Need Feedback on a 4X strategy game

[Lap]

I have been doing a lot of work for almost a year on a turn based 4X strategy game in a Dune/WH40Kesque universe.

I already have the hardest parts coded:

* Multiplayer works with any number of players.
* Graphical display of maps, units, and battles and UI.
* Most basic game mechanics.

What I'm missing are simply more ideas and feedback on everything from units and backstory, to new features and diplomacy options. Even basic commentary on what you like and hate most in certain 4X strategies games would be helpful.

Spoiler:

http://76.26.38.52/forum/index.php?topic=3.0

The forums are kind of dense with reposted game documents at the moment so don't feel the need to read them before you post an idea. I can easily merge reposts.

If you don't want to post any comments at the link provided then please just post here. I'm desperate to actually get opinions from actual strategy gamers.

[Frogger5]

I suggest you put that large image in a spoiler.

So far it looks good, but I'd suggest presenting the image with less compression if not, none at all, because I can't see the graphics properly.

[Lap]

Hmmm...I put it in spoiler quotes before and it just showed a box that had "Image" written inside so I figured spoiler tags didn't work on images. Seems fine now.




Compression is a bit high on a couple non png images, but I'm not too concerned at this point. Most everything is placeholder art and UI until I find a lead artist or at least an acceptable style. A couple of art styles were suggested in a previous topic I'll share below if you want to comment on them.

http://forums.elementalgame.com/381605/page/2/#2665882

[johndh]

I have been doing a lot of work for almost a year on a turn based 4X strategy game in a Dune/WH40Kesque universe.
[...]
What I'm missing are simply more ideas and feedback on everything from units and backstory, to new features and diplomacy options.

I've always got a good flow of ideas. What do you have so far? Some kind of general framework for a setting, or the civilizations represented therein?

Even basic commentary on what you like and hate most in certain 4X strategies games would be helpful.

It's a bit hard for me to generalize, but I can give examples from specific games I've played.
Civilization 4:

• Hate: So much clicking! I might have to tell a hundred units what to do this turn, which is made worse by...
• Hate: ... having to move each unit individually.
• Hate: So many turns are spent just waiting on something to be built, instead of actually doing anything. Want to explore around a bit? Too bad, because that first new unit isn't going to be done until turn 15.
• Hate: The amount of real-world time it takes to do anything, which is the result of all of the above. This seems to be common to most 4X games I've played, but this one is probably the worst offender.
• Hate: The amount of in-game time it takes to do anything. It might take a unit decades or centuries to walk to a city just a few tiles away. How is he still alive!?
• Hate: Despite being completely different cultures all across the globe, they're all basically the same in practice.
• Hate: The combat system is utter garbage, probably as a result of playing battles on the same scale as empire-building.

Medieval Total War:

• Like: So many improvements can be built in any given province.
• Like: Every nation plays differently.
• Like: Variety of agent-type units with special functions (emissaries, spies, inquisitors), all of which are awesome.
• Like: Bribery! The player can pay enemy generals to defect.
• Like: Naval conquest. Armies can travel from one port to another if there is an unbroken line of ships between destinations.
• Like: Generals all have their own stats and capabilities, as well as vices and virtues. A general who runs away a lot might gain a vice that makes his troops have less morale, or the opposite if he leads from the front.
• Like: Provinces have reasons for loving or hating you. A Catholic trying to hold down an Islamic province is likely to get an uprising if he doesn't have a big army, along with some clergy.
• Like: Generals and their troops gain experience.

Master of Orion 3:

• Like: Cool setting
• Like: The amount of backstory in the manual was huge!
• Like: Variety of objectives
• Like: Ship customization (which could have been better documented)
• Like: Having a report on everything significant that happened between turns
• Like: Different planet types are suited to different species.
• Like: Terraforming -- it's pretty cool to be able to shape a planet to fit the dominant species, and to see the change reflected in the appearance of the globe.
• Like: Letting the planetary AI handle things.
• Like: Espionage (but I'd prefer to be able to set more policies)
• Hate: Terraforming -- it's on a different level of abstraction from everything else. If it were like fleet production, I'd be able to build, say, an atmospheric processor on a planet with toxic air, and a starlight redirection array on one that's too hot, instead of just adjusting a slider that doesn't really tell me what I should expect. How much better is this planet going to get if I put X amount of money into terraforming? No idea.
• Hate: Colony micro-management, especially when I've got several new colonies per turn toward the end
• Hate: Obscure mechanics -- a technology says it improves, say, standardization in industry, but what does that actually do?
• Hate: Indecipherable politics. Why does this faction hate me again?
• Hate: Pretty much impossible to have a "quick" game (true of all these titles, really)
• Hate: Combat control dissonance -- controlling space battles is nothing like controlling ground battles. Either system would be fine on its own, but the mismatch always bewilders me.
• Hate: Planetary bombardment tends to slaughter civilians while usually leaving armies virtually unscathed.
• Hate: The scale can get unmanageable at times, with keeping track of hundreds of colonies and all. The micromanagement of planets and production would probably be much more tolerable on a smaller scale.

Dominions 2 (only the demo version):

• Like: Another pretty cool setting
• Like: The actual "dominion" effect
• Like: Magic research/crafting was done pretty well.
• Like: Every faction is drastically different.
• Hate: The undead were basically a game breaker. Once they pick up speed, they're unstoppable.
• Hate: Setting up combat policies was a bit tedious, and usually involved selecting individual spells and in what order they would be cast.

