This is an interesting article on among other things geographies influence on the development of the USA.
http://jutiagroup.com/20110827-the-geopolitics-of-the-united-states-part-1-the-inevitable-empire/
After reading this it became obvious to me how the importance of sea travel, navigable rivers, ports, islands, and transportation in general is hugely unappreciated in basically all 4X games, and they really do suffer for it. The games become much more about resource grabbing and less about long term planning and adapting to the land.
Very true.
Yep hit it right on the nose. I would say that it would do ironclad well to increase the complexity of their planet development and allow players to invest far more in a single planet then they currently can, perhaps researching unique monuments (trade/culture increases) and other investments (other rare resources that would net trade and be required for certain ships/techs/other, like in shogun total war 2).
In this way the planets themselves would have more meaning and tie the player closer to the reality that you are fighting for the planet, not just the logistics slots or strategic position it has. At the same time these extras, once developed could be captured by your enemy and wouldn't be "deleted" just because you take the planet. Perhaps securing a planet via amphibious warfare (landing ground troops with aerial support) would lessen the damage to infrastructure so you could just take over. These "ground battles" need not be detailed, they could have simple rules and be a part if the intricate fight that a planetary siege is all about. In this way the player is still playing a space game, but feels that they actually have a planetary empire, not an empire of mostly empty space.
True, but I feel they felt the need to start small then grow bigger. Just look at the way the game was released. First just fleets duking it out with minimal Diplomacy. Then enter the concept of defenses. Currently in the develop diplomacy stage (still needs some work but I like most of the concepts). They may increase all of this either with another expansion or with as Sins2 release.
Oh I agree, If they choose to work on sins 2, they could release this idea as an expansion to it or have it in the gameplay of vanilla.
I won't stop adding my 2 cents until i see some space amphibious warfare boys and girls!
Hmm... this gives me idea.
Planets already get random bonuses that must be discovered through exploration, maybe instead of or in addition to the bonuses, there could be planetary improvements for things like trade, refineries, and mining, but only a limited number of them can be researched based on the planet type, like the existing planetary improvements.
This combined with more planet types would greatly improve the depth without increasing the complexity.
lol that sounds like my above post
Similar, but not exactly the same.
I was more referring to land based 4X, but ya even Sins has this problem. It has been awhile since I played Sins but I'm looking forward to Rebellion. Though deeper planet development would be cool I don't think it's a large problem in Sins, except for the inability to capture enemy infrastructure.
One problem is that you build no real transportation infrastructure, unless you are Vasari in late game. How about a navigation buoy that increases phase lane speed? Like a reverse jump inhibitor. That would allow you to invest in transportation, and build "highways" in order to allow trade ships and military units to move faster. Maybe there could be collapsed phase lanes that need buoys to work, like building bridges. What would build buoys though because you would have to be able to build them in planetless areas, maybe scouts?
Even the Vasari phase gates are more oneshot fleet catapults then anything like infrastructure. They allow military units to jump around to any other gate. Maybe they should be more expensive and form a permanent link with another paired gate. Thus creating a brand new "road" and allowing tradeships to travel between them. For the catapult affect Vasari could use their superweapon.
Another problem is that one gravitywell is much like another, only the resources they produce vary. World based 4X games have terrain, all space is the same in Sins. Some of the more exotic gravity wells like plasma fields could slow unit movement or hide units from sight. Ships in Asteriod fields could take dmg over time, unless you mapped out the field with buoys?
A only sorta related area is trade ships/ports. If there was a good reason to actually try and protect/raid them you would see people paying much more attention to were phase lanes go and how much they invest in them instead of mindlessly spamming them everywhere. Right now tradeships give a pitiful reward and are replaced for free I believe.
That would be cool. You could bypass the whole planetless GW's by the use of constructors similar to starbases.
Phase gates do. The downside it messes up the white line which can increase your trade income.
Agreed. Wonder if I can mod something like that?
Actually mindlessly spamming them is a bad idea as you mess up the white line of prosperity. And it does cost you something when a tradeship is destroyed. Your income drops a bit.
Planet exploration should be more like Mass Effect's were every planet has a history, and exploration is more interesting.
My guess is that 4X devs mostly agree with DsRaider's basic point, but are under lots of pressure to have every turn of an early game provide as much 'fun' as possible and that parameter conflicts with having an interesting, largish map/game that could model competition between island nations, river nations, etc.
I'm happy to get back on topic.
It's not that I don't think they agree, I just think that a lot of devs end up focusing on things like city micromanagement and don't realize how important geography in general and naval travel in particular was. I just thought that this article was very interesting and that devs could learn from it because it discusses the development of several nations from a geopolitical perspective. Which is startlingly similar to a 4X perspective, and if this article was a game I would play it.
The article goes on and on about how river transport networks are so important and effect everything, but can you name a single 4X game that even features navigable rivers? Rivers have been far more convenient than roads for trade since the dawn of civilization up to even modern times. Naval transport of goods and troops has always been much faster and easier then any type of land route, just look at the Mediterranean and the early civilizations that flourished there, or the British Empire.
