Fighting a common enemy

[guiguibaah]

I was playing CIV3 the other day and realized that the game runs in periods. First, you try your best to expand like crazy up to the point that your empire now borders everyone elses and there's no room to expand. That's the end of period 1.

Period 2 starts when there's no more room to expand. Empires either build up their infrastructure or begin attacking each other. This continues until the end of the game.

- - - -

Now don't get me wrong, some people really like this style of gameplay. It's predicatable and allows one to refine some good strategies.

Myself, I enjoy playing games that offer something of a period 3 - a common enemy shows up and wrecks havoc, forcing people to adapt, re-colonise, etc..

For example. In Sid Meyer's alpha Centauri, one had to contend with Mind Worms. Ususally they were but a nuissance in early game - but on the harderst difficulty levels they could often rip apart cities and take back land you previously owned in the late game. They would also spread their fungus on your terraformed quares and ruin improvements. Finally, they often hit the bigger, more polluting guys harder.

Moo2 had the antarans and space monsters. While they spiced things up, they were a little too weak for my tastes. Plus, there was no incentive to go and help out another race.

Birth of tbe Federation had the Borg. Unfortunately these guys were way too strong, and once they showed up there wasn't much you could do. The computer did not care that you put up a valiant fight, only to have them decimate your worlds and proceed onto them the next - which then lead to a lot of computer casualties.

- - -

What I am suggesting, is perhaps looking at the idea of having some sort of common enemy that, every now and again, really makes life difficult for everybody. And if you helped out a race it would favour you diplomatically not just with them, but with everyone else. Have a slider for people who don't like this idea so it can be toggled.

Also, I'm all for lots and lots of random events. It breaks the monotony in the mid-late game.

[Aquitaine]

The 'late game monotony' I'd prefer to battle with EU2-style diplomacy and events. I hated mind worms in SMAC (although I know a lot of people loved them).

however, we can both get what we want, since mind worms would easily be the province of a mod.

-Aq

[guiguibaah]

- oh for sure. The problem with Mind Worms was that you couldn't speak to the other factions and enact some sort of mutual protection pact against them. In fact, you could tame a bunch of mind worms, bring them right up to an ally's city, then release them in the wild. They'd ravage you ally's city and surrounding regions, without you suffering anything.

Things that just go around making everyone's life miserable aren't much fun because it's till the "guy with the biggest guns" who can defeat them.

But nobody likes negative events - ie: a city you worked so long building up suddenly getting overwhelmed and destroyed because of some weird random event.

Perhaps offer some positive random events. Such as "We can now colonise part of the Oort cloud" or "a black hole leads to a new dimension - first to colonise it gets blah blah blah.."

Basically stuff that keeps the pace of the game fluctuating.
Anyhow, just my 2 cents.

[DemoMonkey]

The event wouldn't have to be completely random. The escalating nature of Antaran attacks in MOO2 could be used as a model, but developed further. Whatever the opponent (Antarans, mind worms, giant star hamsters, whatever) , it would appear at first as a few small scouting attacks, unlikely to do much damage - BUT - beginning a countdown to a devastating attack.

While the "countdown" event is in effect, all but the completely xenophobicr aces become 50% more diplomatically friendly, to represent the realization that they must hang together or they will hang separately.

[Marijn]

They are called 'miniature giant space hamsters'. (Unless you were not referring to Minsc's pet in the Baldur's Gate series.)

I do think it would be neat to have this 'evil late-game enemy' thingy occupy a position on the map. The way the antarans in MOO2 worked made it quite hard to band against them. I thought the gate thing to attack their homeworld was a little far fetched too. The problem with the big enemy taking control of a cluster of systems is that the player who happens to be in the place where it starts invading is in a real bad position, so maybe we could have them live on floating giant propelled asteroids or something?

[guiguibaah]

Something Aquitaine mentioned in a previous thread made me rethink this idea about having a common enemy / late game, and the thread in which he mentioned it was about rebellions. The gist of it was:

"Anything that can be purely random, that the player has no control over, should not have a negative effect". By negative, I beleive it meant loosing something one took time to build, such as a planet or city or bunch of ships or whatnot. Rebellions in SMAC could pop up without warning in my games and I could lose that city to a rival faction the same turn. (In some cases, I'd have a huge army inside to boot). My response 99% of the time was to simply re-load the game because it was such an unbalancing aspect, and FRUSTRATING!

By unbalancing, I mean something I (or anyone for that matter) would have no (or extremely little) control over whatsoever. Also, the final result is negative. Even Admiral VUX couldn't take these kinds of unbalancing events and turn them to his advantage.

