Measuring the success of BE

[PhilBowles]

1. Yeah, and you missed mine. To focus on this imaginary point you completely ignored the fact that it doesn't matter whether or not I agree with your premise. That's irrelevant. I disagree with it, but that's an unresolvable tangent for another time.

I was pointing out the issues in your proposed resolution and how you define a workable end product.

The claimed issue you raised was an assumption that I was specifying a 'workable end product' based on a given source novel. That was not the case - as I've now said several times the workable end product I had in view was one in which affinity choice defines gameplay. The particular choice could be based on a particular source or not, and could be as crudely-linked to existing play archetypes as 'Supremacy = wide, Purity = tall improvement-focused, Harmony = tall specialist-focused', but it's not the specific implementation that's at issue - in fact a system that binary (well, tertiary) would likely be too static (all wide play ends up as Supremacy for instance).

But this is the general approach it makes sense to take with affinities to make them more than cosmetic add-ons - something that influences the core of a 4x game's playstyle and strategic focus to a greater or lesser degree. "One affinity gets extra science from science buildings, one affinity gets extra science from supporting more population, one affinity gets extra science from virtues, all play exactly the same strategy exactly the same way" is no difference at all.

To hark back to the point about science-fiction and what setting to be inspired by, you favour hard science-fiction. I don't, personally, though it can be a riveting read. And the argument of which "flavour" of sci-fi Beyond Earth is based on could go on forever; the existence of Civilopaedia points towards it being more hard sci-fi, but the wishy-washy contents and idealistic theme of the contents of said encyclopaedia could argue the opposite. In reality it probably incorporates elements of both (matching the spectrum of ideas from the design team, no doubt) while also being required to follow established Civilisation trends (like the existence of a Civilopaedia).

I'd say there's less room for subjectivity on this point than you imagine. The endpoint Beyond Earth's affinities end up with, much like Alpha Centauri's transcendence, are as close to pure fantasy that it makes no difference, but our premise is that we start from a near-future base, with essentially our own technology (minus, apparently, computers, satellites or aircraft) save for the ability to settle another planet. We rule out any space operatics, as there are no sentient aliens involved. We are intrinsically starting from something close to hard sci-fi.

3. Affinities already reward play styles. Unit perks, while often one-sided, also offer real choices that mean a lot more than "unit skins". A significant issue with this at the moment is the power level / Affinity access of Hybrid units, but that's a balance issue, and not much else (delay Hybrid upgrades to 7/7 or even 8/8, something that's been proposed the forum over).

Unit perks are the same for levelling in an affinity regardless of which affinity you level up in, from what I've seen. Balance issues in a single-player game are essentially irrelevant, and in any case are a moot point while the AI is in a state where you never need affinity-specific, or even hybrid, units to win the game through combat. And whatever their specific bonuses, each affinity has its units at basically the same point on their tech path, with basically the same combat stats. Affinities should make a detectably distinct enough difference to play style that you should be able to tell what they're doing for you without checking the tooltips. Right now whatever impact they have is less detectable than BNW's ideologies, and those only show up late in the game mainly as a way of boosting your progress towards an already-chosen victory condition.

4. Lastly, SMAC was not a Civilisation game by name and is not associated with the series, and Firaxis / 2K do not hold the rights to it.

Colonization was not a Civilization game by name, but was nevertheless one in playstyle (albeit one arguably more distinct from contemporary Civ than Alpha Centauri); it's not clear why who owns the rights is relevant.

With regards to the terraforming game, you couldn't perform every single terraforming operation straightaway, but you could still do a great deal from the word go. Sure it had more options available, but other than that it played out very similarly. Found City, make improvements, go to war. Mostly go to war.

Which is why I say it didn't do an especially good job of portraying the world as a genuinely new environment to colonise, but it was nevertheless closer than BE. If all you want the game to be is a retread of Civilization, all you'll ever get is a reskinned map, but that squanders the entire premise of setting the game on another planet. Even systems like affinity could be implemented in a typical Civ game, as the same sorts of questions about how to adapt a society to future developments exist (albeit not with a specific focus on adapting to an alien world; nevertheless Purity and Supremacy are both viable options in a future-Earth setting).

 

[Galgus]

Which is one area where the game fails badly. Affinities are superficial, barely more than cosmetic, and don't either particularly reflect or promote drastic differences in playstyle.

When I think of a system like the affinities on a newly-colonised planet, the source material I immediately want to feel the designers have used is the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The pattern of development described in broad strokes in that series: initially, everyone has to get on with the business of surviving in a completely hostile environment, and supporting a minimum level of terraforming for subsistence, but as societies develop splits emerge between those who want to terraform more aggressively (Purity, in BE terms) and those who want to preserve more of the primal environment and adapt themselves to it (Harmony) emerge and leads to sabotage and conflict.

Many of the mechanics are already in place to achieve something like this. The need to develop early could be reflected by affinity points only starting to accumulate once a specific threshold/'era' of development has been reached.

Affinity points need not be purely cumulative, but actions that favour one affinity while being out of step with another might reduce your affinity level in the other; you could still have a balanced playstyle with hybrid affinities, but it would play very differently from one that specialises in affinity. Interactions with the environment that reflect different ideological approaches could affect affinity progression - heavily-developing the surrounding landscape with terraforming-style improvements, for instance, would award Purity at the expense of Harmony; conversely features like Biowells would do the reverse. Wide play and a focus on military and orbital technologies would favour Supremacy.

