Balance between Warring and non Warring factions

from GalCiv3 Forums

Reading through the steam pinned thread "Your wish for Galciv III" Apart from a ton of great idea's being brought up, one big thing was the power difference between Drengin and other factions. They simply have far to much production and warring ability. Let copy paste my response to this, and I'll go into even more detail.

"The reason in every game, the warring faction is always the go-to way to win easily, is because the devs never focus on other things, or balancing in those terms.

Why can't non warring factions have better defenses to semi-balance out at least the speed that they get taken out. Even if they can't go head to head with the warring faction, slowing down the speed they get roflstomped would allow for what they do expertise in, to be effective.

A faction that's awesome at diplomacy for instance, it gives them time to hold out until their allied arrive to help with the war effort. The fact that their strength in diplomacy is so high, also would seem that their friends would be far more willing to put more resources and time to helping them.

On the flip side the warring faction most likely sucks at diplomacy, therefore their friends if they have any, are slower to respond, or less likely to care or help.

etc.

Factions that favor tourism, and Morale for instance can force the warring faction to keep ships on the planets they take over. Tieing up much needed ships for the war effort to keeping the population under control on planets they've taken over. While this may not result in the defender winning the war, it certainly again slows down the warring factions ability to just roflstomp them into an easy victory.

If the warring faction doesn't plan properly, they may end up having most of their fleets tied up in police duty on planets, and the ships that are out fighting end up getting over run in pure numbers as the less efficient ships and fleets of the other faction start winning battles.

Warring faction has to then pull ships from planets, and possibly have the planet flip back to the original faction..

Things like this devs seem to completely neglect in terms of balancing the power struggle between warring and non warring factions. They think throwing in a half ♥♥♥♥♥ diplomacy system automatically makes it balanced, which it doesn't."
   


Ultimately in the end, there's just no balance what so ever in terms of non warring factions specialties to become a weapon in and of itself. The 2 examples above being good ones. How Allied AI for instance responds to threats to you by other factions being non existant, even for the most highly diplomatic factions. Having Allies in GalCiv is just about pointless except to make sure you aren't attack on all fronts, but that alone shouldn't be the only reason you make friends. Especially for non warring factions.


Warring factions as it stands don't need to plan much in terms of who they are attacking, and this in my opinion is why I consider personally GalCiv III to be nothing special in terms of its predecessor GalCiv II, there truly is nothing new or better in III apart from some cosmetic niceties. There truly is nothing new that stands out, and these problems of GalCiv II are still going strong in III.


In pure balance factoring a warring faction should need to consider who exactly they are fighting, and what their strengths are to some degree. Attacking a highly diplomatic faction with lots of friends is probably a very bad idea. (Though atm it doesn't matter, because the AI rarely want to do anything to help friends). A Warring factions course of action should probably be to thin out the weaker factions who are allied before going straight for the grand prize.

Like-wise, putting more focus on scientific focused factions needing those rare resources more to up their science output, and even the power of their ships to some degree, would be a way  for the warring faction to focus them down. While the Science focused factions can usually go head to head with a warring faction due to their extreme science output and match the tech, their production tends to be lower. Balancing this out with them needing to focus on resources, and giving their tech tree the ability to boost output of resources, coupled with the resources boosting their ships defense/damage based on how many resources they have may help them. The down fall though is if they can't or don't defend their resources properly, the warring faction if playing their cards right, destroys a few of the science factions bases, or resource nodes, and flips the table in their advantage.


There are many ways to make every non warring faction viable in a fight in their own unique way, and make the warring faction need to decide how to fight them, and what their best course of action may be. It's something many games like this simply don't factor in, and really should if they don't want to be yet another cookie cutter game.





8,682 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

hmm.. kinda surprised no responses lol

Reply #2 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

In previous galcivs this was done by the 'goodguys' allying together, and helping each other, but without ideology being a driving factor, I agree that some further bonuses to being a less warlike species is probably warranted at the late game meta level, not huge changes just small tweaks. 


Some ideas are:

Diplomatic


Diplomatic Goodwill built up over time, where long alliances are honored even if the odds look bad for the defenders. If this is in already, the bonus needs to go higher for very long term allies, but have less effect for warlike races, so their friends are not constantly getting dragged into wars that were started by their ally.

