Oh boy, do your answers fuel my fears….
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 3:22 am
LienRag wrote: ↑Sat May 30, 2020 10:00 pm
You've done a lot of work here, and I can't say that I understand all of it, but I have a concern that I guess everybody can share : will this be fun to play ?
I wouldn't have proposed it if I didn't think it would be enjoyable.
Nice. That means that we can work together on making sure they actually are enjoyable for all players, not only pure mathematical-oriented ones.
I mean, that not only the planning phase is fun (I guess I can see how your mechanisms could be enjoyable to plan) but the execution phase too (and I see your proposed mechanisms seriously lacking here, maybe because the « how » isn’t developed).
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 3:22 am
LienRag wrote: ↑Sat May 30, 2020 10:00 pmI mean, just paying Influence to buy a planet is certainly not very fun.
I mean you pretty much just pay production to get planets right now, so I don't really see much difference.
No, you don’t pretty much pay Production Points for planets right now. You pay PP for Outpost ships or Colony Ships that you must bring safely to their target, which may or may not be easy depending on the circumstances. And even the part where it can be a bit boring (when both origin and destination are safely in Supply) opens to counter-strategies for opponents, who may well hide a ship with some stealth to destroy any unescorted outpost/colony ship.
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 3:22 am
Ditto for getting an enemy's production list.
Getting someone's production queue could be very useful information.
I’m not saying that it’s not useful, I’m asking where is the fun in it.
If you can find a way to make it fun for all players involved, I’m all for it – but making it fun and/or challenging is the important part.
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 3:22 am
But as influence grows (and even if it doesn't snowball, it will grow, or it's no more a 4X game) even that will be less relevant, and anyway it's no fun at all for the victim.
Your choices also become less relevant for production ans research as the game goes on as well.
Yes, and this is something that we are trying to fix.
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 3:22 am
Also being at the receiving end of a military invasion is no fun for the victim either. Your point is moot.
That is definitely not true, at least to someone who likes challenges.
Being at the receiving end of an invasion force is definitely extremely fun if one has a fighting chance, which depends both on how he played and on what game mechanics are available – that is a reason for the emphasis on developing tactical possibilities, even if right now we basically only have force composition and stealth.
What I’m asking is that Influence mechanisms have similar « tactical possibilities » (see my three rules in the original post).
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 3:22 am
I've seen that there are ways to protect against espionage via paying influence, so that means I guess that one has to pay influence to protect oneself against enemies, and that with left influence one can try to influence-attack (spying, sabotage and so on) enemies ? That makes for a very boring game mechanism imho.
Right now you have to pay production to protect yourself and attack with what you have left over, do you consider that boring?
No, you pay production to build whatever you want, including ships, which you can use either for offense or defense. Note that ground troops and planet defenses are specifically not paid by Production Points but by different mechanisms, which brings variety to the game.
Just paying defenses and hoping to outspend the enemy would be extremely boring indeed.
And it’s not a semantic difference : building ships is absolutely not the end of military operations, one has to choose which ones to build and more importantly be able to bring them to where they are needed, opening room for all types of maneuvering skills.
If you (or we collectively) can design mechanisms to make this Influence-fueled Espionage fun (for example making Espionage costly and with a cooling period – so an Empire cannot spy continuously – and counter-espionage less costly but also with a cooling period so no Empire could counter-spy continuously, imho it would be very fun to successfully counter an enemy spying attempt by timing it precisely) I’m all for it.
But not if it’s just outspending the opponent.
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 3:22 am
I proposed one partial mechanism
here and another
there. In the same logic, as changing Policy Cards is supposed to cost Influence and maybe cause some uproar in the Empire, targeting influence projects at an enemy Empire at the very moment he's going to change his Policy (give or take a few turns) could be a way to generate rebellions more dire than the Emperor accounted for.
You'd still have to know when someone is going to change policies for that to work and there shouldn't be a way to predict that, in my opinion.
Yes obviously, and for well designed Policies it should certainly be possible for a good player to try to guess that : when scouting shows that an opponent is building an economic powerbase but that you suspect that he’ll soon start to build warships, there is a good probability that he’ll switch from some production-oriented Policy to a militaristic one sooner or later – it’s up to you to try to guess exactly when.
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 3:22 am
I do think that these "cloak and dagger, striking in the dark" mechanisms are very adapted to Influence play, but that doesn't mean that all Influence mechanisms have to be like those.
Influence projects will also include propaganda and the like.
My qualm is not with the « What » but with the « How ». I just want to make sure that the mechanisms in place will create a good, interesting and original game, that’s why I offered the three rules presented in my initial post (and quoted below to answer your answers to them).
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 3:22 am
What they need to be is fun, which means :
- Strategic : they need to have consequences, and impose hard choices to the player using them
- Counterable : their targets should have a way to prevent Influence attacks, and not by putting a bigger Influence stack against the attacking Influence stack but by using their brains so that the better player gets the upper hand (cue my "betting" mechanisms)
- Integrated : they should be of little cost/benefit interest alone but give their best results in a combined strategy with other mechanisms (it's no fun to pay Influence to buy an enemy ship, but having the enemy have a "communication jam" that makes a subset of his Fulver ships not execute move orders just the turn where you attack his now isolated main fleet can make for a great game experience imho)
On your second point, play in 4X games often comes down to who can put down the bigger stack of whatever resource at the right location, I don't understand your objection.
Yes, that is how bad 4X games usually work – and FreeOrion is trying to steer away from that.
Obviously being able to produce en masse is an important factor, but being able to build strategically and then to use strategically what was build should be the decisive factor.
labgnome wrote: ↑Sun May 31, 2020 3:22 am
What they need to be is fun, which means :
- Strategic : they need to have consequences, and impose hard choices to the player using them
- Counterable : their targets should have a way to prevent Influence attacks, and not by putting a bigger Influence stack against the attacking Influence stack but by using their brains so that the better player gets the upper hand (cue my "betting" mechanisms)
- Integrated : they should be of little cost/benefit interest alone but give their best results in a combined strategy with other mechanisms (it's no fun to pay Influence to buy an enemy ship, but having the enemy have a "communication jam" that makes a subset of his Fulver ships not execute move orders just the turn where you attack his now isolated main fleet can make for a great game experience imho)
On your third point, I fundamentally disagree. I think you should be able to play and win an influence game, just as much as you can a production or technology game.
Well, that is the point : we don’t have a production game nor a technology game, we have a strategic game with interacting production and technology, where one can choose to rely more on one aspect or the other, but where the final test will be in defeating militarily the opponents¹.
So a game where strategic use of Influence is possible is definitely a good thing, but winning by just accumulating Influence Points and then spending them in Influence projects is not.
So again, I believe that your proposals need a clarification on how they would be implemented, because this implementation is what will decide whether they enrich the game or make it quite dull.
¹ That’s what we have right now, I’m not opposed to the addition of diplomatic victory mechanisms if they are well balanced, but anyway to win a diplomatic victory too one needs to resist any wannabe conqueror’s onslaught.