There could even be specific development mechanics that unlock with each affinity - for instance, at higher levels Purity might have something akin to Endless Legend's district system, allowing them to develop a wide area of the landscape relative to their number of cities; Harmony might have techs that allow them to increase yields from tiles, so that both styles can play tall but have different mechanisms for getting there.

But "You get new unit skins, and every few levels a screen pops up telling you you get a forgettable bonus to resource X instead of resource Y" isn't close to being sufficient for a game that wants affinities as its selling point.

I couldn't agree more that, despite their world building brilliance, their themes are only barely reflected in the actual gameplay.

And even on aesthetics, the Hybrids don't have full unit rosters or city/ leader graphics, making them feel extremely half-baked.
_______________

Aside Aliens being a non-factor, the first part of the game does feel like the early days of colonization.

The problem is that playstyles never fundamentally diverge with affinity.

I'm not sure that Supremacy would be defined by military and wide play, since if anything their infrastructure requirements would seem to promote tall.

Ideally I'd like an Affinity trait system, to significantly change the playstyles of the affinities with powerful bonuses.

These could be paired with respect / disrespect modifiers that promote Affinity-based diplomacy, like what tile improvements are used, how Aliens are treated, and general modifiers against those of opposing affinity.

It would also help to tie Affinity into the game if the local lifeforms were a real, dangerous asset for Harmony in the late game: to the point that the other affinities may want to destroy nests while Harmony would seek to preserve them.
__________________________________________

EDIT

On War, I think it should be difficult and discouraged to attack early, but much more feasible later.

In time the Affinities go beyond being so fragile that a single saboteur could ruin everything.

Harmony lives off the land, Supremacy abandons many traditional human needs, and Purity would certainly have back-up plans an terraformed zones if things went awry.

Additionally the differences in the affinities would make it increasingly difficult for infiltrators to sabotage, both due to ideological differences in recruitment and differences in appearance.

By the late game populations on the planet have risen to the point that broad scale war can be supported.
___________________________________________

EDIT 2

Though I'm not a big fan of Supremacy, I do not think it feels "tacked on" in any way.

It is the idea that, by becoming more machine-like, humanity could exist in any environment: that a second Great Mistake would not stop progress.

Supremacy provides interesting contrasts to the other affinities on questions like the nature of sentient AI, the ethical questions of neural uploading, and the embrace or rejection of cybernetics.

 

[Gorbles]

The claimed issue you raised was an assumption that I was specifying a 'workable end product' based on a given source novel. That was not the case - as I've now said several times the workable end product I had in view was one in which affinity choice defines gameplay. The particular choice could be based on a particular source or not, and could be as crudely-linked to existing play archetypes as 'Supremacy = wide, Purity = tall improvement-focused, Harmony = tall specialist-focused', but it's not the specific implementation that's at issue - in fact a system that binary (well, tertiary) would likely be too static (all wide play ends up as Supremacy for instance).

But this is the general approach it makes sense to take with affinities to make them more than cosmetic add-ons - something that influences the core of a 4x game's playstyle and strategic focus to a greater or lesser degree. "One affinity gets extra science from science buildings, one affinity gets extra science from supporting more population, one affinity gets extra science from virtues, all play exactly the same strategy exactly the same way" is no difference at all.

I'd say there's less room for subjectivity on this point than you imagine. The endpoint Beyond Earth's affinities end up with, much like Alpha Centauri's transcendence, are as close to pure fantasy that it makes no difference, but our premise is that we start from a near-future base, with essentially our own technology (minus, apparently, computers, satellites or aircraft) save for the ability to settle another planet. We rule out any space operatics, as there are no sentient aliens involved. We are intrinsically starting from something close to hard sci-fi.

Unit perks are the same for levelling in an affinity regardless of which affinity you level up in, from what I've seen. Balance issues in a single-player game are essentially irrelevant, and in any case are a moot point while the AI is in a state where you never need affinity-specific, or even hybrid, units to win the game through combat. And whatever their specific bonuses, each affinity has its units at basically the same point on their tech path, with basically the same combat stats. Affinities should make a detectably distinct enough difference to play style that you should be able to tell what they're doing for you without checking the tooltips. Right now whatever impact they have is less detectable than BNW's ideologies, and those only show up late in the game mainly as a way of boosting your progress towards an already-chosen victory condition.

Colonization was not a Civilization game by name, but was nevertheless one in playstyle (albeit one arguably more distinct from contemporary Civ than Alpha Centauri); it's not clear why who owns the rights is relevant.

Which is why I say it didn't do an especially good job of portraying the world as a genuinely new environment to colonise, but it was nevertheless closer than BE. If all you want the game to be is a retread of Civilization, all you'll ever get is a reskinned map, but that squanders the entire premise of setting the game on another planet. Even systems like affinity could be implemented in a typical Civ game, as the same sorts of questions about how to adapt a society to future developments exist (albeit not with a specific focus on adapting to an alien world; nevertheless Purity and Supremacy are both viable options in a future-Earth setting).

Sorry for the delay in replying, had less time last night than I thought I would.

