Sneak Peek - The Total Overhaul I'm working on..

[Ryika]

No, I haven't yet. I plan to go with a similar theme to what I did in my Awesome Affinities Mod though, less over the top of course.

I've been thinking about possibly converting the Affinity Bonuses into Quest Choices, that way people could customize the Affinity into whatever people want it to be.

The one thing I'm pretty sure about is that I want level 5/10 to unlock Affinity-Specific improvements (also with quests that allow some initial customization of those). Now that I figured out how to reskin Improvements I could actually just do some additional and have an extra Improvement for each.

These additional choices would also fill the gap that I've created by throwing out most building quests - with hopefully meaningful choices.

But as I said, haven't spent much time fleshing things out yet. Additional ideas, thoughts etc. are very welcome.

 

[Barathor]

This looks like a great project; especially with your design/modding/artistic skills behind it! Your goals are pretty solid and will go a long way to making the game much more enjoyable, while also giving players a fresh new take on the game.

I'm also a little sad to see the tech web go, but it's probably for the best since you're looking for more of a tiered system and a linear tech tree is much clearer with that and helps to control progression more.

The infrastructure concept seems pretty interesting and I'm curious to see how well it ties in with everything else you have planned and how it feels gameplay-wise.

Yeah, the health system certainly needs to be a little more punishing. It's more enjoyable to have to manage it a little more closely and continuously expand "steadily" instead of just mass expanding at once. I like that you're in favor of expansion too. That's one big thing I disliked about Civ 5 (and what I like about BE); it's 4X -- I want to expand not sit on a few cities.

Your approach to affinities is another novel idea. This project certainly is an overhaul. Using improvements and buildings is a pretty cool idea and will definitely shape each faction appropriately by what they build and improve their land with (something I miss and wish happened in the base game). I also see why you both want to control expansion so that it's more steady and why you want founding cities later on to be very viable too -- you don't want affinity point acquisition to explode at the beginning and crash later on.

Events will also be nice to supplement the quest system. More things happening to shake things up is always a good thing.

Wonders are certainly in need of some more love! I have a different approach that I hope works for them, but yours is definitely more interesting. I'm looking forward to the cool things you cook up; those examples look pretty cool and fun.

Oh, man, those 'scapes are beautiful! I've heard of the idea of xenoscapes before and you've created some nice looking ones (I like the way harmony camouflages within it), but those nanoscapes are a really new and creative idea and look so cool. I assume that's dying flora on the nanoscape; it kinda reminds me of the Zerg or the Undead from WC3 which decayed the trees around them. I'm interested to see what types of bonuses they give and how they tie into things.

Lastly, that example of the unique planet bonuses is another cool idea. It certainly mixes things up between different games and makes different resources something to seek out during expansion and keep an extra eye out for.

 

[DefiantMars]

No, I haven't yet. I plan to go with a similar theme to what I did in my Awesome Affinities Mod though, less over the top of course.

I've been thinking about possibly converting the Affinity Bonuses into Quest Choices, that way people could customize the Affinity into whatever people want it to be.

The one thing I'm pretty sure about is that I want level 5/10 to unlock Affinity-Specific improvements (also with quests that allow some initial customization of those). Now that I figured out how to reskin Improvements I could actually just do some additional and have an extra Improvement for each.

But as I said, haven't spent much time fleshing things out yet. Additional ideas, thoughts etc. are very welcome.

Cool. Just wondering where you were at.

I think giving the player a choice in the affinity perks is a good idea. I feel the lack of options within affinity definitely makes it feel less impactful. I mean, even the Civ V Ideologies at least let you pick what order you wanted to grab the tenets. Reskinned Improvements would be a neat addition. Its simple, but it makes sense and would help with immersion if each affinity could at least get a palette swap.

I don't have any defined ideas to really suggest for the affinities, but more general inclinations. I'll try to flesh out some suggestions and ideas.

Oh, man, those 'scapes are beautiful! I've heard of the idea of xenoscapes before and you've created some nice looking ones (I like the way harmony camouflages within it), but those nanoscapes are a really new and creative idea and look so cool. I assume that's dying flora on the nanoscape; it kinda reminds me of the Zerg or the Undead from WC3 which decayed the trees around them. I'm interested to see what types of bonuses they give and how they tie into things.

