Cornflakes_91 wrote:

JFSOCC wrote:I've been hoping to find a 4x game that ditches the old paradigm of food, money, and minerals as a basis for anything. Still haven't found it though.

what would you replace it with?

good question. Anything, I suppose.

I just don't think basic resources should have as much influence as things like positioning, choice, perception.

I know I'm being vague, but I''ve been working on a concept, I'll share it when it's a bit further along.

JoshParnell wrote:

Flatfingers wrote:Whether Endless Space 2 aims a little more on the side of clear feedback remains to be seen, but I'll guess it's likely.

Oh it's much clearer feedback. CK2 is...special...! I enjoy CK2 a great deal...but for me, playing it was a slow and gradual path to acceptance that "I don't control this game, I just kinda fiddle around in it and hope I don't randomly get sick and die all of the sudden while my eldest son is still 0 years old and the Holy Roman Empire is eating everything that moves."

This is good. It pretty well sums up my dislike of CK2 and, to a lesser extent, 4X games in general. I don't like games where you "fiddle around and hope you don't randomly die". Personally I think that's bad game design. Something went wrong there. It's not presenting enough info to actually be playable as a game, but rather as a "fiddle around" simulation.

4X games I dislike because of long stretches of "there isn't anything to do, so I guess we wait" punctuated with "this turn took half an hour to complete due to all of the necessary micromanagement". In a well-designed game, I feel like you should always have something to do - but never too much to do. Most 4X games fail at this rather hard. Stellaris does better for me because I always feel like there's something else to tweak - but if it comes down to it, I don't really "have" to tweak any of it; your empire trudges along without too many glaring problems on its own. (This is part of why I don't consider Stellaris a "true" 4X - and really, it isn't. It's a cross between 4X and grand strategy.)

If Endless Space 2 turns out to be an exception to this rule, I'd gladly play... however, given the turn-based format, I'm highly skeptical.

Factorio (in my opinion) is a perfect example of a game designed well: The game gives you small goals to reach, one by one, and while you may puzzle a few minutes on how to reach each of them, after you get started it's fairly straightforward. Your factory manages itself just fine (provided you don't mine up a resource pile), although there's always something you can tweak to make it more efficient. There's always something to do, but never too much. You never have to tweak your factory; it will manage just fine while you move on to the next goal - and it won't "fall behind" in terms of development if you'd just rather sit there and tweak it for a while.

Talvieno wrote:

JoshParnell wrote:

Flatfingers wrote:Whether Endless Space 2 aims a little more on the side of clear feedback remains to be seen, but I'll guess it's likely.

Oh it's much clearer feedback. CK2 is...special...! I enjoy CK2 a great deal...but for me, playing it was a slow and gradual path to acceptance that "I don't control this game, I just kinda fiddle around in it and hope I don't randomly get sick and die all of the sudden while my eldest son is still 0 years old and the Holy Roman Empire is eating everything that moves."

This is good. It pretty well sums up my dislike of CK2 and, to a lesser extent, 4X games in general. I don't like games where you "fiddle around and hope you don't randomly die". Personally I think that's bad game design. Something went wrong there. It's not presenting enough info to actually be playable as a game, but rather as a "fiddle around" simulation.

4X games I dislike because of long stretches of "there isn't anything to do, so I guess we wait" punctuated with "this turn took half an hour to complete due to all of the necessary micromanagement". In a well-designed game, I feel like you should always have something to do - but never too much to do. Most 4X games fail at this rather hard. Stellaris does better for me because I always feel like there's something else to tweak - but if it comes down to it, I don't really "have" to tweak any of it; your empire trudges along without too many glaring problems on its own. (This is part of why I don't consider Stellaris a "true" 4X - and really, it isn't. It's a cross between 4X and grand strategy.)

If Endless Space 2 turns out to be an exception to this rule, I'd gladly play... however, given the turn-based format, I'm highly skeptical.

Factorio (in my opinion) is a perfect example of a game designed well: The game gives you small goals to reach, one by one, and while you may puzzle a few minutes on how to reach each of them, after you get started it's fairly straightforward. Your factory manages itself just fine (provided you don't mine up a resource pile), although there's always something you can tweak to make it more efficient. There's always something to do, but never too much. You never have to tweak your factory; it will manage just fine while you move on to the next goal - and it won't "fall behind" in terms of development if you'd just rather sit there and tweak it for a while.

