So, hi everyone! I'm new. Just got into GalCiv3 recently. And I know this is all probably super presumptuous of me (I'm only on my 2nd game in the main game mode so far) but I've been thinking a lot about this game over the last few weeks and wanted to pitch in my two billion credits (what I assume b.c. stands for?) in for some feature requests on anything that might be in development for the game going forward.
Currently, I've got most of the DLC, so I'm up to date on most of the features of the game I think. And after a lot of hours dropped into the game over the last few weeks, I've gotten to understand most of the systems (I think, anyway) that are in place.
So here's a short list of stuff I'd like to see:
1) Flavor/Flair/Polish - Planets should get their names when they're colonized by factions, and all planets in a system should be re-nameable.
It's pretty obvious that there was some kind of backer based naming going on with the planets in the game from some of what I've seen thus far. In my current game as the Iridium Corporation the Altarians have colonized the "Yoloswagulus" System. Which is pretty funny. But it's also weird because it was *always* the Yoloswagulus system. Which doesn't exactly make much sense.
I think it'd be pretty cool if it had just been "TV-377" or even good ol' "Yoloswagulus" until it got colonized by the AI, then, upon being colonized, got its mark put upon it from the faction in question. Somehow I doubt it was the Altarians and their mystic nobility that came up with that name, nor do I think they'd be OK with it. It's a bit immersion antithetical.
If there were faction dependent colony name lists, so they'd add their unique names to planets they put colonies on, it would help make the game's evolving narrative feel a lot more alive. Just a simple thought there (and the Snathi could get the weird meta joke ones, like Yoloswagulus, since that seems to fit when they've got citizens named "Boss Cuddler" and "Prince Biscuit" and all.)
On this note too, I'd really appreciate it if I could rename dead planets. Or at least, if I rename a star, all dead planets in that system will get the name of the star followed by the numerical designation. This is just for personal RP purposes, I guess. But I like to find the theme with a civ and rename planets and stuff according to their concept (EX: right now as the Iridium Corp. all my colonies are named after "corporate" or financial concepts, like Marketplace, Shareprice, Reserve, et cetera). But I can't rename dead planets, and so I'll have the Buyout colony in the Merger system with dead planets Yoloswagulus II and III. It's just a bit irksome. Not much. Just a tad.
2) At least enough "official" Civs for the largest map size without repeats, and without the Old School Terrans.
I like using the official and animated Civs for the most part thus far. I've messed around a bit with the creator and made one to test out its features, and it's nice and robust. But it does pale in comparison to the much nicer, animated official civs. And I'd love to play a ludicrous sized map with only official civs that are all animated and alive and balanced. But right now, even after the Snathi, Mercenaries and Crusader DLC I still can't do that. And I don't want to add the oldschool terrans since they're from the past and a bit immersion antithetical. So what, we need like? Three or four more, I think? Here's hoping we get a Malevolent variation on the Terrans and three more!
3) Some element of tactical control on fleet battles.
So, currently, even though an immense amount of time can be spent customizing and building up fleets, using legions to invade a planet has much more going on in terms of tactics for the player to sink their teeth into.
In a fleet battle the ships just go at each other and shoot each other up. The player can't do anything about what they do other than direct the composition of the ships themselves. But when you invade with legions you get a whole host of options on what you can do. From an enhancer tactic like orbital bombardment, information warfare, or biological warfare, to picking the particular tiles and approach vectors your legions are going to head to first, and potentially accomplishing different objectives, like destroying different parts of the planets infrastructure.
This is . . . a bit backwards, I think. There needs to be some element of player choice when a fleet encounters another fleet. Even if it's just a rock/paper/scissors tactical command at the end of the day which causes the fleet to assume different battle lines, use different ship types more prevalently, or to be more defensive or aggressive.
I say this mostly because as it is, fleet battles are completely lopsided. Either you have enough ships that are good enough to smash the enemy fleet, they have enough to do the same to you, or you don't and you're at best sacrificing ships to chip away at a doom stack while you mass a different armada elsewhere to push back against them.
It would be a lot more interesting if you can issue at least one general strategy and maybe consider one particular tactic per battle.
General strategies would be a list of three options, different depending on whether you were attacking or defending, that roughly fall into three strategies based on and which synergize with the three weapon categories, and which ultimately change three factors of a fleet: the general formation of the fleet, the optimal range at which they try to maintain distance relative with the enemy, and when they release fighters/drones from bays. Right now, I've got three core formation concepts myself with an offense/defense variant for each, and I'm sure other people can come up with more:
Hammer Formation - If I'm sending in laser based ships, it's important that they close in with the enemy as soon as possible, and put extra energy into their tactical speed at the outset. But more importantly, is that this means I need my strongest ships, in terms of HP and defense, in the front and a bit spread out to take the first hits of the enemy fleet, while the smaller and weaker ships follow behind so that they can work as a force multiplier after the bigger lead ships start duking it out with the enemy and their targeting solutions are locked in. On a 2D field, this formation would probably resemble a hammer, with the stronger wider bulkier leading formation, with a narrow composition of weaker ships making up the tailing head of the fleet. This would be a formation that would begin engagements with longer range weapons for the lead ships while they still try to keep moving in close and use their laser weapons as their primary preferred armament, and would hold off on releasing fighters until after the lead ships engage.
Sword Formation - The 100% opposite of the hammer. It puts the weaker ships up front as a screen, to draw fire and likely die while the heavier ships hang back and spread out in the "hilt" of the sword. This wears down the enemy with weak disposable ships as they try to close in on the stronger rear ships, which then finish them off. Likely the the perfect counter to the hammer on defense, but the exact wrong choice on offense. This formation again optimizes for laser weapons, but it gets out fighters ASAP to lead the tip of the sword.
Sickle Formation - The ships spread out in a line that forms a "U" shape, but much wider, like crescent moon or a sickle. Smaller and weaker ships are on the flanks and move forward, while the strong core remains in the center-rear. They try to stay in relative formation and focus on kinetic ranges for the core ships as the optimal firing range, with wings engaging at whatever range their best weapon is. The idea is for the flanks to engage slightly before the center does, and distract just long enough for the core to catch up and reinforce them before they're totally destroyed. It's a generally balanced formation meant to optimize the potential HP of your fleet, with a bit of favoritism for your bigger ships. The bigger ships in the center try to maintain distance with the enemy fleet if possible, and fighters are released immediately to form the front of the flanks if possible.
