4X strategy. You may have heard of the term. It stands for: eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate. They are a specific genre of strategy game. Today we are going to talk about them and how Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade, aims to innovate the genre.
Besides 4X, there are other genres: Real-Time Strategy games (RTS), such as Ashes of the Singularity and StarCraft, focus on harvesting resources to build units in order to destroy the enemy with it all happening in real-time. Grand Strategy Games (GSG), such as Stellaris and Europa Universalis, tend to use continuous turns (similar to real-time) with the action focusing at the nation state (or galactic state) level.
The best known 4X game of all time is, by far, Sid Meier's Civilization. 4X games are typically turn-based (with the exception of Sins of a Solar Empire) and typically revolve around balancing finite resources in order to make "interesting choices."
The ideal 4X game would be one in which each turn presents an interesting choice to the player. In Sid Meier's Civilization, the player is quickly confronted with a series of interesting choices when it comes to the first technology they research, the first unit they build, where they settle their first city; each decision leads to the next. Each game develops a natural evolution from exploring the world in order to know where the resources are, to expanding into the world to capture those resources, to exploiting the resources you have - and then exterminating all those who oppose you - 4X.
Sid Meier's Civilization is a historical 4X that starts with the first humans leaving their hunting and gathering ways. Galactic Civilizations begins the moment people leave the Earth to colonize new worlds. Unlike with a historical 4X, a future-based 4X has the challenge of making the alien approachable. For example, not only do we have to explain what antimatter is, but why you would want it.
Today, we will talk about how Stardock's mega expansion, Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade (Crusade), will tackle the nature of future resources; but also how such resources allow us to explode the final act of the genre to resolve the age old "late game grind" problem.
If I were to describe the fundamental difference between Crusade and Galactic Civilizations III, it would be that Crusade is all about resources and how you use them. Where the base game was largely about building a galactic civilization and the productive capacity of your people towards your strategic ends, Crusade couples that with the importance of resources and having access to them.
As I am fond to saying to my fellow World War II history buffs, it's not like Germany could just rush buy another Panzer division.
In Crusade, almost everything requires access to a resource; colonizing a bunch of planets and having a huge population won't be enough. You will have to own, beg, borrow or steal critical resources to succeed.
NEW in Crusade: You can see what resources are on a planet before you colonize it.
In the base game, the planet class (a number from 1 to 20) was the driving factor of whether you wanted that planet or not. The higher the number, the higher the population it could support. The higher the population, the more it could produce. In Crusade, players can also see what special resources are on the planet before colonizing. Suddenly, that class 9 planet with Techapod Hives on it might be more valuable than the class 14 planet next door.
Turn 1
No more starbase spam and no more colony rush
The first thing a GalCiv III player will notice is that Constructors, Colony Ships, and Survey Ships now use Administrative resources. Your time, or I should say, the time of your various minions, is finite. This should be obvious but we have not included minion time (administration) as a resource in this manner before. Thus, the early part of a Galactic Civilizations game was two fold: Rush build as many colony ships as you could provided you had good planets for them to go to, and rush build constructors otherwise.
But if I start with only 4 administrative resources, what should I build first? Now you have to make some interesting decisions, especially since Survey Ships are now buildable from the start and the galaxy is littered with cargo-containers containing trace amounts of resources waiting to be picked up.
How do you get more administrative resources? In the Galactic Citizens article, we discussed how you can now train citizens to be Administrators. Every so often, a citizen emerges and you can specialize him or her into a particular category based on what technologies you have. If you want to have lots of starbases, survey ships and colonies, then you will need to train a lot of Administrators. But training an Administrator means not training a Spy, or a Diplomat, or an Engineer, or a Scientist, or a Commander, or a General or any number of other specialists.
Citizens determine how your resources are used.
Now, still on turn 1 I look at my randomly generated map playing as the humans. In this game, I got a great start: Earth and Mars both have rare resources on them (or like those reading this, I restarted the game until I got my super mega awesome start...).