I thought they were fully functioning synthetic cybertrees! You know... a totally synthetic metallic landscape!

 

[Ryika]

Yeah, I'm not really sure what these things are myself. Originally I wanted to make them match the Affinity-Color that can be seen on the supremacy units, but that bright yellow looked really odd and out of place. So I settled with the orange which relatively closely resembles the color from the Affinity-Symbol giving it that autumn-ish style that can either be trees that are in the process of losing their leafage - or actual synthetic landscape, some sort of solar-collecting technology maybe.

I think I'll leave that intentionally vague so everybody can decide for themselves.

I guess I'll keep updating this thread with further information about the mod process as I'm really enjoying the conversations that arise from it. Don't really have much content right now, I didn't really have that much time last week and spent the time I had on fixing some stuff in the background and doing some boring changes.

I DID however decide that the Event implementation that I had was boring, bland and silly, so I went back and changed things up a bit. Most events now have a limited duration during which they're active and because of that I was able to turn up their effects enough to make them have an impact without having them dominate the whole game. It also adds some new possibilities like for example allowing you to build a specific building/wonder only during that event, which would put players into the situation where they have to decide whether they can/want to sneak in some stuff that they had previously not planned for or whether it's better to just continue building what they were building anyway.

Sounds awfully mechanical, I know.

Anyway, I've updated both, the Event UI and my Token-Event (Banner is a placeholder and yeah, the awkward "significantly ... considerably"-phrase is still there):



Obviously this specific one doesn't really make use of the turn limitation, unless there's really not a single person that manages to build that wonder within 60 turns.

 

[DefiantMars]

Sounds awfully mechanical, I know.

Anyway, I've updated both, the Event UI and my Token-Event (Banner is a placeholder and yeah, the awkward "significantly ... considerably"-phrase is still there):

Neat. While technical, I think its actually rather intuitive. Events don't last forever, they're events. Unless they cause a change so significant it affects things permanently. Anyway, I like the idea of interesting wonders.

Side note, maybe up the purple a little bit in the Xenoscape to make it pop a bit more?

 

[Umbral Reaver]

One thing that has always bugged me in BE, and something I hope can be fixed here, is that limitations of affinity resources means that it's better to build the economy of one affinity and the army of another.

Perhaps the resources should be divided between military (alien resources) and economy (terrestrial resources). Or to encourage single-focusing affinity, make the economy of one affinity cost the other alien resources. Say, Purity uses Floatstone to build its armies, and burns Firaxite and Xenomass as fuel for its industry. It would heavily encourage focusing rather than spreading affinity. It might make hybrids a little more difficult, but perhaps that's fine.

 

[Ryika]

I'm pretty certain I don't want to split resources like that. Could certainly work but I like having to choose between Military and Economy and have actually gone a lot further with it in my mod - Buildings that grant Affinity per Turn, strong Affinity-Buildings and Affinity-Specific units all cost Affinity-Resources, and in total certainly more than you'll have on average.

It just makes sense to me because it creates the scenario where you can either invest into a strong military and go conquer cities that hopefully have more affinity resources (and grant benefits in general) to then re-invest into economy, or you can play more defensively with more basic units (and still a few affinity unit to hold key positions) to push your economy or affinity directly.

I do however have some plans ready (though not implemented yet) to make sure you have some use for Affinity-Resources of other Affinities:
- Simplest Possibility is some sort of Conversion-Building. Construct it for (random numbers) 6 Floatstone, get 3 Xenomass out of it. Not sure how that would work story-wise, but I'd say given that these buildings would probably pop up half-way through the game it would be relatively easy to invent some technology that allows that type of conversion.
- Wonders could require those Affinity-Resources, especially National Wonders (with again higher numbers than you will have on average so you have to choose between things)
- An idea that is a bit more "out there" would be to add some some sort of Market where you can sell and buy resources for other resources (with decaying numbers), but that would of course heavily penalize the AI. And probably a lot of unnecessary work.
etc.

I guess it's worth noting that the Affinity Resources you get from Terrain only make up a part of the total Resources that you can get. There will be different Sources that allow you to increase the amount of Primary Affinity Resources that you'll get throughout the game (such as Building Quests, AffinityLevels, National Wonders, Events, possibly some Virtue Trees and Diplomacy - Resources from Trade Routes are gone however, because of the "You can construct Buildings that you don't have the local requirement for!"-bug), so the amount of Resources from other Affinities will be limited anyway.

