Lazygamer Zoe Hawkins reflects on "Hybrid Affinities" livestream

[Gilleous]

Honestly, the awkwardness - as long as it doesn't come from the gameplay itself - is one of the things I like most about some of the streams. That one Stream where Hinkle brought in the other two guys from... some other part of the firaxis-team that I can't remember and the three of them were just having a good time was probably one of my favorite ones.

I enjoyed their banter but I wanted hit my head on the desk when the guy kept refusing the deal fearing he would buff the cities of his future enemy. Even by then I knew the treaty would break during a war and his opponent wouldn't have the bonus against him. Thus he gave up on some DC he could have had easily obtained.

This is why I'm leery of watching Let's Play, I'm a terrible player (I can only beat Civ 5 at King with any degree of confidence, and only beat Emperor once) so when I see mistakes I think are blatant rookie mistakes... I die a little on the inside.

The banter and ribbing between them was great though. Hinkle seems like a very nice guy!

 

[Galgus]

I'd think having agreements with civs should cost DC rather than granting it, else everyone is encouraged to have good relations with everyone.

It would be better if players had to ration out who to have ties with.

 

[TheMarshmallowBear]

I'd think having agreements with civs should cost DC rather than granting it, else everyone is encouraged to have good relations with everyone.

It would be better if players had to ration out who to have ties with.

Isn't that the point?

You spend a lump of sum and per turn to have an agreement and the recipient who provides is given the lump of sum (I think) and per turn.

Besides maintaining a good relationship is not always necessary going to be easy, we saw just how fast a relationship started to deteriorate with Slavic when the players health was negative for too long.

 

[Galgus]

That approach encourages giving agreements to just about everyone, not rationing it.

 

[Gorbles]

Negative modifiers are what discourage agreements. Personally, I feel there should be as much emphasis on making agreements as possible.

Otherwise, why would you bother with them? They'd just be a "nice to have", which in optimised play would boil down to "irrelevant".

 

[Galgus]

Bother with them to pick allies, to get the bonuses they provide as well as whatever the AI might accidentally end up doing to help its allies.

 

[Gorbles]

But you'll be doing that anyway. Excessive modifiers against picking them prevents you from picking them up. I'd imagine it's a psychological balance; psych theory crops up a lot in games design. That's partly why focus testing groups exist (for better or worse), too.

 

[Galgus]

What do you mean by modifiers? I may have missed that in the stream.

Do fear and respect levels change the costs of agreements?

 

[Gorbles]

Sorry, like agreements costing Diplomatic Capital. It's a negative psychological modifier when weighting choices ingame. Incentivising players to pursue agreements with everyone is a sensible design goal in my opinion - there are already too many incentives to wage war by comparison. The same problem most initial Civilisation games have.

 

[Galgus]

If anything Beyond Earth is far too tame, with AI's that only seem to consider war if they have a vast advantage over the player somehow.

The game desperately needs more mid to late game affinity conflict, more threat from Aliens, and more division based on approach to the Aliens.

At very least I should be able to heavily invest in one ally rather than needing to give agreements out to everyone to maximize DC.

Civ without at least the threat of a real war is a science-based next turn button simulator.

 

[Ryika]

Incentivising players to pursue agreements with everyone is a sensible design goal in my opinion

I 100% disagree with this. In my opinion ideal design would be to make every decision something that the player has to think about. "Do I get enough from this to make up for the fact that the other faction may get something better?", "Is that faction weak enough that I can make this deal for the benefits I get although it favors them?" - those are the things that players should have to think about.

If the right answer is just to do as much diplomacy as possible, then the system becomes really boring really fast.

there are already too many incentives to wage war by comparison.

I guess that depends on how you play. I never feel any incentive to wage war when I play my "try to win fast"-thing. Wars are just too slow and pay off way too late in those games.

 

[Galgus]

@Ryika

I completely agree on the point that every decision should feel like a trade-off and none should be an automatic "Yes", but honestly I doubt I'd ever notice the impact of the AI benefiting from deals.

They already get significant bonuses unless I am mistaken, so piling a little more on that will probably be negligible.

I'd prefer the trade-off to be a need to ration which agreements to maintain with a finite amount of DC.
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Generally the AI feels completely ignorable from start to finish: players never really need to worry that an AI might conquer them, or that the AI may be getting out of hand.

 

[Ryika]

...which are problems that should be fixed, not be worked around in my opinion.

 

[Galgus]

Indeed.

 

[BevHeartMuncher]

I don't think agreements can be 'given'. An AI player has to ask for the agreement, meaning you only get the extra capital when the people who like you want your agreements.