1. You directly stated that you wished the developers to base their source material on is the Mars trilogy (by Robinson). This then defines and shapes the Affinities thematically regardless of gameplay consequences. My post pointing out the issue with that was simply that everyone else is going to have a different thematic source given their sci-fi tastes.

This direct wish is likely to remain unfulfilled, for better or worse. Do you see where I'm approaching the argument from?

2. What do you mean play differently, then? Science is king in Civilisation games, always has been, always will be. Science is the direct resource that translates into Technologies that provide ingame progression that advances literally every other aspect of your empire. Affinities gaining Science in different ways is as close to differing strategies as you're going to get.

Deconstructing "Science is king" would do the series a great benefit I feel, but I'm not sure that's what the developers are truly fussed about (and indeed, the series maintains a strong presence despite this reliance) and it would require a lot more work than just improving on BE (and as such, would be outside the scope of this discussion about BE, its longevity and relative success). Would be an interesting suggestions thread if enough people got involved.

3. Ahh, there's always room for subjectivity What do we even define as hard sci-fi in this instance? Surely despite the existence of the Civilopaedia there's a great amount of handwaving when it comes to BE's source material. The Great Mistake, some plot device or unnamed disaster trope that forced people to leave the planet Earth . . . that could apply to any variant of science-fiction. The lack of hard science surrounding the generations-long trips in stasis for the settlers to reach an alien planet, and so on, and so forth. SMAC was arguably "harder" sci-fi (and even in literature this is classed as more of a sliding scale than a black-or-white thing) mainly because the initial premise was set more in fact and required no elaborate explanation or world-building (the existence of Earth is moot, and a mutiny about a ship provides ample explanation for the subsequent faction splits).

(I love debating this stuff, because I feel that barring some very obvious exceptions "hard" and "soft" sci-fi are overly-used and most sci-fi bridges the spectrum between the two extremes)

4. Unit Perks actually provide the most variance in your army loadout, full stop. This is something I completely disagree on, and while I agree with Galgus that Perks should be better, they're still very separate in of themselves and the progression paths for each unit reinforce the Affinity chosen (Miasma bonuses for Harmony, damage-on-death for Harmony, adjacency bonuses for Supremacy, flanking bonuses for Supremacy, and so on, and so forth). There are shared Perks, absolutely. Expanding this system would help casual interest in the game for sure (bearing in mind that expanding a tree-based upgrade system makes balance exponentially more difficult - and while players criticise the existing balance, I'm sure that making it even harder to optimise would be unfavourable. But that's up to the developers to decide between as a cost-benefit analysis).

5. You mentioned SMAC as a Civilisation game that did something better than BE. SMAC is not a Civilisation game, so the wordplay is actually important here. The inference is that an old <Civilisation> game is superior to a new <Civilisation> game, when in fact it's a stronger semantic argument to simply state you think SMAC is a superior game regardless of title (or even genre). A lot of people would agree with you (though, ironically, not me. I love SMAC, but it has significant, even glaring, faults).

I also disagree that SMAC starts were more hostile than in BE. Aliens are more of an initial menace than Mind Worms ever were (even if you had bad luck with Resource Pods and you got the native life / perihelion event repeatedly). The difference is Mind Worms retain potential through the broken application of Psi combat throughout the game, but Aliens do not. Some people categorise this as evidence that SMAC is superior in presenting alien lifeforms, but again I'd disagree on the grounds that they're simply different approaches. Aliens in BE are not intended to be a lategame threat - players are.

 

[Acken]

Deconstructing "Science is king" would do the series a great benefit I feel, but I'm not sure that's what the developers are truly fussed about (and indeed, the series maintains a strong presence despite this reliance) and it would require a lot more work than just improving on BE (and as such, would be outside the scope of this discussion about BE, its longevity and relative success). Would be an interesting suggestions thread if enough people got involved.

Science and tech progress being crucial is not really a problem I think. The issue is that such an important part has only one way to get it (or close to it). Civ4 did it slightly better offering to go either for money or specialists but even then it was a bit unsatisfying. Civ5 and then CivBE made it even more one dimensional, relying mostly on growth and using every +science options available.

What I would have liked is to have other means to raise your science, to compensate for other playstyles and reward success there. For example, being an influential culture through tourism could award an interesting discount on every tech known by that civ. Or conquering the cities of someone could reward techs known by them. Of course when it comes to civ5 this suggest the AI is not so bad at teching . Make teching dependent on terrain is also an interesting idea. Expanding to a location with Iron could give a discount on IronWorking and Metallurgy for example, founding a religion could give discounts on Religion techs.

The form of the trees are also important. Civ5 is often criticized for having too many beelines because of unlocking science buildings. A possible solution that I like a lot is what Endless Legend does with tiers of techs that you unlock after an amount of techs spent in the previous age. I'm not a fan of how costs increase since it suggests to pick only the most efficient stuff but the tier idea with no prerequisites is a good idea in my opinion. Interestingly, the civilization boardgame does something like this !
CivBE tree is not a bad idea at its core, it's just the execution that I'm criticizing and I profoundly believe affinity techs just kill the design purpose of the tree web.

 

[PhilBowles]

Sorry for the delay in replying, had less time last night than I thought I would.

