Livestream #3: "Affinities: Which Direction?" - Aug 28th

There are definitely many possible ways to fix it. The immortal wall is the main problem. I suggest some simple bonuses that are easy to balance. It's just a level 1 bonus anyways, shouldn't be anything amazing.

Immortal Explorers are probably overpowered in-and-of-themselves. Consider it is essentially like giving every one of your Explorers a free escort to protect them from any and all Aliens. A very strong bonus that scales up with map size and dramatically increases your chances of scouting out your starting landmass and grabbing up any goodies/Expeditions.

Relying on enemy bombardment wouldn't be a good option. Manticores are only able to attack if the player decides to get close enough to the wall to attack. This means the player would always have initiative due to the wall. The Aliens would have no wall of their own. Even if it Manticores were a balanced option for the Aliens in response, it's still a terribly silly mechanic. "Hide behind the Explorers!

It appears that Alien Drones do not pass through Explorers, but rather attack them .. which they wouldn't be able to do if they have Purity 1, so the Explorer would block them. There would be cases where it may not be possible to block them from specific tiles (Canyons, Coastal), but those are less important. Have we seen a Siege Worm tunnel under a unit yet? I can't recall an instance. It appears to attack when moving to a tile occupied by a unit.

It's possible to allow them to phase through, or reposition the Explorers, but probably a much more complicated change than simply changing some bonus combat value or modifying time for an Expedition. Having it "never get attacked unless it's next to another Explorer" would be a gamey fix, with potential to be gamed in response. It would still allow for a great deal of funnelling (very powerful in it's own right, even with SODs ... in 1UPT even moreso) and some walling in very tight quarters.

Such an "explorer wall" would clearly be an exploit anyway. People will always find exploits, it's just up to you to fix your limits. I'd rather have a simple, clean design than a clunky one just to prevent exploits.

Teproc said:

Such an "explorer wall" would clearly be an exploit anyway. People will always find exploits, it's just up to you to fix your limits. I'd rather have a simple, clean design than a clunky one just to prevent exploits.

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in single player, exploits are no problem, you use them at your own peril. In multiplayer though they can impact the fun you'r adversaries are having, making games unfair, so there is a good reason to hunt them down and exterminate them like the bugs they are.

3of5 said:

in single player, exploits are no problem, you use them at your own peril. In multiplayer though they can impact the fun you'r adversaries are having, making games unfair, so there is a good reason to hunt them down and exterminate them like the bugs they are.

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If i see my opponent trying stuff like that:
- if it's a friend and he does that to me, i tell them to quit doing that or i quit playing with him for a very long time.
- if it's somebody i don't know i would start a war and kill him or if he's too powerfull i just quit the game with him and put him on my blacklist.

Fireaxis should know this possible exploit and fix it before the game comes out, because now a lot of people know it and some WILL use it in multiplayer.

3of5 said:

in single player, exploits are no problem, you use them at your own peril. In multiplayer though they can impact the fun you'r adversaries are having, making games unfair, so there is a good reason to hunt them down and exterminate them like the bugs they are.

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That's a good point, one I hadn't thought of because I don't play MP and if I did I would play coop. Maybe it would be worth it to change it a bit then, maybe only if your explorer isn't adjacent to an other of your units.

Teproc said:

Such an "explorer wall" would clearly be an exploit anyway. People will always find exploits, it's just up to you to fix your limits. I'd rather have a simple, clean design than a clunky one just to prevent exploits.

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The clunky design is the one with exploits.

Not every implementation is going to have exploits. What's the exploit of -turns for Expedition? You can't exploit it, it just does what it's intended to do, and nothing else. That's simple, clean design. Do what you intend, not what you don't intend.

Perhaps a fix for the exploit might be that Explorers always survive with 1 health if attacked by aliens. This bonus would only apply on the defense, attacking with the explorer would allow the Explorer to die. This would make 'herding' highly impractical, as having more 1 Explorer would just encourage the alien in question to attack adnauseam. Still has it's own problems, but will at least prevent that particular exploit.

The "explorer wall" thing doesn't sound like an exploit I'd bend over backwards to "fix". It's not that good a tactic to begin with: you're tying up 2+ explorers which could be doing something more useful (like exploring) so that a ranged unit can attack aliens unimpeded. Big whoop, you're wasting resources instead of investing in an extra military unit to cover the ranged one and kill the aliens more efficiently.

Are you going to take down a Siege Worm with that trick? Not likely: you'll be firing on it for 20 turns during which it'll likely move in and out of your range, away entirely, or effortlessly tunnel to your nearest city if it gets too angry. You'll also need either very convenient geography or a lot of scouts to shield the attacker from what I'm guessing will be a pretty fast adversary which can tunnel past any line of units if there's a free hex at the end.