Still Turn 1 you have access to some interesting resources
Techapods aren't space horses. For one thing, they're on planets. For another...they, um...well, shut up. That's what. Seriously, Techapods aren't new in the GalCiv universe but they were previously just an abstract trade resource. In Crusade, a resource is a resource is a resource. The idea behind Techapods is that if we could find a super robust alien creature that was highly trainable we would totally use them.
The early part of a 4X is about exploring. As I uncover the galactic fog I begin to see various types of interstellar resources, as well as some planets that have their own special resources. Should I rush buy a colony ship to get the planet or rush buy the constructor to claim the precious interstellar resources?
The second act in a 4X game is expanding - that is, claiming territory; this is done through colony ships and constructors. In Crusade, constructors build starbases but are not required to upgrade them anymore.
Administrators are required for both colonies and starbases.
Colonizing planets gives you ownership of that planet's resources and starbases give you control of nearby interstellar resources. Planets produce a variety of resources based on what you build on the planet.
The 6 standard resources of a planet
Crusade changes the way food is used: In the base game, food is a local resource that determines a planet's population cap. In Crusade, food is a global resource that is consumed by cities that can be on other planets.
My Food planet
My City Planet
And then there are the rare resources found only on planets. Techapods is a rare resource mentioned earlier. Below is an incomplete list of some of the other resources you might find.
There are a lot of resources in the galaxy. You may play many games before you find them all.
We'll talk more about these in a bit.
The Expand phase of 4X games ends when most or all of the planets and resources have been claimed. In a well designed 4X game, the Explore and Expand phases are very enjoyable and make the player feel like he's had to make some challenging decisions. The next phase is when players begin to execute their particular strategies for victory: Exploitation of their resources.
The lines have been drawn. The territories claimed. Through diplomacy, warfare, trade or other means players must begin executing the strategy they believe will lead them to victory. Exploit represents the exploitation of resources human or otherwise.
In Crusade, starbases construct their modules locally. If you have the necessary resources, you can build it.
Your planets are now producing resources each turn that go into your global inventory. Similarly, your starbases are mining resources to go into your inventory as well.
One big change from the base game is that in Crusade, starbases are upgraded directly. Since resources accumulate each turn, players can, over time, upgrade their starbases provided they have access to the necessary resource. A good player may stock a lot of resources, build a group of constructors with a large fleet, and build a massive forward base as a prelude to war.
But what happens if you don't have legitimate access to a given resource? Fear not, Crusade has a new strategy: Scavenging. The galaxy is littered with cargo containers that have...been misplaced. When one is collected, another one is usually spawned somewhere else. Thus, constructing a fleet of survey ships is now a viable strategy for obtaining resources because these cargo containers often contain trace amounts of various resources. The player who wants to win via other means than direct warfare can be competitive this way.
Cargo containers often contain trace amounts of a given resource.
What resources you have access to will impact what strategies you employ. Each interstellar resource has a particular purpose:
Suddenly, a good trade agreement providing resources per turn suddenly makes sense. Diplomacy stops being about ripping off aliens for their money and instead negotiating resource treaties that, by their nature, cannot be exploited by humans.
As much as you might want to build that cruiser with 35 moves per turn, doing so might consume most of your antimatter. On the other hand, suddenly strike forces with constructors that can build hyper lanes, start to make more sense provided you can protect the starbases that provide them.
As cool as the Citizen system and resource system is, it has the added benefit of drastically reducing micromanagement. You can hyper-specialize your planets without feeling like you're cheesing the game because you are doing it through means you earned and doing so in a way that doesn't require constant tinkering.
With Citizens, you have much more direct control of your resources without the micro-management.
At this stage you have leveraged your resources to execute your strategy. Victory means destroying the opposition. You can win in Galactic Civilizations through a variety of means: Ascension, Conquest, Diplomatic and Culture. But in any case, victory means eliminating those who oppose you one way or the other.
How a 4X game handles its last act determines whether it will be remembered as a classic or as a boring slog. One classic 4X - Master of Orion 2 - is well loved 20 years after release, partially because of how well it handled its final act. In that game, they meant extermination quite literally as players would race to various planets dropping biological weapons. Good times.
Crusade provides new strategic avenues to execute your strategy...decisively.
