Defining good tactics

from Stardock Forums
Hello players, Stardock crew!

I want to express my insight into strategy games that I suspect hasn't been noticed yet.Atleast it isn't discussed of or realized in any contemporary strategy games. I try to be short in writing it. This is very important as it suggests how map colonization and army building could be done to make gameplay more simple, more challenging, and more effective. This is not about habit of pleasure or personal preferrings.

In GalCiv II there should be such a realistic universe that habitable planets could only be found in less than 10 % of all stars. The "rare" setting in GalCiv from 2003 should be (at the most) the most abundant one and the most scarce one should be really scarce, like 10 habitable planets in every 1000 stars. Also there should be a mass of empty stars like in the real Milky Way. In a way it should not be so that you "send ships to colonize the nearest habitable planet" but that you "send ships to travel in space in hope of finding habitable planets". The abundance setting of the beginning should determine the "hope", not the "availability".

The main emphasis on unit building should be on tech and designing, not on number. This should be accomplished in some way so that you can't create a bottomless list of units to handle in the midst of the gameplay. For example make the (rare) habitable planets need expensive infrastructure, make a blunt taxing system of any army that exceeds over 5 units, make only industrial capitals capable of ship building etc.

In short, important single units and vast space.

That was the suggestion. I did a rules modification to to Civilization III Double Your Pleasure mod according to these principles. I changed the goverment settings so that each gov. gives you different free unit support, free unit support per city size (3 sizes in Civ) and heavy tax for each unit that exceeds the limit of these parameters. Combined to the Civ's feature of advancing units, it affects so that your one cavalry unit is your pride and asset and that you must move and deploy it carefully, and that your army size no longer matter but your use of your units, thus contributing to tactics and reducing the main problem.

Shortly about the universe resources, usually the more mines/resources, the bigger army. Also GalCiv II could win an illusion of reality and game appeal by creating a universe that is interesting, dangerous, thrilling, hard to explore, large enough so that it is hard to tell what happens next or what you will find, and that is full of secrets, lost tech, space incidents etc.

The main problem that my suggestion seeks to correct is the fact that in Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires, Command and Conquer, GalCiv I, Civilization and other strategy colonization games there is only one path to take: Build factories, upgrade units, build mass of the one best unit and then clash your mass with the enemy's correspondent one-type best unit mass. Some games try to give emphasis on specialized units that must be used well together in order to win. This is intering tactical challenge but it sort of postpones the real problem. You still have to find the ultimate formula for winning.

If you could use your one or few units so that their special capability (aka their deserved place in tax-free units aka technological device) could be used against the enemy's other specialties (and not that the amount force expectadly determines the duration of the battle - defeat is inevitable), then there maybe would not be "the problem of single way to victory".

So by making a game that has universe of a few turn of travel, capability of countless of one-skill units, and stars one-by-one next to each other, you could make a typical and average game and lose all this excitement and appeal that I described.

Thank you for reading this over there Stardock Corporation!
ideas
8,403 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Interesting ideas. As far as planets go, that topic is a double edge sword. What you suggest may not work for everyone. There are some people who really like planet hopping. We allow that. There are some like you that want a more realistic game. We allow that too. That's what habitable planets variable is all about. You get to choose how you play.

We are adding more game mechanics to limit the size of your navy. We didn't want all our games to end like regular 4x games. You shouldn't have a "cleanup fleet" in the end that just travels from planet to planet conquering all in it's path. You'll have limits on your fleet size and composition. This should make the game more tactical.

Thanks for the ideas. Please keep them coming.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
I'd like reflect on what you said. There might be a way to allow planet hopping even with hard-to-travel distances. That is the function on strategy gaming tactics. You should consider making the hopping a goal, an achievement of tactical playing, such as certain complex research or rare device found by scouts. I'd say that the more there is player responsibility through choices between different paths and rewards in form of fun scifi capabilities, the more motivating, rewarding and unique is the scifi strategy game. Critics ofter praise the depth of tactical features in games. They are correct in my view. This don't necesserily mean that the gameplay comes less comprehensible or that some people can't have "dynamic" playing with abundant targets. It actually is one the determining features in your brilliant GalCiv how dynamic but intelligent things are. By choosing simple galaxy models you also choose a simple game and by choosing challenging alternative you make a true tactical game. I do not believe that those people who enjoy "planet hopping" want it just simply like moving from a planet to the next.

Thank you for listening me. I'm waiting enthusiastically for your creation for the Galactic Civilizations series, which is as it is the best contemporary series of it's genre.
Galactic Civilizations III
Reply #3 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
personaly i usauly just built a huge fleet and a terror star, whipe out a few planets and make sure your military si stronger than everyone else and bam you start a war and you promis to end it when they forfit a few systems, rinse repeat
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
I do that too, but if the problem of too massive and too simple to build fleet would be solved, the game would be more challenging and fun from the start to the finish.

Dear Stardock crew. I have one simple request yet to make. Having said about the universe that it should be big and contain resources of which harnessing should require lots of tactical play, make the galaxy in which the game happens like actual galaxies. There are a few known types of galaxies, like our galaxy, the Milky Way is a double-spiral galaxy. Scatter all the in-game civs to random places on the double-spiral galaxy, and add warm holes. Make the star travel according the stars of a double-spiral galaxy. Make tons of empty star to build up the galaxy form, but only 10 in every 1000 stars (average setting) with habitable planets. If the galaxy models would be this realistic, the colonization would a very much more fun challenge.
Reply #5 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
In GC1 I seldom do that (build huge fleets and bash the other side's heads in). If I want to play that kind of game I go to CIV2 or MOO2. In GalCiv I mostly go for an influence win, encouraging star systems to defect to me. In the interest of keeping other races ships off my back, I build a few strong ships and keep them placed where I think they may come after me.

make the galaxy in which the game happens like actual galaxies.


