Affinity Diversification - One Man's Theorycrafting

[Gar]

After several finished games of BE I kept getting stuck by how, no matter the affinity, I kept building the same buildings and improvements every game. Affinity changed how my cities and units looked, but not how my colony behaved at an economic level. Thus I started thinking, and the many words after this are the result. I'm not making this a demand for improvement or in any way think this is perfect. It's just what my mind suggested. So without further ado, my proposed changes:

All affinity progress is even until one reaches Tier 4, becoming your ‘primary’ affinity. Once an affinity reaches Tier 4 both other affinities proceed more slowly. All point gains for the other affinities are reduced by 5% per affinity level in your primary affinity. (20% at level 4, 25% at level 5, etc.). Early game, if you focus on a secondary affinity it is possible to ‘replace’ your primary affinity with work.

Military and city buildings already have a nice ‘per affinity’ flavor. The map, the actual gameworld itself is where it all breaks down and feels very ‘samey’ at the end game. When, in theory, that should be the most diverse period of the game.

Base Changes:

• Biowells: Change to 1 food, 1 health. Biowells in Miasma get +1 food.
• Miasma: -1 Production on all squares. Also reduces the ‘primary’ output of most improvements by 1, -1 science on academies, -1 production on mines and manufactories, -1 energy on generators, etc. Yes this means early game farms in miasma are useless.
• Terrascapes: Terrascapes get even harsher penalties from miasma. Each square of miasma on or adjacent to a terrascape lowers it’s output by 1 in the order culture>production>food>repeat. So a terrascape surrounded by miasma without the virtue perk would produce nothing.
• Domes: Get -1 health for each adjacent dome and -1 health from miasma.
• Alien nests: Spread Miasma in a fashion similar to a city spreading culture, out to a range of 3 hexes.
• Capturing cities: -25% turns for same affinity, +25% turns for different affinity.

More affinity bonuses:
Each affinity level would instead give 1 ‘rank’ for that affinity. Affinity ranks can be spent on perks much like is given now but more options and a little more freeform. Perks would be separated into tiers, higher tiers unlocking at specific affinity levels. By level 18 a player would unlock all possible perks for that affinity.

Supremacy:
Tier 1:

• Explorers get an extra module
• Half cost for roads and magrails
• Workers build nodes and arrays 50% faster

Tier 2 (level 4):

• Nodes get bonuses for adjacent, unworked tiles if they are connected to the capital by road. +1 food from farms, +1 energy from generators, and +1 production from mines, quarries and manufactories. +1 science from arrays. Etc.
• Roads and magrails are free and produced 25% faster.
• Specialists get +1 of their main resource for each external trade route the city has. Citizens now consume 1.5 food, 0.5 energy.

Tier 3 (Level 7):

• Nodes connected by magrail get +2 of the primary production for each surrounding improvement.
• Academies connected by road or magrail get +1 science, +1 health. Citizens consume 1 food, 1 energy.
• Satellite coverage from all firaxite.
• Four firaxite resource
• Double healing bonus from nodes, nodes also give +25% ranged attack strength and +25% melee defence
• +2% energy production, max +200/turn. Stacks with other similar bonuses.

Tier 4 (Rank 13, perks cost 2 ranks each, victory unlocked):

• Citizens consume 0.5 food, 1.5 energy.
• Sabotage Covert Operation
• Units can phasal transport between any 2 of your cities that are connected to the capital.

Harmony:
Tier 1:

• Alien aggression heals twice as fast
• Remove base production penalty from miasma
• Units take 5 less damage in miasma

Tier 2 (level 4):

• Remove Improvement Penalty from Miasma
• Units take no damage in miasma
• +1 food and production from forests

Tier 3 (Level 7, perks cost 2 ranks each):

• Units heal 5 HP in miasma
• Ignore alien ZOC(walk through aliens) and alien nests act like xenomass wells (must pillage to actually destroy them now)
• Four Xenomass resource
• Biowells slowly spread miasma to adjacent squares. Miasma increases the primary production of each improvement by +1 except manufactories.
• +25% global Health
• Specialists get a bonus based on the % of miasma hexes surrounding the city. +1 for 50%, +2 for 100%

Tier 4 (Rank 13, perks cost 2 ranks each, victory unlocked):

• Ultrasonic fences increase friendly alien combat abilities by 100%. Your civilian units can stack with aliens.
• Wormcalling covert operation
• Miasma increases the primary production of all improvements by +2, triples the output of undeveloped hexes. Workers can now remove improvements in your territory and plant forest.

Purity:
Tier 1:

• Explorers are immune to aliens.
• 20% combat bonus vs aliens
• Melee units get +10% melee and ranged defence inside your borders.

