New Patch Incoming!

[Minor Annoyance]

I don't think a comparison to colonial America is all that apt. The space colonies aren't monarchies out for wealth and power above all else. They're trying to keep the human race from going extinct. So they don't have to me altruistic to want to help a new settlement they established. New cities aren't an 'other' out there to be exploited. They are our children, and children are the future!

 

[Barathor]

they are our children, and children are the future!

"... teach them well and let them lead the waaaay, show them --" err, sorry.

 

[PhilBowles]

I don't think a comparison to colonial America is all that apt. The space colonies aren't monarchies out for wealth and power above all else. They're trying to keep the human race from going extinct. So they don't have to me altruistic to want to help a new settlement they established. New cities aren't an 'other' out there to be exploited. They are our children, and children are the future!

For a start that's an oversimplified view of the colonial trade networks. Furs weren't exported back to Europe because they enhanced the power of the monarchy; they were a fashion item in demand among wealthier members of the public in areas like London. Tobacco was the same.

But the point I'm making is more general and applies equally to modern economies. Trade, domestic or otherwise, is a corporate endeavour at the scale of individual companies, not at the scale of a state with an eye to developing all of its cities. The company just sells to the highest bidder, which will usually be in a wealthy, large urban centre, and obtains the commodity at the lowest price - commonly smallholders in less wealthy areas. Fundamentally new cities are there to be exploited - it's still expansion into a new territory, and the reason to settle there rather than in an existing centre is to make use of whatever characteristics and resources the new site allows.

And even at the scale of modern states wealth is unevenly distributed and favours importing to already wealthy areas over investment in depressed ones - so you have entire states of near-ghost towns in the United States, a depressed north and ever-booming London in the UK and so on and so forth.

 

[Manannan]

One would question whether it's even realistic to expect the smaller city to gain more. When the Americas were colonised, the vast bulk of trade was from the colonies back to Europe, not vice versa.

If you want that to be the thread of logic for trade routes the current design is still problematic. From a game standpoint, it would make more sense to have the TR system look more like the one from CiV where the direction of the flow of resources is dictated by which city the TR starts from, and where it goes to. If they implemented something like that in the game where the bigger yields are always outgoing, and the smaller yields returning it would be significantly less counter-intuitive and actually allow the player some flexibility in what they're doing, rather than just trying to game the silly, seemingly broken algorithm to min/max yields as desired.

 

[PhilBowles]

If you want that to be the thread of logic for trade routes the current design is still problematic. From a game standpoint, it would make more sense to have the TR system look more like the one from CiV where the direction of the flow of resources is dictated by which city the TR starts from, and where it goes to. If they implemented something like that in the game where the bigger yields are always outgoing, and the smaller yields returning it would be significantly less counter-intuitive and actually allow the player some flexibility in what they're doing, rather than just trying to game the silly, seemingly broken algorithm to min/max yields as desired.

Agreed, Civ V's trade route system is one of the best advances the game made over both its previous iterations and other games in the series. It's bizarre how badly BE managed to mangle it.

 

[LORD ORION]

I don't think a comparison to colonial America is all that apt. The space colonies aren't monarchies out for wealth and power above all else. They're trying to keep the human race from going extinct. So they don't have to me altruistic to want to help a new settlement they established. New cities aren't an 'other' out there to be exploited. They are our children, and children are the future!

Heh, no...

Pick your authoritarian overlord

Intergalactic Monetary Fund (Central Banking Cartel)
Federation of Independent Planets (Centralized Command Authority)

They'll either corrupt your local government officials in the case of a democratic libertarian society and fold you into their banking system...
Or in the case of you having a hard dictator that becomes untouchable, they outright invade you and install their own puppet government... as an added bonus the flexing of military might makes for a good example for the others not to resist.

 

[Kutuzov]

I'm curious, did the devs ever make any kind of statement about trade routes and whether they were working as intended, or no? I'd be a lot more willing to cut them some slack over bad design if they would at least let people know "hey, yields aren't bugged, it's working as intended, and here's why we did it this way instead of some other way" (assuming "here's why" != "the voices in my head dictated it"). The silence is far more frustrating than anything else imo.

I know few game developers who their discuss design decisions with their community. There are some who do, like Paradox for a very good example, but others don't. Developers actually have good reasons for not doing so as well and they're not all about covering for their own 'incompetence'.

If you really want to know what the designers intentions are, why don't you apply to join the Beta testing team for this game or any other you're frustrated with the lack of communication? I'm quite serious. Developers really do explain their reasoning on the inner boards and the Beta team can 'interrogate' their decisions in there but are strictly forbidden from commenting on any discussions on the outer boards. One reason why they are willing to do this is because they believe that anyone committed enough to the game to sign the NDA is really serious about helping them to make their game good and merits an explanation.

 

[Minor Annoyance]

This patch focuses on wonders. I wonder if the victory wonders have changed?

