Small things you hope will be in game

[Catoninetales_Amplitude]

Anything to reduce micromanagement in the late game by allowing AI automation, decreasing the # of choices generally, but greatly increasing the impact of such choices so they are more interesting . Examples are below. This is the only reason I don't keep playing Endless Legend or Endless Space and I'm worried they will continue these errors because they did them in the Endless series which is their foundation for this game. The Endless games do streamline some things like the Governors, and allow combination of units so you don't have to move units one at a time, but there are systems in both that require escalating micromanaging which ruins the Endless series for me (or causes me to quit mid-game), where such choices make no real difference in the game. This includes:

1) Equipping units with upgraded weapons on a regular basis. PLEASE for the love of god provide an automation option and allow player to make broad suggestions (i.e., offense or defense, whether to use some special mineral or not), which the AI just follows. I know this is a feature that Amplitude is proud of, but I stop playing Endless Legend and Space in the late game literally because of this equipment nightmare. Min-maxers (of which I am not one) can continue equipping to their heart's content. Stellaris is also terrible about this b/c you have to upgrade your ships like every 2-5 turns. Civ VI and Old World does a good job of this with promotions, which are rare and make a huge impact. Reduce the number of equipment slots or increase the difficulty of obtaining something, and make the impact substantial. At a minimum, list ALL units with equipment slots in ONE screen in which you can move and drop equipment, or say "Apply to All Units" some particular equipment. (Think Great Works screen in Civ VI, a better version of that).

2) Assigning abilities to Governors/Generals when they level up. This is fun in the beginning but is a complete nightmare late game, when you have 15-20+ governors that increase level frequently and you have to manage each of them and by that time, their traits make no difference, and each governor can level up 25 times and each trait becomes increasingly not impactful and boring to pick. Please allow AI automation on this - I get that picking traits can be a big deal so maybe the AI presents recommendations of what to level up presented to you in a popup, and then you can say yay, nay, or let me pick.

3) Same, re equipping Governors/Generals if that is a feature (also a micromanagement nightmare in Total War 3K with ancillaries, which make no difference in late game). Either have an AI automation option, or present a screen every now and then listing which generals have which equipment and allowing you to substitute or move them around from one governor to another ON THE SAME SCREEN (think Great Works in Civ VI), rather than unequipping, opening another gov screen, then reequipping. Or make such items very few but very impactful.

4) Hacking from Endless Space. This is also complete nightmare mid-late game. You can ignore hacking, but you lose out on important benefits, but to engage in hacking successfully you have to click like 3-5 times to set up one hacking thing and you end up having like 5-10 hacking things you have to re-setup every X turns. Maybe hacking won't apply to humankind but if they repeat some system modeled after this, please find some way to AI automate as an option or otherwise reduce the number of clicks to one (perhaps by adopting a policy of picking by default X or Y defensive/offensive thing, which itself was extremely confusing, barely made a different, and uninteresting. Also hacking in general was confusing and opaque to me.)

5) Combat. In general I like the way they do it in Endless Legend, which appears to be the model they are going for. I like being able to choose between micromanaging the battle and automating (like in Total War 3K), though if you do automation, perhaps the outcome should not be 100% knowable based on the AI's analysis (like in Total War 3K). However, combat in Endless Space was horrible so please avoid that kind of system or make it extremely easy to understand. They tried to make it interesting with the cards, but this cards were extremely confusing no matter how many times it is explained to me (I will never ever understand how to use them and not just automatically pick the ones based on firepower and range, to the extent I'm even reading the firepower and range info correctly which I probably am not). At the end of the day, it doesn't matter what equipment or card you pick, the one with the biggest Stack of Doom wins the combat.

6) Improvements. Please make them more interesting than the ones in Endless Space and Legend. In both games, you just end up picking the blob that matches the color of the FISD thing you want to increase. I have no idea what the blob is referring to, I don't see the building on my screen, they all have generic names and the only way I can make them interesting is by reading definitions of what they are which is tedious. This creates a very boring Excel experience, i.e., "bucket" type game that takes me out of role-playing. And in any Endless game, there are maybe 7-10 buildings that are the same blob color and you just pick them without paying attention to what they are. Yes, some of them do have secondary effects but given that FISD is king, none of that matters. The districts in Civ VI are good b/c you can see them and there are only 3 buildings, most (nor all) of which do something unique and instead of increasing X by Y points.

