/civ4xg/ - Strategy/4X General

Just wanted to compliment that guys emblem for 10/10 aesthetics. I really, really liked it.

> play Hivemind
> win
> special post-victory screen with "You turn your attention outwards, there are more stars to become You"
> You are the HAK now

>Sounds boring like just getting a free unit, mechanically.
Not the guy that made that post, but when I read "turn them double spies", I was thinking sending them back with your stolen tech (or so the enemy thinks) and instead they give them false leads on my tech/sabotage their current tech for them so they have to research it again.

It would be better if you could use entirely organic ships, maybe a special tech branch and skin focused on that only available to hiveminds.

Should have been part of biologic ascension, or talking to/taming space amoebas.

related

youtube.com/watch?v=POYgUfr9XeI

Some ideas:

>Hiveminds get access to special ship sections that have more hangar slots, simulating their ability to greater coordinate large wings of smaller ships and less accommodations for their drones
>tech that increases fire rate, simulating a smoother operating crew
>bioengineering drones to be vicious warriors for ground combat
>more militia in ground combat, everyone is capable of fighting and dying for the hive
>A policy setting for how autonomous you want your leaders to be, possibly risking a breakaway section that must be reintegrated by force or a special project, or alternatively, a tradeoff of efficiency in certain areas like energy/mineral production for research and vice versa

Hive mind doesn't really specify bioengineering.
That's a general thing they can persue as anyone else can.

Should be able to have hivemind robots too.

Is to say that the first statement is fact and the second statement is opinion.

They can, but I'd like to see an all organic Hivemind that is capable of pushing the bioengineering further than non-Hiveminds.

I just checked and they can't do the spiritualist or mechanical ascensions.

I wasn't referring to the robots thing, that's just retarded, I meant "they (other civs) can (do bio engineering) but..."

Should have made it more clear.

Oh okay, I got you.
They're fluffed out to be a psionic hivemind, but they can't do the spiritualist memery. Which I guess can best be written off as like the Tyranids, being psychic and of the warp, but not interacting with anything else as an individual.

For additional bio-engineering I guess it'd be fine to give them more. That's one of the weaker parts of the game. Need to go full combine rather than the weak system we have at the moment.
The ascension is just lackluster as well because it just strengthens the existing mechanic rather than fixing it.

That's my point, I'd like to see the ability to create certain drone castes that excel in mining, energy production, fighting, adapting to new enviroments, etc that you unlock and then improve through research and the traits thing.

Gentlemen, how do we make armor relevant? I just don't see any point in wasting a utility slot when I can get another shield.

by balancing the numbers obviously

In what way? I'd like to see them be a flat reduction in damage as opposed to percentage based. That way you wind up with battleships that need Large weapons to even pierce it's armor, and slapping a bit of armor on a corvette actually helps it survive for longer as opposed to reducing damage by like 6%. 6% of only 10 damage ain't shit, especially when HP is only 300. Shields outright eclipse it in terms of actual damage soak and that's before you even get into the fact almost every weapon reduces armor anyway.

>spiritualist ethic
>no religion mechanics

Doesn't matter in which way. Only difference would be in how many numbers they change.

shields take more power is probably the most simple idea
Or you could move around every number and have EVElike setups with no generator spots(even for weapons) and full armor
Which is okay in theory but would obviously fall apart in practice considering how easy it is to ignore armor. Which would then require adjusting the things that ignore armor.
And so on.

The how is basic, the maths are the hard part.

But the spiritualist ethic IS a religion mechanic.
And there's literally "theocratic oligarchies" and everything (for the next 2 days).
What more do you want!?

Will we get separatists fighting for different interpretations of some old scripture?

>tfw you will never be able to convert the heathens from other systems to mormonism

Is anyone playing the ES2 early access? Thoughts? I enjoyed ES1 a lot, debating buying in early or waiting for the full release.

>I enjoyed ES1
Serious question.
How?