 

[LORD ORION]

This patch focuses on wonders. I wonder if the victory wonders have changed?

Well 2 are obnoxious (Supremacy and Purity)
1 is auto-pilot easy (Harmony)
and Contact is broken out the ying yang (you can skip the equation portion, energy income is set to 0 so you can go on a negative energy binge)

Overall though, would it be bad if they simply raised the Affinity levels required a bit for the 3 affinity victories?
eg: Say 15 instead of 13? That would at least make you research and use a few more techs on the way.

Contact probably needs a review, if you max Science output (academy spam etc...) and then run for the Deep Space Telescope, 200ish turn victories are the norm. (Heh and the telescope gives you even more science output for cheap)

 

[Gort]

Yeah, I'd be in favour of raising the Affinity levels needed for Affinity victories.

Contact could be unlocked by a mid-level tech, but you have to control the eight (or so) alien monoliths scattered across the world's surface for twenty turns. A bit like domination but with monoliths instead of capitals.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

Contact could be unlocked by a mid-level tech, but you have to control the eight (or so) alien monoliths scattered across the world's surface for twenty turns. A bit like domination but with monoliths instead of capitals.

Something needs to be done about Contact, but forcing you into war to conquer the proper locations is not it. I think the Beacon should consume a fixed amount of energy, science and culture, and you should be able to commit more in order to speed up the process.

 

[Ryika]

Removing the I-WIN-Ruin (or, even better, make it open up an alternative path, instead of just allowing you to win way faster) is also something that should be done imho.

 

[Acken]

Increasing affinity level requirements for victory would just add 20turns to the game (which is not bad). Everything else would play exactly the same.

 

[Manannan]

Well 2 are obnoxious (Supremacy and Purity)
1 is auto-pilot easy (Harmony)
and Contact is broken out the ying yang (you can skip the equation portion, energy income is set to 0 so you can go on a negative energy binge)

Overall though, would it be bad if they simply raised the Affinity levels required a bit for the 3 affinity victories?
eg: Say 15 instead of 13? That would at least make you research and use a few more techs on the way.

Contact probably needs a review, if you max Science output (academy spam etc...) and then run for the Deep Space Telescope, 200ish turn victories are the norm. (Heh and the telescope gives you even more science output for cheap)

I recall making a thread awhile back where I think the consensus was that increasing affinity required to unlock the victory wonders would be a step in the right direction, even if only because it would allow time to unlock and play with all the best toys and encourage unlocking more of the tech web. Now that affinity specific units have been nerfed into oblivion I'm inclined to agree with the sentiment it's probably just needlessly adding turns to the game without adding anything fun to the experience as there's little to no reason to care about building those affinity units at this point. Maybe raising the requirement to 16+, making the AI vastly more aggressive when a planetary wonder is completed so the player actually has to do something past button mash enter until the game ends and giving the affinity units a bit of a buff so they're more fun to play with would help but the victory conditions probably still aren't going to be fun without an expansion I fear is never going to come to overhaul them entirely.

 

[wayneb64]

I don't understand why people are complaining about the affinity units being nerfed. I use CMDRs all the time and find them a great stepping stone until my marines get to tier 2, and then again the CMDR is fantastic with it's upgrade at only 10 Sup, 4 whatever until I get to 11 Sup for the marine upgrade.

 

[Manannan]

Because they're generally not worth building anymore? Level 4 affinity units are only relevant until the player hits level 6 in affinity, at which point in time they're just weaker soldiers that suck up strategic resources. That's how many turns of use exactly? Sure they kinda come back online when they get upgraded but by then you're close to max level rovers which are probably better in most situations anyway. That tends to be the theme with affinity units in my experience, although I will make special note of the affinity units that are rendered more or less useless as a result of being on parts of the tech tree the player generally won't bother teching towards.

 

[Ryika]

Also, at that time t1 ranged units are the backbone of your army anyway, making only slightly stronger "blocker" units not really needed. t0 Affinity was so strong because it could just break through pretty much any defense, which it is really bad at now, so that hammerhead-strategy from before they got nerfed doesn't work anymore.

 

[wayneb64]

I don't use them as hammers, I use them as walls. The AI on Apollo always has more and/or better units and having CMDR's to 'hold the line' while I whittle away at the enemy with pea shooters is the only way to survive. Every other unit is one or two shotted.

 

[Ryika]

If they're one-shotted, then you've chosen a bad angle of attack. ^^ For everything else we have units to swap around.

 

[LORD ORION]

Increasing affinity level requirements for victory would just add 20turns to the game (which is not bad). Everything else would play exactly the same.

Getting to 13 can be quick if you optimize. (as in using free tech ontop of a few free affinity points to hurdle your way into 13)
Getting to 15 requires 49 more Affinity points over 13.

At a minimum you need 1 more outer ring + leaf tech (but will likely need 2) which is 5740 sci each + the paths to reach them.

It's more like 40ish extra turn before you can start to build the victory wonder.