One of the key benefits of going hybrid will probably be to get extra Affinity Resources for both Affinities, however, going Hybrid requires quite an investment in itself, so just building Affinity-Military of another Affinity will probably not be an option anyway.

 

[MindXX]

Most awesome Ryika!!!!! Love your other mods and this one will top them all!!! Cannot wait!

 

[Ryika]

Mid-/Lategame-Idea:

Spoiler :

Should help breaking up the building-monotony and provide great projects to construct. Ideally the whole Empire needs to help gather these resources in one way or another, for truly magnificent bonuses that tower everything that can be gotten from other sources.

Could even work the Contact Victory into that system.

 

[Ryika]

A few Updates:

I've decided to scrap the event system. Certainly not an easy decision but after now more than 4 weeks of trying to do something really creative with it and only coming up with ideas that basically led to a lot of randomness and "Oh, this Event didn't trigger, that's annoying."-moments I felt like it wasn't really going anywhere. At least not into a direction where I want it to go - helping to create cool play-styles and adding ways to make strategic decisions. I few days ago I did then also find a few technical problems that would require me to basically re-build the whole thing from the ground... so yeah, as I said, I basically scrapped it at that point.

Despite the tons of I time I wasted on that feature I'm still making good progress though. I feel like slowly but surely things are coming together. Didn't get to work on anything today because in the ~2 hours of free time that I could devote to the game I was too busy actually having fun playing my mod. That's mostly because of the Effect of the little new feature that I had implemented yesterday: The Empire Manager.

Spoiler :

Looks pretty boring, doesn't it? But it actually does achieve some great things. The Interface allows you to change the income of different yields, Higher Taxes mean more Energy, Lower Taxes mean more Food. The Funding Options allow you to spend Energy to get more of another yield, or to decrease a yield to get more Energy. All at somewhat inefficient rates of course (the Very Low/High-rates are even worse) so you can't just boost the yield you want to focus on without some losses in the process.

The main effect this has is to allow yields to be really, really flexible while at the same time adding strategic depth and giving you a tool to make decisions to directly respond to a problem that is approaching. Winter is coming? You expect war? Increase Taxes, max out Industrial Funding - there you go, perfect Environment to build an army. Ran out of stuff to build? Decrease Industrial Funding and go full Science to unlock new stuff. Need more Health? Well, Cultural Funding to unlock more Virtue Synergies! Or simply activate the 'One Child Policy'-Enactment to get some Flat Global Health at cost of City Growth until you can add more health to your total (But more about that another time, Enactments are not really implemented yet).

One thing that also needed desperate fixing was the fluctuation of Energy between "tiers" of Infrastructure. The Energy Maintenance can go up really fast when you start building advanced Infrastructure (building-maintenance goes up as far as 16 Energy in the midgame) and more than once did I find myself in a situation where I suddenly was in deep negative Energy, with no easy way out. This system will be a good buffer zone for that.

And last but not least: With this system you can actually directly gear your empire towards pleasing an AI. Gone are the times where you got "Dude, increase your food output!"-messages with no actual way to do that simply because you started in a relatively food-starved area. You can invest a lot into a single yield if you want to. This is especially true for high difficulty settings where the AIs number bonuses often make it impossible to actually keep up in a situation where you haven't already outgrown them anyway.

Speaking about difficulty settings: The AI goes completely bonkers with the changed that I've made to the game. Turns out that when you put a lot of focus on yields and a lot less focus on insanely overpowered combinations of effects that the AI doesn't understand the AI is pretty unstoppable. I played on (slightly edited) Gemini today and just couldn't keep up with the AI during the mid-game (and I normally have a really easy time on Apollo), mainly due to a lack of health as a limitation (midgame-health still needs some work). I think that's good though, because when Human-Only Features like the Moonbase and the Empire Manager are fully implemented that gap should get smaller and in the end the effect will hopefully be an AI that plays a solid game with increased yields while human have some tricks that they can use to keep up.

Also, little Moonbase Update:

I've decided how I want to name the Moonbase-Resources!