Civ doesn't have traversable rivers, and it's maritime transportation requires both a fair bit of tech and really isn't faster then land. Maritime trade is also very advanced tech and infrastructure wise in Civ. While in real life even the most ancient civilizations' trade was dominated by maritime routes where possible. Elemental really has no maritime side at all. The article also features tons of little things that 4X games ignore that would make them much deeper. Especially in regards to resources being useless or hard to hold without an available geographic transportation network.
The lost income is still negligible unless all trade ships are destroyed.
Planet exploration definitely needs some work, only the Advent, in the late game, with a Progenitor, Divination, and resources to spare have a real reason to explore planets.
On the topic of Sins the problem is that it is very simple in a lot of ways and is primarily a combat game with very little Civ building actually going on. Transportation wise you start with roads to everywhere and basically nothing changes all game. You do unlock wormholes and system travel but those are negligible, and I personally hated multi-system maps anyway. Maybe Sins2 will be a more complex RT4X, and hopefully they look at world based 4X games and how methods of transportation and geography shape those games.
I can't, but I'd also love to hear about one if it exists.
I'm in the middle of The Freemantle Diary, which is a journal written by a Brit officer who toured the Confederacy for several months in 1863 (it is surreal how many major figures he met, and he was at Gettysburg). His story makes it painfully clear how vital rivers and ports were to the struggle. If the Confederates had managed to win naval support from a major European power, it is quite possible that we would have two nations descended from the Revolutionary War, not one. At minimum, the North's massive troop and matériel advantages would have been reduced.
The worst element of sea and river travel is that the relative speed to land travel is compromised- this has always been a major flaw of the Total War series, where armies move as fast as fleets, for example.
The American Civil War might be one of the few settings where navigable rivers are a gaming feature- doesn't AGEOD's version feature navigable rivers? Not strictly a 4x, but then you couldn't have one based on the Civil War anyway.
You may be right to emphasise trade and transportation, however there are a few other aspects you need to consider. Trade was often stifled because it was more convenient for states to tax trade than anything else- as an example, Britain and France continued to trade during the Napoleonic War because Napoleon felt it was lucrative, ironic considering he was supposed to have attacked Russia to stop Russia trading with Britain.
However, as a counter-example, the Spanish were disdainful of trade and were able to dominate Europe almost purely on the basis of plundered treasure from the Americas. It might be true that had they invested in trade and industry at all they might have been powerful for longer, however the Spanish dominance lasted as longer or longer than that of other European countries- and longer than the current American dominance.
One aspect of Sins that I've never liked is the everlasting nature of resources, very counter to real life examples. Also with Sins you cannot capture anything at all, planets are razed as soon as they become neutral. I consider these elements counter-intuitive, and to make for duller gaming.
True trade was usually taxed but that was mostly because it was so lucrative just as you said. This is a example of why it is important not the reverse. The Spanish are really a special case because as you said they could pillage the new world for things instead of "trading" for them. That is only possible because of a huge cultural and scientific gap caused by a sudden ending of isolation, which rarely occurs. Also no culture can simply not trade, any market that is not in official use will simply become underground. I imagine a whole lot of goods crossed the Spanish borders whether or not they were into trading or not. Spanish nobles probably drank a fair bit of French wine.
Whole empires have been founded on trade, look at the Silk Road, East India Company, or the Dutch. A small country can become extremely rich if it controls a strategic trade route. 4X games are usually about expanding as fast as possible in order to munch as many resources as possible. With no thought to the logistics involved. Civ is the only game off the top of my head that has any real trade with it's luxury resources. But even then these resources magically teleport to their destination through borders and across oceans. Transportation and geography never come into it, so it becomes just another resource to grab as fast as possible.
I wouldn't disagree that Spain may well be a special case, however most 4x games tend to be about 'exploration' leading to a huge cultural and scientific gap, no..? The Dutch Empire was more about plunder too.. except spices rather than gold. The United States was created at a time when bulk transportation became far swifter and more reliable than it ever had been previously.
I rather doubt Spanish nobles drank French wine though, unless they happened to be in France. The Spanish were notoriously military- it was considered unmanly to learn to read and write, for instance. As Spanish weapons were considered superior to the rest of Europe and there was no middle class to speak of, trade was minimal. There needs to be a substantial market for cross-border trade, or merchants will go elsewhere.
Venice might be a better example of a trade 'empire', a financial capital able to field large fleets and mercenary armies. However there is some doubt as to how a trade empire acts- for example, it was probably in the interest of Venice to have the Ottomans control the eastern Mediterranean, so that there were fewer middlemen on the trade route, less war and less piracy. As 4x games involve expansion, Venice would not have been progressing towards the 'victory conditions.'
I've always wanted a strategy computer game where factions not only had different units but different objectives. For Sins, that might mean that the TEC desired to control all planets, while the Vasari had a goal in terms of resource stripping to finance their next emigration, and Advent needed to mass a huge number of converts for their next psychic evolution, or whatever.
Planets already get random bonuses that must be discovered through exploration, maybe instead of or in addition to the bonuses, there could be planetary improvements for things like trade, refineries, and mining, but only a limited number of them can be researched based on the planet type, like the existing planetary improvements. itransition
From the standpoint of more realism I agree. But Sins works because of oversimplification. This concept could work very well in Gal Civ, but probably Gal Civ 3. At the moment, Gal Civ can support resource complexity but the game is sort of dead; time and effort not justified. Turned out to be only one real playable race, humans. Rest of the game downhill from there.
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