What are you comparing it to? I didn't play thousands of hours, I doubt its mechanics would hold up that well, but I played a few games and enjoyed it. I haven't tried Stellaris, is it significantly better? What other modern space 4X is the frame of reference?

I'd say make armor a flat reduction in damage, slightly increase power consumption of shields, maybe an extra 2.5 across the board and a slight buff to shield regeneration. Shields drop like nothing once a ship gets focused on, a slight regen buff means they get a bit more survivability, combined with flat armor means you have to think more about weapon and fleet composition. A battleship with 30 armor is effectively immune to small weapons. You would need specialized ships to deal with it, counter ships, counter-counterships, etc, etc. I think it would do a pretty good job at forcing you to build more than a model or two of each ship size and calling it good.

I could easily see someone who only put a dozen hours or so in to it finding it really comfy.

I've got almost 150 hours in ES1, played most of those with a friend. I think the tech tree and building system is done pretty well. Not to mention the music is worth playing over other games!

Unironically yes, it's better, even with its flaws. And define modern. MoO is fucking amazing. Distant Worlds isn't pretty, the UI is a bit opaque but it's basically what Stellaris was shooting for with more casualized mechanics. There's a shit ton of space 4x games that are better than Endless Space. Not that Endless Space is terrible, it's just an average game in a field of giants.

Is the new Master of orion worth looking into?

An actual religion mechanic with bonuses as it spreads through spiritualist empires.
Religions having a chance to split into sub-factions which causes friction inside an empire.
Materialists spreading their own "atheism" religion/education to prevent spiritualism religions from entering their empire and ruining their materialism bonuses.

Would add a cultural element to the game.

>music

youtube.com/watch?v=yupbwsSfGsE
youtube.com/watch?v=exRFQXX3oeg

high hopes for ES2 music

I don't really have a frame of reference and I hesitate to call Stellaris better than anything.

It failed to catch me at all, not enough atmosphere, not enough of anything in general.
Hands off battles fell flat. Hardly any opportunity to roleplay.
Didn't much care for the races, though the setting was fine.

I fucking loved Endless Legend, it's great in every way ES1 isn't.
I played one game, I think about average map size and enemy civs. I got around 1/4 through before I entered automatic mode and disregarded everything in order to win as quickly as possible, because I was offered nothing else in that first period, and it sure as hell didn't appear later on.

For space 4X sort of game I'd rather play over ES1 I'd list Distant Worlds(also deeply flawed in the economy{the player's ability to interact with it and the simplicity of raw cash, the resource simulation was spectacular}), Stellaris(flat and soulless but still kinda fun and kinda immersive at the faceless leader figure level of Grand Strategy, along with a great aesthetic),
Sins of a Solar Empire(basically zero ability to roleplay and slow to the point of obnoxiousness, but still more fun to actually try and win, also it's an RTS I guess)

Ah yeah, I've played more DW than ES1, but it really sucks that it's so clunky and singleplayer only. Stellaris is my favourite so far though, I can't wait to see what it's like after a whole bunch of major DLCs in the years to come.

>define modern. MoO is fucking amazing

I wouldn't call 24 years old modern for a video game. Obviously everything is relative but for this industry I'd say 5-10 years is modern. Unless you're talking about the new one, which I haven't tried but haven't heard great things about.

The visuals of Distant Worlds really put me off but I'll give it a shot. I just feel that calling it a "field of giants" is inaccurate, unless you're going back to the 90s. 4X is not that big of a genre and the only dominant force is Civ, which is obviously not a space game and is significantly different from ES/Stellaris/etc

Oh, you want some Civ style religion. Nah, you already have that with the ethics system and having something stupid like space missionaries spreading a religion that gives bonus unity or minerals is too stupid and illfitting for the style of game Stellaris is.