That's what I like about TW:R2. In the beginning, you have maybe 3 or 4 cities or provinces (based on your start scenario). You start recruiting basic troops, upgrade your cities, research new technologies. And normally, after about the first 2 or 3 rounds already a war breaks out. From there on the fun starts. In the beginning, you normally have to fight the battles by hand, because the calculation of your losses is just huge. Later, when your armies are strong enough, you can just fight them automatically. You have a lot to do until your cities are upgraded, but after that, you can focus on the battle. And with each newly conquered city, you have to start the upgrading process again. Or after you research new buildings, you upgrade your buildings. Which then allow you to recruit better troops. So, you have to send your army back to the next base and retrain them or just muster them completely from anew. It's really fun, you always have to do something, but not too much, and the feedback is just great. The joy when you win a battle by hand that it previously told you "you have absolutely no chance to win this!" just by good tactics and knowing your troops. In the battles, you have to truly micromanagement. I don't remember when was the last time I played a battle in real-time. Usually, I play them in slow-motion or even pause them completely, to think about the development of the battle and maybe reposition my troops, prepare a flanking manoeuvre or just some special skills of my general or troops.

(I really like this game, does my text show that? )

Sounds like a lot of fun. Reminds me of Mount & Blade.

To be clear, I'm not saying I dislike 4X altogether; I'm just saying I've had some bad first experiences with them. The ones I played were fun until you got closer to endgame, where they became a micromanaging grind just to stay afloat. As you got even farther, it got to where you almost felt like you could just sit back and skip most turns - although, if you did, the AI would beat you in the end anyway. I found the experience frustrating.

I do understand that some people like this kind of thing, though, so in part, it is not necessarily a "bad thing" - but I think it could be better.

Talvieno wrote:This is good. It pretty well sums up my dislike of CK2 and, to a lesser extent, 4X games in general. I don't like games where you "fiddle around and hope you don't randomly die". Personally I think that's bad game design. Something went wrong there. It's not presenting enough info to actually be playable as a game, but rather as a "fiddle around" simulation.

4X games I dislike because of long stretches of "there isn't anything to do, so I guess we wait" punctuated with "this turn took half an hour to complete due to all of the necessary micromanagement". In a well-designed game, I feel like you should always have something to do - but never too much to do. Most 4X games fail at this rather hard. Stellaris does better for me because I always feel like there's something else to tweak - but if it comes down to it, I don't really "have" to tweak any of it; your empire trudges along without too many glaring problems on its own. (This is part of why I don't consider Stellaris a "true" 4X - and really, it isn't. It's a cross between 4X and grand strategy.)

If Endless Space 2 turns out to be an exception to this rule, I'd gladly play... however, given the turn-based format, I'm highly skeptical.

Yep, well-said. That's definitely a difficulty with turn-based. I find it stressful to think "ok, have I done enough this turn?? Maybe one more glance over the empire...". Whereas in something like Limit Theory, time is time. Spending time analyzing how your projects are doing is time not spent doing something else. I actually find that more relaxing, since you can never actually hope to achieve 'optimal' time usage. It doesn't even make sense, because continuous time is always a trade-off. Compare with turn-based, where time isn't a trade-off...you could, conceivably, do everything under the sun in one turn, which means there's more of a concept of 'optimality.' And I play games to escape from my own perfectionism, not to feed it

I actually had that problem more with Stellaris than I did with ES2, turn-based-ness aside. When you think about it, the ability to accelerate time (as in Stellaris) is not so different from turn-based in the sense that you now have the option to try to optimize your time. You could play a whole game on 1x time. But dear god would that be painful. I guess this isn't a problem in multiplayer? To be fair, I'm sure Stellaris MP is a lot more fun. But I love my SP games, and ES2 makes the SP experience fun.

Oh, and I think all games of this scope should have automation facilities to alleviate tedium. Which is why I really appreciate ES2's planet automation. You can select a 'focus' for the planet and let the AI do what it thinks is best. It actually does a pretty darn good job, especially once you've got the planet 'reasonably' established. This is really nice since you basically don't have to worry about your well-established systems, you can focus your time on your current war, or colonization effort, or whatever...and hit 'next turn' without fearing that you're going to be demolished because you haven't put enough time into microing every crevice of your empire.

