When I read GalCiv thinking of what is 4X strategy game in this article, I understood why GalCiv, although being a great game, still falls behind Sid Meier's Civilization. It is because they do not understand the greatest advantage that Civ has compared to GalCiv - as it is written by Draginol in his article "what is a 4x strategy game" - they think that eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate phases follow each other consequently - when one phase ends, the next begins.
This thinking is completely wrong and Sid Meiers Civilization proves that! The secret advantage that Civ has is that they make those 4X work simultaneously!
As I have already commented in this article, " It is the mix of those 4 EXes that compliment each other and that makes the game exciting, when those 4 work SIMULTANEOUSLY. This is why [early game is so interesting - because all 4eXes at the beginning are there and have not ended yet and] late game currently becomes far less interesting - because there is only 1 (!!!) EX left and that is EXtermination. But imagine if my proposal was there - if even in late stages there still was EXploration and EXpansion possible (and thus EXploitation, logically). It could be entirely different experience than that of now existing when all that is left in late stages is to manage monster fleets in monster maps.
Here is how those 4X work simultaneously for Sid Meier's Civ, throughout the whole game session:
eXploration: revealing map is only the initial phase of eXploration and even this first step is not without its challenges as barbarians always pose danger to scouts. But as time goes on, there are new and new things to explore - the strategic resources being the most obvious. Those reveal with time and effort and have huge impact in the game. It can be said, that the exploration of strategic resources is a way to continue eXploration phase throughout the whole game, because strategic meaning of the map changes. Not completely but in a balanced way, notably. The same applies to archeological ruins and, to some extent, the Compass technology, when players are able to travel ocean tiles. Since unability to travel the ocean in initial phase postpone the eXploration, there are multiple levels of eXploration that makes it a race to compete in and that have duration longer than just initial phase - eXploration takes place in multiple levels throughout the whole game. The child in us wants to explore with wonder, be amazed with new possibilities the toys/game map has, time and time again. And Civ gives us that the best way they can come up. But GalCiv... Heh... Exploration ends as soon as 1st ship travels through fog of war...
eXpansion: again, claiming territory is not a phase that starts at one point and ends in another, just to let the next phase begin. The cities grow the whole time, throughout the game in Sid Meiers Civilization, making eXpansion a phase that work simultaneously with other three X phases, throughout the whole game. Obviously, growing a city is completely different from growing/building a planet in GalCiv where a planet consists of flat, buildable tiles. Yes, there is a growing/eXpansion aspect and tile bonuses add a little spice, but it falls far behind from that Civ has, where you have multiple, MULTIPLE factors that take part into city development. In Civ, a city truly eXpands. For GalCivs planet it is less so, because number of tiles is predefined, the tiles are even in nature, understandably(?) you do not have to compete for planet tiles with neighbour civilizations and fewer factors take part in development in general.
eXploitation: obviously, eXploitation is a progressive phase in Civ when you can improve the improvements throughout the whole game, no matter if they are city districts or casual tile improvements. The same can be said for GalCiv's starbases. But, obviously and unfortunately Sid Meiers Civ is far better in its variety. In Civ you can "eXploit" [improve] just about anything, while in GalCiv you improve starbases that eXploit only strategic resources (durantium, thulium, antimatter, prometheon or etherium). Planetary resources has recently being added with Crusade, but even those cannot challenge the variety that can be improved in Civ. Yes, you can build different kind of starbases that give you bonuses, but I do not consider that eXploitation the same way a tile is eXploited/improved in Civ.
eXterminate: well, yes, that can progessively go on the whole time for sure, in all games, no matter be it Civ, GalCiv or else. And players abuse this option to full extent not necessarily because they prefer it, but also because it is the only option left in the late stages. Unfortunately.
I think I have made my main point why Civ is a game so good others can only aspire to - it is because in Civ all those 4 eXes work SIMULTANEOUSLY, an advantage that no other game has perfected so well than Civ.
Why this post is in the "Future ideas"? Because there is a space to improve GalCiv, no matter how good we value it already. And, perhaps, there is a thing or 2 that GalCiv devs could learn from the best 4X strategy game there is - Sid Meiers Civ.
Planet (including dead) eXploration? Nebulae eXploration? There are plenty of room to invent not-so-hard-to-do features, that would change now existing 4X order to simultaneous 4X. It takes some effort, but it is possible for GalCiv to SURPASS the all time leader, the Civ, both in sales and fanbase.