1. You directly stated that you wished the developers to base their source material on is the Mars trilogy (by Robinson). This then defines and shapes the Affinities thematically regardless of gameplay consequences. My post pointing out the issue with that was simply that everyone else is going to have a different thematic source given their sci-fi tastes.

It's true that I said "When I think of a system like the affinities on a newly-colonised planet, the source material I immediately want to feel the designers have used is the Mars trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson."

However, I then elaborated on precisely what elements of this source material are universal to a colonisation project and fit the already-chosen direction of Beyond Earth (the affinity focus): "The pattern of development described in broad strokes in that series: initially, everyone has to get on with the business of surviving in a completely hostile environment, and supporting a minimum level of terraforming for subsistence, but as societies develop splits emerge between those who want to terraform more aggressively (Purity, in BE terms) and those who want to preserve more of the primal environment and adapt themselves to it (Harmony) emerge and leads to sabotage and conflict"

This direct wish is likely to remain unfulfilled, for better or worse. Do you see where I'm approaching the argument from?

I see where you've gone wrong in interpreting my argument better, at least. I'm not insisting a set text as a general template - I'm raising it as the specific work (of those with which I'm familiar) which best-describes in detail the type of world Beyond Earth's designers have already selected for their game.

I'm saying essentially only that the game should better-correspond to the works it's based on (and the Mars trilogy was namechecked by the designers when advertising BE originally).

2. What do you mean play differently, then? Science is king in Civilisation games, always has been, always will be. Science is the direct resource that translates into Technologies that provide ingame progression that advances literally every other aspect of your empire. Affinities gaining Science in different ways is as close to differing strategies as you're going to get.

This is a question that past games in the series have answered, precisely because 'Science is King' is the foundation of Civ games. They have offered multiple avenues to victory beyond 'fill bucket X instead of bucket Y'. Both playing wide and playing tall ultimately generate science, but require differences in play beyond clicking on different building options; similarly specialists provide science through a different mechanism from tile improvements, and are favoured by a different playstyle. None of the affinity differences achieve anything similar.

3. Ahh, there's always room for subjectivity What do we even define as hard sci-fi in this instance? Surely despite the existence of the Civilopaedia there's a great amount of handwaving when it comes to BE's source material. The Great Mistake, some plot device or unnamed disaster trope that forced people to leave the planet Earth . . . that could apply to any variant of science-fiction. The lack of hard science surrounding the generations-long trips in stasis for the settlers to reach an alien planet, and so on, and so forth. SMAC was arguably "harder" sci-fi (and even in literature this is classed as more of a sliding scale than a black-or-white thing) mainly because the initial premise was set more in fact and required no elaborate explanation or world-building (the existence of Earth is moot, and a mutiny about a ship provides ample explanation for the subsequent faction splits).

I'd define the game's genre more in terms of the way it portrays gameplay rather than the premise used to get to turn 1. Grubbing around on a new world obtaining resources to build a colony, develop technology the hard way rather than stumbling across magic alien equipment and the like are all plausible developments that are better-considered hard sci-fi in most cases. Both games have somewhat drastic departures from 'hard sci-fi', with psychic worms in the first and a fully edible landscape covered in alien ruins in the second. And while a mutiny is plausible, the idea that a mutiny would result from factions that split immediately into factions as distinct as those in AC (especially once you introduce robots and pirates) is pretty much as awkward as the idea that - with a lot of planets apparently available to choose from - eight factions would happen to land on the same planet close to simultaneously. And Alien Crossfire strayed unashamedly into space opera from its opening cinematic.

5. You mentioned SMAC as a Civilisation game that did something better than BE. SMAC is not a Civilisation game, so the wordplay is actually important here.

No, it's merely semantic. Neither of the two original Civ spinoffs had "Civilization" in the name (while Call to Power, which was not a Civilization game, did). They were spinoffs, using the core engines of the Civ games of the time, and with the same developers. You can't judge whether or not a game is a 'Civilization' game by applying a branding convention that wasn't adopted until almost two decades later - the numbered Civ games had Civilization in the name because they were direct remakes of the original game, not to promote brand awareness; since AC and Colonization had different premises they weren't given the Civilization name, but that's the only difference.

The inference is that an old <Civilisation> game is superior to a new <Civilisation> game, when in fact it's a stronger semantic argument to simply state you think SMAC is a superior game regardless of title (or even genre). A lot of people would agree with you (though, ironically, not me. I love SMAC, but it has significant, even glaring, faults).

The argument was that it portrayed a specific thematic element (a little) better, not that it was a better game. Certainly I'd say it's a better game in practice than BE, simply because I consider BE a poor Civ game, but I've never got the adoration that surrounds SMAC. It made few mechanical changes to Civ II and one of those - the unit workshop - I strongly disliked. While with generally well-written quotes the factions seemed too caricatured and implausible for me to immerse myself in the storytelling. I always preferred Colonization and didn't get invested enough in AC at the time that I didn't pick up the expansion until it turned up on Good Old Games a year or two ago.

I also disagree that SMAC starts were more hostile than in BE. Aliens are more of an initial menace than Mind Worms ever were (even if you had bad luck with Resource Pods and you got the native life / perihelion event repeatedly). The difference is Mind Worms retain potential through the broken application of Psi combat throughout the game, but Aliens do not. Some people categorise this as evidence that SMAC is superior in presenting alien lifeforms, but again I'd disagree on the grounds that they're simply different approaches. Aliens in BE are not intended to be a lategame threat - players are.