I desperately hope Stellaris gets some kind of automation help (last time I played it didn't have anything...has that changed?) I spent way too much time looking at planet tiles trying to think about how I'm going to power my next research station I actually find Stellaris to have quite a bit more micromanagement than CK2. Am I doing something wrong?

Still need to carve some time out to play Factorio. Maybe this weekend.

JoshParnell wrote: I actually had that problem more with Stellaris than I did with ES2, turn-based-ness aside. When you think about it, the ability to accelerate time (as in Stellaris) is not so different from turn-based in the sense that you now have the option to try to optimize your time. You could play a whole game on 1x time. But dear god would that be painful. I guess this isn't a problem in multiplayer? To be fair, I'm sure Stellaris MP is a lot more fun. But I love my SP games, and ES2 makes the SP experience fun.

I prefer single player in everything. Stellaris is no exception. I like being able to accelerate time; rather, I just keep it on Fastest all the time, and slow it down in combat... mostly for shinies. Stellaris combat is pretty.

I desperately hope Stellaris gets some kind of automation help (last time I played it didn't have anything...has that changed?) I spent way too much time looking at planet tiles trying to think about how I'm going to power my next research station I actually find Stellaris to have quite a bit more micromanagement than CK2. Am I doing something wrong?

Yeah, sounds like you aren't using sectors (which have improved tremendously since launch). I typically stick a lot of things into sectors... which, I think, is how they intended you to play it... although there's the option of not doing it that way if you prefer micromanaging. You can automate exploration now, too, though that works best (as you'd expect) in larger galaxies with more stars to explore.

You can select a 'focus' for the planet and let the AI do what it thinks is best. It actually does a pretty darn good job, especially once you've got the planet 'reasonably' established. This is really nice since you basically don't have to worry about your well-established systems, you can focus your time on your current war, or colonization effort, or whatever...and hit 'next turn' without fearing that you're going to be demolished because you haven't put enough time into microing every crevice of your empire.

Stellaris does this with sectors - sectors being a group of planets under the same rule - a partitioning of your space that also automates the partition.

Still need to carve some time out to play Factorio. Maybe this weekend.

Factorio will steal all your time and beg for more make you beg for it to steal more.

JoshParnell wrote: I desperately hope Stellaris gets some kind of automation help (last time I played it didn't have anything...has that changed?) I spent way too much time looking at planet tiles trying to think about how I'm going to power my next research station I actually find Stellaris to have quite a bit more micromanagement than CK2. Am I doing something wrong?

because sectors dont exist

I've written, on my desktop PC, what I think is a pretty cogent comment on the endgame problem of strategy games, including 4X games.

Unfortunately, our DSL is completely fried until (no later than, I hope) Saturday.

So until I can dump this thing on you, just assume I've written a long and painfully detailed thought piece on how 4X games Ought To Be Designed.

(I'm typing this on a dinkyphone. #thestruggleisreal )

Though in the latest patch, the sector AI will happily teraform a planet into a useless type. :V

Flatfingers wrote:I've written, on my desktop PC, what I think is a pretty cogent comment on the endgame problem of strategy games, including 4X games.

I'm looking forward to reading this.

If only there were ways to transfer text files from a pc to a phone...

I'm open to suggestions on PC -> iPhone.

Can't you tether your computer to your phone's cellular network? That's a feature for Android, at least.

Flatfingers wrote:

I'm open to suggestions on PC -> iPhone.

Attach it to the pc with a cable and transfer it as on a usb stick?
I mean, surely apple isn't that dumb that they can't do that, right?

0111narwhalz wrote:Can't you tether your computer to your phone's cellular network? That's a feature for Android, at least.

That feature exists. You should be able to connect the computer to the internet via personal network and USB.

Dinosawer wrote:

Flatfingers wrote:

I'm open to suggestions on PC -> iPhone.

Attach it to the pc with a cable and transfer it as on a usb stick?
I mean, surely apple isn't that dumb that they can't do that, right?

You clearly don't know apple.