Tier 2 (level 4):

• +2 orbital coverage for each city.
• Domes give +1 to each adjacent improvements primary production. Each tile can only be effected by 1 dome.
• Enemy units get -10% combat strength in your borders

Tier 3 (Level 7, perks cost 2 ranks each):

• Domes give +2 to each adjacent improvements primary production and +1 to its secondary production. Units fortified on a dome get +50% defence.
• Enemy units have their speed reduced by 1 in your territory.
• Four Floatstone resource
• Specialists get +1 of their main resource for each internal trade route the city has.
• Domes get +2 Culture, +1 health.
• Explorers get +1 movement, heal all adjacent units 10HP/turn

Tier 4 (Rank 13, perks cost 2 ranks each, victory unlocked):

• Dirty Bomb covert operation
• Within your territory enemy units have their speed reduced by 2 (to a minimum of 1) and your units have their speed and sight increased by 1.
• Terrascapes get +1 culture, production and food, +2 science. Terrascape maintenance and building are both halved.

This diversifies affinities strongly without specifically saying ‘don’t do that’ or locking other affinities out of a style of play. Each affinity should end the game looking rather different:

Late game Supremacy is carpeted in nodes and generators with roads and magrails everywhere. Armies are centralized, deployed to trouble spots quickly.

Late game Harmony will have miasma covered lands with biowells, alien nests and few other improvements, swarming friendly aliens acting as a passive defence.

Late game Purity is a utopian fortress. Impregnable countryside that must be fought over hex by hex, powerful dome ‘forts’ clogging the battlefield in favor of the defenders. Terrascapes, domes and farms are the order of the day.



If you made it this far, thanks for reading! I hope it was at least entertaining.

Edit: Reading this forum my thoughts are hardly alone, well, guess this is just my take on it.

 

[silvertuerk]

"Terrascapes: Terrascapes get even harsher penalties from miasma. Each square of miasma on or adjacent to a terrascape lowers it’s output by 1 in the order culture>production>food>repeat. So a terrascape surrounded by miasma without the virtue perk would produce nothing."

Terrascape associates for me with Purity that wants to eradicate local flora in order to make planet an Earth II.

"Alien nests: Spread Miasma in a fashion similar to a city spreading culture, out to a range of 3 hexes."
Sounds cool. Perhaps Harmony could build them.

The idea that Supremacy citizens would start to use hybrid of energy and food for citizen growth is radical but excellent flavor. It reminds me of Meklar in venerable Master of Orion II, a mecha race. Node seems to be a key building indeed (at least flavor).

The Great Wall-like speed reduction of enemy units for Purity fits the flavor of isolationist humans on a hostile planet. I do not know, however, which improvement, Dome or Terrascape fits the flavor of Purity better. One of them is more high-tech, defensive and isolationist while the other seems a clear attempt of terraforming.

As concerns Harmony, I have not yet had enough player hours to comment. However, I suggest that they could have Evolved Alien Nests as terrain improvements.

In addition, what if their units could hide in forests and Evolved Alien Nests and become invisible to most of the units like submarines of Civ V, or even better, set up an ambush that would grant them a few first strikes against the unit that attempted to move on the occupied square.

 

[Roxlimn]

1. Direct Energy-Food conversion is dangerous and extremely powerful. Energy is stupidly plentiful in-game. A direct conversion would lead to a powerful feedback loop effect similar to what's possible right now in-game because of energy deal exploits.

2. Harmony isn't about tree-hugging or learning to not modify the environment. It's about human bioengineering. All the factions deal with that to one extent or the other, but Harmony deals with it the most. They domesticate, not live in the wilds like Elves. The XenoCavalry is emblematic of their approach. This view is derived from the Civilopedia entries.

3. Current tile improvements already get Affinity-related boosting based on the tech web. If you're building the same buildings and improvements every game, it's because you're getting the same techs and using the same tech path every game.

Basically, before further discussion, try to make this work: Do not build any Farms or Biowells. All other improvements are good. Yes, the game can be won this way. It's not even harder. It just requires a different style of play. Avoiding Farms and Biowells will emphasize Supremacy technology.

 

[Gar]

Hey guys, thanks for the replies!

"Terrascapes: Terrascapes get even harsher penalties from miasma. Each square of miasma on or adjacent to a terrascape lowers it’s output by 1 in the order culture>production>food>repeat. So a terrascape surrounded by miasma without the virtue perk would produce nothing."

Terrascape associates for me with Purity that wants to eradicate local flora in order to make planet an Earth II.

Totally agree. This change was meant to emphasize the incompatibility of terrascapes with the new environment (Miasma). Played a couple harmony games where I still built lots of terrascapes and then just put miasma back over them.

"Alien nests: Spread Miasma in a fashion similar to a city spreading culture, out to a range of 3 hexes."
Sounds cool. Perhaps Harmony could build them.