Bow Formation - The opposite of the sickle. The fleet is still arranged in a curved, wide line, but it's now an upside down, wide "U", with the weaker and smaller ships forming a line of reinforcement behind them (the "string" of the bow shape). Again, the idea is to maintain kinetic range distance with the enemy fleet and maximize HP on all ships by presenting as many ships as possible at once to the enemy fleet, while also presenting as many guns as possible. The main difference here is that this presents the stronger ships to the enemy first, with the weaker ships engaging slightly after contact, but still a lot of ships are meant to engage at basically the same time. Fighters could be released at roughly the same time as first contact with the enemy fleet. The bow should beat the sickle when defending against it.
Brick Formation - The most basic formation really, all ship are arrayed in a wall formation and kept even and equidistant with each other and do not break formation even as the engagement continues. They engage at the optimal ranges of their best weapons, but it's really meant to be for missile weapons so that the enemy faces an absolute deluge of missiles from all directions at once before they can close in with closer weapons. With mixed weapon types though, this means that as the enemy gets closer, they engage in more fire from more sources, but not all at once. This is also meant to be a fleet that fires as it reverses, moving forward at the start to get into missile range, but then keeping this distance if at all possible, while unloading more an more missiles and staying in formation. Fighters are held back in this formation until you start to lose ships, then they're released to fill in gaps in the lines and maintain the integrity of the wall.
Pike Formation - The kind of opposite of brick. Basically, this is again a wall formation with a very fixed, spread out line, yet the shorter range weaker/smaller ships form spikes along the main line that jut out so that instead of enemies taking fire from more sources as they close in, they take fire from all sources at the same exact time (the shorter range craft are further out from the main wall in such a way that as they would engage in laser or kinetic fire, the missiles would already be hitting). It would resemble more of a pike line, with ships jutting out, but again, in a strict formation. Fighters would be released whenever it is coordinated so that they would hit at the same time as the missiles and other attacks.
. . . and so on. I'm sure there are other potential formations people could come up with. So maybe the real solution is to make, a formation designer in addition to the ship designer?
I don't know, but I do know that having some amount of formation choice going into a fight seems like it's the next real step to making combat interesting in the game. It could especially make admirals more important, as you would probably only have one or two options based on the the majority of ship's core weapons in the fleet, but with an admiral you could use different options instead and see how they work out.
4) Some new ship/fleet strategy commands - Interception/Overwatch
Basically, I want to be able to set a fleet on "overwatch." They already have the sentry command, where they will wait in position until a different faction's fleet enters their sensor range, and then "wake up." They also have a guard command where they can be set to hold a position. But what's needed is the option to intercept another fleet if they move through a range of space on the enemy's turn. This would allow a fleet to be able to intercept an enemy fleet within a zone of control that they may otherwise just skirt around to attack a shipyard or a planet or something. And if they have enough speed, this means they can hit weaker and soft targets basically with impunity.
So there needs to be a defensive option to counter this, and interception orders are the only thing that makes sense. For balance purposes, the interception range probably shouldn't be equal to a fleet's max movement range normally (that might be a bonus from an admiral or something though), but probably half their remaining movement. That would give a fleet a smaller zone of interception than their potential zone of movement on their own turn, and still allow for stuff like moving past an enemy controlled space with a really fast ship or fleet of your own, but it would also allow for much stronger core system defense networks.
5) New ship types: Interdiction/stealth.
But this idea also leads to an obvious concept for a new ship type: Interdiction support ships (or potentially, interdiction support stations). Basically a ship type that creates a strong artificial gravity well that, when activated, pulls in ships trying to pass by in hyperspace into its space for an engagement. It's an absolute way to guarantee that enemy ships cannot get past a defensive line of your choice, but it probably means some kind of trade-off or set-up, like you can't turn on interdiction and move a fleet with an interdiction support ship in it in the same turn.
And this idea leans into the next one, which gets into how should know where to place interdiction and interception fleets: sensor jamming. As in, on the main map screen, not just in an actual battle scenario (where it mostly seems like the jamming support feature is being used in the game currently). So that, basically the stronger your jamming arrays a fleet has, stronger (i.e. closer) the enemy fleet has to be before they can see you. This naturally leads to the idea of jamming modules and potentially, an composite type of hull that is already difficult to detect through most sensor arrays and thus, stealth ships.
Obviously, stealth ships that you can't see until they're right up on you should be expensive and resource intensive, but possible to make. It'd add a lot more to the strategic combat layer of the game, especially if sensor strength improved the more fleets/stations/planets were layered on top of each other in a sector of space, so that stealth ships would have a natural advantage in the fringes of the battle space, but probably couldn't sneak up on core planets unless space stations and patrol fleets were taken out first.
6) Mercenary Contracts
The mercenaries DLC is fun and the ships are a lot of fun to play with, but they suffer from game pace problems. Mainly, they're awesome to get early, but the return on investment for early ships shows a huge drop off in utility as the game goes on. I.E. getting the H12 Super on like, within 10 turns is awesome, because it means you can now scout the whole galaxy way before anyone else and get a jump on early colonization, but once you actually finish that, you're looking at holding onto a scout ship whose value diminishes more and more as your sensor tech catches up and exceeds him.
The same thing goes with all of the battle craft. If you hire them as early as possible, they have a lot of utility. Especially since it means you can probably get a jump on a larger hull size ship before you unlock it yourself. But once you DO get there, you're probably going to be making comparable ships to the mercs in short order. But THOSE ships you can keep upgrading over time, while the Mercs slowly stagnate and get worse over time.
The solution might be to make the mercs be more . . . mercenary. That, upon paying for them, you do NOT have permanent control of them, but are only getting them for a contracted number of turns. At the end of that period, they leave your service, and go back into the pool to be bought again, BUT depending on the EXP you gained with them they can improve their ships one or two tiers.
Rehiring a merc should come with a discount (you're a valued customer), merc contracts should be potentially something you can buy or trade for in diplomacy if someone else has a merc you need right now.
All-in-all, I think this would make mercs more interesting and potentially relevant as the game goes on, rather than just having them be an early-mid-game booster.
7) Diplomatic Sessions at the U.P.
In general the U.P. sessions are completely undersold. They occur semi-rarely and you get warnings that they're coming up, so the game signals these meetings as "big deals." But then you get to them and they're completely underwhelming. A single screen with no lead-in that has you voting instantly on a single issue that you can really not do anything to politic around and have no way of determining how people are going to vote, really.
It would be a lot stronger if U.P. sessions were two-three week events that took place in multiple stages that covered multiple votes as the game goes on. With the first meeting setting up the agenda for the session, then letting at least a week(turn) passing before the vote could take place.