I'm not talking about the implementation of aliens, I'm talking about the terrain setup. you couldn't build farms immediately from recollection, and terrain with high outputs (of food or anything else) seemed rare without resource pods. You needed to reach higher levels of terraforming technology to adjust elevation (and so rainfall) to reliably generate food surpluses - it's that conflict with the environment that's missing from BE, where you're on a new planet whose resource yields tend to be more generous than those on Earth in BNW (especially since the designers made the disastrous decision to add energy yields to tiles as well as implementing BNW-based trade routes, where Civ V wisely removed gold tile yields other than those from luxury resources).

 

[PhilBowles]

Science and tech progress being crucial is not really a problem I think. The issue is that such an important part has only one way to get it (or close to it). Civ4 did it slightly better offering to go either for money or specialists but even then it was a bit unsatisfying. Civ5 and then CivBE made it even more one dimensional, relying mostly on growth and using every +science options available.

The direct link between population and science was the core mistake made by Civ V, and carried over to BE (yes, much more important than oft-whined-about trivia like 1UPT). Civ V at least heavily pushed tall vs. wide as viable alternative options (where 'go as wide as possible' was the mantra in every previous Civ game). BE lacks even that, with the only reason to go tall being constraints set by the map and/or surrounding factions/stations you don't want to conquer. And getting free science boosts from your agents without any need to do anything pretty much lets you do whatever you like and still get an edge - unlike Civ V, where you steal specific techs rather than science, and so espionage can only ever get you to parity with a civ that knows more than you do rather than get you ahead (plus you avoid weird conceptual issues that you can somehow advance your understanding of relativity by spying on a civilisation that just learned about the wheel).

What I would have liked is to have other means to raise your science, to compensate for other playstyles and reward success there. For example, being an influential culture through tourism could award an interesting discount on every tech known by that civ. Or conquering the cities of someone could reward techs known by them.

Past Civ games used the latter. Losing it was sad thematically but made gameplay sense, especially in a Civ V framework where the AI has a much harder time than the player capturing cities, as it was almost always a way the player could get an advantage over the AI rather than vice versa (tech trading was removed for the same reason).

Make teching dependent on terrain is also an interesting idea. Expanding to a location with Iron could give a discount on IronWorking and Metallurgy for example, founding a religion could give discounts on Religion techs.

I've thought in the past that resources other than stone and marble should give bonuses, particularly bonuses worth fighting over. Copper could boost research into both Bronze Working and Electronics, for instance, or a production discount for associated units/buildings.

I liked Civ IV's tailored Great People, where each was spawned with the ability to learn or contribute research to a specific tech related to the GP's type, even though I've never been a fan of the Great Person system in general.

A big issue is that all techs fall along the same tech tree - Civ V tried to address this to some degree with a culture system and religion that removed the direct "research this, get that civic/government/religion" element of previous games, but without having genuinely separate tech trees which use a different resource to pursue you can't get away from the simple fact that you need to get more science in order to get the techs that give you the culture or faith points - bringing us back to Science is King.

If culture is provided only by culture buildings/improvements that are found along a culture-specific tech tree, for example, you need to focus on a different resource to get there. Though you'd probably need some form of interlinking similar to Civ IV (for instance, say Drama and Poetry/Literature is along the culture tech path, but you will need Construction or at least Masonry as well in order to build the Amphitheatres it unlocks).

The form of the trees are also important. Civ5 is often criticized for having too many beelines because of unlocking science buildings. A possible solution that I like a lot is what Endless Legend does with tiers of techs that you unlock after an amount of techs spent in the previous age.

I'm not a great fan of the EL system, and aside from the thematic difficulty of translating it to a historical setting (in which technologies genuinely do form a somewhat linear progression), like much of that game's design it's very hostile to the AI since it presents too many different paths without sufficient guidance for the AI to settle on an optimal strategy in a given situation. Civ III did use the same model of 'you enter a new era when you unlock X techs', but being a Civ game it had a linear tech tree as well.

I'm not a fan of how costs increase since it suggests to pick only the most efficient stuff but the tier idea with no prerequisites is a good idea in my opinion. Interestingly, the civilization boardgame does something like this !

The Civ boardgame (if you mean the original Avalon Hill game that inspired Civ 1 rather than the board game based on Civilization) actually takes the approach I suggest in having multiple tech trees, each linked to a different resource (or in the game's terms, colour, with each colour representing a specific type of cultural development), instead of a single tech tree. While individual techs don't have prerequisites as such, they are discounted if you have other techs of the same colour, and the discount is greater the more techs you have.

 

[Acken]

I'm not a great fan of the EL system, and aside from the thematic difficulty of translating it to a historical setting (in which technologies genuinely do form a somewhat linear progression), like much of that game's design it's very hostile to the AI since it presents too many different paths without sufficient guidance for the AI to settle on an optimal strategy in a given situation. Civ III did use the same model of 'you enter a new era when you unlock X techs', but being a Civ game it had a linear tech tree as well.