I can already tell you that you won't have to worry about points 1 to 3, because we're not planning unit customization, nor do administrators and generals have skills or equipment (at least not in the release version of the game. Who knows what might come later...)
Combat will still have an option to automate it, though playing manually is a bit more hands-on than in Legend due to having direct control instead of an "orders phase - execution phase" separation of the turn. I find the combat system to be clearer than it was in Legend (and much clearer than it was in ES2... As much as I agree with the goals of that system, I personally have many gripes with the execution and explanation.)
However, I have to disappoint you on point 6: No, we will not be dropping the FIDS color coding of (mostly) single-purpose buildings, because said color coding of the artwork is an accessibility feature. New players should be able to easily tell what a building is for (in general) without having to read an entire tooltip worth of information. Some of the Emblematic Quarters offer more "split benefits," though, like the Babylonian Astronomy House providing food from Researchers.

actual unique architecture for all factions from industrial onward, I would be terribly dissaponted if Amplitude pulls a Firaxis and goes: "all modern architecture is pretty much the same so why bother".
Paris, London, New York, Tokio, Ankara, Moscow, all should look different from one another.

As far as I recall, we have several city styles in the Contemporary Era, but not a unique one for each Culture.

 

[aguaacrobata2]

However, I have to disappoint you on point 6: No, we will not be dropping the FIDS color coding of (mostly) single-purpose buildings, because said color coding of the artwork is an accessibility feature. New players should be able to easily tell what a building is for (in general) without having to read an entire tooltip worth of information. Some of the Emblematic Quarters offer more "split benefits," though, like the Babylonian Astronomy House providing food from Researchers.

I have never played ES or EL before so I don't know exactly what you are talking about but identification by colours seems to be somewhat important during battles. Please remember about the existence of color blind players. Tropico 5 did, and there was an option in the menu that adapted some parts of the user interface to color blind players. Tropico 6 (and most of the games I play) did not (as long as I played it, I don't know if they eventually changed that) and it was terrible for the color blind player experience.

 

[ehecatzin]

As far as I recall, we have several city styles in the Contemporary Era, but not a unique one for each Culture.

Thanks for the clarification, I'm happy if there's is at least a graphical set for cultural groups. I can understand how it can be difficult to differentiate modern architecture, but anything that helps in telling cultures apart in the modern era helps a lot for immersion.

 

[grug]

I hope that fish and whales will be moving resources, the same way elk and mammoth are in the Neolithic Era of the game.

Also hope that naval and air warfare will have some unique mechanics. Maybe there could be storms that damage ships, cloud cover that disrupts bombers, or paratroopers that could fly over enemy lines. Having some kind of black ops or proxy war mechanic in the late Contemporary Era could be cool too.

 

[Shadowhal]

Anything to mix things up in the late game - namely more challenges that are NOT based on other Civs and their AIs. [...]

There might be an internal upheaval b/c of size of empire (think Rome). [...]

Anything to reduce micromanagement in the late game by allowing AI automation, decreasing the # of choices generally, but greatly increasing the impact of such choices so they are more interesting .
6) Improvements. Please make them more interesting than the ones in Endless Space and Legend. In both games, you just end up picking the blob that matches the color of the FISD thing you want to increase. I have no idea what the blob is referring to, I don't see the building on my screen, they all have generic names and the only way I can make them interesting is by reading definitions of what they are which is tedious. This creates a very boring Excel experience, i.e., "bucket" type game that takes me out of role-playing. And in any Endless game, there are maybe 7-10 buildings that are the same blob color and you just pick them without paying attention to what they are. Yes, some of them do have secondary effects but given that FISD is king, none of that matters. The districts in Civ VI are good b/c you can see them and there are only 3 buildings, most (nor all) of which do something unique and instead of increasing X by Y points. .

Mouseovers. Old World has completely spoiled me here. Please make almost anything mouseoverable with tool tips and links like in Old World.

