I follow the Cube Rule, it has been my greatest ally.
On a different subject, I’ve gotten into the opendev testing of Amplitude Studio’s Humankind.
It’s been pretty good. Overall it barrows heavily from Endless Legend, which I count as a huge plus.
The test scenarios are extremely limited however, so it currently feels like Endless Legend with a just a new theme. Hopefully as they get along more and develop more content for it Humankind will differentiate itself a bit more.
I’m quite saddened by Humankind. It has always been the fantastic settings and factions that draw me in Amplitude Studio’s games, so having them drop that and do yet another Civ is quite disappointing.
I’m hoping for human civs but with very divergent rules for each civ.
I think the main thing that’s going to be hard for them is the direct comparisons with the factions in their Endless series. Oh look, this civ can only have one huge city, that’s never been done before >>
My biggest beef with the playtest is that the tactical map view for battles has this weird whiteout overlay that covers the terrain actually making it more difficult to see what you are fighting over (not sure if this is a glitch or just placeholder assets). Also I think a big part of it is testing the UI/UX for eventual tutoralizing but theres a ton of keywords and rules features that aren’t immediately apparent so I hope my testing survey feedback clears that up.
Also I’m really hoping the impact of decisions is amped up. I like the idea of the decisions in Humankind and Endless Space, but they always felt like just accumulating small, cumulative bonuses rather than making hard choices.
I think its good for Civ series and other potential historical 4x games to have another game pushing at the territory. Amplitude has a different design ethos and game history than Firaxis and I do think the core concept of having to pick civs in different eras for different bonuses adds an additional layer of strategic depth of picking civs based on short term needs vs long term goals or playing to your start location. When you pick a civ in Civ5/6 you are basically committing to a certain playstyle for optimum competitive play, maybe you alter the course as you go to meet challenges but your civ strengths are always a constant.
I was thinking.
We got a lot of 4X games, and almost always they have one of two themes.
Theme 1 is history of Earth. Civilization, Humankind, etc. They go through the history of human beings on Earth. Starting around the time of the invention of agriculture and going forward to present day, and perhaps the future.
Theme 2 is space. Master of Orion, Gal Civ, etc. Fictional alien races, may or may not include humans from Earth. Starting around the time that the alien races discover interstellar travel.
There may be some here and there with other themes, but they are rare.
What if, without really changing the gameplay formula much at all, there was a 4X that sort of met both themes in the middle. Give me a fictional alien species on another planet that isn’t Earth. However, don’t start with interstellar travel. Start with primitive aliens that have just discovered the alien equivalent of agriculture. Don’t model it on human history with religions, wars, etc. Does an alien species even have those things? What do they have? Come up with something fictional and wild!
That’s cool in that it has indeed created a fictional alien world, but it still seems to revolve around the same concepts as human history, war, economics, etc.
This is a genuine question, but if the game isn’t about war, economics, etc., what do you want it to be about?
I mean, war is a bad thing, but these are games, and games need to be exciting and give players something to do. There are really only three choices for a game that deals with civilizations: war, economics, and diplomacy. Civilizations are trying to better themselves through one of those methods. If you take them away, what are you left with? What do you want the game to be about?
I only know what I don’t want it to be about, which is anything remotely like Earth or humans. A tall order, considering that’s all we have to go on, being humans from Earth who haven’t met any aliens.
That is a tall order.
Back in college, in one of my literature classes, we learned that at the most basic level, there are only three types of conflict: Man versus Man, Man versus Nature, and Man versus Self. You can kind of extend these to three more types of conflict that don’t fall neatly into one of the categories above: Man versus Machine, Man versus Society, and Man versus Fate.
The 4X genre of games, kind of by necessity, deals with civilizations, or tribes, or large groups instead of with individuals. Because of this, a lot of these classic types of conflict don’t apply easily. You can’t really have a game centered on the conflict between Man versus Society when you’re playing as that society, just as an example. This really limits what you can do and the types of conflict you can incorporate into the game to make it fun and exciting to play.
Hm. A truly alien race whose culture is founded on principles that differ entirely from our own?
I mean at some point I think we have to acknowledge that the human thinkymeat is sort of limited in what it can envision. The concept of “conflict” is…I mean it’s drilled all the way down to unicellular life, so I’m not entirely convinced there is a way to have a civilization that doesn’t have wars. And if there is, I’m not sure my electric jello can actually build a world where that happens. It’s just too intrinsic to life as we know it.
BUT
One option is to not play out the war, but instead the aftermath of war. Instead of the glory of combat, you get to deal with the consequences of your ruinous fighting. Fast forward through the fight, or just make it not matter. Never talk about who won, only what comes after.
It’s still abiding by the war theme, but it removes the part that glorifies actually fighting and refocuses on striving for peace.
I wonder if you could do a similar treatment for the other concepts.
Defining war as “two factions with similar levels of power seeing who can dominate” means even science fiction stories are just warmed-over variations on existing human wars and conflicts. However, there are plenty of science fiction stories where the definition of conflict isn’t so cut and dried. It leads to all kinds of interesting stories that make for great novels, but probably not good game mechanics.
If it’s too hard to imagine a past and progression through history that from nothing to interstellar civilization that isn’t full of human-style systems of conflict what about going even further future instead? That seems much easier to imagine.
Don’t start when interstellar travel is first invented. Start way way later. Start with “The Culture” or the Star Trek Federation and such. Just don’t include any Klingons, Borgs, Predators, Aliens, Inchoroi. “Good” guys only. What happens if there are ten different “The Cultures” and they meet?
What about a “war” where actually killing isn’t the main objective? The problem with “human-style conflict” is really about the modern mega-nation approach to it - but tons and tons of traditional human tribal warfare is specifically about posturing and display, and not about actual killing. It’s about asserting borders and boundaries while allowing people to still live their lives. “War” is really a product of nations specifically.
If you turned it into a different sort of thing than the classic expansionist imperialist mode of operation, that could work.
OF COURSE, “expansion” is an intrinsic part of 4X. This genre at its core is about imperialism and colonization, so could you actually get away from those concepts and still be a 4X game?
This is the crux of the problem. You can make a game that tries to get away from those concepts, but those concepts are kind of integral to the 4X genre.
The 4X game is just “replicate more effectively” and/or “persist.” That’s it.
I prefer the human-centric ones because they have many real-world-informed natural heuristics.
Really we need a 4x game that doesn’t cause me to stay up wayyyy to late on a work night and barely function as an adult when I’m playing a game of it :-p
//Looks at Stellaris and Civ 6
Stellaris is going to kill me, I can feel it.
Would really love a solid mobile game (from scratch developed for mobile) or a boardgame mobile port that managed to scratch this itch in single player vs AI or extremely long turn play ala CIV message board games.