Instead...

1. Such events should deduct some positive aspect one would experience or get from that situtation. Say you race is blessed with 30% towards production. Well a rebellion at this planet has now caused that system to lose that advantage for say 20 turns, even though the rebellion ended in 3 turns.

or.

2. Random events or a common foe offer some way of you getting something out of the situation if you are clever or wily enough. Antarean attacks usually resulted in a negative effect if you were not prepared for them in moo2.
Now if you WERE prepared, the result could have ranged from a) your ships having more experience b) you capture an antarean ship, to c) you capture the ship and learn a technology (like Xentronium armor).
Mind worms in SMAC were almost purely negative, except if you were +Green, where you could capture them (or kill them and get some cash for it.). But they were rather mindless IMHO (I liked the antarean raids better).

- - -

Anyhow, back to my original though - I just realised Moo did have the opportunity for continuous expansion. Some planets were guarded by space monsters, which meant you had to invest a considerable amount of cash and tech and ships to claim them - the ultimate was Orion itself.

Having a common third enemy could be something like the Antareans (that raid you and everyone else equally) perhaps bumped up a notch - but there would always be something you could gain from the situation. That the reason your planet was raided wasn't because the computer rolled a 6 instead of a 5, but because you didn't plan or anticipate something like this in the future.

Anyhoo, hope I made some sense, because now your stuck with it.

[Paul1980au]

You know Spece empires 4 has allowed fan modding and there is one mod with over 200 events that can affect the empire these include

Random spatial movement that takes ships and dumps them in a random point in the gamemap - could wreck fleet preparation plans.
Plagues
Rebellion
Ship damage
Space Pirates attacking ships
Lost knowledge reducing tech levels
Visiting galatic games and raising or lowering morale
Planets and suns blowing up
Asteroids converting to planets
Sun creation
Warp point and jump gate appearence and disapperance
Many many others
You could add space monsters and unrelated barbarian type races pop up and try to conqueor areas of empires
Could also add new empire appearence
Planet warping to new locations - youre homeworld in the middle of an emeny system would be itneresting and vise versa should an enemy planet arrive ripe for invasion.
Alien relics
Discovreing alien ships which defect to youre empire (but cant be deconstructed anayised - once destoryed its advanced benefits would be lost)
So would you put it into combat or save it for a needed situation.

[Krikkitone]

I think the idea is that phase 2 needs to be expanded, there are two ways to do this.

1.. Earlier contact with other empires.. shorten phase 1

2.. Longer time required to achieve dominance... this can be accomplished 2 ways

A... Balance of power politics... needs a large number of players to be viable, but is important

B...Multiple phases.. ie you finally beat all the other 2-3 system empires that are your neighbors, you are now a 7-10 system empire, and have to compete with the other 7-10 system empires that just beat all their 2-3 system neighbors...until you become a 30-40 system empire and have to contend with the other 30-40 system empires.... (of course in the process you might fall down a 'level' but then the should begin focusing on other competitors and ignore you)

B is essentially a more complex version of A requiring LOTS more players


Once you get to stage 3, ie winning is inevitable, you should win... (the game should let you play beyond that, and balance of power politics should make it real hard to get there, but once can eliminate all other players with a flick of your wrist, the game should have you win.)

[Daveybaby]

Hmmmm i kinda like the sound of B.

One thing i'd always thought of as kinda lame in Moo2 was the antaran homeworld thing. Just 1 planet. Woo Hoo. I'd been hoping for something more like the alternate dimension from Master of Magic - i.e. an entire second galaxy that you'd have to purge of the Antarans - with them attacking and actually taking over the first galaxy at the same time.

Moo3 was a similarly disappointing affair in this regard. [reads blurb on back of box] Send out missions to explore the antaran dimension - sounds like fun! [imagines] Navigate your exploration fleets around the alternate dimension to find the X's, fight off space monsters and antaran attacks, try to get back home before your last ship is eradicated... droool.... [actually plays game] Errrrr. hang on... oh no. Instead of that theyve decided to implement the most incredibly dull way to win a computer game ever imagined by humanity(tm). Build a bunch of scouts. Wait. The end. Yay!

So what i've always wanted is a full alternative dimension / galaxy. In a SP game this isnt too hard to figure out (just take some of the basics from Moo2 and Moo3 and finish the job they half-heartedly started) but MP can be more of a problem.

So what you want is to split the available players up between a number of galaxies. These galaxies are totally separate, no communication is possible between them up until a certain point in the game. Then, at this point, communications and travel become possible, and you have your phase 3 : A number of well developed empires suddenly making first contact.

