To whom it may concern within the creative division of Stardock,
I've been giving this a bit of thought ever since I first saw this functionality implemented in StarDrive (which was an unfortunate flop) and I was thinking that it could really shine within the framework of Galactic Civilizations II. And here I was, mere moments ago, casually searching Google for game sequels that I really wanted to see in development. And whadya know! GalCivIII is finally a thing! I spent the last half hour poring over the contents of the site, trying my hardest not to squeal like a little girl (I failed). I did this half out of curiosity and half out of a need to remember my old account name and password (I succeeded) so that I could post the following questions to the devs or creative leads of the GalCivIII project.
I am assuming that the Custom Race creation system will not be too unlike the former GalCivII creation system where you spent points to boost your Race's abilities in certain areas such as weaponry, economy, procreation... (don't worry, I still won't bother asking) etc. So my questions are:
Upon release (or sometime in Alpha/Beta for those of us who will shower or have already showered you with crisp green affection) will negative traits be added to the Custom Race creation system that you can choose in order to handicap your Race for the sake of getting more skill points to spend? (Within reasonable limits of course. There are only so many positive modifiers one can take advantage of. That and adding the inability to positively modify negatively modified traits.)
If you are not currently working on it, or if the idea has simply not been tabled yet, would you consider adding this functionality to the game?
Sincerely,
Extant Faora
(P.S. - Are you guys by any chance working on Drengin plushies?)
I think I like the idea, of bringing flavours and "human traits" into game. But I'd prefer to extent the suggestion and let us to either customize, or have already customized not just races, but also governors, ministers, and our leaders themselves. It seems at least some Stardock team members are aware of Tropico series, that, probably, would be closest similarty I could come up with (Fallout 1-2/NV are second best).
Race leader could have openly positive traits, like being economical genius, allowing race to have eonomy boost.
Or he could have "mixed" trait, like pathological honesty - that could create problems with doplomacy, but his people could like him, knowing he won't pour BS on them.
We could have some small traits added either for flavour, or deeper background description. He could be former soldier, who carefully kept that family-like relations within units where he served, thus earning himself a notable reputation (if not utmost love, respect and loyalty) among fighting force. Such trait could give permanent soldiering boost, morale boost for civilians, and make planets less susceptible to rebellions against player, and more susceptible to rebellions against invader. Or leader could be teetotaler (and/or supporter of healthy lifestyle), who would not impose prohibition, or increased taxes on alcohol or tobacco, but will offer simple "follow my lead" stance. According to support he have, on the long run that could lead to increase of nation's health, thus improving morale, soldiering, and reducing costs on medicine. Should he support his lifestyle through building sport facilities everywhere, bonuses could be even bigger.
I'm pretty sure that this could be done in Galciv II by tweaking the XML files (I think MabusAltarn even has a tutorial on Youtube on how to do it). If I recall correctly, one problem was that there was no way to set a limit on how many negatives you could add, so it was possible to make a completely broken civ.
Also, one thing I didn't like about the old UI is that it could only display four choices at a time for spending customization points. So if you added more than four options, it would create a scroll bar, which I felt looked "messy" so I'd always avoid it.
It's a great idea though, and if it's not in the new game, hopefully the super-moddability of Galciv III will allow us to do it ourselves.
It not only could be done, but already has been done. For the record, I'm going to release a new version soon, which adds a couple more options, and changes the customisation points of the custom races for each "difficulty" (completely forgot about those).
I like the idea but all I really ended up seeing was 'Drengin plushies' and my mind went to a happy place. I would 100% order those if available. One of those ideas which is instantly amazing.
The only issue I have with this is that people tend to game it. Figure out how you're going to play, take positives that boost that, and take negatives that hinder something else and thus aren't really a huge negative. It's a good way to min/max the system.
Age of Wonders 2 was notorious for that (if you're playing as Life or Death, you could take the "Anarchist" penalty and it was really just free stats as it did absolutely nothing that mattered), but Endless Space had the same problem with it's customization system. Find some negatives that don't really bother you much, use them to take an uber positive, and you've become more powerful.
So if they're going to do it, I'd like to see the negatives be things that are universally bad for you.
Well there ya go!
You know I always meant to try your Autumn Twilight but never did get around to it. I haven't really played Galciv2 in a long time though. Maybe I'll start a game while waiting for Galciv3.