The Excel / bucket game in general.
OK that was a lot!

Wow, that was indeed a comprehensive and insightful post. Lost of interesting stuff here.

Definitely yes to internal challenges. The standard for me is the Revolutions mod from Civ IV where you really had to watch your stability meter. Revolutions could and did occur and having a third of your empire break away mid-way to form an independent nation just changed things up so much. Or pushing a staggering opponent over the cliff ...

Definitely yes to Old World style mouse overs.

In a similar vein, an in-game encyclopedia will be nice. I think this has been confirmed and will be a welcome additions from their previous games.

Yes also to terra map/scripts.

Yes also to reducing micro-management late game. The frequency and importance of decisions just scales so poorly in 4X games, almost by virtue of a game sessions life cycle. I agree with your comments on unit with equipment and funnily enough also with heros, as I had only unconsciously disliked it. Cat assuaged any concerns on that front.

As regards improvements ... well, Amplitude's solution seems to be the ability to merge cities together late game, so you will only have a handful of build queues to manage despite having a dozen (or several dozens) of cities sitting underneath that. There are also "unadministered" cities which you cannot direct to build units (though I think you can still specify buildings/quarters).

Another approach could be smart governors/intelligent delegation. Most often, when a 4X game has governors, you get the option to assign one priority and that's it. Sometimes that affects build queues, sometimes just the way your "workers" are assigned to resource tiles/professions. I would love a dev to experiment with more granular forms of delegation and transparency. For instance, assign military and production to high priority, gold and science to medium priority, and influence, religion, food and the rest to low priority. And then build and pop assignment follow that. And transparency what these priorities do. For instance, in AoW you can assign priorities to the production fields. That allocates ALL available pops to that category, and evenly among all selected priorities. Clear enough, if somewhat limiting, but that's not the only way a priority could be interpreted.

On the improvements themselves ... I felt that in EL the decision on which improvements to build happened one step earlier, in what you chose to research. If you wanted to improve industry in era 2, you had the option between an improvement whose benefits are dependent on nearby forests, one which was dependent on nearby rivers, and one generalist. I think having different choices how to upgrade a given resource is nice. Not sure I liked the research bit as much, but it certainly forced tough choices which is good. Another approach could have been to limit the number of buildings. For instance, you only have x building slots (per tier/quarter?). So chose which ones are of most value based on what you need to achieve, what works best with the terrain available and between improvements now and stronger versions from future techs. Of course, the more complex this becomes, the trickier to combine with smart delegation, automation and reduced micromanagement. None of this probably falls under "small things" given how it strikes at the core of 4Xs.


So, in the spirit of small things - maybe ideology-driven civ/culture flavour texts? I like how in Rhys and Fall and some other mods you'd face not just America, but the Union of Socialist American Republics (Ok, I made that one up), or the Islamic Kingdom of Spain etc.

Oh, and other thing, I have kind of a thing wanting to know how a session lasted. If there were a way to track that, it would be neat. Civ IV and Fallen Enchantress have it.

Did someone mention good mod support? That would be ace too. Judging be Amplitude's previous games, I think they will do what they can to make changes possible.

I know that diplomacy is still to be revealed, but I'd like to make a pitch on the interface side. I think some version of the two attached screenshots should be included (in any 4X game with diplomacy for that matter). A quick overview who is allied and at war with whom. And ideally a glance who likes/hates who to get some advance guidance of potential changes.

Maybe something special upon winning the game? Nothing fancy, since we wouldn't want to sink resources in that could be used elsewhere. Maybe use the accumulated fame to pick a handful of top achievements and have a "best of" reel from your game session. Think of a combination of the civ-like time laps map painter combined with the era score view.