Actually I strongly disagree here. The AI will have access to its key techs way easier than with any trees. One of the difficulty the AI has in Civ5 is to beeline the right techs. The propagation algorithm has trouble to really making the AI pick the right paths. If more options are available right away with no prerequisites the choice is direct for the AI depending on other factors. If the game techs are 100% linear it's obviously also very easy on the AI but that is at the loss of the player experience.
The hardest system on the AI is the techweb of CivBE where it's both a system of paths/prerequisites AND many options.

The Civ boardgame (if you mean the original Avalon Hill game that inspired Civ 1 rather than the board game based on Civilization) actually takes the approach I suggest in having multiple tech trees, each linked to a different resource (or in the game's terms, colour, with each colour representing a specific type of cultural development), instead of a single tech tree. While individual techs don't have prerequisites as such, they are discounted if you have other techs of the same colour, and the discount is greater the more techs you have.

No I'm talking about the later game, inspired from the videogame. Where you have access to all techs of an era.

 

[Galgus]

Science and tech progress being crucial is not really a problem I think. The issue is that such an important part has only one way to get it (or close to it). Civ4 did it slightly better offering to go either for money or specialists but even then it was a bit unsatisfying. Civ5 and then CivBE made it even more one dimensional, relying mostly on growth and using every +science options available.

What I would have liked is to have other means to raise your science, to compensate for other playstyles and reward success there. For example, being an influential culture through tourism could award an interesting discount on every tech known by that civ. Or conquering the cities of someone could reward techs known by them. Of course when it comes to civ5 this suggest the AI is not so bad at teching . Make teching dependent on terrain is also an interesting idea. Expanding to a location with Iron could give a discount on IronWorking and Metallurgy for example, founding a religion could give discounts on Religion techs.

The form of the trees are also important. Civ5 is often criticized for having too many beelines because of unlocking science buildings. A possible solution that I like a lot is what Endless Legend does with tiers of techs that you unlock after an amount of techs spent in the previous age. I'm not a fan of how costs increase since it suggests to pick only the most efficient stuff but the tier idea with no prerequisites is a good idea in my opinion. Interestingly, the civilization boardgame does something like this !
CivBE tree is not a bad idea at its core, it's just the execution that I'm criticizing and I profoundly believe affinity techs just kill the design purpose of the tree web.

I'd still prefer a system where adopting virtues or researching technologies grants generic affinity points which can then be spent as the player wishes.

Techs could still be affiliated with affinity via bonuses that require a certain amount of points to unlock, but it would allow significantly more freedom in tech paths.

I'm personally fine with beelining techs, though free tech bonuses kind of break it.

 

[PhilBowles]

Actually I strongly disagree here. The AI will have access to its key techs way easier than with any trees.

This might be true in a static game, where there are always specific 'key techs' regardless of strategy or map context, but it requires giving the AI an essentially linear path through the tech tree anyway. And my experience with Endless Legend is that this is one of many areas where the AI fumbles - it can era-jump quickly enough, but from its performance and unit stats it seems evident that it isn't following any particularly fine-tuned strategy.

No I'm talking about the later game, inspired from the videogame. Where you have access to all techs of an era.

Okay, I'm not familiar with the gameplay of that one.

 

[Acken]

This might be true in a static game, where there are always specific 'key techs' regardless of strategy or map context, but it requires giving the AI an essentially linear path through the tech tree anyway. And my experience with Endless Legend is that this is one of many areas where the AI fumbles - it can era-jump quickly enough, but from its performance and unit stats it seems evident that it isn't following any particularly fine-tuned strategy.

I dont know about EL but it would have solved many of the problem I have when improving Civ5 AI. I can play with the flavors and strategyAI as much as I want... if the tech is too far the AI just doesn't see it.

 

[PhilBowles]

I dont know about EL but it would have solved many of the problem I have when improving Civ5 AI. I can play with the flavors and strategyAI as much as I want... if the tech is too far the AI just doesn't see it.

I've found that Civ V's base AI is pretty good about selecting effective tech orders - it's the first time a Civ game has consistently been able to pressure me for non-military victories. The AI doesn't need to see tech X, it just needs to be programmed with a predefined set of tech path options (such as the steps that lead along the Civil Service path, or those that lead along the Education path) - at any given time it only needs to see the preferred tech two or three techs along, and the linear nature of the tree itself does the rest by cutting off certain options. With EL it still can't see X techs ahead, but at the same time no tech choice it makes will restrict its future options so it will be just as 'confused' at each tech step.

 

[Lexicus]

Science and tech progress being crucial is not really a problem I think. The issue is that such an important part has only one way to get it (or close to it). Civ4 did it slightly better offering to go either for money or specialists but even then it was a bit unsatisfying. Civ5 and then CivBE made it even more one dimensional, relying mostly on growth and using every +science options available.

Yes, it's difficult to think of what could possibly replace a "Science is King" situation. I mean, for Civ's historical setting "Science is King" makes total sense, it's a reasonably accurate reproduction of history.
Personally I would like to see some sort of acknowledgement of the radical differences between the entities lumped together in the game as "civilizations." Like, the way that the Mongols or Huns are played should differ entirely from how one would play a sedentary people like the Egyptians, while "hybrid" civilizations like the Ottomans or Arabs should be something else again.