To recap:
Late game, you are probably either in a desperate fight for survival, looking for a miracle, or in a position of power looking for a swift and satisfying triumph. To deliver your miracle and/or decisive blow, we combine citizens and resources together to deliver a series of super abilities that can be activated by sacrificing a citizen along with a lot of resources.
Pick a Citizen and...retire them.
We euphemistically refer to this as "Promoting" but in essence, you can spend a bunch of accumulated resources and based on your ideology, sacrifice a citizen to activate a one-time super power.
Note: Screenshots here are still a work in progress, the final game will look a bit different and have different descriptions.
Have a scientist? Spend some nanites and antimatter and instantly get that technology you previously needed 90 turns for in exchange for retiring him.
Fighting a desperate war? Sacrifice your Commander for the cause by having him single handedly destroy an entire enemy fleet (provided you have the resources and the right ideology) .
At last, you can finally work your people to death in a video game...
...Doubly true if you play as the Drengin Empire.
And of course, Spies. We'll have a whole Dev Diary dedicated to them.
Depending on your ideology, there are some pretty horrible things you can do with your Spies provided you have the right resources.
Every Citizen specialty has multiple super powers that they can use. Often, using that power means sacrificing them or at least retiring them. Sometimes it's a power that can be used over and over. It just depends on what resources you have, how much you have, and what your dominant ideology is. The ideology part matters because a benevolent civilization will not be able to use their spy to poison the atmosphere of a target world; and a malevolent civilization won't be able to access some of the cool influence super powers.
Through this combination, rather than the late game being a slog, it instead begins to wrap up in a very satisfying manner. The player dominating the game will be able to use their resource advantage to bring the game to a swift conclusion. Or the crafty underdog may be able to make a bold move through sacrificing their citizens to bring them back into the game or alternatively act as a spoiler.
What has made the 4X genre so compelling over the years is that they are a sandbox for the imagination. Each game is a story complete with a beginning, a middle and an end with the narrative told not through in-game tidbits, but through your actions and deeds. What Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade aims to do is give you more pages for your story.
Your story is told through your choices:
Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade will be coming out this Spring. Please feel free to ask questions and comment below.
Guns Germs and Steel
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Wealth and Poverty of Nations
Sid Meier: 4X games are a series of interesting decisions
Brad Wardell is the founder and CEO of Stardock. He designed Galactic Civilizations I and Galactic Civilizations II and has returned to co-design Galactic Civilizations III: Crusade. His home page is www.littletinyfrogs.com.
Are we going to have to provide 10s of pictures of aliens for galactic citizens every time we make a new faction? That could become very problematic. I'm assuming we can program in their names...
@JVDouglass Thanks!
Looking forward to it. I have cooled on the current game somewhat and this sounds like something that will get me involved again.🤓
add
to any improvement, I add it to the colony capital
That's what I did. I modded a lot more things (but not on a deep level) and I don't want to fiddle with Nexus or whatever, so it's difficult to make my mod available other than posting changes like jvdouglass did.
^^ Did that also in GST, reduced what you get from Techs(55%) and Map Sizes(2 per map size) too. So Planets pretty much act as the cap on Admins. Scales pretty well this way.
Side note, ATM, AdministrationUsage function doesnt reduce admins, but if you say have it on a colony module, once that ship is used it does add 1 Admin back to the pool. AdministrationAwarded crashes the client.
In reference to "food planets," will blockading the planet (surrounding it with fleets on six sides) prevent food from getting out? If it doesn't, then there is no negative associated with the strategy.
^^^ This opens up an entirely new can of worms directly associated with diplomacy. While I would LOVE this feature and there is several novels (see Foundation) that would support this type of diplomatic action. I don't think this would be in Crusade.
I would like to 'blockade' planets and have it NOT provoke an all out war. This could be used as a step between open hostilities and simmering anger. Blockading can be used as means to disrupt trade, food or resources. All of which would be a prelude to war.
Back in Alpha the idea of blockading planets missed the point that we are dealing with space. 3 dimensions and the fact that space is 'mind-bogglingly' big!