It's game, why not let people use what they want, at least in single-player, where all competitive functions are off by default? Following old mantra, purpose of the game is to have fun, and let others have fun too, but if you play alone, there is only you.
If you entirely against "faceroll class imba", then it would be possible to make bonuses small, ineffective from powergamer perspective. But seeing certain bonuses in Fallout, Tropico, or Hearts of Iron I can't see that as big problem, even if I agree with Endless Space example.
There is potentially a really easy fix for that. Let's say that there are four negative options and four positive options per skill tree. For every point you put into a negative, the next point gives you an exponentially larger negative. Whereas if you put a point into the positive, the next point after that gives you a smaller boost than the original +1 (Example: First Weapons point gives +10%, next point only boosts it up to 17%. On the other hand: -1 point in Weapons gives you -7% weapon effectiveness, the next point gives -21%.) I think that all the skill aspects were very important in the game (save for Courage and a couple of others) and a permanent negative in any one of them would affect your gameplay tremendously. Even a 10% decrease in your Influence ability could be a game changer if faced with the Krynn early game and late game would mean influential pressure from other civs that would threaten to turn your planets in a jiffy.
Of course the potential for min-maxing will always be intrinsic to the system unless heavy balancing were to ensue. In GalCivII whenever I was playing (sort of a casual here, not too much of a hardcore Suicidal-level player) I would always put my points into Economy, Fertility and Morale and I would choose Super Diplomat (which thankfully got nerfed in TA). I usually played against Tough AIs and I would usually be set for the entire game. Even then however, my victory was not assured (starting position accounted for a lot of that). I would often be faced with uncomfortable situations where all my battles were uphill, in the snow and I was beset on all sides by Drengin, Krynn and Korath alike.
What I'm really trying to say is that min-maxing can be a problem, but that depends entirely on the player and their starting position as well as the occurrence of certain random events. Beyond that, I doubt that the devs would let min-maxing become too prevalent a feature (example: allow only one negative point and stick with the four point positives system, thus limiting one's ability to overdevelop one tree while chopping the legs off another and expecting it to run 100 meters in a second). In any case, I think you are overplaying the problem Tridus.
I also believe that people like to have fun.
It's probably best, if you wait a little longer. I'm going to release a new version soon, which has some pretty big changes. Well, or at least a lot of changes. If all is going as planned, I should be able to release it in a week (or two). I just want to make sure, that I've got everything.
You're the goods so I'm sure it'll be great!
If you think I'm overplaying it, I probably came off stronger than intended. It's something that I've seen before in other games and would like to avoid, but not a game breaking problem at all. Creating custom races is a nice thing to have.
it it just may need to be shut off for meta verse and competitive MP games (sandbox and coop players won't care).
I don't really have a clear picture of how competitive play is supposed to work (heck I only threw my x-amount of $ at Stardock today ), so I am not too sure how the skill system will work. I think that positive traits on their own will unbalance competitive play enough to warrant removal (if competitive play is ever to be a thing, though I am not expecting Starcraft II levels of coverage and all that) or it would require enough nerfing for competitive play that the singleplayer would run on the same system (or on a separate one, who knows, I won't even be able to run the alpha of this game on my computer). I am hoping that the devs will address this matter in the future so that we may put our worries and fantasies to rest. Also, something to consider: If GalCivIII does go competitive, won't we just be stuck playing the default races anyway? Or will it just be a spree of Custom Races that get to cherry-pick their tech trees and skills? (Also assuming that the tech trees will follow in the footsteps of TA where each race has their own. Though that brings to mind the Custom Race Tech Tree which may just be forced onto everyone because it is generic.)
I'm ranting... I'll stop now...
(P.S. - If any of us ever happen to meet online I will likely be sporting a {PILZ} clan tag.)
Well, single player "competitive" play could be done with the Metaverse like GC2, assuming games are scored (and I'd expect they would be). Higher score, the better you did. With MP, it'd just be whoever wins the game by whatever means. In those cases custom races can get iffy because if they can be gamed to advantage, they will be very popular. But the super racial traits aren't really a big problem there since every race has one, and race selection already matters.
It's just a fact of life if you allow it, but since the game isn't competitively focused it's not a huge deal.
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