Some Thoughts on the Space Colonization Part of C2C

[Snofru1]

I have finally finished my game of Space Colonization by having researched everything, having colonized nearly all of the Universe and having built any (reasonable) building in any of my cities. This took more than 2 months of regular (mostly daily) gameplay, I really have to say C2C is immense! I have added my last save if you are curious how this may look.

I used the "Tiny Alternate System" map from KaTiON_PT which has all the necessary space parts in it and also a quite descent earth map which was fun to play. The map was changed while I played to be able to use everything that came originally from pepper2000´s Space Colonization modmod but is incorporated in C2C for a while now. Thank you, KaTiON_PT for providing this great map which is much smaller that TPEHEP´s map, therefore you have a chance to finish a game in your lifetime.

When I started the game there still was the issue with AI civilizations not expanding, so earth was conquered very easily. That was no problem for me as I wanted to start the Space Race as soon as possible anyway. That should be different if you start a game with the current SVN, though.

The space colonization part of the game in itself is huge, very well thought out and nearly a game in itself. Thank you, pepper2000 for enlarging C2C that much!

Now some comments:

1. There is not really competition in space, but I knew that beforehand. Some barbaric villages appear (especially on Venus) but they usually aren´t able to attack you (probably they don´t have units that can walk where they currently are). Even some animals appeared (on Venus and Mercury IIRC). This part of the game is just about exploration and expansion.
2. Some parts are a little bit complicated, especially when you want to know what you need to settle on a certain tile. There is the excellent Space Guide from Pepper but that is quite a lot of reading. Could be a little bit more intuitive all in all.
3. A lot of buildings and wonders are available when you reach further into space but your older colonies e.g. on Moon and Mars don´t get new buildings after a while. They just sit there and build research, just as is the case for your earth cities most of the time in the late game. This is especially true as most later settler and working units can only be built in far-off space. Maybe it would make sense that some of these distant and galactic buildings and units could also be constructed on earth, moon and the planets.
4. Terraforming (on Moon and Mars IIRC) doesn´t make sense currently. You just gain one food per tile but loose the ability to construct hydroponic farms, martian mines, etc. which give much higher benefits. Unless it is totally worked over I´d say terraforming outside of earth should either be taken out or should still allow all the improvements on it.
5. Pretty late in game your space colonies grow quite big and you get problems with crime, disease and pollution which you cannot counter by buildings or units. There should be an option that you can transport policing and health care units to any space colony late in the game. You can teleport and travel through time by then so why shouldn´t you be able to send a Police Mech to Mars to take care of these marauding colonies? Or have a factory there to build them on site?
6. There is not really a fun end to the game. It would be great if the Space Race Victory could be somehow adapted to have a clear goal for your civilization to achieve in the far future.
7. There had been other issues, like lattitude being wrong on space maps (important for some buildings and wild animals spawn) and buildings being not constructible because of some resource and obsoleting issues. All of this has been taken care of by raxo2222 so if you use current SVN and also raxo´s lattitude and longitude modmod you should be fine to play on space maps. Thank you raxo, also for your ongoing help and support in all the space issues!

 

[raxo2222]

1. If you place anywhere active volcano or fresh water features, then after some time you may get hill with forest on it or barbarians/animals spawning at freshwater source.
Probably there was Earth terrain too on Mercury on Venus.
3. It is intentional, that focus should move away from Earth towards outer space.
4. Terraforming as in changing tiles on Moon and Mars is placeholder essentially.
5. Weren't property buildings limited to Earth only? Edit: Properties have no actual effect in space as property pseudobuildings are limited to Earth map category.
6. There is Science Victory, that is still at very end of game since it was created.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Interesting. Sounds like quite a journey. I'm impressed it can be fully played through. You're the second one now to do so I think.

 

[raxo2222]

Interesting. Sounds like quite a journey. I'm impressed it can be fully played through. You're the second one now to do so I think.

And this map was less than ideal too.

Someone else also played till end of game.

 

[KaTiON_PT]

Glad you had such a great experience!

 

[pepper2000]

Thanks for your comments, and I'm glad you enjoyed it.

I've thought about this issue of what to do with colony zones that run out of things to build. In the case of Mars for instance, I want terraforming to be the capstone project, and after that your attention is not on Mars anymore. There are a handful of more advanced buildings that were added mainly to give the Mars cities something to build later in the game. I would be interested in adding another capstone project for Mars, perhaps with the necessary components becoming available in the late Cosmic Era, but I'm not sure what such a project would be. Ideas are welcome.

Some others have suggested that we make more buildings available in multiple zones. There are a handful of buildings that are like this, but in general I disagree. I want every zone to have a unique feel, and that means separate building sets. Sometimes we have multiple versions of a building for different zones, but even that I approach I don't want to overuse if it causes different zones to feel the same.

Regarding the complexity of getting space units, yes I know it is a bit complicated. There are a few minor things I can do such as adding better tooltips to the space settlers. I am open to any other ideas on how to make the system more user friendly.

The Green Mars and Green Moon terrains used to give much bigger bonuses, but that was causing the map scripts to create those terrains on Earth, which we don't want. Since then I hadn't really thought about it. I think it would make most sense to create some improvements (or maybe use the terraforming "improvements") for big bonuses to get around this problem. Or some special buildings that require Green Mars / Green Moon in the city vicinity.

