Should building's quests influence your affinity goal?

Jaeger5

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 30, 2007
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36
Take the Virarium where a scientist wants to make earth-Alien hybrids.

Continue the research and get +1 to science or stop the project for +1 food, you're a Vivarium make some vittles!

Now, the Harmonies would love to continue that research and the Purists are, "Are you crazy! Since I can't gig you down to teaching 6 grade science because you will feel those kids heads with nonsense, I'm going to banish you and you can get all closee-feely to those damn aliens all you want!"

How you answer the quests will synergize with your affinity...

Instead of oh, I need more food or science now...
 
I think this would make the choice a lot more interesting. As it is, there are quest choices you just always pick. Who would take maintenance free over +1 culture? If maintenance free came with a few affinity points, maybe it would be worth considering.
 
I think this would make the choice a lot more interesting. As it is, there are quest choices you just always pick. Who would take maintenance free over +1 culture? If maintenance free came with a few affinity points, maybe it would be worth considering.

"Maintenance free" is essentially +1 energy. +1 culture/+1 energy is moderately balanced.
 
If you're asking that the quest box be filled up with more walls of text that will either overwhelm newbies or irritate veterans, no thanks.

The quests are already more obtuse than they should be, considering the huge number you have to click through in every game. Having to mouse over the choices to see what the choices actually mean (and there's no way you could infer it from actually reading the pointless fluff) instead of just putting the icon-tagged reward choices right up front where you can clearly see them at a glance... it's one of a set of very strange UI choices. There's a similar problem in the Unit Upgrade perk choice dialog: you're shown two radio buttons with useless abstract icons and zero information about what they mean; you have to mouse over or click on one or the other to see what it actually means instead of just putting the brief explanation under each choice. Tooltips are nice, but I don't see the point of simplifying dialogs to the point where there's no useful information in them without clicking and hovering. It's certainly not a screen space issue.
 
"Maintenance free" is essentially +1 energy. +1 culture/+1 energy is moderately balanced.

I don't think so, just like in BNW, energy is a lot easier to come by than culture. 3 culture for 1 energy is a much better deal than 2 culture for nothing.

see it this way, 4 energy equals 1 hammer when buying something, think, so buying a 80 hammer unit costs 320 energy. If you had had those extra 320 hammers, you would have built that thing quite a while ago already. Especially since you don't need to pay for unit upgrades anymore, which was one of the main reasons to always have a solid +gpt in BNW.

And culture is even harder to stack up than production.
 
Wait, wait, wait!!!

Should I take an extra trade route or +1 energy? I cannot decide!
 
yeah that's pretty much the worst choice in the entire bunch. The only reason you would take the energy is when you're not in the mood for micromanaging another bunch of caravans...
 
The building choices would have to be a lot more balanced to add affinity actions to them.

That said, I would like to see more late game ways to get affinities other than through techs. It feels like early game, you get a nice mix of techs, quests, and expeditions to give you affinities....and then its all techs all the time.
 
There's no way 1 culture == 1 energy. There are so many ways to get energy in this game, and comparatively few ways to get culture (although I haven't played Supremacy yet).

You can build generator tile improvements that give +2 energy from the start, and rivers give +1 energy on either side of them. There are no tile improvements that give +3 culture until late game. You can even get a solar collector to give +1 energy to 7 worked tiles; nothing equivalent for culture.

Even the starting colonist choice makes this clear: artists is +2 culture +1 health, and aristocrats is +3 energy +1 health.

Actually they should take the health away from Artists and maybe even bump Aristocrats to +4 energy.
 
Oh, now a great choice I just came across - Cloning Plants - 10% food carried over after growth, or +1 health.

+10% carry over is amazing ... but the health is also super useful, and I actually picked the health.
 
One extra covert agent, or +2 city strength?

One of the things i don't like is that every time i get some points towards one affinity, i get enough for an entire affinity level up. I'm yet to get less than enough points for a level up. I think it would be cool if the quests bonus towards affinities were smaller, and every building quest gave you a little bit extra to make up for it.
 
Yes, I think these should accrue affinity points - and in general that affinity should be decoupled from tech (whether it's linked to quests or not). For instance, improvements such as Terrascapes could add affinity points (in that case for Purity), and possibly points in each affinity could accumulate in the same way as faith points in Civ V. That could give building quests interesting trade-offs, as not all of the best options would give you points in the same affinity but could have the 'cost' of increasing a different affinity (of course, for this to work there would need to be drawbacks to having points spread across too many affinities - for instance if enough of the population supports Purity thanks to all those culture-spewing Old Earth Relics, you may have trouble if you try enacting Harmony or Supremacy policies or taking actions relating to them).

Without a civil disorder mechanic populations in this game are too calm and well-behaved anyway - any number of building quests warn of an ideological schism between factions that want X and those that want Y, but somehow they never come to blows.
 
If you're asking that the quest box be filled up with more walls of text that will either overwhelm newbies or irritate veterans, no thanks.

The quests are already more obtuse than they should be, considering the huge number you have to click through in every game. Having to mouse over the choices to see what the choices actually mean (and there's no way you could infer it from actually reading the pointless fluff) instead of just putting the icon-tagged reward choices right up front where you can clearly see them at a glance...

I agree that the quest boxes would be better if they had inline detail rather than mouse over detail, but your comment is excessively strident and hostile. Unless you have subar reading comprehension, you actually can get a good idea of what the two options are going to be from reading the "walls of text" -- which are completely optional. It is totally wrong to say that the flavor text is "pointless fluff" that gives you "no way" to figure out what's going on.

Also, if the optional text irritates you, don't read it. If you get irriatated by the fact that Firaxis gave you the *option* of reading a quasi-story, you need to get out more, in my opinion. I think the text is at least moderately engaging.
 
I agree that the quest boxes would be better if they had inline detail rather than mouse over detail, but your comment is excessively strident and hostile. Unless you have subar reading comprehension, you actually can get a good idea of what the two options are going to be from reading the "walls of text" -- which are completely optional. It is totally wrong to say that the flavor text is "pointless fluff" that gives you "no way" to figure out what's going on.

Also, if the optional text irritates you, don't read it. If you get irriatated by the fact that Firaxis gave you the *option* of reading a quasi-story, you need to get out more, in my opinion. I think the text is at least moderately engaging.
I largely agree with Arioch. It's good to have flavour text, but I found myself quickly not bothering to read it, just skipping to the bonuses. I think it's because there's so much of it cropping up all the time, it's always a single block with no paragraphs, and most importantly it never has any bearing on anything. I don't really think it's a "story" because there is no storyline here - the decisions from early on have nothing to do with the later quests or events. They're simply isolated vignettes that are meant to give some flavour to what's going on, but nothing more than that.
 
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