Spoiler :

Unlock-Mechanics and some of the bonuses have also been implemented, I really like how the Feature turns out. It currently unlocks on the Terraforming-Tier (early midgame) after somebody built a wonder that starts the "Race to the Moon". It's like history repeats itself. Just that this time you don't just plant a flag but instead build a base.

 

[Starrynite120]

Sad to hear about the events, but that empire manager is a really cool idea. Energy was kind of a lame yield, but with this you'll be able to turn energy into other yields making it much more valuable. Overall a very good idea, can't wait to try it out!

Also, I'm ok with unstoppable AI the game could use a bigger challenge!

 

[Ryika]

Yeah, it's just silly when those who are not looking for a challenge but instead want some laid back games don't have AIs to choose from. I've actually added 4 difficulty settings, for a total of 10, so having the AI go on a rampage on Gemini (4) isn't really what I had planned.

 

[Ryika]

Unbelievable to think that in the last 3 days I've basically spent the time I had to work on my mod by trying to make the minimap more... readable... and then ended up with only two changes... making it a bit bigger and trying to find a background color that is just bright enough to make the land pop but not too bright to make it hard to see the sponsor borders. 8) Result is pretty good though (imho):



...at least when it comes to distinguishing land from water and sponsors from each other. Maybe I should replace the Mountain Icons (the white and gray dots on the map), I think being able to properly see them could be useful information.


Anyway. I actually thought a lot about Water vs Land Cities and have made some decisions about how I want stuff to play out. I've actually gotten rid of literally every original difference currently, with the exception of the Culture bonus and the not-growing Culture borders. (Which is partly based on the technical limitation, I would actually love to test how Aquatic Cities with Cultural Growth work and whether that would completely invalidate moving cities or whether both systems can complement each other). Trade Route Bonuses, Health Bonuses, Lower Defense... all gone for now. So here's the current layout of how I want aquatic gameplay to work:

- I guess let's start with the main limitation first: Aquatic Cities will not be able to move onto Ocean Tiles. Ever. This is mainly to give the Terrain some "contures" instead of just having a big, open space. It's still open terrain for units (well, not quite, but I'll get to that), but not for cities. I realize this is probably not going to be very popular with everyone, so I decided to add an Advanced Option to re-enable movement to Ocean for those who really want to... but the Design will focus around having Aquatic Cities be Coastal only.

- Tile Yields: Coast still yields +1 Food +1 Production. Ocean however yields +2 Food instead. This again plays into breaking the monotony of the Ocean. Different Areas should play differently, just like on land. If you place your City between 2 deep oceans left and right that city will evolve differently than a City placed with tons of coast around them - you'll need to buy some extra tiles in the first city (because you can't move onto ocean), but it will have more food available to grow. While that other city can move freely (and the production from the Coastal Tiles synergizes with that), but will have a harder time growing. (Unless it has tons of eggs - my god, Eggs are so overpowered in my current build X_X) Also, Reefs now yield +1 Energy.

In General Aquatic Cities will focus a little more on raw Energy while Land Cities will have a few additional Specialist Slots.

- Aquatic Wonders: I've decided that I want to continue the theme of "Aquatic Wonders change the output of Terrain Yields" that some Wonders already have. Faraday Gyre currently spawns Reefs on Coastal Tiles around the City and makes Reefs worked by the City yield +1 Culture as an Example.

- Aquatic Combat: I've decided that I think Aquatic Units are too fast for my taste and removed the Movement of all Non-Submarines by 1. I'll probably also remove 1 Movement from one of the later Affinity-Upgrades for these units. They'd still be faster than land units (as they should be). And I've decided to change the function of Submarines. Instead of having them be these slow and steady defensive Units that they currently are I decided to make them into the Glass Cannons that they were in Civ 5. Very low Melee Defense. Good Damage. I'll give Aquatic Defense Structures increased radii to reveal hidden units so they'll have a role as neutral (and friendly) water predators, not so much in a direct conquering spree.

- Aliens: I'm currently experimenting with moving a lot of the Alien Activity onto the Water. Having the Oceans sprawling with wildlife is actually pretty enjoyable I find. The Oceans do generally have more Resources, but having to deal with Aliens (in one way or the other) to get them creates a much... harsher environment.

But all of that stuff is of course not set in stone yet. I wonder whether people think this deviates too much from the unmodded game.

