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Re: Parsek
by ac is people on Tuesday 08/Apr/2008, @18:18
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A good strategy game should force the player to decide between a number of trade-offs. If some feature doesn't add trade-offs it doesn't add to depth, it just makes the game more complicated.
Bad example: Weapons in MoO2/3. There was almost always one optimal choice and 20 progressively worse alternatives. Give each type of weapon one niche at which it excels
Good example: Weapons/Shields vs. Stealth/Scanners in MoO3. Normally scanners and cloaks aren't that important but in MoO3 you could easily end up in situations where one side was unable to detect the other and couldn't even fire back.
How they screwed up anyway: The research system meant that normally one side was better in both weapons/shields and stealth/scanners. You had to be careful in fleet composition but a lot of potential was wasted.
In a 4X game the major elements should be
- colonization vs. planetary improvement (i.e. no colony-rush at the beginning of the game where you try to colonize as much as possible and the player who gets the most planets wins. Colonies should be money sinks for some time before becoming profitable and there should be plenty of planetary improvements at the lower tech-levels that can grow your economy just as much)
- tech vs. quantity - kinda related to the first item but in general you should be able to compensate for lack of size by better tech. This means specifically that tech development shouldn't be a linear function of the amount of money you spend. You should be able to make a few choices (perhaps cultural, like the domestic policy sliders in Europa Universalis) a big empire wouldn't wanna make (e.g. less oppressive regime) that compensate for lack of size and even without those there should be diminishing returns on tech spending.
- diplomacy - AI that honors treaties and allies that actually help you in a war
- espionage - You should be able to spend money on establishing a whole organisation in other empires instead of just sending a few assassins. The better your organisation the more you learn about the empire. At the highest level you can see as much information about the other empire as its player. GalCivII had a system like that and it makes espionage actually useful, not to mention much more realistic.
None of this requires much complexity or micromanagement. A Europa Universalis in Space would be nice. =)
I'm gonna have a look at TP rulesets and how much flexibility they provide. |
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