I haven't felt a late game grind, myself. I actually feel there is some late game that I'm missing out on. Like I epiphany Huge hulls and doom rays. Build some big ships, they dominate. Epiphany epiphany...tech victory, done. Is there no epic space battle at the end, my 10 doom dreadnoughts to his 30 nightmare corvettes? Admittedly, this is 4x--not a RPG. I just want to get some use out of those late techs, and they not be just stepping stones to tech victory.
The only late-game grind I feel is when two or three major factions surrender to me in a short period of time, and then I have to spend an hour for each one, absorbing it into my civilization sending ships into orbits, visiting each planet to review and set production, destroy 13 farms because only one is needed, etc.
That's fair, but this whole genre is 4X. I'm only here (or at Civ) because it's 4X, as are others, I'm sure. So now I'm even less certain than ever what you were expecting to get from this thread.
Just because this whole genre is 4X, does not mean that both games have crafted, executed that 4X in its utmost brilliance. I was arguing that Civ almost has, but GalCiv - not. Hope that enlightened you.
Enlightened, but I still disagree. If it weren't successfully implemented, I probably wouldn't be here. Anecdotal, yes. But fact.
Well, I guess this whole post was made in vein then. Next time I will just take a look if BIF is there.
I concur. While I can't say that Civ is factually, objectively the better game, the market seems to agree that it is.
And the key word here is "executed". Galciv3 has no shortage of brilliant ideas--more than Civ, in fact. It's just not executed on as much. Case in point: the economic model. Having raw production, % bonuses to raw production, % bonuses to net production? It's brilliant. Having planet tiles where you can build multiple of a thing, and where you position it matters? Bonus tiles? That compares favorably over Civ. But it's all for naught when the population and money system is unbalanced, and the building upgrades are seriously UP. Over half the colony improvements in that brilliant system are not worth building.
Or ideology. Does Civ have ideology? Civ4 did have mega events; I will grant that much. But half the ideology tree is useless. It's always the same choices. You mean I can choose Benevolent, where I can build ONE Elevation foundation--or I can go Malevolent and build Intimidation centers--which do basically the same thing--on every planet? A moment of brilliance, nerfed by a simple oversight.
Tetley, many games have very cool ideas that have not reached its potential just because of lazy developers. OF COURSE GalCiv have some cool stuff noone else has, including Civ.
But as you rightly put it - the key word is executed.
I mean - it is a crime to launch the Crusade in the state it was launched (the state the game still is). But lets not talk about bugs and imbalances here for a moment and lets focus on that 4X that I want to talk about all the time.
Apart from fog of war - where is eXploration in this game? There is no such a thing. Where is eXpansion? All planet tiles are even in nature. It could be 1 000 000 times more interesting if the planet tiles were supposed to be worked on. Lets say medium sized planet has 50 tiles but only 5 of them are intantly buildable, the rest have to be worked on. Very few tiles could be even in nature, the planets could be unique because they could have very different characteristics, very different tiles. Thats what I call eXpansion. But GalCiv devs are oblivious to such imagination.
Well crusade just came out. I think the base game is better. If we were going to compare five havent played six it doesnt even compare. Still thinking four is the best. It didnt have the inferior ideology system, but it basically replaced government with civics shouldve kept this.
I pretty much stopped playing civilization because of galactic civilizations. Im having a lot of fun playing crusades.
I politely disagree with this part. I think this game's imagination has outrun its execution. And I want to point out, it's not just game developers that run into this problem: ANY entrepreneur trying to market ANY product has this problem. It's why 90% of startup businesses fail: execution, execution, execution. The ideas are there. Ideas are cheap, in fact. Does anyone here not have a family member (or yourself) who has a brilliant idea for a new consumer product? It's not the lack of an idea: it's that you have to put in a crazy amount of work to make it happen.
I did, however, put forth my wish a long time ago--pre-Galciv3--that Galciv3 have lots of bonus tiles (which is more-or-less equivalent to what you said). I put that wish in my wishlist. They had to have read it. I think the reason they didn't go more overboard with having different planet tiles is because they wanted to play it conservatively. Galciv2 was successful without too many bonus tiles, and so they didn't want to risk the balance, micromanagement, etc. from having too many different tiles. The AI wouldn't get any easier, either. So if we are already saying that Galciv3 has taken on too grand a scope and hasn't quite executed on it all, then it would be frustrating to them to then say, "Why couldn't you implement this other big change?"
I admit, I may be critical about some things, but I do want to keep it constructive; I really do. I would love nothing more than to swing by Detroit and hear about all their struggles over pizza and coffee. That would be more fun than playing the game itself.
p.s. Wilber, good point about comparing ideology to Civ4 civics.