This way, after the proposal is mentioned, players can chat with AI in the diplomacy menus to figure out which way they're thinking of voting, and then maybe make some trades with them to get them to vote a particular way or not. Other players/AI could do the same on their turns, and so you might see votes going a certain way based on the larger galactic powers at play, and it could lead to a stronger rational for why certain factions would abstain and leave when the vote occurs - that's the result when two different allies pay off the same leader to vote in opposite directions.
This would add a touch more drama and panache and play to the votes. But they also need something to hype them up when they occur. A quick intro film of the G.P. meeting location or something.
8) Diplomatic Events
As the game already has events that trigger during various scenarios (most commonly when colonizing planets) events aren't that big an idea to add.
But I learned in my first playthrough that Diplomacy in this game is WAY too easy a victory condition to achieve. Or at least, it's easily the fasted to achieve in Single Player. And double most definitely as the Terran alliance and their likeability trait.
Once the malevolent faction or factions gets taken out (because so far in my games, that's what happens each time) when there are more pragmatic players in he game (and there are more pragmatic factions than any other, so this is statistically likely) because the malevolent guys start too many wars and eventually lose to multiple other factions allying to destroy them then you just send a few diplomats, wait a turn, move to agree to that last ally or two or three in one turn, and BOOM. You win.
Which is just . . . kind of a boring thing, ultimately. At least as the terrans (it's a little more interesting to achieve I'm guessing, with a faction people hate, like the Drengin or YOR or something).
Something that could spice it up, and could also help keep ideology growing beyond tile improvements in the mid/late game, could be diplomatic events that occur within relationships that have been maintained for periods of time.
These events could hurt, bolster, or maintain relations with the other faction, but they should probably follow the trend of, "it's cheaper to let something happen that could hurt your relationship, costly to maintain the status quo, requires damaging something else in some manner to bolster it."
One way to maybe make the diplo victory a bit tougher to achieve might then be to do two things: first, have the chances of these events go up the longer an alliance is maintained, and get higher as you add more and more allies each time you do (similar to having trigger points on colonies being founded) and also add a requirement to the diplo victory condition that they have to hold onto the full alliance until they can solve X number of diplo events (depending on map size the variable would change).
9) Bombardment/Blockade/Raid
Honestly, it's just silly that I can't shoot missiles from orbit onto a planet that I've taken the fleet defenses out on until I get my transports there. Bombardment in general should be a thing that you can do with an enemy planet. Smart bombardment should be the thing I need to tech up for.
Orbital bombardment should do what it says it does: damage/destroy structures and reduce pop, unless they have a defense shield, but it should also raise resistance for when the ground invasion goes off, and it should hurt relations and lower morale if you take the planet as it currrently does.
But, this could lead to developing different kinds of "bombardment" that can be developed later on in the tech tree too. Like maybe propaganda bombardment, where you can try to force a culture flip on the edge and take a planet without killing anyone.
Also, you should have the option when moving your fleet into enemy orbits to not bomb them at all, just blockade them, which allows you to cut their population growth in half, and reduce their yields by a high percentage (like 80-90%). Blockaded planets are effectively under your control, in terms of power, but not culture or official ownership.
They can become bargaining chips at the diplomatic level then, and you could use your blockade of a planet as a valueable trade for something you actually want, potentially. Or you could just hold it to ransom for cold hard cash of course.
Also, what's the point of showing trade routes if I can't raid trade routes? I mean . . .come on.
10) Narrative polish/News/Flair
One of the things I'm noticing other 4X games do lately is adding touches to make the narrative of the current game to come to life a bit by highlighting it in some way shape or form. Endless space has faction quests. Civ 6 is doing this timeline thing.
GalCiv3 already has a couple elements of this with stuff like the "your first elerium mine" videos that play. But these peter out once you've nailed all your "firsts" from a pretty limited pool.
Something else needs to fill this gap in the "narrative flair/polish" in the game. The most obvious idea is to have some kind of newscast that occurs every so often where an anchor highlights a major event, like the building of one of the galactic achievements, the destruction of a faction, the outbreak of war, or a major battle in a war taking place.
This way you can get little extra narrative flair moments that go a bit further beyond the rare times your robo advisor pops up to tell you Y guy has built X achievement or that Z faction has been destroyed.
It's all about the presentation here, I guess. The little robot saying these things happened is functional. But it could be presented a lot better with an appropriate framing device.
. . . . and that's all I got for now.
And I know I just wrote a LOT there, so it might seem like I've got a lot of hate for the game. But I really don't. I'm actually enjoying it quite a lot. I'm just hoping it can also get even better, and this is the kind of stuff that I think might do that.
Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read that wall, whomever does so.
1. All (colonizable) planets are currently renamable. Left click on the planet in question, and look at the lower left corner summary pane. Hover your mouse over the name in that pane, and you can then click to rename it.
As far as individual faction-based names, well, that's pretty far down on the list of things to do. I'd also presume it's a non-trivial problem to come up with "faction appropriate" names for every single one, plus there'd be code to be written to look at the faction name pool rather than the initial one (which I assume every planet is being assigned a name only on initialization of the game, not during it). All in all, probably something that won't ever get done.
Basically, this is Bling, and not really something I've seen anyone else ask for.
2. The Galaxy settings page when you set up a game allows you to pick your opponents. Also, use the Steam Workshop to find other opponent races that you might like, from those designed by the community. Otherwise, I can't see this getting any Dev attention, ever.
3. NO. This has been debated to death, and the current ship role setup (which, admittedly is still not really jelled) is as close as you'll get. This fundamentaly is a Strategy game, and space battles are really not intended to be more than what they are now - calculated statistical happenings. The level of micromanaging required to make them anymore is incredibly high once you have anything more than 1 battler per turn. There will never be any Tactical-style gameplay in the GalCiv series. That's Word of God from the Devs. The very most that I've seen discussed as a possibility is that when a battle is initiated, you get a choice of base stance: "Withdraw", "Defensive", "Neutral", "Aggressive". That I think is the very most that will ever possibly be done.
4. Maybe, but probably not. There has been a Patrol option discussed, and we might, at some point, see that, which is "move from A to B repeatedly, and act like Sentry". The problem with your proposal is that the nuts and bolts are far too ambiguous - what the computer would do in various situations is not easily programmable, by any means. Better to just wake the ship/fleet up and have the human determine what's appropriate, than make some wild guess automatic response (which, by the way, would be trivial for human opponents to game the system and exploit the poorer AI response).