 

[Stringer1313]

I can already tell you that you won't have to worry about points 1 to 3, because we're not planning unit customization, nor do administrators and generals have skills or equipment (at least not in the release version of the game. Who knows what might come later...)
Combat will still have an option to automate it, though playing manually is a bit more hands-on than in Legend due to having direct control instead of an "orders phase - execution phase" separation of the turn. I find the combat system to be clearer than it was in Legend (and much clearer than it was in ES2... As much as I agree with the goals of that system, I personally have many gripes with the execution and explanation.)
However, I have to disappoint you on point 6: No, we will not be dropping the FIDS color coding of (mostly) single-purpose buildings, because said color coding of the artwork is an accessibility feature. New players should be able to easily tell what a building is for (in general) without having to read an entire tooltip worth of information. Some of the Emblematic Quarters offer more "split benefits," though, like the Babylonian Astronomy House providing food from Researchers.


As far as I recall, we have several city styles in the Contemporary Era, but not a unique one for each Culture.

Thank you so much for reading this and taking the time to respond to each one. I understand the accessibility issue. I think the more that a certain building has a secondary effect (one that makes sense given the building, and one that is significant and impactful) in addition to +X of the FIDS resource, I think that could go a long way (and it already seems like that's happening).

 

[Stringer1313]

On the improvements themselves ... I felt that in EL the decision on which improvements to build happened one step earlier, in what you chose to research. If you wanted to improve industry in era 2, you had the option between an improvement whose benefits are dependent on nearby forests, one which was dependent on nearby rivers, and one generalist. I think having different choices how to upgrade a given resource is nice. Not sure I liked the research bit as much, but it certainly forced tough choices which is good. Another approach could have been to limit the number of buildings. For instance, you only have x building slots (per tier/quarter?). So chose which ones are of most value based on what you need to achieve, what works best with the terrain available and between improvements now and stronger versions from future techs. Of course, the more complex this becomes, the trickier to combine with smart delegation, automation and reduced micromanagement. None of this probably falls under "small things" given how it strikes at the core of 4Xs.

Yes x100! I had forgotten that sometimes EL forced you to choose one building for another. This is an excellent feature so that I don't just mindlessly click the building color that has more of the FIDS I need. Anything forcing you to make choices at the expense of another is very good.

I also agree x10000 with limiting the number of buildings. They do this in Stellaris which I like. They also do this in GalCiv3 in an extreme way and in a way that i very much like b/c you cannot possibly fit all your buildings on a planet (this is literally the only thing I like about GalCiv3 lol).

And thanks for articulating the issue better than I did -- the issue of scaling in 4x games. You are right that this is a problem in every single 4x game, where consequential decisions early on have such negligible impact later. Automated AI is, of course, a bandaid to this problem but what is better is the introduction of later choices that are harder and more impactful like you suggest. Civ VI fails at this b/c the victory conditions are hardly mutually exclusive and you can pursue all at the same time and i cannot think of a consequential decision late game other than declaring war. Total War 3K also fails at this as do most games. And I had no idea there was a Revolutions mod, which sounds amazing. However I'm such a purist i never play mods, but would like to rethink that.

Old World has done a decent job of this or at least made a good start. In Old World there are random events that can cause wild swings in family opinion or other AI civs' opinion that can all but force you into a war. The Ambitions *sort of* do this because in the late game, achieving a challenging ambition means neglecting other important things, and has a significant impact on other things. Any choice that can potentially wildly change the trajectory of your late game would be greatly welcome.

 

[Shadowhal]

Yes, both Old World and Humankind try some clever things to overcome some of 4X's traditional pitfalls. I look forward to seeing how both games turn out. I also have a few more radical and potentially unworkable thoughts in that space, but that's better reserved for another thread.

As for mods ... I can only recommend trying them. They can make a world of difference and oddly enough I find myself playing fairly few strategy games in vanilla mode. The ones I mentioned are:
Revolution for Civ IV BTS: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/revolutiondcm-for-bts.262937/. This is the revolution mechanic with a few other components thrown in like starting as a minor civ (no diplomacy until writing) and that barbarians can evolve into new civs mid-game.
This other mod pack adds a select few additional units, buildings, techs, civs, and further new mechanic as well as some balance tweaks: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/main-download-and-information.325253/.
There is also a Revolutions mod for Civ V: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/revolutions.456860/. I can't say as much about it, as I have played it less, but Gedemon struck me as a very talented modder, so I'd suspect it's solid.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Lots of options for different tastes.


So yeah, giving an engaged community powerful tools to play with can yield some pretty crazy results