 

[Doviello]

Interesting changes, i really like extra food instead of energy for ocean tiles. But i thing removing ocean cities would make it hard to play with a "mobile fortress" like some players enjoy: stick an artillery or a Sabr and a bunch of planes on a floating city and move around the world conquering everything. But it's nice that the option to allow ocean cities will still be there.

The moon base stuff and empire management thing are really interesting. Also i recognize some of those images you're using as background from wallpaper websites

 

[MasterEcabob]

Wow, I never thought someone would beat JFD to Sovereigntry. That empire manager feature looks amazing, and I'm really excited for enactments (hopefully some Alpha Centauari style wackyness). Could you explain how the moon base feature works? The part about tying it into the contact victory sounds really exciting!

 

[Ryika]

Moonbase currently works like this:
(- Lore in 10 words: "There is progenitor stuff on the moon, go get it!")
- Once a Player builds the 'Project Luna'-Wonder (temporary name) all Players gain access to the Moonbase which in itself doesn't mean much, because everything that can be built there needs 1-2 of the new Resources (Ylurium Crystals and Progenitor Alloys), which are produced (per Turn) by certain buildings and Wonders.
- After players have set up the basic Infrastructure required to start getting some amounts of Resources they can construct the three basic Buildings that will grant some smaller bonuses that make it easier to maintain the moonbase, such as removing the (heavy) maintenance from the buildings that produce Moonbase Resources.
- After players have constructed the three basic objects they get access to excavation sites on the moon itself, which is where the really big gameplay bonuses lie. I haven't actually yet thought about the exact bonuses to be honest. For now it's stuff like +6 Yields from Specialists, all Cities can work 6 extra Tiles as a placeholder. I plan to make the actual bonuses a lot more interesting and game-defining instead of just having stronger versions of already existing stuff.
- Once the player has created a set number of excavations (currently 4) he gets access to a repeatable mission (that gives some relatively small bonuses and is mostly meant to allow players who don't want any of the other excavations to spend the Resources they produce, as well as what is currently named "Nebula Mission" - that is supposed to be one of the pieces needed for the new version of the Contact Victory. Don't really want to spoil the lore yet, but it will basically be the part of the puzzle that tells you how to make contact to the progenitors and unlocks the Beacon.

I'm not 100% sure whether I really want to add the Contact Victory to the moonbase though, mainly because of the AI. It doesn't actually use the feature itself (the coding required to make that work would be huge and the benefit would be relatively small) and instead just gets some of its bonuses "for free" here and there - at a reduces level of what the player will be able to get if he somewhat focuses on the moonbase. That does however mean that I would need to also let the AI cheat when it comes to that step of the Contact victory, which isn't reaaaally something that I'd want to do.

So maybe Contact becomes a player-only victory (which would actually allow me to add some other out-there mechanics to it), or I end up not using the connection to the moonbase at all.

In any case all of this is of course heavily WIP and subject to change. Currently I think it feels a lot too "mechanical", so that's something that will need to be thought about. There's also a lot of (obviously unofficial) progenitor-lore that comes with everything you can unlock on the moonbase.

 

[DefiantMars]

I agree with Doviello. I really like the "terrain"/tile changes for oceans but I also think that moving into Ocean tiles should be possible. But I will concede that it could definitely be relegated to a later tech than what... Habitation Leaf tech, right?

I've been trying to think of specializations for the Affinities but with minimal success. But I do feel that H/P could easily have a Specialist focus.

 

[DefiantMars]

So I've thought about it a bit harder, and here's what I've got:

Given that they are all very different in their approaches to problems, mechanically they should also have non-combat specializations.

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Harmony: The ability to take control over the area around alien nests, somewhere in the intersection between puppet city, outpost, and citadel. But that might be too difficult to do. But I do feel that Harmony should be really good at growing and settling as they are the most adapted to the planet.

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Purity: I think that a mass Improvement focus would be quite sensible. Purity has not one, but two improvements by default, the Dome and the Terrascape. I could see the upgrading the default improvements and making improvements affect each other being options.

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Supremacy: Energy and Production! Being all… robot-like, efficiency is probably a pretty key feature in their society. Accumulating more energy and production from sources, cheaper purchasing of buildings and units. Their cities transforming into living assembly lines.