Possible Implementation Options:
* Each galaxy has a central wormhole connecting it to the centre of all of the other galaxies
* Have something like the black hole/neutron stars from Moo3 spread around each galaxy, with one way travel possible - enter a black hole in one galaxy and appear at a neutron star / white hole in another. You would then have to get to another black hole to try to get home. Or you could just make travel 2-way (although i prefer the 1-way thing - i think it will encourage conflict).
* Players research and build their own dimensional portals wherever they like (this probably requires that each galaxy is identical in layout to the others)

Other possible options:
* Inter-galactic travel doesnt require any special tech - but it only becomes possible after a fixed number of turns, when an 'interdimensional sub-space rift type thingy' ends. Thus it becomes possible for all races at the same time, regardless of tech.
* Intergalatic travel is something that becomes possible for all races as soon as any one race researches and builds a certain device.
* Intergalactic travel is enabled on a case by case basis - only races that have developed the capability can travel between galaxies.

When starting an multiplayer (or, indeed a single player) game you simply specify the number galaxies you want to create. The game then splits players equally between galaxies. Its should probably ensure that human players are equally divided between galaxies, then fill in the AI players afterwards. In addition the game should probably ensure that each galaxy starts with the same number of empires to ensure no-one gains too large an advantage just from starting in a more/less populated galaxy.

[Ragnar]

Daveybaby: I like it!

That would really help with the phase 3 boredom. Of coarse, now you have phase 4 boredom.

MOM was one of my all time favorites.

You could still have one entire galaxy left to the common enemy. It could be a final duel, in the spirit of Highlander.

Compartmenting the universe makes it like a bracketed tournament.

[guiguibaah]

Hey, here's an idea... If galaxy specials are implemented, say like blackholes, Quazars, black matter pockets, Binary Stars and Rifts - perhaps some of these form a gate to these 'Antarean' worlds.

IE: You have 5 black holes, 2 Black matter pockets and 1 rift.

While exploring the above (by leaving ships there... which slowly dwindle due to the dangerousness of the area) you discover that 2 black holes and 1 rift are direct links to 'antarean' systems.

For programming reasons, they are really systems. They are just masked as black holes or rifts until you successfully discover they aren't.

This would be a little easier on the programmers, since they wouldn't have to program a whole negative galaxy.

Also, you could have it so that once you defeated one planet, the raids intensify, and they could begin to target only you.

Anyhow, just an idea.

[Krikkitone]

actually for Civ Type Games I'd always though this would be good.

Because of programming and computer processing constraints, small level (below one square for civ games or System for MOO1, Planet for MOO2 or Region for MOO3) and high level (outside of the planet for Civ, outside of the 'Galaxy' for MOO games) interactions are abstracted.

An interesting game system would be one in which the scale of those interactions could change (ie a Civ game where the first map is a single river valley and each 'square' is small..you can colonize the 'outside' but it is generally abstracted.. and once you reach a certain point, you expand to a map of a small region (India, China, Middle East, etc.). and some of you smaller squares 'merge' into each other and new squares are added to the outside (not empty but based on the abstract picture from before) you then zoom out to a continental level, then to the whole planet... then to a system, then to a MOO like cluster, then as you zoom out more, systems become MOO1 like, eventually groups of systems become the squares and you are playing on an actual galaxy..... etc. and so forth.)

Now that game would be...utopian in most senses of the word, but if a game incorporated some of those levels.

As for the Transfer time between levels, that actually would be pretty simple, design it to be based on achieving a certain achievement (like Civ's Spaceship Ending would automatically transition to the multi planet point) As soon as someone could reach other areas technologically on a regular basis, then the board expands.

[Marijn]

The somewhat ancient game 'sword of the samurai' (not the recent game of that name) had a system like that and it worked quite well. You'd start out as a minor samurai and spent the first part of the game trying to become the chief of your province, and after you managed that the whole game changed and you entered a higher-level game where you had to conquer all of Japan. The game did this quite well.

Something like this is not very viable for FO though, it would have had to be included in the desing from the very start to work.

[Ragnar]

Maybe drifting OT, but: After FO is built in it's current state, there could be a 'pregame' developed that had you fight to emerge as the leader of your race, which would not end but launch you into FO when you become the leader.

Also, I like the idea of nesting games at different levels of warfare (individual combat, tactical, operational art, strategic.) Anybody know of any current ones like 'sword of the samurai'?

[krum]

I think there were actually three stages in Sword of the Samurai. Dunno about any similar recent titles, though.