Lords of the Realm 2:

• Like: County management was pretty cool. Each county has (up to) a cattle farm, a wheat farm, a quarry or iron mine, a forestry, and a couple other things. The player distributes peasants between each one.
• Like: Political exchanges. The player can send compliments, gifts, insults, etc., as well as requests for aid (in which case the response will usually be something like "Okay, but first give me X"). Each ruler has a rating of how much they like or hate you, and they will declare their eternal hatred (from which there is no return) for you if it drops too low, or offer alliance if it gets high enough.
• Like: Different rulers have different personalities and favor different makeups of their armies (despite all having access to the same soldier types).
• Like: "Slaughter these villagers?" Why yes, I think I will. Armies can also lay waste to fields and other infrastructure.
• Dislike: The happiness system was overly-simplistic. All the people seem to care about is their rations, their health, and taxes.

Hearts of Iron:

• Like: Many different branches of research to pursue, all interconnected. You'll need to put some thought into computers in order to gain advanced rocketry, and don't expect paratroopers without chemistry.
• Like: Combat is affected by things like terrain, supplies, and morale, but done so abstractly so it's fairly hands-off. Marching your troops through the Amazon will make their morale and organization drop as if they had the plague or something.
• Like: It's possible to cut off an army's supply line by isolating them from the rest of their territory.
• Like: After conquering an enemy nation, you can either annex their territory or set up a friendly puppet government.
• Like: Declaring war on a nation without provocation will raise dissent.
• Like: A nation's political leanings affect its relations with others.
• Like: Political ministers have their own traits and personalities. Your minister of intelligence might be an efficient sociopath while your president might be a great negotiator.

[Lap]

Firstly, your list of likes and dislikes list is essentially the kind of thing I've been trying to get for a very long time. I can divine a lot of useful things just from looking at what people remember about other strategy games. Thanks so much for making that list. Very thorough and touches on a lot of great games.

I'll try to resummarize this project:

(most of this is similar to Emperor of the Fading Suns, but that won't mean anything to you if you haven't played it)

Spoiler:

-Set in a Dune-esque universe. Space ships are rarer/more expensive than in something like MOO. Clans/Houses wield political and military power in a feudalistic system.
-Multiple planets, but with more of a focus on the actual planetary conquest and development versus the GalCiv/MOO space focus.
-Detailed resources and supply lines like the Anno series. Multiple resources which make interplanetary trade and supply more interesting.
-Province based like Total War or HoI. Not hex based. (Saves tons of time)

Aside from those points the sky is the limit on what I can implement from there. I can do things like combine the M:TW vice/virtue system with Hearts of Iron style supply lines.

I started this project and just did what you just did. I made a list of the games I liked and the parts that were really memorable. I finally have a good chance to make the game I've always wanted and there's not really any concept that I can't code in.

So how would you make your ideal strategy or 4X game?

Even just throwing out isolated gameplay ideas is useful. I had a friend who mentioned how weak and underused United Nations style meetings were in most games and that he had some ideas for how to improve them. That led me to thinking about the games where I thought it was better done (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri) and in things where it was done poorly (most everything else). From there we were able to hash out some really interesting diplomatic situations that I'm going to try to include in the game. No real knowledge of this specific project was even required.

[Atz]

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri / Alien Crossfire is still my favourite 4X ever. The faction bonuses and civics system was great - each faction had some inherent bonuses, and then you could mix and match policies in four different areas to emphasise what you wanted (government, economics, values, and "future society", the last being for things like "Cybernetics for everyone!"). I also liked the modular units and the espionage system. Planetary Council was also kinda interesting.

[Jetrel]

The fundamental problem in civ is that it didn't scale well. Moving individual units around is fun only when there are a few, but the game chose to try to run way above scale, hundreds of times above its "sweet spot". The sweet spot is how civ plays right at the beginning of the game, with just a couple of cities. Once you have dozens, it's out of scale. This is analogous to making a DOOM map, and putting several thousand monsters in it. Most games don't make this mistake, but the civ guys unabashedly did. The problem, however, is that staying inside the bounds of your sweet spot doesn't fulfill the requirements of some games. Civ's intention was to be a game where you manage an entire civilization (that means managing dozens of cities), and they forced the game up to that size because making it smaller makes it a game that's no longer about world empire-building and conquest. What civ should have done instead, is they should have altered the basic design of the game.

I don't know of a silver bullet for this, but the general strategy seems to be like algorithmic complexity. Never do game UI designs that increase linearly with the number of units/etc involved (e.g. civ units). Or worse, exponentially (imagine a trading game where you amass additional trade nodes, but have to then manage connections between every node). Try to do a game design where issuing orders and such has a constant cost no matter how many units/etc are involved.

A clever, tip-of-the-iceberg instance of this is in AoE3, which has a "move all of your military units (yes, EVERYONE) to a spot" command. This is kind of an afterthought, a bolted-on design. You can go much further by designing like this from the start.

[Sgt. Groovy]

Try to do a game design where issuing orders and such has a constant cost no matter how many units/etc are involved.

The obvious solution is the ability to arrange the units into groups and the issue orders to the whole groups. If the groups can be further assembled into supergroups in infinite scale, the player basically gets to choose the amount of work needed to control their army. If the group hierarchy is presented as a tree, issuing an order onto any node would made the order trickle down the branch, ultimately being issued to every leaf of that branch. In that way, the player would have complete flexibility to control the army with only few commands, yet at the same time have the ability to micromanage at any level of detail they wish. In addition, the player should also have the ability to rearrange the tree at any time.