5. Interesting idea. I can see some things good about it, some bad, but it should be discussed. Unfortunately, it should defintely wait until the current ship role stuff is really sorted out.
6. Mercs are indeed a bit of an issue. Much of it revolves around the fact they're not really balanced for the new Crusade meta. There's people working on that. Wait until that's done before considering any new features.
7. The UP is more interesting if you manage to get elected Chair (win the election the very first time it meets), then you can propose legislation. In addition, the frequency is settable during game creation. But yes, more UP play options are really needed (and, at least, we should be able to see the actual VOTE numbers...)
8. There are significant number of Diplomatic events that come as "MegaEvents" as well as just ordinary events besides colonization. In addition, Diplomacy is not anywhere as easy as you find it once the number of opponents gets higher - the bigger maps have dozens to a hundred or more possible opponents, and it's REALLY not possible - even with excellent Diplomacy stats - to win that way at all.
9. Problem with Planetary Bombardment is that it destroys the thing you're trying to capture. There's no such thing as "targetted" orbital bombardment - it's basically "nuke them from orbit" strategy, and in a game where capturing the planet is really the goal, hard-core destruction is discouraged. That said, yes, the whole planetary invasion mechanic/setup is currently due for a rework.
We did seem to lose the ability to hit trade routes somewhere. Would be nice to have it back.
10. There hasn't been much desire for that. The reality is that GC3 is a bunch of wonkheads that are far more devoted to the game than the various Civ and such. They don't really care about that kind of stuff, since it's a distraction having to watch that video rather than get on with the game.
Nice thoughts, and keep playing, and keep asking!
Well, fair enough, and you're probably right. I know you can rename colonizable planets, though. That's kind of the point of this request though, that I be able to rename DEAD planets in my territorial space. It's really annoying to come up with a fun naming theme like classical generals (Hannibal Colony, Africanus colony, Augustus et cetera) then have to get the autonaming stuff to stamp Yoloswagulus on things or for that to be the secondary dead planet in the Cleopatra system or something.
Really? You don't think they'll add more factions to the game? Like, isn't that one of the main things they can sell to players or potential players? Has there been a large enough shift in the staff that they've fired all the artists and can't make faction portraits anymore?
Well developed factions with animated artwork and probably more importantly, unique traits and base ship models are one of the main pieces of content that I think people are willing to pay for. I know after messing about with the base game starting out I felt there weren't enough and immediately bought Snathi and Mercs to add on more.
And because 99% of the player made factions are Star Trek expies, I'm just not excited for them on the workshop for the most part. I've found maybe two or three that were original creations from players. Those I like.
Hmm. Like I said, I'm new, so I'm definitely not aware of such past discussions.
However, that said, I think I mis-wrote a bit, or I wasn't entirely clear with my intent here. Because all in all, I agree that I don't want the game to become some micromanaging tactics game. For that, if I want it, I have stuff like XCOM or stuff like Fire Emblem or something.
What my request is, ultimately, is still a strategy layer command decision. It's not nitty-gritty tactical command stuff where you micro a fleet battle. It's about being able to pick not only the time and place of an engagement, but a general strategy for your side to follow in the engagement.
The main thing I think, is that right now, when I get into battles, I'm having two issues with the combat, I suppose.
A - It's completely decided in advance 99% of the time. If I have the same type of ships the enemy does but a lot more of them? I'm going to win. If I have bigger ships, I'm almost certainly going to win. If the enemy has either, I'm almost certainly going to lose.
It's VERY rare that you're going to ever see a balanced "it could go either way" in actual combat, because you're incentivized to NEVER engage on those terms. I mean, why would you ever send a squad to their death against a doomstack fleet other than an edge case scenario where you'd only have a paltry fleet that could reach them this turn, and a stronger fleet that can reach them next turn but has a worse chance, so you throw the small fleet at them now to soften them up?
The pre-fight calculation is pretty much spot on most of the time, and I'm not getting much out of watching the battle play out other than to see which specific ships die first. Which means that:
B - Feet battles are boring. Putting the camera in cinematic mode helps a bit but it just cycles between the other modes, and doesn't do anything fancy like highlighting shots in a dramatic fashion or anything in a smart manner. So there's no real drama to watching the fight play out. And you have no interactivity when it does. I can't issue any commands at any point. So I don't really feel any ownership over the battle at all, or like I have any control of it past the choice to engage or not (and when I'm getting attacked, then that's not exactly a choice I made either, though that's also a punishment for me not paying attention to the galactic map, so fine).
And this might be OK-ish, but another combat system in the game does combat better - planetary invasions. Even though there's no customization on my legions, when they actually go to take over a planet? I can tell them where to enter the atmosphere. I can give them a high level strategic/tactical approach that uses resources and produces extra effects. I can not target the capital and just damage and other buildings if I know I can't win this turn but just want to try my hand at maximizing my damage to the planet this turn.
Since I made some choices as the engagement began, even though I didn't have any control as it played out, I feel a lot more ownership over its outcome and I'm a lot more invested in watching how it plays out. And that's just a lot of little dots floating around a bunch of still images of buildings. Compared to the 3D combat routines going on in the fleet battles that have lasers and missiles and explosions, I think this investment imbalance is a bit odd.
And that imbalance occurs because I made zero choices about the battle when it began. I had no options to pick from either on defense or offense, so I don't have any way of feeling like I own the battle myself. Either I was prepared enough in advance (enough legions/ships) or I wasn't (not enough legions/ships). I have that in both battle use cases, but the one where I got to pick a couple things at the start makes me a lot more interested in seeing how it plays out.
And that's really what I'm requesting here. A simple, basic something to go in front of a fleet battle the same what I have a simple basic something to pick in front of a legion invasion.
Naturally though, the mechanics of a fleet battle, being "naval" are different than a land invasion. So the thing that occurred to me to be the most important factor when considering larger strategic/tactical choice on a naval engagement was in the formation of your ships.
And this is something the game has to consider already anyway. When those ships enter into the battle mode to play out the simulation as it is, they spawn in a basic formation. They have a basic behavior of outcomes that ultimately, stems from this formation, as that formation interacts with the different other factors at play based on the ship designs - tactical speed, range of weapons, and other bonus stats like jamming (though for the life of me, I have NO idea what experience does for a ship. I have yet to see any different AI behavior on a level 10 ship and a level 1 ship watching engagements play out).
