Making Harmony More Harmonious With the Aliens

[Louis XXIV]

These suggestions come from someone who has obviously not played the game, so take them for what they're worth. Basically, it comes down to Harmony affinity and treatment of native life. First I should say I have no problem with playing harmony where one attacks the native life. That's fine when the strategy presents it. But it strikes me as good for a strategy game (in addition to feeling true to the affinity) to provide alternative routes. And benefits for a peaceful game would be a good idea.

The problem right now is all the incentives for Harmony are to attack the aliens. The resource they absolutely need is located on alien nests. In order to get xenomass, you have to destroy their homes. While you can find sources of Xenomass without this, no other strategic resource has this problem at all. So, in a war for scarce resources, the incentive is to wipe out alien life. In addition, their bonus of lowering alien aggression quicker really just means you can attack them without consequence more often. That strikes me as exactly backwards. I'm assuming you reach friendly (blue) status quicker, but I don't know that for a fact (that's a nice start, but there are a couple problems there). Here are my (hopefully modest) suggestions.

Have alien nests count as a xenomass well if they're located in your territory - probably as a harmony bonus, but maybe just as default. Probably only do this if the aliens are friendly. But, that way, you don't have to destroy the nest in order to get xenomass.

Give a warning if you're about to attack friendly aliens. Don't make them angry because you carelessly move your explorer into an alien hidden in the fog.

Let harmony players ignore friendly alien zone of control. That way they don't annoy you in your territory.

Doing this and you won't be penalized for being friendly to aliens while a harmony player. It'll allow you to try and pull off the strategic benefits without being hurt too badly by the problems.

 

[EddieTheLion]

I think alien nests DO count as xenomass wells if you are at blue with the aliens.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Do they? Looking at MadDjinn's Kavithan Protectorate LP, he had a nest in his territory with zero xenomass. Granted, I haven't made it all the way through yet, so I might be missing something (needs to have a certain tech?). I hope you're right.

The warning if you're going to attack is the other big one, though.

 

[GhostSalsa]

Do they? Looking at MadDjinn's Kavithan Protectorate LP, he had a nest in his territory with zero xenomass. Granted, I haven't made it all the way through yet, so I might be missing something (needs to have a certain tech?). I hope you're right.

The warning if you're going to attack is the other big one, though.

It added xeno resources for the nests in his other cities later in the vid, before those respective nests were cleared/improved. In the end only the capital seemed to insist on the nest being cleared? It wasn't clear why.

I agree very strongly about the attack warning and ZOC issues - the UI clearly doesn't agree that the alien units are friendly at all. Very distracting to watch, probably more so to play.

Harmony is certainly a counterintuitive experience right now. But we seem to be asked to accept that harboring a preserve-population of alien species isn't the same as a roving swarm of aggressive beetles that can take on a unit of armed soldiers. Maybe this would be more clear to the player if the preserve was a tile improvement?

Right now I equally dislike the fact that uncleared nests can be worked by citizens at all. Since deriving their yields means tiny human beings have to walk around on that tile and collect all those tiny little dots - which would literally clear the tile.

There's a lot to be ironed out with nests.

 

[Louis XXIV]

OK, that's good to hear about Xenomass.

I'm fine with the idea of wanting humans to be protected from the alien life. Even people who want to live in harmony with our nature might still have a problem with Tigers attacking us. But encouraging essentially a war of extermination is problematic. There's a middle ground.

I'd personally encourage them to change it so you can't work the nest tile. I've made suggestions both for role play reasons but also for increasing strategic options. Not being able to work the Xenomass itself (as long as you have access to the resource) would be a fair counterbalance for not choosing the aggressive path.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Sorry for the double post. Part 4 of MadDjinn's Kavithan Protectorate video seemed to have the nest give him Xenomass, but I can't figure out why. It happens roughly eleven and a half minutes in.

 

[jaldaen]

I believe Maddjinn got the Xenomass b/c of two things:

1) He studied Alien Sciences
2) The turn he gets the Xenomass is when Harsha becomes a city.

My assumption is that Alien Sciences counts Nests as Xenomass Well tiles since they are "improvements."

However, it's a bit confusing as to why the initial nest never counted until it was improved with a Xenomass Well. I hope it's just an oversight and it'll be fixed so that if you do get a Nest in your territory, it will count as a Xenomass Well as soon as you get Alien Sciences.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Well, the one that counted was directly next to the city (ETA: Or in first two rings), so that might have something to do with it as well? Certainly, it's not quite clear (video four of Maddjinn's Kavithan Protectorate LP about 11 minutes in for a reference to what we're talking about).

 

[jaldaen]

Later in the series there are nests that are farther away and still count so I don't think it's distance. Of course I'm going off of memory so perhaps I'm mis-remembering.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Maybe it's a bug? Either way, it's unclear exactly what triggered it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I think the reason was any nest that entered his territory After they were blue he could use, but not the initial one.