I'd like to see some sort of 'interdiction' setting we can put on ships that are either parked on trade lines or near planets, give the ships a 2 or 3 hex range and then a percentage chance (say 25%) to intercept anything coming or going to that planet. Tech lines can then be added to support this type of actions (space piracy, buccaneers or some similar name).
I have always wanted the Pirates in GCIII to be stepped up in the number of actions per turn they can do, like pull up a trade screen and politely (or not) extort you for goods/services/cash or food or else......
Most sci fi games hit this problem of 3D space vs. 2D game boards. The answer is simple, if you cannot blockade a planet, then ships should be allowed to pass through each other's hexes without problem. You cannot have it both ways, either ships have a radius zero zone-of-control (preventing passage), or they don't. If you allow "3D maneuvers" like going allowing a blockade runner to go "over" a hex, why can't other ships do that in normal space and avoid a fight? If space is so big that a blockade runner can simply "slip past" the blockade, then why can't other ships do that in deep space (which even more empty). Indeed, "slipping past a blockade" should actually be harder starting from a planet, because it is a known point-source, and all the blockading ships must do is watch one single location in space, as opposed to scanning lightyears to try to find the enemy.
In short, blockades not only should be an option. I would argue they must be an option in order to make the came internally consistent, and there is no scientific reason I can fathom why they aren't necessary given other game mechanics.
This diverges from the topic of this thread but......
Back..long dark ages ago with a reviled game called 'Call 2 Power 2' by Activision. You had trade routes that went all over the map from point A to point B. In that game you could park a military unit on the 'dotted line' of travel of that trade route and 'siphon off' funds or disrupt it.
That feature would be kinda abusive in GCIII unless the malevolent ai's in the game could be made to abuse players with it.
Blockading could be done in GCIII I suppose but you would have to have some 'rules' to do it. I'd say you would have to have a fleet of 5 or more ships and they must be parked in an adjacent hex of a planet. Such actions immediately drop your diplomacy by 2 types or a negative percentage if we go by points per turn...Blockading prevents the planet from receiving any resource be it money, food, construction material or citizens (going to the planet I suppose).
Ok now Horemvore just needs to write up the script and email it to Stardock. I am pretty sure we can have it in game in a few days!
Trade route raiding is in the code. Total turns of raid and consecutive turns of raid to kill the trade route is also in the code.
I've never actually seen the AI park a ship on a trade to take advantage of this. Worse, pirates don't raid trade lanes. They don't act like pirates at all. They act like suicidal lunatics.
I suspect the AI was never written a code to go after trade lanes like it did in the previous Gal Civs.
Gross oversight! (>smacking Stardock's hand<)
Was it GC1 or GC2 that had the mini freighters that could be attacked and destroyed? If I recall correctly after the mini freighter was destroyed 3 times (might be off on the number) you got a message that the trade route was being discontinued because it was too dangerous. I liked that mechanism.
To bring it back to the thread, I agree that any one of the "dotted lines" (trade, sponsrorship) and indeed any physical product of a planet (such as production or food) "should" be interdictable as a matter of course, but there is a big difference between attacking a dotted line and surrounding a planet/ asteroid/ starbase (food starbases?)/ whatever so that no dotted lines can get through. Just blocking a dotted line may not be effective, since the ships represented by the line can just go around you. Cutting it off at the source or destination with a full six-hex blockade where the dotted line can't go around the blockading ships is simple logic, and is a geometric consequence of the unique point termini of line segments (i.e., it is logical by definition of the problem), because the source and target cannot move.
Not including blockading in one form or another as an option would represent an unusual departure from what is otherwise a reasonably coherent and internally consistent game, and would give large empires the benefits of economies of scale without the potential pitfalls.
Dark Avatar had it I don't think that twilight had it.
Indeed, that was great and we need this mechanics back. It put on another layer of strategy when playing (againts) merchant empires.
I often constructed raider ships - no defenses, small attack, lots of engines, sensors and support. And I raided AI trading as hell
But if that mechanic is brought back it would only be reasonable (and fun) to be able to assign escorts to your mini freighters, otherwise raiding would be too easy.
And pirates should be made more "piratey" as was mentioned in others threads for a long time now.