But how to implement this is the question, to which I lack an answer.

I am actually really excited for At The Gates, pursuant to some of this stuff.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Yes, it's difficult to think of what could possibly replace a "Science is King" situation. I mean, for Civ's historical setting "Science is King" makes total sense, it's a reasonably accurate reproduction of history.

I don't think we need to totally replace "science is king". Obviously, technological progress is key when you are dealing with a game that spans human history. But maybe the game could make some other things a bit more important so that science isn't quite the end-all-be-all. For example, make military training or morale more important so that sure, you might have a technological superior force but are they well trained, well equipped, loyal etc? That way, other things will be important, not just science. Also, I've always liked the idea of making certain resources prerequisites for certain techs. For example, you have to find iron before you can research iron working. Or maybe a certain social policy might be a prerequisite for a certain tech. That way, geography or culture can impact the direction of your science so that tech progress is more than just maximizing beakers.

 

[Galgus]

Yes, it's difficult to think of what could possibly replace a "Science is King" situation. I mean, for Civ's historical setting "Science is King" makes total sense, it's a reasonably accurate reproduction of history.
Personally I would like to see some sort of acknowledgement of the radical differences between the entities lumped together in the game as "civilizations." Like, the way that the Mongols or Huns are played should differ entirely from how one would play a sedentary people like the Egyptians, while "hybrid" civilizations like the Ottomans or Arabs should be something else again.

But how to implement this is the question, to which I lack an answer.

I am actually really excited for At The Gates, pursuant to some of this stuff.

I had an idea like this earlier for Civ, types of civilization with different mechanics.

There would, ideally, be a sort of policy web connecting them which players could move along to change to another type: with a significant period of unrest.

Different civilizations would naturally start in different areas, making for longer or shorter paths to certain types.

 

[Lexicus]

For example, make military training or morale more important so that sure, you might have a technological superior force but are they well trained, well equipped, loyal etc?

To some extent we have this with promotions, which are far more powerful in Civ V than in IV. I'd take a Logistics-promoted Treb over a zero-promotion cannon, for instance whereas in IV even highly promoted technologically backward units are almost always worse than low-exp new units.

Also, I've always liked the idea of making certain resources prerequisites for certain techs. For example, you have to find iron before you can research iron working. Or maybe a certain social policy might be a prerequisite for a certain tech. That way, geography or culture can impact the direction of your science so that tech progress is more than just maximizing beakers.

More things like this are probably a good idea. One area where I think Civ V does better than Civ IV is with policies and religions giving certain bonuses to different tiles and improvements. Civ V in a sense doesn't go far enough with this--the bonuses are more "flavor" than game-changing.

Done well it could make for very different playstyles for different religions, governments, terrain starts, etc.

I also think that the Social Policies system in Civ V need not be mutually exclusive with the Governments system in IV.

There would, ideally, be a sort of policy web connecting them which players could move along to change to another type: with a significant period of unrest.

Different civilizations would naturally start in different areas, making for longer or shorter paths to certain types.

I do like that idea, I would love more complex interaction/intermediate stages between the Barbarians and Civilizations, similar to CS in V or the Independents in RfC.
I mean, in real history the interactions between "barbarians" and civilizations was a lot more complex than just constant war. For much of history most social progress was made by civilizations being destroyed and replaced by "barbarians". In the West you had Mesopotamian civilization destroyed and remade by the Persians, then the Greeks arrived from the periphery, then the Romans, and so on. China has similar episodes with "conquest dynasties", most notably the Qing and Yuan. In the New World you have the Aztecs taking on the mantle of the Mayans.

I guess in general I would like to see more variation between Civ playstyles and more reflection of the great historical differences between different political-economic, cultural, social systems, and, crucially, the interaction between these different systems producing even further variation.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Beyond Earth has actually managed to turn me off of the company's games for the foreseeable future.

The reason is simple: I don't feel they've sufficiently patched and balanced Vanilla, and now it seems like they're ignoring it.

With previous titles in the series, you'd usually get one last patch before the expansion launched with whatever they could put in the Vanilla game. But BE Vanilla seems to have been abandoned a lot sooner and a lot more quickly.

Had they had the good faith to put out another Vanilla patch, I'd likely have bought Rising Tide. As it is . . . I lost interest.

 

[Acken]

I've found that Civ V's base AI is pretty good about selecting effective tech orders - it's the first time a Civ game has consistently been able to pressure me for non-military victories. The AI doesn't need to see tech X, it just needs to be programmed with a predefined set of tech path options (such as the steps that lead along the Civil Service path, or those that lead along the Education path) - at any given time it only needs to see the preferred tech two or three techs along, and the linear nature of the tree itself does the rest by cutting off certain options. With EL it still can't see X techs ahead, but at the same time no tech choice it makes will restrict its future options so it will be just as 'confused' at each tech step.

Your idea of predefined tech paths make it too rigid and impossible to mod the tree so that's a nono.

It's not important in EL that the AI doesn't see future techs. It will unlock them at the exact same speed regardless of what it takes before.