Overall, I don't think you gain much using the exploit. You waste time and units killing stuff you should either be killing faster or avoiding altogether at a given point in the game.

GenEngineer said:

Perhaps a fix for the exploit might be that Explorers always survive with 1 health if attacked by aliens. This bonus would only apply on the defense, attacking with the explorer would allow the Explorer to die. This would make 'herding' highly impractical, as having more 1 Explorer would just encourage the alien in question to attack adnauseam. Still has it's own problems, but will at least prevent that particular exploit.

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You'd still have situations where you're bombarding Siege Worms from behind invincible Explorers. Or worse yet, defender Explorers whittling away at health since the attackers will just keep attacking.

Why keep the immortality? That's the root of the problem. Just replace the Purity 1 bonus with a simple bonus in line with other level 1 Affinity bonuses. No need for any extra game mechanics to fix the broken game mechanic.

Lord Shadow said:

The "explorer wall" thing doesn't sound like an exploit I'd bend over backwards to "fix". It's not that good a tactic to begin with: you're tying up 2+ explorers which could be doing something more useful (like exploring) so that a ranged unit can attack aliens unimpeded. Big whoop, you're wasting resources instead of investing in an extra military unit to cover the ranged one and kill the aliens more efficiently.

Are you going to take down a Siege Worm with that trick? Not likely: you'll be firing on it for 20 turns during which it'll likely move in and out of your range, away entirely, or effortlessly tunnel to your nearest city if it gets too angry. You'll also need either very convenient geography or a lot of scouts to shield the attacker from what I'm guessing will be a pretty fast adversary which can tunnel past any line of units if there's a free hex at the end.

Overall, I don't think you gain much using the exploit. You waste time and units killing stuff you should either be killing faster or avoiding altogether at a given point in the game.

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From the videos it appears Siege Worms are 1 movement.

2 Explorers to keep a Siege Worm from smashing through your infrastructure isn't a high cost. (Given that 2 Marines can't even dent one.)

3 Explorers to herd a Siege Worm to your neighbour would be a very small price to pay.

Having immortal Explorers means the "other" stuff they should be doing will be done faster and cheaper anyways.

Purity 1 is going to be far and away the best level 1 Affinity bonus as is. And it's dead simple to fix.

I find it hilarious that people are ready to make definitive statements about game balance before anyone's got the chance to even play the game.

Teproc said:

I find it hilarious that people are ready to make definitive statements about game balance before anyone's got the chance to even play the game.

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So if it hypothetically turned out Harmony level 3 Infantry can choose the bonus of +100 STR and +10 MOV you wouldn't be able to tell that's a problem without playing?

I hope I'm wrong and the words "will not attack" doesn't mean they won't attack. But if they won't attack, and we're talking 1UPT here ... that has very clear implications.

I'm a little confused about how Purity explorers could herd Siege Worms, or be immortal defenders whittling them away? The affinity bonus reads "Aliens will not attack tiles with Explorer Units"
It doesn't just say: "aliens will not attack explorers" for a reason I think.
I read that as meaning that aliens will retaliate if an explorer attacks them, as technically the explorer is moving into the alien's tile to attack. For anything other than wolf beetles this will probably destroy the explorer immediately.

So the bonus means aliens will ignore explorers unless directly provoked, making expeditions a lot safer.

Herding just means you get in the way in such a way that you leave the Alien unit only avenues of movement where you actually want them to go.

It's an old trick. Civ III Scouts could be used this way to head off Diety SODs for instance, because the AI wouldn't declare war to attack Scouts if it had clear path to it's objective, and Scouts had enough movement and were cheap enough to be a very good defense against what otherwise would be a game over situation. The SOD would instead try to reach the objective before declaring war. As long as there was a path, it would keep trying. (If you closed off all routes, they would attack.) So, you just manipulated that path, leaving an opening on one side, then the other... and the AI would just march back and forth as long as you wanted them to.

You could even use it to move them "backwards", or really anywhere you wanted them to go. There just wasn't much point in trying.

Skorpios said:

or be immortal defenders whittling them away?

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That was in response to the suggestion that Aliens would attack, but would leave Explorers with one HP. It's not how it is in the game as far as we know.

OK, thanks for clarifying that.

But what's the reason why the Livestream #3 is not yet online on YouTube?!

CortreX said:

But what's the reason why the Livestream #3 is not yet online on YouTube?!

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There is a very poor quality upload on the previous page. About half the audio is missing, and it isn't 1080p like the CivGames channel provides.

CortreX said:

But what's the reason why the Livestream #3 is not yet online on YouTube?!

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Because the recording was poor quality so they are probably cleaning it up or forgetting about it.

It would be nice if Firaxis could place a high quality version of the live stream on their YouTube channel. It's great that nerds living locally can tune into live streams and visit Firaxicon events and such, but people from far flung corners of the world are left with crappy quality uploads with half the audio omitted.