Considering the ship designer being a key feature of the game, this makes a lot of sense. If I spend a bunch of time building my own ships that have certain features, then I want to see how they perform, naturally. But I still have a hard time enjoying this because I watch the exact same strategy being employed by my fleets every time - move forward while shooting in line with zero coordination.
It makes it a great way to test out that design - the same factors of behavior each time eliminates an X factor so you can control for it better. But it just comes off as dumb, and not what any fleet commander would ever actually do in an engagement.
And that's really what I want here. Something that let's me feel a little more confident that I'm not watching the rookie captain's wife's first day on command play out again and again in each battle, and something I as a player can take a little ownership of, or which might be able to alter a fixed outcome on a battle.
The only mid-battle decisions I think might be acceptable to allow the player once the fighting begins and the fleets begin playing out the simulation would be high level stuff like maybe choosing when to launch fighters from bays, and if and when to try and break off the engagement and flee. Past that, I'm not asking for an RTS here.
I suppose what I'm thinking of here is more something from Ogre Battle, but in space. That's an old Japanese "RTS" that had a couple installments on the SNES and the N64, where you really can't micro engagements at all. Your main choices are in composing squads of soldiers and their formations - in advance of the engagement - then directing them on where to go, and at most, on which target in engagement is their priority. It also has a small number of "interrupt" limited use special abilities that can help turn the tide of an individual engagement, but these are rare and meant to be a limited resource meant for emergencies.
Past that, though, you watch the AI fight it out on its own. The test is really of your ability to pre-plan things well for your army compositions, army formations, and to direct your squad's positioning well. And those three elements were enough to make me feel like my role as commander was impactful enough to affect the battles in the game, even though there's almost no micromanagement in the combats themselves.
Right now GalCiv3 has the composition and position elements on the galactic map for fleet combat. What it's missing is that third, crucial element, which is formation. Add that little bit of extra sauce, and you've got a much better system. And one that's not suddenly turning the game into an RTS like Homeworld or anything.
I don't see my proposal as that ambiguous, but maybe I didn't explain it well. So I'll give a theoretical example.
Your fleet, fleet A, has a movement range of 10 units. On your turn, this movement range is effectively its attack range, conceptually. On your turn, you select its option to this proposed command, "Intercept," or maybe "Ambush" if you do it from a nebula or something.
Upon selection, it shows a small circle on the map that represents its interception range, which is half of its remaining movement. So in this case, if you didn't move the fleet, its interception range is any space withing 5 units from your ship, barring obstacles like asteroids which would apply their movement penalties. But assuming empty space with no obstacles that's a circle radiating out from your ship in 5 units in every direction.
You get a confirmation box that says something like, [NAME OF FLEET] will engage the first enemy fleet to enter into this zone of interception. Continue? Then you can accept it or not.
If you use up more than half your movement on a turn, you can't go into this stance, and the option is grayed out if you select the command option on a fleet.
But let's say you select yes for this command on your turn and haven't moved a ship, so the Zone of Interception/Engagement is that circle of five units.
Now, you end your turn. On the AI turn, AI 3, the Iridians, your allies, send a merchant transport through this zone to try and begin a trade route. There is a brief check for the fleet but as the Iridians are flagged as allied, the fleet doesn't move. The next phase of the AI turn, AI 4, the Snathi, your enemies, move a fleet into this ZOE on their way to try and invade your colony, and your fleet does so, on their turn, forcing a combat engagement, which plays out on their turn.
The main thing to program the computer for with using such a tactic would be on planning defense. That, if they do not have a lot of ships, but multiple vulnerable properties (for example, two planets in the same system, or near each other in adjoining systems, it would be a better defensive option to take, say two planetary defense fleets that are smaller, combine them into one larger fleet and create a wider Interception fleet that protects both properties.
And yes, I'm sure in time people could game the system, but right now they can too. And there's really no element of Zone of Control in this game that you can take advantage of (which makes some degree of sense in space) and that means the combat game is all about blitzkrieg strategies only. There need to be stronger defensive options or that's all can develop for optimal strategic aims - build ships that have more speed and thus can skirt around defenses to have more engagement opportunities on their turn.
Zone of Control elements like this and the Interdiction ship idea are basically about creating defensive options that allow defense to be more possible on the galactic map, not just the ship designer.
Now, the main edge case would be about neutral ships entering a ZOE, but that can be an option box you can click on or off when you set the command if you want to allow it all.
Ideally, there could be a chance for some interactive diplomacy with neutral ships. Like, you have your ship move to engage a neutral ship but before the battle screen this generates a brief event window or something where you can get a player decision, like, you can then at that point decide to stand down or engage, or just challenge the other fleet to move back from your space and force the AI/other player to make a choice on whether or not they want to start a war with you by entering it.
( I mean, I'm mostly thinking of real world political stuff surround airspace disputes here with this kind of thing - you see conflict over airspace all the time, and even international incidents where people shoot down another nations planes sometimes which raises the possibility of war everytime it happens, though it doesn't necessarily happen all the time - so I think this could be an interesting case that could add to the game, but it's probably just safer to default to, this targets flagged enemies only, to limit the edge case potential)
Sad to know that trade route raiding WAS in the game and its gone now. I knew it felt like an oversight more than anything. Yeah, it really seems like something that's super important to include. Economic warfare is an important part of 4X as far as I'm concerned.
And I don't see how there's no such thing as "targeted orbital bombardment"? I mean, what is air support for ground troops in real life if not "targeted/selective aerial bombardment?"
Though I do agree that there needs to be a stonger delineation between why one would choose to bombard a planet with your fleet from space and why one would want to send in the soldiers to capture it. You're right, in that there's basically no incentive to make this choice (though this was why I suggested "alt" bombardments too, like propaganda bombardment and setting up blockades too) .
In part, one reason might be to have some system of stronger diplomatic bonuses or maluses for different kinds of war actions. Like, maybe malevolent factions LOVE it when you bombard planets and just cause mass death (to other people). But that's minor.
The main thing might be to make planetary defenses/resistance tougher nuts to crack for legions. This is probably pretty necessary as it is anyway, because right now all ground combat is genocidal anyway. Or at least, that's the impression I get since upon taking a planet there's rarely any further further rebellion from the planet or pacification I have to do on the planet in question. And it's definitely the case with several of the AI when they've taken over my planets that they just seem to wipe out all my guys.
Probably the obvious thing would be that you have to spend many turns to pacify planets normally even if you don't bombard them (I mean, we're definitely seeing these days that winning the initial battle is the simplest part of conflict; urban pacification is a MUCH longer process that occurs after that) and take them with troops, and this could be a huge hassle that might not be worth it or you can't really execute on yet, so why not just bombard their planet a bit and break stuff to hurt their infrastructure/pop, and try to get them to sue for peace and surrender?