I've been meaning for a long time to add crime/pollution/disease reduction to the space infantry units. There is a little bit of that in some of the buildings but not enough. One of those lingering "to-do" items.

Finally, regarding the ending, I'm open to ideas. There are two wonders in the last column of the tech tree. They aren't really any more special than other wonders, but they require the Multiverse Economy national wonder, which in turn requires that you have a bunch of other stuff build throughout the cosmos. I don't want to poach the scientific victory condition from the Ascension Gate. Once upon a time the space ship was an interdimensional ship that you would build in the Galactic Era, back when that was the last era. Since then it has turned back into the interstellar starship that you build in the Nanotech and Transhuman Eras, more in line with Vanilla Civ 4. Personally I disagree with this move and would have gone in the opposite direction, having all the components of the spaceship become available during the Transcendent Era.

I am out of modding commission now, but that doesn't mean that I'm not thinking of ideas and doing research. I am planning on getting a new Windows machine later in the summer and getting back to it then.

 

[tmv]

Right now there are very few armed units in space - I think there is only the Neutronium Battlecruiser, which is a cosmic era unit - a bit late if you can only build such units when you already control an entire galaxy.

Shouldn't it be possible for armed space units to attack planets / cities / units? And even if that aggravates the steamroll effect, I don't think it really matters if one nation has already reached this point. It could easily be required for such units to be produced by e.g. a Deep Space City, like Worldships.

The reason for this is that I think there is a bit of a disconnect between earth and space, partially because of the lack of trade routes, but also because being very successful in space doesn't seem to have any consequence on earth. If there are still different nations, most of them having a reach of a few thousand miles and one having a reach of a few thousand light years, I think that should matter.

 

[pepper2000]

So far I've held off on armed units, in part because Tbrd has expressed interest in working on that and mainly because they don't have anyone to fight. At the very least there are some very far future techs such as Shapeshifting that should open up new units on Earth.

There are a few ideas I have for attacking your rivals from space.

- Ion Cannon Blast. If you have an Ion Cannon in one of your cislunar colonies, you can train this unit, which would act like a missile. Could attack Earth, other Cislunar space, or the Moon.
- Solar Cannon Blast. Opens up at Solar Ordnance, similar to Ion Cannon Blast but stronger and can reach anywhere in the solar system.
- Relativistic Kill Missile. An even stronger missile, opens up at ACNP Propulsion or Antimatter Rocket or somewhere around there.
- Weaponized Asteroid. The less benign version of the Captured Asteroid, would function like a nuke.
- Dropships that could drop infantry from other planets on Earth, or maybe the reverse.

There are some rather ridiculous things you could do later on. For example, you could open a wormhole with one end at your enemy's capital and the other end at a black hole or the center of a star, or a True Vacuum Bomb that a vacuum collapse that expands from the detonation point at the speed of light. That would destroy the whole Earth and so such attacks against Earth cities probably shouldn't be allowed.

Earlier I said that we shouldn't have direct trade routes between Earth and space cities, but I've since changed my mind and think it should be allowed. This would require routes and trade to go over Low Earth Orbit plots, but I still don't want cities on those plots.

 

[Thunderbrd]

So far I've held off on armed units, in part because Tbrd has expressed interest in working on that and mainly because they don't have anyone to fight. At the very least there are some very far future techs such as Shapeshifting that should open up new units on Earth.

True on all accounts. But when I do get to working on units in this range, I'd like to work closely with you because I'm not nearly as confident in my understanding of the tree at this point. That can easily wait until after your return.

I really like a lot of the ideas you expressed there too. Even a lot of those will require some further programming to do it right I think.

For now, we have a good sandbox play for the future.

 

[Faustmouse]

I know Pepper knows the youtube channel from Isaac Arthur, but TB (or anyone else working on the space combat system) might take a look as well. He has a series on interplanetary and interstellar combat where he talks about how it is done in novels, and how it would play out realistically. This could be a good baseline and from there it could be futher extended to fit into the game.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

I know Pepper knows the youtube channel from Isaac Arthur, but TB (or anyone else working on the space combat system) might take a look as well. He has a series on interplanetary and interstellar combat where he talks about how it is done in novels, and how it would play out realistically. This could be a good baseline and from there it could be futher extended to fit into the game.

Isaac Arthur is a good source for space combat. I liked his one on how missiles are impossible to dodge, why stealth wont work (at close range), and why you will never see the attacker until they destroy you at long range. Also "long range" becomes light hours across quite quickly once you leave a gravity well.

 

[Faustmouse]

Last episode he talked about how planetary invasion would work and the epic siege picture of it sounded pretty cool. On the other hand, you'd need a very good reason to not just simply scorch the planet or simply kill off all life on it; plus both parties would need to be at a similar tech level. Considering how much better equipment is now than it was 20 years ago, I can hardly imagine two parties being ever that close on the grand scale of the universe....

 

[tmv]

Considering how much better equipment is now than it was 20 years ago, I can hardly imagine two parties being ever that close on the grand scale of the universe....

Unless it's a civil war.