I debated letting harmony build alien nests directly, or building 'hybrid' nests as Roxlimn stated. In the end I though harmony can kind of 'build' nests by putting miasma over a source of xenomass and waiting a few turns for one to naturally appear. I just didn't like the idea that when you arrive on the planet, except for harmony lands it was as miasma'd as it was going to get. Seems like the planet would 'fight back' a little.

The idea that Supremacy citizens would start to use hybrid of energy and food for citizen growth is radical but excellent flavor. It reminds me of Meklar in venerable Master of Orion II, a mecha race. Node seems to be a key building indeed (at least flavor).

I really like the flavor here too. It can be potentially unbalanced, energy heading toward a 'monoresource', but the flavor is just so cool!

The Great Wall-like speed reduction of enemy units for Purity fits the flavor of isolationist humans on a hostile planet. I do not know, however, which improvement, Dome or Terrascape fits the flavor of Purity better. One of them is more high-tech, defensive and isolationist while the other seems a clear attempt of terraforming.

In my thinking purity has terrascapes and domes (domes are even already filled with purity buildings if you look close). Supremacy has nodes and arrays, and harmony has alien nests and biowells. That's kind of the starting point I was working from.

As concerns Harmony, I have not yet had enough player hours to comment. However, I suggest that they could have Evolved Alien Nests as terrain improvements.

In addition, what if their units could hide in forests and Evolved Alien Nests and become invisible to most of the units like submarines of Civ V, or even better, set up an ambush that would grant them a few first strikes against the unit that attempted to move on the occupied square.

Harmony getting some measure of 'stealth' in miasma would be cool, even if it was within your own borders.

1. Direct Energy-Food conversion is dangerous and extremely powerful. Energy is stupidly plentiful in-game. A direct conversion would lead to a powerful feedback loop effect similar to what's possible right now in-game because of energy deal exploits.

I completely agree. This proposal does not address several glaring imbalances already existing in the game (trade routes, energy, weakness of aliens late game, etc.) I was trying to focus on flavor and style rather than trying to fix all the games problems at once. That said, given how broken energy is at the moment (my latest Supremacy game is making almost 1200 a turn) I figured this change wouldn't break it too much further.

2. Harmony isn't about tree-hugging or learning to not modify the environment. It's about human bioengineering. All the factions deal with that to one extent or the other, but Harmony deals with it the most. They domesticate, not live in the wilds like Elves. The XenoCavalry is emblematic of their approach. This view is derived from the Civilopedia entries.

One of my, admittedly unstated, goals with this approach was to not add any new improvements or buildings to the existing set, to try and keep the overall scope of the changes in check. If I was adding improvements I would give harmony hybrid forests to replace mines/manufactories and maybe some sort of bio-energy generator improvement that fits more thematically with harmony. Also adding a buildable 'hybrid nest' as Silvertuerk said sounds like a good idea...a xenomass well that also spawns friendly aliens every so many turns.

3. Current tile improvements already get Affinity-related boosting based on the tech web. If you're building the same buildings and improvements every game, it's because you're getting the same techs and using the same tech path every game.

I agree that the tech web does make certain improvements elan toward certain affinities..but that's such a soft correlation. I play mainly on epic/marathon and by end game I usually have over 10 in every affinity from grabbing almost all the improvement-improving techs. I'll freely admit this is clearly an output of my own playstyle, but I just like to grab 'all the things' every game.

Basically, before further discussion, try to make this work: Do not build any Farms or Biowells. All other improvements are good. Yes, the game can be won this way. It's not even harder. It just requires a different style of play. Avoiding Farms and Biowells will emphasize Supremacy technology.

A very good point, my games do vary somewhat, especially from those two improvements. Games where I'm having more health problems tend to have more biowells. Games where someone beats me to the +2 food/farm wonder tend to have very few farms. Those variances tend to be dictated more by random occurrence than affinity though.

 

[Roxlimn]

Gar:

I completely agree. This proposal does not address several glaring imbalances already existing in the game (trade routes, energy, weakness of aliens late game, etc.) I was trying to focus on flavor and style rather than trying to fix all the games problems at once. That said, given how broken energy is at the moment (my latest Supremacy game is making almost 1200 a turn) I figured this change wouldn't break it too much further.

You can leapfrog to Xenomalleum and get +4 Energy Generators in addition to the inputs from External Routes relatively early - before mid-game. Being able to buy food in addition to everything else would completely break everything. Food is the most important resource in the game. That's why sources of it are so heavily regulated.