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Ascendancy (Harmony+Purity): Ahh, to my favorite affinity I say -- More Specialists and Super Specialists. With their tendency to create superhumans, making domestic superhumans makes sense to me. More yields for their specialists, less cost to use specialists, or a specialist that that does a bit of everything.

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Mastery (Purity+Supremacy): I think that the "extra population" mechanic granted by the Drone Command Artifact Wonder fits wonderfully. I think giving this affinity a couple of free population, along with some other bonus… I’m kind of stumped here. Any *Purity/Supremacy* players have any suggestions

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Voracity (Supremacy+Harmony): I feel like they should have some form of way to maximize or exploit basic resources, as well as boost their supply of strategic resources. If there is a resource available, they’ll find a way to reap the benefits.

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But those are just my feelings. This may be completely irrelevant or not in fitting with your own goals and views for the affinities.

 

[Ryika]

Hybrid Affinity Identities probably won't be too much of a thing, even with the increased length of the game I find it hard to fill them in in a meaningful way, I'm focusing on pure Affinities instead, with Hybrids giving relatively neutral Bonuses to the Empire (such as extra Global Health).

When it comes to pure Affinities each one is focusing on one main yield:

Harmony -> Food
Purity -> Production
Supremacy -> Energy

Their Affinity Improvements reflect that yield + give a Choice between 2 "neutral" yields (Culture/Science/Diplo Capital/(Local) Health) each.

They all have some small bonuses that synergize very well with their main Yield (such as Harmony getting some extra Specialists in their Buildings and Purity getting extra Titanium (which is mainly required for National Wonders) and Bonus-Yields from National Wonders (which cost tons of Production).

However, those bonuses are relatively minor and are at best "synergy bonuses". "Specializations" as you mentioned, such as Free Working Tiles, Increased Yields from Resources and Yields from Killing Units are cool but already placed in other Mechanics that are mostly independent from Affinity - that allows players to combine stuff in any way they want.

I don't want Affinity to dominate everything you do in a way that you don't really have a choice anymore and I'm not a big fan of the "You can get everything from everywhere!"-mechanics of Beyond Earth which is why I decided to split things up like that. Because if your Sponsor can get you Spy Bonuses and your Virtues can get you Spy bonuses and your Diplomatic Traits can give you Spy bonuses and your Diplomatic Agreements can give you spy bonuses and your building quests can give you spy bonuses... is there really any reason to only pick 1-2 instead of every single one (aside from having competing bonuses being extremely overpowered of course)? I always felt like that makes your picks very pre-determined and removes real choices, you decide what you want to go for at the beginning of the game and then stick with it in literally all Categories where it's possible.

I feel like my version doesn't quite fix that (yet?), but it does at least encourage (aka force ) some mixing of different focuses by virtue of not having everything available everywhere. Supremacy with Specialists will probably not be as Efficient as Harmony with Specialists, but it will be a possible way of playing for people who don't care about 100% Efficiency.

Of course that does mean that overall each mechanic has a bit less impact on the layout of the empire, but I think that between Affinity-Specific Improvements, a heavy focus towards one yield and Affinity-Specific Buildings that work very differently between Affinities their Influence on the overall gameplay is big enough to feel very distinct from each other.

 

[Doviello]

Harmony are good with specialists, and not supremacy? Shouldn't it be the other way around? I always imagined from a lore perspective that purity should have stronger improvements, supremacy stronger specialists and harmony more worked tiles (more pop).

Anyway, anything that makes the affinity more distinct are better IMO. I don't even need more bonuses for each affinity, i just want to feel the differences between playing with a cyborg civilization and a purity civilization, besides different colored cities. Making the affinity units actually good would be a start i guess.

I think the affinity levels system isn't that efficient, in the end they should have scrapped affinity XP alltogether and made affinity more quest-based, give the player a choice in affinity after every interval / at certain points in the game (like settling your second city, pillaging the first nest, certain quests etc), with more lore attached to those choices. I've been playing endless legend these days, and the quest system there is really good, even the victory quests, which are unique for each faction, and there's ton of lore for each. I get it that my buildings are turning green because my people have been investing more in adapting their genes to feel more at home with the planet, but that information is lost in the civilopedia, and has very little impact in the game. Supremacy still rely on farms for food, Harmony still get tiles blocked by aliens etc.