Follow-On Game Idea: Civilization in Space

[gunnergoz]

While waiting eagerly for BE, I got to thinking about what should follow it. Civ 6 would be logical and I'd have no beef with it, but how about a Civ game that allowed us to play something that is a cross between a space 4X game (similar to Masters of Orion) and a regular Civ game. What I'm thinking of would pay far more attention to each planet and its population than in previous 4X games, yet allow for long time spans as each planet's culture grows and advances, eventually to the point where they start expanding outward, settling their own solar systems and then moving on to other systems, where they may settle unoccupied planets or encounter the alien races that had already been advancing, much like civilizations do in standard Civ games. In certain respects, it would play sort of like an Islands-only Civ game, except other players would be races and each race would be advancing its own culture over time, then expanding into space. The planetary advancement part of the game might not be as long as a regular civ game, lest the overall game become a marathon, but the idea is to give each player some 100-200 turns to build up his own planet, perhaps overcoming other planetary factions to claim the planet as his/her own before expanding off-planet.

As I envision it, the game would have a lot of room for different races and discoveries, wonders, etc.

Most space 4X games leave me feeling very underwhelmed when it comes to how they treat the planetary side of things and this game would be quite different.

If Sid were to make such a game, would it interest you? If not, why not?

 

[SupremacyKing]

Oh, yes!! I really want a space 4X game by Sid Meier. Master of Orion was one of my favorite games of all time and I've never been quite happy with the 4X games that we've seen in the past years.

 

[AriochIV]

I'd love to see Firaxis' take on Master of Orion.

I really wish I knew what Jake Solomon is working on right now.

 

[Sonereal]

...Galactic Civilization III without the lulzy alignment system?

I really wish I knew what Jake Solomon is working on right now.

He's working on a project called "I Can't Tell You", which is apparently a sci-fi espionage open-world RPG set in a post-war New York City where the Germans landed on the East Coast.

 

[Cole98]

I would love to see one where you start on a planet in the Industrial Age, play a bit (normal civ style) to get a space program then you can pick a planet to colonise and do a civ game on each planet as you go along

 

[cooldude1128]

So like every planet serves as an island that you develop like a normal civ game, but you can zoom out to see all the planets and send ships across space?

 

[AriochIV]

So like every planet serves as an island that you develop like a normal civ game, but you can zoom out to see all the planets and send ships across space?

I don't think that would work... it's just too much to manage. I love dual-level games like Master of Orion and XCOM, but there's a limit to how complex the tactical or "zoomed in" mode can be before it becomes an unmanageable mess. A MOO style model where each planet is essentially a Civ city in which you build structures, or a Galactic Civilizations model where there's a small planet map on which you place structures... these work. But if each planet was a full Civilization map, and there were dozens of planets... I don't see how one would keep track of all that.

 

[Sherlock]

Still waiting for 'Ancient Civilizations'.

 

[Cole98]

I don't think that would work... it's just too much to manage. I love dual-level games like Master of Orion and XCOM, but there's a limit to how complex the tactical or "zoomed in" mode can be before it becomes an unmanageable mess. A MOO style model where each planet is essentially a Civ city in which you build structures, or a Galactic Civilizations model where there's a small planet map on which you place structures... these work. But if each planet was a full Civilization map, and there were dozens of planets... I don't see how one would keep track of all that.

Each one would be tiny size I think
Just enough for 4 to 6 cities

 

[s0nny80y]

Civ 4 's BTS Final Frontier mod was a tad bit simpler than Galactic Civ, both created by Jon Schafer.

 

[cooldude1128]

Each one would be tiny size I think
Just enough for 4 to 6 cities

This is what I was thinking of. Each planet wouldn't be an entire map, it would be 5-13 something hexagons wide, with 13 being rather extreme.

 

[DarkestOnion]

This sounds like a Golden Gamer Dream, but I suspect it would also be a Dark Developer Nightmare. Hybrid games are a very hard thing to do well, which is why most Game Developers shy away from them I think.

 

[gunnergoz]

Well, a guy can dream, can't he?

Yes, I was figuring that you would have to have some sort of distance-reducing mechanism between solar systems in such a game, probably replicated by "gates" of some sort that transfer you to another system. The scale would be an challenge, but I think clever design could work around most of the issues. Each Solar system would have to be its own map and each planet/moon might require a map as well. In the end you would be looking at a series of linked maps, nested in layers. A lot of computing? Probably - but then good design might take advantage of multi-core PC's in innovative ways.

 

[AlpsStranger]

This sounds like a Golden Gamer Dream, but I suspect it would also be a Dark Developer Nightmare. Hybrid games are a very hard thing to do well, which is why most Game Developers shy away from them I think.

It's a dream of gamers who have little perspective on game design, sure.

Anything that's a Dev nightmare is basically a gamer nightmare by default because the results are going to be buggy, or wildly flawed from a gameplay perspective.

I agree that it might be a dream game if a 10/10 version of it could just fall from the sky, though.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

It's a dream of gamers who have little perspective on game design, sure.

Anything that's a Dev nightmare is basically a gamer nightmare by default because the results are going to be buggy, or wildly flawed from a gameplay perspective.

I agree that it might be a dream game if a 10/10 version of it could just fall from the sky, though.

Even a '10/10' version would probably be Way too complicated for gamers once they got it.