One of my, admittedly unstated, goals with this approach was to not add any new improvements or buildings to the existing set, to try and keep the overall scope of the changes in check. If I was adding improvements I would give harmony hybrid forests to replace mines/manufactories and maybe some sort of bio-energy generator improvement that fits more thematically with harmony. Also adding a buildable 'hybrid nest' as Silvertuerk said sounds like a good idea...a xenomass well that also spawns friendly aliens every so many turns.

My point was that your idea of what Harmony is and what the Civilopedia says it is is not the same.

I agree that the tech web does make certain improvements elan toward certain affinities..but that's such a soft correlation. I play mainly on epic/marathon and by end game I usually have over 10 in every affinity from grabbing almost all the improvement-improving techs. I'll freely admit this is clearly an output of my own playstyle, but I just like to grab 'all the things' every game.

The game is designed for you not to have all the things. That's why you win at Affinity 13.

A very good point, my games do vary somewhat, especially from those two improvements. Games where I'm having more health problems tend to have more biowells. Games where someone beats me to the +2 food/farm wonder tend to have very few farms. Those variances tend to be dictated more by random occurrence than affinity though.

The Wonder only adds +1 Food per farm. The other +1 comes from Vertical Farming. You don't have to build either of those improvements, as a matter of fact. I have planned heavy-Farm games and heavy-Biowell games, and games that have neither of those improvements. This is a doable thing. The game plays differently.

Basically, the game evolves as you choose to. The reason you've been having a similar experience is because you've been choosing to have a similar experience every game, and the systems are allow you to do so; because they're designed to be responsive to your choices.

 

[Gar]

You can leapfrog to Xenomalleum and get +4 Energy Generators in addition to the inputs from External Routes relatively early - before mid-game. Being able to buy food in addition to everything else would completely break everything. Food is the most important resource in the game. That's why sources of it are so heavily regulated.

Can't really argue with that. Energy is much too easy to come by. There's no 'pre currency pinch' as there is in CiV. Even early game it's fairly easy to maintain a positive balance by building a generator when your surplus dips into the teens, if it even gets that low.

My point was that your idea of what Harmony is and what the Civilopedia says it is is not the same.

I'll own my flawed suggestion for 'fixing' harmony as presented here, but that's not what I would call my idea of harmony. My solution was driven by a desire to make harmony play differently within the constraints set for myself, and I missed the mark some as you have pointed out.

The game is designed for you not to have all the things. That's why you win at Affinity 13.

I'm not sure that my aberrant playstyle invalidates my beginning assumption that the affinities could do with some changes to make their playstyles diversify as you delve deeper and deeper into that affinity. I agree that my personal style leads to some homogenization in the end game empire makeup. Personally, very much opinion, affinity 13 seems to come so early in each game. Just because I can start winning at that point hardly means I want to. I'm here to build something awesome, winning ends that.

The Wonder only adds +1 Food per farm. The other +1 comes from Vertical Farming. You don't have to build either of those improvements, as a matter of fact. I have planned heavy-Farm games and heavy-Biowell games, and games that have neither of those improvements. This is a doable thing. The game plays differently.

Thanks for the correction, should have refreshed myself at the wiki before typing my response.

Is your choice to play with more or less farms or biowells influenced by your affinity? ..or the game state in general? One of my goals here was to make biowells a more harmony choice by linking them to miasma, and then making miasma even less desirable than it is now for the other affinities.

Basically, the game evolves as you choose to. The reason you've been having a similar experience is because you've been choosing to have a similar experience every game, and the systems are allow you to do so; because they're designed to be responsive to your choices.

Civ:BE definitely already allows different playstyles in its current state, but are those playstyles directed by player choice or by affinity? At the risk of removing some player choice I, personally, would like to see affinity to have an even stronger role in player choices. Your affinity could go beyond making a choice of building a particular improvement merely suboptimal or a different path to actually being a poor choice for your affinity.

 

[Roxlimn]

CivBE chooses to actively say that mixed affinities are absolutely a good thing, and a choice you can make and be viable. The mixed-Affinity evolutions of the Unique Units is proof positive that the intent is for Supremacy to mix a little Purity or Harmony in their identity at their discretion, and vice versa for each Affinity.

 

[Gar]

An excellent point. However the hybrid-affinity units don't seem to require more than 3 or 4 of the secondary affinity.

I do enjoy Civ:BE as it currently stands, a lot. It certainly could be left alone, flavor wise and be a good game, with some reblancing a great game even. When hearing the initial promise of affinities however I was struck by a desire for my choices to have a greater impact on my style of play than they do now. Given that no discussion here can have any impact on where the game will evolve to in the future (unless a Firaxian just happens to glance in at the right moment and feel inspired by our words) I just wanted to spark a discussion of potential 'what ifs'. I concede your point, that the current game has a lot of merit as it currently stands, however that doesn't stop the current game from leaving me wanting for more.