In general though this makes me consider the bigger issue underlying this problem, which is that there's rarely ever much reason not to just aggressively take planet after planet through force - even if you're "benevolent."
Well, that's not a response I was expecting. Hmm. I mean, I guess you're right in that this isn't probably what a lot of people in the current audience are demanding.
But I guess what I'd say to that is that, this is the kind of stuff to make if you want to grow the audience a bit. It's flair and it's "bling" as you called it, but it adds to the user experience in little ways that are generally liked in lots of games.
I mean, the Metal Gear series for example, is a series of games that hardly ever had much gameplay and had overwrought cutscenes, but they also had a million little flair touches everyone remembers fondly, and they're probably the reason (in my humble opinion anyway) people came to really like that series.
The flair stuff can be very memorable. And those memories leave a good impression in player's minds. And good impressions create good word of mouth. And good word of mouth sells games.
So I agree that yeah, it might seem silly to a wonkhead, but to the general audience, it's helpful.
And like I said, that's also about the emerging trend in the genre. At a certain point with these kinds of things if you don't have an X, but all other games on the market have that X, then people potentially looking at your game amongst a crowded field begin to consider that X, once considered a novel feature for one competitor that didn't mean much, really, is missing from option A but not option B. Even if it's minor, really, if there's no X, it's "less than."And if you make Option A, then soon enough you're losing out to Option B.
"Emergent narrative encouragement mechanics" are definitely the rising trend in 4X. Civ6's Rise and Fall expansion's timeline feature is something that's even been done before, but it's going to be really popular once that hits, judging from the forums I'm on. People who like Endless Space ALL mention the questline systems in that game when they praise it. This kind of stuff is stuff people like, even if it is a bit . . . fluffy (well, this is GalCiv, so, Snuggly?).
And really, that's a lot more about presentation of stuff you already get.
Like, like I said, messages as news broadcasts are just one option. It really could be anything, and I may not be the person to come up with the right idea here. But I do think there should be . . . something more here in the game. Even if I'm not sure what exactly, that is.
Thanks! And I will on both counts!
First of all, welcome to the community!
Next, the reply to the reply.
1. Naming dead planets (You CAN name stars, if you haven't noticed): After a large amount of playing this game (over 1800 hours) I can honestly say I don't even notice them anymore (unless a tactical situation comes up), but I can see where you are coming from. Be a bit of a pain for me since I only play on large maps (my fingers would probably fall off after a while). The issue for Brad would be this: how many people want it, as opposed to how easy/hard it would be to add it, as well as memory overhead. What might be great on smaller maps might become a nightmare on the larger ones. Although for RP purposes it would be great!
2. New factions: There may be one or two we might see (hopefully), but this is a game with a long history and established races (the first version was 25 years ago). It isn't a matter of resources, it would be a matter of fitting new races into an established story. That is why we have the workshop. I would encourage you to try the civ builder, if you haven't already. While there are a lot of Star Trek (and Star Wars) races out there (not to mention many other races from other fiction), this is a function of what people want to play (or play against). I also would encourage you to check out the modding community, much of the best work on these lines can be found there, especially Gauntlet's Race Mod.
3. Fleet battles (and invasions): The question is, What does it bring to the game? Formations could give a bonuses to your fleet, but that would have to be true for both sides and would probably tend to cancel out. The difference with invasions is that you can raid a planet you can't hope to take and destroy some of the infrastructure. While they could probably do this with fleet battles, (make certain ships primary targets) most of the targets you would want would be in the back (meaning you would have to shoot your way through his fleet first) and that the AI could do the same to you, all of which brings you back to, difficulty to implement vs the desire for the feature. So very unlikely.
4. I'll call this one "autonomous engagement" : Ignoring the fact that this is a turn based game, I could see this bogging down turns on larger maps rather easily. After a couple hundred turns on a Ludicrous map it might even melt your motherboard .
9.Planetary bombardment: Dev preference on game balance. While they COULD make starships effective in bombardment, it would destroy the reason for specialized invasion ships, just bomb them out of existence and start over. Maybe use Neutron weaponry if you want the buildings. At this point in the game your planets are usually full enough that population isn't hard to come by, so losing that planets pop isn't usually a big deal.
10.Cutscenes/news broadcasts: Cutscenes in a sandbox game are mostly a "WOW" moment for newer players, no matter how good they are after a few dozen times they get old. News broadcasts OTOH could be useful as a more immersive way to give info. The info, however, is already there, so I imagine it would come back to player desire vs dev effort. Given that they had it in Gal Civ 2, but dropped it in 3, without a huge outcry, I would imagine that the desire is low. Quests are something I would really like to see. Much of the focus in the next expansion is likely to be on the political end (and AI development, which is Brad's reason to exist ). This may be the last expansion for 3, but Brad is already talking about 4, so hopefully we will see them.
I hope you continue to enjoy the game and keep the enthusiasm, that is where the best suggestions will come from.
One of the big things you need to be aware of is that GC3 is one the very last 4X games that hasn't devolved back to a Turn-Based-Tactical-That-Pretends-Its-Strategy. It's also something that has a FAR greater scale for the player to control than anything else. This is a MACRO game, and everything else plays 3rd fiddle to the ability to manipulate things on a massive scale, and deal with forces at that level, and NOTHING below it.
You have to think of yourself as either God-Emperor, or a member of the Chiefs of Staff. THAT'S the level of detail that should be concerning you. *That's* the level of immersion; God-Emperor doesn't care what the system names are. He plans for LOGISTICS, not Tactics, so ship formations are irrelevant - wars are won on production, not whether a particular general had a bad (or good) battle. He ultimately really doesn't really want to manage planetary buildings (which is why we have Governors).
That's why things like politics (and the UP), Espionage, Trade & Economy, and Diplomacy are so important to get right. And why every feature has to be evaluated in the context of how does it scale to hundreds of instances of that action/entity, and how much user interaction is needed.
Put this into context: a mid-sized map has 100 colonizable planets with 20 or so races, and can easily have over 100 instances of things (starbases, ships, planets, etc) that could be touched each turn for each player. Typical times to manage a turn at that scale are in the 5+ minute range. And the game likely runs to 500+ turns.
So since both replies talked about this request, for some kind of additional layer on fleet combat, I guess I should narrow my focus make my arguments here on this issue primarily:
Thanks for the friendly welcome!