Can you imagine a game with as many stars as our Milky Way has? What would having to manage billions of star systems do to the code of a computer game? I don't see any way for any computer game to be that realistic. They have to stick to being "representational".
Reply #6 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Give peoplle the choice - as they already do. You are forgetting fun and playability. While it might be more realistic for fewer life supporting stars, I'm not certain that would be fun. The way Stardock currently has it is best - you get what you want, I get what I want. Why should you limit me and how I wish to play? I'm not asking for your option for fewer stars to be taken away, so don't ask mine to be taken away.
Reply #7 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
The main problem I have with this is that there is a big potential problem with balance or a very tough time on the designer's part. This is because some races, due to random galaxy creation, will just not have any habitable planets that they encounter for a long time whereas others will run into a lot more. The other problem is that a player who just happens to guess the right systems to explore will have a big advantage over those who get unlucky with their choices. Not that the current system doesn't have this sort of effect but decreasing habitable planets so drastically will make this problem a lot worse. Lastly, having such a stringent limit on the number of ships doesn't make a lot of sense to me. The United States maintains a very large fleet of various types of ships and its hardly a drain on the economy (check the CIA world factbook, the US only spends something like 3.5% of its GDP on military and that includes everything not just the navy). I think a race that can travel through space would be capable of building very massive fleets indeed. However I do agree that the military aspect needs to be more tactical which is why I personally believe so strongly in Tactical Combat (which isn't even that difficult to do, just look at some simple table-top space ship combat wargames. A Sky Full of Ships is a good example). But hey, thats just me.
Reply #8 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Teemirun, you're stating that you want a adozen Yellow star's out of every 1000. That means the Homeworlds are really, only going to be suitable. I could'nt cope with having less than 10 Spacecraft than have to pay immense taxes, etc.
Galactic Civilization 2 should'nt aim towards having to colonize the best bad planets, terraform em'up till mid-game.
In average it needs an option to lean towards less but more richer worlds like Earth towards more abundant Gaia's and Earths but than means lack of ground to buildup planets and minerals.
Reply #9 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
I think the answer is that some people want more severe poles between realism and fun factor. The game already includes options to adjust the number of useable planets on the map, which what we're talking about here. The solution is simply to make the most abundant and rare options to be even more rare and abundant. Maybe include a couple an Ultra Rare and Ultra Abundant option to create those extreme galaxies. The game balancing would probably be pretty poor as colonies would be scrunched up really tightly or spread so far apart that travel will take ages, but if thats the game some want to play, might as well let them.
Reply #10 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
Ugleb, excuse me but aren't the Hosptiable planets are going to have not alot of room for infrastructure and mining including, planets like Mars whereas its an great planet for mining, building, difficult to live on? Either way players are going to have difficulty so their just making it hard in two different ways.
Reply #11 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
then there maybe would not be "the problem of single way to victory"

The technical term for this is Pure Strategy, where one strategy is the winner. The alternative to a pure strategy is what is called a Mixed Strategy where several tactics might win, but are not guaranteed to do so against all comers, so that the best choice is a probability distribution over a set of possible strategies.

For example, you launch two transport fleets, one fully loaded with expensive troops and one a cheap empty decoy fleet. If I always attack the leading fleet, then you know to put all your troops in the trailing fleet. This is a situation where the perfect strategy for me is a Mixed strategy; I should choose to attack the lead fleet 50% of the time.

This applies to fleet design as well: Building a fleet of all one type of ship might make it weak against a different type of foe. For instance, if they are all Huge gun ships, then they might waste a lot of damage when fighting tiny ships. Or if they are all tiny ships, they might miss the opportunity to deal more damage by being somewhat larger.
Reply #12 from Stardock Forums Top
Hi everybody,

I just thought of a simplier resolve to the mass army problem (exponential unit increase via tech factors). Make a control point system improved from Master of Orion II.

Three points:

First, the larger the single ship, the more control points it takes. You get control points from the number of planets, which is fine. Just make the ships eat a huge load of control points. tiny: few; small: double; medium; 4 times: large; 8 times; huge 16 times

Second: Make an equation that increases the control point cost of ships not just by size but also by number. Make fleet sizes that require increasing amount of control points. Few: normal; squadron; double; group: 4 times; flotilla: 8 times; fleet: 16 times

Make the larger ships worth while by making them hard to destroy (realism). Multiply their structure points with increasing factors according to size. The Doom Star should have very many structure points. Still the small ships should have enough to last minimum 3 turns in combat with largest ships.

This way you could build small ships more than big ships but not too many small ships. You could build very small amount of large ships (which via tech should be very hard to destroy) and more smaller ships. The largest ships would take very many control points compared to smallest ships and with a large group of largest ships you would need so many control points that you would need very large amount of planets to support them.

These 3 ideas are more simple than my last suggestion and together they would fix the problem of uncontrollable fleet expansion of AI and the strategy play.