Mini Factions that are defensive alliances between more than 2 species, with each additional member being less likely to accept or be accepted. This of course can help warlike factions also but be less helpful long term to their ability to expand, it also allows if people want it, internal politics. I suggested this awhile ago but it was received with mixed results.

Defensive

Making turtling a bit more viable, perhaps through starbases. Turtling isn't loved by some of the player-base and so I think this is some of the problem you'll receive with part of your idea, so a compromise could be:

Having a single race that is great at turtling. A peaceful race that are incredibly defensive but expand slowly, maybe they have technology that is decaying so they get weaker defensively as time goes on, till they are better off just using regular tech. OR They simply have massive offensive penalties and great defensive bonses, so attacking them is costly. This would give everyone a new challenge, even the warlike people, either hit them early at high cost, or wait until they have expanded out and are possibly even harder to break.

Economic 

War Weariness having a measurable effect over more of your screens, again this won't be loved by many as its arbitrary.

More Random Positive Events for races at peace. This is a reverse for war weariness, as in, you get a few small benefits for not being at war, but I think it helps balance out the positives for constantly being at war.

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I've never seen the problem with "turtling." The people who hate it in my opinion are just people who like to roflstomp with OP military, and hate it when something throws a wrench in their gears. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

If you're "turtling", and slowing down a more powerful enemy, you're doing something right. I don't see why game developers have to give the winning side even more roflstomping power to hasten the loss. It's completely backwards thinking that I've seen run rampant in all types of games. "oh, winning is taking too long, QQ, we should have won already!" basically is what it comes too which is just stupid.

 

I first came across the term "turtling", while playing league of legends years ago. Riot started nerfing all the towers HP's, defense, and damage, while buffing minions, and champions damage to towers, etc. because the community didn't like "turtling". It was completely idiotic and narrow sighted.. The complaints against turtling was ultimately just as stupid and childish. Never seen a good, or logical reason against it, and all it did was favor the winning team, and give them even more of a snow ball auto win chance, while punishing the enemy team even more severely than normal for getting behind. Idiotic and stupid at its best.

Reply #4 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

What I'd like to see is the a system where declaring war gives a negative diplomatic modifier to every race combined with some mechanic to let several races declare war on someone at once and have the AI take into account the combined strength of the group when deciding if it's a good idea or not.  Ideally I'd also like a bunch of "casus belli" to mitigate the negative modifier or possibly if enough stack eliminate the hit or even provide a boost.

So if a faction is going around conquering the galaxy the other races will hate them, and if enough races hate them they'll all go to war at once and have a chance of stopping the snowballing race.  But if you're going to war to defend an ally, stop a war monger, and/or getting rid of a single race no one likes you'll be ok or possibly even better off diplomatically.

Reply #5 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Quoting Yeller123, reply 4

What I'd like to see is the a system where declaring war gives a negative diplomatic modifier to every race combined with some mechanic to let several races declare war on someone at once and have the AI take into account the combined strength of the group when deciding if it's a good idea or not.  Ideally I'd also like a bunch of "casus belli" to mitigate the negative modifier or possibly if enough stack eliminate the hit or even provide a boost.

So if a faction is going around conquering the galaxy the other races will hate them, and if enough races hate them they'll all go to war at once and have a chance of stopping the snowballing race.  But if you're going to war to defend an ally, stop a war monger, and/or getting rid of a single race no one likes you'll be ok or possibly even better off diplomatically.

 

So something similar with how Crusader Kings 2, and Europa Universalis works in terms of Cassi Bellis and Alliance determining strength as well then?

Reply #6 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

Ya, I was thinking of Crusader Kings 2 when I wrote that.

Reply #7 from GalCiv3 Forums Top

I agree. Currently, alliances merely assure that they are bound by a treaty to never attack you and being one step towards allied victory. Most often, my allies get pissy on me for being attacked by their warmongering trading partner, completely ignoring our alliance. Just like in Galciv2, the ultimatum of either helping your allies or break the alliance should return as that made a whole lot of sense and made alliances more than glorified non-agression pacts. It also created a dilemma were you had to side with one or the other faction in a conflict or lose their approval. It made for intense situations of thinking through the cons and pros of either choice.

Oh, and the AI should actually put up their own alliances again. I have no idea why that never happens, not even when I make a peace-focused faction for them they sit idly and never put their skills to use.