I certainly recall attacking freighters from GC 2 -- IIRC attacks could cancel a whole trade route there so you had to establish another one.
What do you have your fleets for, my friend?
Whether you can use your "normal" fleets for that depends on how it's implemented. If there would be real, attackable minifreighters using your fleets would mean you would have to check the position of every freighter of every trade route per turn and then move you escort fleets manually to cover each freighter that should be protected. That doesn't sound like fun anymore.
Instead if you could assign one (or more) of the ships in orbit around the planet where the trade route starts to the mini freighter and theses ships would accompany the freighter automatically on its course (moving with the speed of the slowest ship like a normal fleet) that would be great.
If you issue the order to escort a mini freighter and said freigther is not there yet the ship waits and joins the freighter automatically when it arrives on the planet.
If you decide to stop escorting the mini freighter the ship or ships just stop following the freighter and appear at the current position of the freighter on the map.
All of these discussions come to one single point in our game and that is all pointing to some changes in Diplomacy. One thing I would really like to see is a change in how the ai decides to go to war.
Now I think that destroying another Civs ship or even a fleet should not be instant grounds to go to war. If we leave that over here, then we can open other routes to war and theats that both the Ai and we the player can use.
Using the example above, having an escort with your traders is fine or just making your traders armed would be enough. So now we have 3 types of ai that can cause you harm. The Pirates (should be a non aligned major faction but my screams are ignored), and Major Civ players (Drengin, Yor, ect.) and Minors (all races that comprise minors.
So if the Drengin attack your freighter to be a dick or because he gains money or food from doing so, it is NOT at act of war but an act of aggression. If you go and destroy it while he was attacking your freighter should he suddenly be mad at you or should there be no faction change with him since he was already doing bad things to you? This is just ONE thing that can drive game developers bonkers. Its hard to make that kind of behavior.
I would like Diplomacy to have a (one set of points per incident) progression system. I send a fleet into your space, blow up a star-base (+100 points angry), go and blow up your fleet nearby (another +100 points) and then finally I give money or tech or ships/material/food to his 'perceived' enemy (+100 angry points). All of this would add up and you would have various thresholds on your way to war. I'd say at some point cap the ai declares unless it sees its futile in which case it does everything it can to get other ai to 'gang up' on you.
Pirates are an entirely different lever to pull that should be Capitalized on. Keep them non aligned but can be hired out to interdict another civ and by using espionage can you reveal who the one behind it is > this would add angry bonuses from some civs and may give happy bonuses from others...
Ok, off to work...
Wow, it truly does look to be a different experience. I too am excited! Honestly just the removal of colony and starbase spam is a big improvement.
My question is around ideologies, are there going to be any changes there? Will my citizen choice influence my ideology at all?
Eventually, operations short of war, like psyops (say, rigging elections, espionage, guerrilla conflicts and asymmetrical warfare, blockading, trade-related malfeasance, providing weapons tech or warships to opposing civilizations, sheltering pirates) would be great to explore in more detail, although they might be taxing on the AI. One such activity is already prominently featured: influence and planet flipping. I do think the current AI is too permissive of planet flipping. It would be ideal at some level to develop a more complicated relationship between quasi-hostile actions, natural competition (how close is someone getting to victory? Are they getting too powerful?), and the decision to go to war.
In the geopolitical situation today, certain powers (not to get too political) have made a habit of 'salami slicing,' slowly using influence, covert action, and political maneuvering to eventually effect a fait accompli in the long-term. For example, if GCIII ever considered the species of populations, one might be able to foment interspecies strife on a conquered planet to prevent the population from being used effectively for production, or to promote nationalism to stymie development and eventually 'reverse flip' a flipped planet.
To be clear, I do NOT want to start a discussion about current politics here... while they are a good example of the things I am talking about, I think these forums should welcome people of all nationalities, opinions, beliefs, and motivations. It is just a game, really...
i can have a lot of "fun" with this one...when i can get the game working again...
Privateers and rebellions are coming.
Replying to your latest GalCiv: LOve your analysis but far too exhausting. Having tried various 4X I go back to MOO1. Short, simple, restful.
Your one of those small maps people huh.
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