Thanks the civics was great.
I like your idea about more tiles. I have said, and would like the last terraforming tech to be continously reusable until all the land tiles are used up. I think the problem is probably a carry over from two unless they fixed please correct me if this has been fixed. Is that the ai will terrAFORm every tile even if there are other unterriformed tiles. This could be solved by checking to see if there are other unterriformed tiles. It would require a code rewrite to do this.
This would trivalise the classes, but moot.
True, Tetley, true.
But maybe its not the LACK of ideas that is the problem, but the abundance of em. I mean - if you go through forums, you have to plough through thousands and thousands of ideas. Some of them are plain stupid in my opinion, but there are lots of normal ones that are worth considering.
WHat we as players can do is to come up with the best ideas that would enrich the gameplay the most. Thats all we can do, the programming part is supposed to be for devs.
Modding is a cool thing for 2 reasons: 1st: you can change gameplay more to your liking 2nd: you can do/invent things the developers didnt do, fix stupid things that were not supposed to be there. Fallout 3 and 4 are "shining" examples for this 2nd and sad modding reason. We will see how much GalCiv devs will polish the game, but right now modding is goddamn topical. On top of that, modding is more limited than most programmers would like.
True, Tetley, true.But maybe its not the LACK of ideas that is the problem, but the abundance of em. I mean - if you go through forums, you have to plough through thousands and thousands of ideas. Some of them are plain stupid in my opinion, but there are lots of normal ones that are worth considering.
Before MoO3 came out I followed the development on the forums for nearly two years bacuase Master of Orion 2 was one of my best games of all time. You cannot imagine how disappointed I was when I had to compare the finished game to all the brilliant visions and ideas that the original designer originally had ... or maybe you can
I played Civ 1-4, didn't play 5 or 6 due to the reviews of same. IMHO I believe 4's last version was the best. Comparing the Civ series to GC is difficult due to the obvious abnormalities of the medium (vis-a-vis one world map against the expanse of space). One commonality is pushing back the darkness in both series. I played both with conquest as the only endgame so my view is slanted in that way. To me, the AI's do a fair job in exploration but the exploitation phase is lacking in both. Maybe I play them with a bit more gusto as I usually end up 1st in all 3 areas, production, tech and military even before the 3rd X (extermination) has started, even on the higher settings. My concern is that the AI's are both lacking in military targeting priorities. Their usual move is go for the closest/weakest target and they are easily trapped or made to bite on diversionary tactics.
My point is that given the same amount of time the AI does not make good decisions so upping the difficulty level just tilts the resources in their favor via bonuses instead of improving the decision making ability of said AI. AI is and always will be key to the games playability. I have a project manager's background in large IT applications and perhaps the developers/designers could use some work in table-izing the data so that the decision making process is improved in an ever changing universe/world on-the-fly. If it's possible include their racial tendencies and attributes as input to their strategic decisions and more importantly tactics. If the AI is playing a strategic game it would help to synchronize the strategy with the tactics i.e plan your work then work your plan.
Just my two bits.
More ideas are a good thing, but we should be careful not to take it personally when others disagree with us. It was not meant to be personal; just that the arguments given did not sway me. Don't just tell me I'm wrong, because that'll never advance the conversation. And best of all, I can promise that if you convince me that your argument has merit, you will have no stronger ally, no more vocal champion. But to get that, you have to actually change my mind by convincing me that your way either makes the game more challenging, more realistic, less fussy to play, and more rewarding to succeed at. All things that are good for the game, right?
Point - I agree that terraforming, once achieved at the highest level of technology, should make all but the most inhospitable tiles eligible for development. I mean, look at what we can do on our current planet! I'd add to that, that with some exceptions, I should be able to build things on most tiles right from the beginning, but maybe not "everything". Seriously, do I REALLY need arable land to build a continent of factories or a Texas-sized planet-based gun capable of taking down transports?
Point - I don't expect this to ever change, but I find the planet screen to be somewhat coarsely-granulated. It seems preposterous that a single tile can cover thousands of square miles, yet only be able to support a single city or a single space elevator. I want to see more detail at the colony level, and yet I don't want this game to become Civ VI. Maybe we can split the difference and be allowed to build a corral for those giant worms, or a dude ranch for riding those horse-sized insects? Giddyup!