So, I guess my point about what this brings to the game is that I can foresee three primary things:
First, it increases emotional investment and engagement with the outcome of a fleet battle. As I outlined in my first reply, this is much more about engaging the player psychologically more than anything else.
I may not be a game designer, but I've played too many games in my life not to have picked up some basic concepts on game design theory, even if I don't know whatever the proper terminology might actually be. But what I think the issue with the fleet battles is (and remember that this is me approaching the game as a newer player here), is that the major decisions that you have control of going into a fleet engagement were primarily already made well in advance of the engagement. To the point that you've essentially, psychologically, "forgotten" them by the time the engagement actually occurs.
This is because the active decisions you've likely made were all in the production aspect of the ships. You picked the order of production in the shipyard, you assigned engineers to a planet maybe or rushed a production with cash, you moved the ships into position somewhere as a mass fleet. But all of those decisions were made in the past, potentially many turns ago. Or even in a prior session that you saved and quit out of that you're now returning to.
So really, when it comes to the big fleet battles, you're not making many decisions on the turns that fleet battles occur in. You're actually only making one. Moving this fleet to attack that enemy fleet, or not. It's completely binary.
Adding even one more decision to occur at the point of engagement creates another choice the player is making on the engagement, and decisions, in terms of player psychology, ARE emotional/psychological investment.
I mean, this was Sid Meier's whole theory on game design and I'm inclined to agree with him here. That the point is to create interesting choices. And the choice about whether to have a fleet engage another or not is potentially an interesting choice, but also potentially isn't because of the next point I'll bring up (but I'll get back to that in a second).
Functionally, this extra choice, even if it's a single choice you can make (I'd also say the choice about withdrawing during a battle is another good choice to add as well maybe) increases investment, so long as it is in fact, an interesting choice. And I think, after learning a little bit about real life naval engagements, and always being a big fan of space battles in shows and films that focus on the big fleet battles (the recent Battlestar Galactica did this really well, but if you want a surprisingly great take on this that most western audiences don't know, check out the 90's anime, "Legend of the Galactic Heroes," for, despite it's really cheesy name it might be one of the best examples of interesting space naval combat I've ever seen, as it treats fleet maneuvers rather realistically and very intelligently) that fleet formations are the natural choice as to what even could constitute an interesting choice here. Because aside from range and speed, formation (and presumed coordination in one) is the heart of naval combat - the more guns that can be leveled at a single target in a field of fire, the better a fleet can multiply their force, and one of the optimal ways to do so is to arrange the formation of a fleet so that the arrangement means more guns engage at the same time or otherwise layer their attacks for specific purposes.
Second, the big issue that often prevents the choice to engage from being interesting is that the game forecasts the outcome of engagements well, and players seeking optimal success (which I think should always be presumed about player behavior) have zero incentive to attempt risky battles. Adding this choice here, presuming it works as intended and actually adds enough impact to the potentially shifting the outcome in one direction or another, can create that incentive and some risk/reward choice on battles whose outcomes are a toss-up.
Basically, this issue is also about player psychology and dealing with the training the game already does with the player. It's not something you have to worry about at first, as in the early encounters in the game, and you're going to be interested in the outcome and try to get a feel for what constitutes a chance for success.
But soon enough, as in, during some point through your first game most likely, you will have enough production and you'll figure out enough about the core mechanics that you're completely dis-incentivized from ever engaging in a battle unless you see either the "guaranteed success" or "likely success" green words on the pre-battle infobox.
You've spent too long or too much money building that fleet to want to throw it against a force where the outcome is potentially in question. So you're only ever looking for positioning your fleets and massing them so that you'll get guaranteed wins. Because this is natural optimal play.
The point of this kind of choice, again, if it's essentially working as intended and can add enough impact to the outcome to shift the chances by 10-20% in either direction depending on if you make the right or wrong choice, is to give a reason to try those riskier battles. Because if I have an even match up with the enemy fleet, and I see that their fleet mostly has missiles while I mostly have lasers, but I learn the formations and I know to choose a particular formation that I think could boost my odds of success in that match up enough to take the gamble on it right now rather than backing off and letting them take out a planet or a starbase or something, I'm now again making an interesting choice rather than falling back on the obvious one.
Finally, it gives a better reason to use a feature that's already in the game and which goes underutilized during extensive play: watching fleets battle it out, rather than just skipping to the end and the outcome on the main galactic map. It also adds more variability, and thus, potential interest to the battles as they play out, and validates the use of a wider array of hull sizes throughout a progression.
Essentially, from what I can understand, (and please, inform me if I'm wrong here, I'm interested in learning how the nitty gritty works if you know more than me) the game runs a quick numbers check based on the total stats of all of the ships in respective fleets and determines an outcome based on what I'm guessing is the amount of guns versus the amount of defenses and HP as divided by the number of ships. It generates an outcome based on the respective strength from there, perhaps with a small number of variables tossed in there for some random chance elements.
This calculation seems to be what the 3D battle engine is also using when it draws the battle out in the cinematic 3D battle screen. From what I can tell, a number of potential variables aren't really fully utilized because primarily, the behavior is super simple and entirely based on the abstract math check that occurs before the fight, and not on how the ships move within the 3D simulation itself.
To some degree, I suppose I'm asking for the simulation of the ships in 3D space to affect the outcome a bit more, rather than just purely abstract stat matchups. Because that's what formations do in a tactical sense: they consider relative distance of vessels as part of the timing on those vessels deploying their armaments, and which ships are getting targeted first in terms of choosing which vessels you want to absorb the damage from the enemy fleet first.
Consider the example I gave in my first post, of the "Hammer" formation. The idea of arraying your fleet so that the larger, capital ships led the charge into the enemy position, with the smaller weaker ships following behind (reducing their speed on purpose to do so, as this is a coordinated maneuver) is about positioning your fleet so that the bigger ships take the brunt of the enemy counter attack, and this should keep the smaller ships alive long enough so that they'll pop out from behind the big ships once their engaged, and do extra damage to the enemy fleet that is already focused entirely on the bigger ships.
Right now, because all your ships just move in a wide line according to their listed tactical speeds, it means that faster ships will engage first, slower ships take longer to get into range. Usually, if using the default designs, this means the smaller ships are faster than the bigger ships, and so they break off from the pack and engage first. Followed by the size above them. Then the size above them, and so on, until all ships are within range to fire their weapons at any available targets.
