New patch : No wonders balance!? Seriously?

[traius]

To be fair, the wonders might not be exciting, but I'm glad that they're not actually broken as many like to proclaim. Trade routes were a problem because they warped the entire economy and were disproportionally powerful. Hence, squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Wonders? They don't "warp" the gameplay in the same way, the worst sin is that you can ignore them but they don't have any bad effects, so to speak.

That makes them a low priority issue to me. Yes, it'd be nice if they became more worthwhile and interesting... but overall? I can live with it.

As long as an AI thinks a complete garbage wonder is a potentially good idea, it's warping the game.

 

[Manannan]

I'm gonna put Xenodrome in there too, for Purity and Supremacy.
Now, I admit, Supremacy will probably go thru Transgenics instead, and Purity doesn't need to be in that part of the tree at all.

But if you are there, (steal tech?) it's +10 culture for 750 nuts. +4 for wonder, +4 for the free Xenosanctuary, and +2 for the Xenosanctuary quest. That's awesome.

Eh, it's a nice wonder for harmony but I don't think it's worth teching to for supremacy or purity. There are 4 other "culture" wonders (Promethean, Deep Memory, Bytegesit, Memetwork) that I'd say are more worth the effort to get than the Xenodrome if you want that sort of thing.

Again, so much of whether or not a wonder if worth it is all based on where it is on the tech tree right now, which to my line of thinking isn't very good design. Wonders should be tempting me to stray from a more optimal path to potentially get a very nice bonus, they should not be things I look at and say "it's more or less on the way to something I actually need anyway, maybe if there's time". Also some of them come so late I can't help but wonder why anyone thought they'd be useful at all. For example, if the Xenonova came earlier and cost a bit less to build it might be well worth grabbing as all that extra food (especially post TR nerf) and some token extra health could be nice to help a city really grow, but no, it's a last tier leaf tech you need to unlock it. Explain to me the logic of making a big +food wonder only available after the player isn't going to be particularly concerned with growing their cities, that one (like so much else in this game) boggles my mind.

 

[Pietato]

I actually like building wonders, so having the majority of them as junk 'warps' the game for me. Also as traius said, the AI still wastes time and resources building them, so the game is broken that way.

It should not be hard for the dev team to get together for a day, and just discuss wonders and fixes.

 

[gamemaster3000]

The +city hit points wonders aren't as useless as you might think. In a game with 6+ range aircraft, range 4 SABRs, and phasal teleporters, in a 1v1 human-v-human game it would be pretty easy to sneak a capital for a turn.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

I don't even mind that many wonders aren't *that* useful. More often then not your main city won't have to build anything in the mid and late game anyway, so you might as well toss in a mediocre or even bad wonder.

My problem with the wonders is more about the fact that many of them sit on leaf techs that you will never research because they either have the wrong affinity attached to it - or no affinity at all. Which is actually more of a design problem than a balance problem.

The benefits of a wrong/non-affinity tech or wonder have to be *HUGE* to make you research/build it. The Gene Vault is probably one of the few wonders that is strong enough to warrent research for non-purity players. Free Tech effect wonders are at least self-sufficient when it comes to win speed, but that's it.

So I'd ay unless the Affinity win conditions and/or the way of accumulating Affinity points via tech is changed, it will be impossible to balance wonders properly.

 

[Aimeryan]

It is a shame there are not more affinity quests, replacing some of the tech affinities. It would free up the techweb somewhat and allow for choice (as well as the quests being potentially more interesting).

 

[stealth_nsk]

It is a shame there are not more affinity quests, replacing some of the tech affinities. It would free up the techweb somewhat and allow for choice (as well as the quests being potentially more interesting).

The whole idea of affinities is to tangle the tech web - otherwise players would just beeline to desired techs. Giving less affinities from techs and more from quests would be exploited badly immediately. Players will not get more freedom, they'll just win earlier.

 

[Gorbles]

The whole idea of affinities is to tangle the tech web - otherwise players would just beeline to desired techs. Giving less affinities from techs and more from quests would be exploited badly immediately. Players will not get more freedom, they'll just win earlier.

Ooh, I hadn't considered this. Appreciate this insight!

 

[Aimeryan]

The whole idea of affinities is to tangle the tech web - otherwise players would just beeline to desired techs. Giving less affinities from techs and more from quests would be exploited badly immediately. Players will not get more freedom, they'll just win earlier.

You probably have a point here. I guess the counter would be that had the affinities been obtained from questing rather than the techweb in the first place then the techweb need not have been designed as it is, and thus the issue you describe wouldn't be present.

However, that is not the case, and I feel it would probably require too much work at this point to be viable. Oh well.

 

[Gorbles]

How else would you design a tech web that is both rewarding and doesn't incentivise the shortest-route to the victory technologies?

 

[Aimeryan]

How else would you design a tech web that is both rewarding and doesn't incentivise the shortest-route to the victory technologies?

Check out Endless Space's tech web. The basis is that you make going in multiple directions more beneficial (faster) than going in just one. Military stuff helps here as well, as you can't just neglect it under ideal circumstances (those where the AI are quite capable).

 

[Lord Tirian]

Check out Endless Space's tech web. The basis is that you make going in multiple directions more beneficial (faster) than going in just one. Military stuff helps here as well, as you can't just neglect it under ideal circumstances (those where the AI are quite capable).

I found Endless Space's tech trees very, very boring, though. One of the interesting things about the standard Civ-style tech tree and Civ:BE's tech web is that you never "just" pick up one thing:

Even if you go for miltary stuff, you still pick up other technologies and buildings. Even if you focus on economy, you develop some miltary capability. As a result, the whole thing feels more organic and also has the side effect of making it a lot harder to hobble yourself (ditto for the AI).

By having super-compartmentalised tech trees like ES, it feels like you really only have 4 choices and it feels less like you're making progress technologically (which, in reality, always had a lot of unexpected developments) and more like putting points into a skill tree.

It works, true, but it's one of the reason ES felt so bland and boring, I think.

 

[Aimeryan]

Just an example; I am sure there are better ones or that Civ could do it better than Endless Space's (which only really had 4 resources, FIDS, where as Civ also has culture and health, as well as possible alien stuff).