There is no doubt that a purely linear path is easier on the AI. But you cannot make a game based solely on what is easy on the AI. A single line of a tech tree wouldn't be good right ? The linearity of Civ5 tech tree is a problem for the player experience due to how key techs funnel you toward them limiting replayability. EL solution helps both, it is easy on the AI (easier than CivBE) AND allow better customization for the player. As I've also said earlier I don't like how costs work in EL though and if your worry is that the AI would skip some techs for the whole game then that is something I agree to and why early techs should be easily accessible... so that the AI will get them naturally.

 

[PhilBowles]

Your idea of predefined tech paths make it too rigid and impossible to mod the tree so that's a nono.

It's not important in EL that the AI doesn't see future techs. It will unlock them at the exact same speed regardless of what it takes before.

There is no doubt that a purely linear path is easier on the AI. But you cannot make a game based solely on what is easy on the AI. A single line of a tech tree wouldn't be good right ? The linearity of Civ5 tech tree is a problem for the player experience due to how key techs funnel you toward them limiting replayability.

That depends on how you consider a game to retain playability. If you have something like Civ IV's tech tree, sure you have three or four additional paths through the tree - that's a fairly small boost to playability, all else being equal and assuming an AI that's going to present little substantial challenge other than 'spam stacks'.

On the other hand, if you have an AI like Civ V's you have 3-4 routes through the tree, limiting playability in terms of strategic diversity, but now the AI is capable of winning in 3-4 different ways it wasn't able to win before. So there's considerably more variety in the challenge, and in turn that's going to promote different approaches to beating the AI than just finding the few optimal routes to beat its stacks.

I won't say Civ V got the balance right - for a start it's worse at the military game than Civ IV's, and you can always beat it with units if you don't want to play a more peacefully competitive game. But it's taking a better approach. Ultimately, Civ is not a strategically complex series and there will always be an optimal path to take. Much of the variety comes from players doing non-optimal things to vary their experience. So trying to boost the pool of near-optimal strategies is somewhat futile after a certain point, as well as often presenting a barrier to entry for newer players by making the game seem more complex than it is.

"Hard to learn, easy to master" could be the motto for Civ III and IV's initially impenetrable complexity, where the converse is really what a game of this nature should aim for, especially one whose designers aspire for it to sell well.

What you can't really do is take the extreme that Endless Legend seems to aim at, and design systems that may be fun for players with barely any regard for the AI's capabilities.

Customisation is harder for an AI than linearity, and yet we have customisable units, customisable hero levelling, and customisable tech progression, resulting in an AI that both techs badly and builds bad units. The only concession that the game seems to make is by making unit customisation very simple (two types of weapon at most per unit, and two types of perk - greater damage, or greater initiative - from resource-based weapons), which ultimately makes it bad for the player as well as being bad for the AI.

We have a market-based system as the only way to obtain new heroes; again the AI either isn't capable of using this, can't make good decisions, or avoids it in its tech progression and, because of the problem you highlighted in its tech decisions, it never back-techs once it hits a new era. Whatever the case, I haven't seen the AI use mercenary hero units.

We have a quest reward system and an AI that either doesn't get quests (like the BE AI) or is unable to pursue them, as it never explores and - although it appears to automatically turn on the victory quest condition when it hits a certain point in the tech tree - it's not capable of actually pursuing the quest victory. We have huge initial rewards for pacifying villages, again through quests, but because the AI can't do those quests it has to destroy the villages, and seems very slow to rebuild them, with the result that the player is always going to get the extra population up and running much sooner.

 

[Acken]

First off, I'm not saying Endless Legend AI is good. If that's your impression then let's make that clear. I don't even play that game. I'm talking about the tech system and how the way the AI works in civ5 would react to it. Whether or not Amplitude failed to make the AI competent in unit building or chosing the right tech is 100% irrelevant to me.

I don't know why you're going on a tangent about quest and how you get heroes. Really I don't care about that. I'm not defending EL as a game, or its AI, I'm defending the idea of a removal of tech prerequisites as a mean of increasing choices rather than relying on beelines which is good for the player experience. As an example, I agree with you with unit customization which is a system that I don't really like for reasons you mentioned although in EL its not as bad as in ES or Galciv.

On that subject, you keep repeating having access to all techs of an era would make it more difficult for the AI to pick its key techs. I don't think it makes any sense and strongly disagree based on my modding knowledge of the Civ5 AI. When the AI has access to a tech it is geared for, it will chose it assuming the AI is correctly programmed to recognize the techs it needs. I'm sorry if Amplitude can't do something like that. Civ5 do this well. If it has access to a tech it considers key it will go for it. The problem is that the AI will ignore prerequisites to a tech it wants because it doesn't need the prerequisites (up to a point because of a propagation algorithm). A good example is Acoustics+Architecture being culture flavored but leading to a science flavored tech (ST) or Biology bein a warmonger tech hidden behind a culture tech.

What paths achieve is to force the AI (and the player) to acquire some other techs. If those techs are necessary techs for performance then they need to be given enough weight to be picked after the key ones. It's true that it's easier to dictate what you'll get through this but I think there need to be a bit more variation in how you chose to tech than what civ5 proposes.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

Endless Legend (and Endless Space too) have pretty obvious first order tech choices.

The difference is you just pick the best techs from each era first and then move to the "less bad" one until you have enough for the next era. There is *sometimes* some choice involved to consider whitch techs make the cut for the 8 (?) one you have to pick, but most of the time there are clear winners and clear losers.