What this means is that all battles play out the same, an it completely invalidates smaller ships over time as the game goes on. They have less HP and more speed, usually, so they'll always go out ahead and get destroyed in combat that amounts to waves crashing against each other. First your wave of fighters and tinies. Then your wave of smalls. Then your wave of mediums. Then the larges, then the really big giant ships if they're present.
Without any kind of fleet coordination, this means the usefulness of smaller hull sizes just becomes less and less as the game goes on. By the end of the game, there's really no reason to make corvettes at all, just giant ships. Because it becomes a bigger and bigger hassle to make fleets of a lot of tiny ships rather than just make carriers for one, but also because the return on investment becomes less as there's really no way to preserve the smaller ships in multiple engagements - they're just old fodder you toss at the enemy to chew up until your big guns get into range.
But there are fleet formations that can take the opposite approach, like the "Hammer" formation. Where you absorb a lot of enemy damage early on with the big guys so that the tiny and medium guys do a big, delayed punch shortly after, at the same time as your big guns are also firing.
This means there's some real variance to the battles. Using the right formation with the right composition against the enemy's wrong formation or composition could lead to a battle being played out that looks a lot more interesting, and more importantly, IS more interesting, because you told them to do that. Choosing poorly means you realize that this formation doesn't work well against their own, and that's a lesson that keeps you on your toes. In either case, you're more engaged psychologically, and the potential for more variance has you likely enjoying the battle viewer feature a lot longer.
Considering the game has a big pew pew cinematic system to show off battles, I'd hope that the devs would want to encourage players to use it more often than not. Seems strange to include it otherwise.
Well first, this is an idea cribbed from other turn based games. The concept of overwatch fire on the enemy during their turn after setting up a trigger condition is a key element in most tactical turn based games about squads of soldiers. Pioneered by the original UFO/XCOM in that context.
It's also, interestingly a sort of system that's kind of meant to never be used, in a sense. The whole point of overwatch is usually meant to be a psychological maneuver, really. That you create a defensive zone of control so that the enemy has to consider the risk factor of choosing to engage you.
Because if they can just run past you and hit your weakpoint shipyard or survey ship or planet that you can't actually defend (since it's their turn and you can't retaliate until your own) then there really is no defensive option other than building like, 10 different fleets and placing them in a big circle all around a point you want to defend, which is just a pain, and really unrealistic, really.
Mostly, what I'm actually trying to suggest here is a way to prevent ME from abusing the AI, I guess. Right now, when a war begins I'll usually have a fast fleet that I send into the enemy systems run around and right past their bigger, potentially actually dangerous fleets and wreck all their asteroid mines and ship yards while I move my stronger but probably a touch slower fleets into position to engage with their actually dangerous ones.
Which not only makes me feel a bit bad for them, but also is something I know is a bit silly. Because it will often mean that my little raiding fleet will fly right by their big defensive fleets, and I know that realistically, they would have been engaged - no one lets a potentially threatening force into their territory unchallenged in a modern context.
You may be correct about the frying of mother boards, but I'm not too worried. I mean, do they get fried right now if there are a bunch of battles happening on the AI's turn? If they are, that's really a different issue, I think.
First, sure, yeah, it is a high level god game. All 4X is usually. And I don't want any lessening on the big picture stuff. Actually, some of this stuff I think GalCiv3 does better than I've seen in other games. Particularly the economics on trade with Crusade. I think this game might have the most intuitive trade screen I've seen in a while, and the wide variety of trade goods and their uses is really well done. Considering Offworld Trading Company's use of a more supply and demand based economic system I think it could be made a touch stronger to model that game's excellent use there (it seems to some degree it already does, but I've seen AI have monopolies or near monopolies before - in my current game, the Iconians and the Thalans are the only empires with Monsantium, for example - and they don't seem to press that advantage though) but that's really only a this good system can only get better from here sort of thing.
But in many ways, this is NOT a high level god game. Or at least, it's not a WH40k God-Emperor game. Because if it is, there's entirely too much micromanagement.
If I were a big space emperor, I presume my days would be all about selecting staff and being presented big decisions that probably usually came down to "yes/no" dichotomies 90% of the time. Really those would be the two key things: staff and events.
I know I certainly wouldn't be saying to a planet, "Hey, first I want you guys to build this factory over here, infact, I'll pay for that one, then I want you to build this building over there, then this other one over there . . ." and so on. I wouldn't be telling my fleets where to go at all. I'd have an admiral that I picked from looking at his record of service and I'd presume that he's a capable enough man to make good decisions. If he wasn't, I'd fire him and install a better admiral. Until he called my office with the question about whether or not he should engage with a force on the border we're currently neutral with or something, I wouldn't really ever hear from him during my tenure.
The point is, if this was really a game that was solely about the top level of command, a lot of the systems in it would be removed or completely automated. And there'd be a lot more systems about staffing my cabinet position and WAY more political events.
And it'd be Crusader Kings in Space at that point. Or Stellaris. Which I presume is what that game is, I haven't been able to check it out yet.
And that's not a bad game, but it's not a 4X game really either. 4X is more about inhabiting a LOT of different roles in a lot of different contexts. Sometimes you're basically the mayor of the city/colony. Sometimes you're the president or king or other name for the political executive. Sometimes you're roughly representing the combined business interests of your whole state (because otherwise, trade would be completely automated in certain civs like the Iridium Corporation, to represent the free market capitalists who are establishing their own independent trade routes, and only totally controlled economies would have the political leader make such direct decisions). Sometimes you're a general. Sometimes you're an admiral.
In that sense, yeah, it's still a god game. In that, I guess you could say that gods would have to have a degree of omnipotence and omnipresence or they're not much of a god, but this means that the number of potential theoretical roles you can inhabit is inifinite, not limited by the perspective.
I mean, 4X, since it takes a really grand view at the outset, can kind of justify any level of granularity and focus it wants to explore at any point. If they wanted, they could make a system where you have to roleplay the plight of a Drengin widow struggling to raise her brood of 38 children after her husband died trying to crush the Terran Resistance for 16 turns until you learned to empathize with the Drengin plight because your last ideology choice was too uncaring of their plight.
It's a video game. They can do anything they want, and care to make.
And I'm going to have to disagree about wars. Production is of course, very important. So is tech. But it also takes crazy bastards making the right plays when the rubber meets the road in a battle. The Romans certainly conquered the ancient world in no small part because they had better logistics and organization of their armies than most of their opponents. But they also would never have gotten that far or held together as long if they didn't have some amazing generals and commanders in their armies in numerous instances. One only needs to look at the success of Julius Caesar in the battlefield and the absolute failure of Crassus when he died in ignominy to see that.
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