Point - The Ideology tracks are not completely useless. I think they do balance out. Oh sure, one track may offer a "one-shot" improvement, as compared to that same track of a different Ideology, but if you look at the other tracks, and compare the totality of each Ideology, they do ultimately balance out fairly well with the other Ideologies. Of course, improvements can always be had, right?
So, to convince you on the ideology point: Benevolent can rock in a Tiny galaxy. Free colonies? That and Brindle are a big deal when you've only got 3 colonizable planets. On anything large, though, not so much. You get a few free administration, but 51 planets instead of 50 is not a big deal. Certainly not enough to spend an empire-wide ideology over. Besides, you can hire colony ships as mercenaries. The 150 research point pick is nice in the early game, but you are contending with other picks for your first pick. The second research pick is not very good, unless you have zero relics (such as on a tiny map).
Enter Malevolent. Intimidation centers on every planet--which besides being worthwhile to build for the "approval" bonus, convey ideology points. 5 points a turn when you've got 50 of them. Next in the line? +10 raw production on your home world--useful on a tiny map. But then, probably the best bonus in the game: 100% ship construction!! And ship construction means money. You can Treasure Hunter the tar out of it. You can churn out fleets and just let them die like nobody's business. Any problems with the maintenance? Just dial it back a little and build a treasure hunter.
Pragmatic: they have probably the best first pick in the free constructors. It doesn't get less useful if you pick it later, and on large maps that's 3 free administration, and that admin translates to relics. The next two picks in that line are also useful. Arceans just flat out rock after you get that third one. They will probably have almost zero mining issues after they pick the 4th. Pragmatic's preparedness centers, however, are not so great.
All this to say: is malevolent the only useful track? No. Pragmatic is useful, too. Benevolent is useful on small maps. But only one line in each track is really worth it. 75% of the ideology picks are just fluff. But on large/malevolent, it doesn't even matter, because you can pick them all.
Frogboy was describing earlier that the AI is already tableized, in that it reads off the XML and makes parameterized decisions based on that. That would be extremely difficult to code a good AI for.
I have an idea: take a machine learning approach. Have AI's play one another overnight with different XML's, collect the data and train. Now measure different measures, such as production, military, money, winning, and weight them. Use ML to infer the decisions. But that approach is extremely advanced--one could get published in the ACM Journal if they succeeded at that. Google would probably hire you for $180k a year.
I'm certainly biased because I only play larger maps and focus on conquest victory. That said, the benevolent ideology is completely useless to me because even though I'm a sucker for research, I can get more research through expansion (via malevolent) than I can by choosing peace and harmony. That feels backwards based on the tree designs. Most of the colony tech choices are based around influence/research/diplomacy vs production/wealth.
On small maps, I'd say malevolent still has ben beat due to +10 homeworld production. That translates to a huge amount of not just research but wealth, social, and ships. I'll argue with tetleytea and claim it as the best bonus in the game followed closely by prag's three constructors due to both's early game advantage. Getting that 10 production makes your homeworld an across the board powerhouse.
One day I'd love to play a benevolent influence focused conquest strategy. Right now, that's just a good way to lose.
Tetley, you've made some good points there. But some suggestions as to how to improve the improvable wouldnt hurt at all.
What would you do to improve those 75% ideology picks to make em all worth?
And lets not talk that 180K Google "option" alright? Whats next step for Stardock? Hire rocket scientists? Purchase military equipment? Lets talk real options here.
Who's to say Stardock devs are not talented people capable of it? I don't think Brad's a Ph.D., but he's doing AI. If he can build a 200-person company and an AI, he could likely do it.
Is Ideology moddable? I'm not seeing an IdeologyDefs.xml file. If it is, I'll try modding it and see what I come up with. If not, I can just post some ideas.
Wtf? How are they "SJW"? Explain.
Im not a big fan of the Civ games, played a bit of Beyond Earth and Civ 6, was ok but nothing too interesting. GalCiv3 is a lot better.
Couldn't agree more, except I played 4 and 5... Pretty boring games IMO. Cossacks 3 is more fun, too.
Step #1: Increase our budget by 8X to be in line with a typical Civ game.
Step #2: ???
Step #3: Profit
There is so much ahead for GalCiv III and since the Civ IV and Civ V teams now work with Stardock (Mohawk Games = Civ IV leads, Oxide Games = Civ V leads) we have been able to compare notes.
BTW, GalCiv III's original designer was Jon Shafer (Civilization V). You can still see a lot of his influence on the base game including, as we call it, the Shafer button for the turn button.
His influence was somewhat stronger on Sorcerer King.
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