So, one might argue they're already 'rationed' by only a few of the civs actually liking you enough to buy them - because, as the game progresses, the AI is bound to pick up traits which go against what you are doing, and so will lose respect and not ask for agreements.

If I recall, across 2-hour gameplays, they really only got asked for agreements like 3 times? And the AI, if it is only ehh about you, they might only ask for low-cost agreements.

Plus, you almost need to give them out to everyone who asks if you hope to buy a few of the expensive agreements frrom your allies, because without building a bunch of wonders you can only generate so much capital by yourself.


Besides, there is always a good reason to turn down agreements- if you don't need to make one.
I'm a huge warmonger (I love BE because now you can blow things up with lasers and other cool weapons), so generally having friends isn't a big deal, and so if someone wanted an agreement, I'd pretty often say no unless I wanted them to like me (because they have something I like, or I'm trying to engineer a world war).

So, if you were in a game where getting some big agreements was important to you, you'd be building wonders and selling agreements to everyone so you could get yourself bonuses.
If you're not worried about diplomacy in this particular strategy, or there's nothing on the table right now that you want to get, then not allowing the AI a bonus because you don't value your gain is perfectly logical.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

That approach encourages giving agreements to just about everyone, not rationing it.

Giving agreements to them benefits their empire (at the cost of DC) and it therefore increases their chance of winning first. (assuming the AI doesn't take stupid agreements)

In terms of selling agreements you are limited to 2 things
1. the Other civs need enough DC,
2, the Other civs only can buy 5 agreements (just like you can only buy 5 agreements)

 

[Acken]

You're going to get as many agreements as you can.

FFA games have always rewarded cooperation. Getting an advantage over 6 AIs is often better than trying to deny 1AI an advantage. This is why you would always get RAs in civ5 (assuming you have money), not care about the delta of trade routes or trade away techs in civ4 to get the most out of them (at best you kept for a little while until you were done with whatever advantage the tech gave you).

On top of it, players are usually simply more efficient than AIs to use their ressources and as a result you will just grab the DC to use them efficiently for your needs. You will just agree in 95% of cases. Research agreements in civ5 cost money but here you get free DC for it (and the AI gets something else). I see very little reason to refuse from experience. On top of it DC seem to have a lot of possible utilities.

Granted, your limitation will come from the likelihood of the AI proposing an agreement. Which is likely to be based on opinion scores. And then we come to my real problem with the system (and RT):

Besides maintaining a good relationship is not always necessary going to be easy, we saw just how fast a relationship started to deteriorate with Slavic when the players health was negative for too long.

So if I followed correctly the AI gets diplo modifiers based on your metrics and as far as I've seen it's only about positive metrics. Which mean that the better you do overall the more likely you are to be friends with someone (I guess you can't be the best in every category but that is not the point). If you are friends with someone, the more likely you are to receive agreements, which grant points that you can use to further improve your metrics/performance. On top of it, the less likely you are at war, the easier it is to improve your economy.
Nobody else see the problem with this ? This is a snowball mechanic by definition, helping civs that are ahead to get even more ahead. Civs should plan or cooperate to take down leaders. BNW is criticized exactly because it's too easy to just snowball away while the AI keeps a happy face.

 

[Galgus]

Giving agreements to them benefits their empire (at the cost of DC) and it therefore increases their chance of winning first. (assuming the AI doesn't take stupid agreements)

In terms of selling agreements you are limited to 2 things
1. the Other civs need enough DC,
2, the Other civs only can buy 5 agreements (just like you can only buy 5 agreements)

With the incompetence and cheating that the AI already does, the impact of an agreement on their winning chances is negligible.

For example, how often have you really noticed an AI get stronger because you trade with them?

I've certainly never seen it.
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Thus the optimal tactic would be to either give out as many agreements as possible to buy as many as possible or go for Domination.
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@Acken

Good point, weaker AI's should band together to take down runaways - and optimally rivalries would form between strong factions.

At very least I hope that that try to conquer everyone gets at least some of the AIs to team up against you.
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I use a mod called Super Warmongering AI in Civ 5, though despite it's imposing name it's possible to have long-lasting declarations of friendship.

Mostly it just makes the AI more territorial and more eager to field large armies in war, but I've found that the threat of a real AI invasion and sometimes being tied up repulsing an invasion can help prevent the player from snowballing out of control.

If I had to choose between two extremes, I'd take a crazy AI that keeps the player on their toes over a docile one that politely waits in a corner while the player snowballs.