in Gal Civ 2? A 20% varieance may make the game more interesting as all habitual planets have the same number of maximum population disregarding those with special features.
Make Starbases a symbol of your power. Building enough of them may make weaker empires halt from attacking you but lose enough and its a FFA on you.
Here is a new addition.
In the infocards of planets it should show witch cultures are present and influencing the planet.
I think that instead of nations just making allies between themselves, coalitions should be made. The leader for that coalition could somehow be elected, for ai it would be judged by the # of ally points. The leader would set the alliances and wars which would affect the entire coalition, but the other allied nations could veto that decision.
For that to get ever trusly usefull youll need games with 20+ people in them.
First of all, I really like the game a lot and I have spent countless hours playing it ... thank you for a great effort.
For Diplomacy, I agree with a lot of what has already been said. I like the hero idea, the idea of seeing how much of each culture is influencing a planet (although it should also affect revenue output), I don't like spies (it seems like the AI always cheats), and I would like to give the AI and other human players missions (like I always get from the AI).
I think culture should affect revenue output kind of like in the US ... so much money is flowing out of this country to relatives in other countries .. like Mexico, Vietnam and the Phillapines, that these other countries "benefit" from having ex-patriots in the US.
I would also request that some type of method of "absorbing" the neutral factions would be interesting. Something like buying them over to your side or my culture is so great, they can't resist joining up with me. Too often, I have taken over the main AI after a hard fought battle, just to find a neutral AI still holding out in the middle of their empire. I guess I am looking for a better way of taking over the neutrals than bombing them to submission!
How about a " Diplomatic Immunity " for Scout Frigates?
Not quite a cease-fire but better than just running for it?
And maybe a Scout Frigate speed upgrade?
thankx,
Prof.
" We're on a Diplomatic Mission to Alderan "
Oh yeah, one other thing..... could we use a fourth race ... Pirates! If you play as the Pirates, you gain revenue based on % of trade in your star system, can intimidate other players into giving you money, can trick two rivals into war (at a cost), can add mobile star bases (no planets), start off very strong with many ships, strong culture, but a tech tree limited to only a few upgrades that take lots of cash to buy (sort of like you can buy new ships or upgrade them, but both will take nearly the whole game to do). They should also be able to "turn" back without destroying any ships if they are "paid off" (bribed?) just before attacking.
The more I think about it, the more I dont want different factions to ally themselves. If you're playing TEC and you want to ally yourself with another TEC thats fine, but not if you're Vasari with TEC or Advent with TEC... This is not Master of Orion its Sins and each faction is an enemy of the other. Its like saying that the Zerg will sign a trade treaty with the Protoss... it doesn't make any sense!
All I want are ways to capture a planet without wiping everything off the map, or just turning neutral and losing any upgrades that planet has when recolonized by your forces after a cultural overthrow, other than that I think it has been well covered!
Hi, what I'd like to see is:
That's pretty much all.
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