>Didn't much care for the races

I felt the same way, ES2 seems to be stepping it up a bit in this regard. Baffled as to why they brought the Sophons back though, I thought they were one of the most generic and forgettable designs of ES1.

>I fucking loved Endless Legend, it's great in every way ES1 isn't.

Could you elaborate? They seem pretty difficult to compare, but I've played very little of EL. The races of EL did seem to have very distinct playstyles though which I appreciated and it seems ES2 is trying to carry that forward.

You have to go back to the 90s for space 4x games. There just haven't been many made in the past 10 years, I could probably list the major ones on one hand and if you want to count Sins. But if you go bacj to the 90s, you're stacked up against some pretty damn great games.

There is literally no reason a civ style religion system could not work for stellaris. Ethics are also nothing like religion.

It has all the bugs, issues, and general weirdness that comes with an early access game, but it plays well. It very much shows how much Amplitude learned since ES1.

I'm not saying it couldn't physically work. I'm just saying it would be stupid and not fit with the rest of the game.

It would add more depth. As it is now stellaris is just about war.

>implying religion is not just about war.

"My God has a bigger dick than your God!" *blam*

It wouldn't add anything. It didn't even add anything in Civ other than another batch of units to manage and a new diplo modifier that was irrelevant due to the retarded AI. At best, it added your choice of bonuses which are mechanically fulfilled by the ethics system. The difference being, with the ethics system you're not going to have your preferred bonus yanked from you by an AI that cranks out a million fucking missionaries to spread his shitty religion and take away your pagodas and Jesuit education

t. materialist

t. Main reason why we can't have nice things.

I have to agree with this. Despite the fair effort behind the religion mechanics in (for example) Civ 5 & 6 it's just adds nothing in the end. It's extremely unnecessary and shallow.

It adds a way to achieve victory through means other than MOAR WAR. I'm sure some faggots just want to kill others but it is also a very shallow way of playing.

>conversation got me interested in possible future victory conditions
>find this
>AI doesn't even try to win

without the missionaries it could be kind of interesting

Technically, the AI never tries to win. It tries to oppose you, but doesn't aim for winning.
This is why I don't play with humans, they're much, much worse than the AIs.

I'm honestly okay with that. Winning has never really been the point most of the time in these games anyway.

While I agree there should be more ways to achieve a victory in Stellaris aside from conquer everyone, religion definitely isn't the way to go. Hiveminds alone would throw that out the window. What about fanatic materialists? Just fuck you, you believe in an alien god now because I sent a missionary to your planet? Nah. If you want to broaden it to be more representative of a culture kind of thing, maybe. But even then, mechanically that's being handled by the ethics system and internal factions in the new update and I don't think Civ's way of doing it should be the blueprint for refining it in the future. While it would be nice to slowly influence smaller/neighboring empires to be more in line with your ethics, maybe have special culture type stations that, I don't know, beam your TV into neighbor empires, I can also see why it's not something they've gone into yet. It just doesn't fit with the type of sci fi setting they've built or themes they're exploring. It's very Star Trek, Heinlein, Niven inspired stuff, as opposed to exploring softer social oriented topics. Simply put, this is a game about starships, future tech and robots, not Coca Cola and jeans.

Most don't have the mechanics to support a sandbox style of play for long and need a victory condition. Stellaris is one of those.

not very much.
its better than stellaris tho

civ style religion isnt very good. i find it very gamey
but stellaris needs a cultural push/pull mechanic. ethics dont do it because its basically a homogenous/heterogenous axis instead of locus based

>While I agree there should be more ways to achieve a victory in Stellaris aside from conquer everyone
There should be LESS ways to achieve victory than conquer everyone.
If I wasn't chasing that shitty victory screen like some sort of retarded crack baby, and the game was just sort of open-ended a'la CK2/EUIV, I think we'd all be a lot happier, and just have a comfy time making our own fun rather than blobbing obsessively.

As notes though Stellaris currently isn't deep enough to support sandboxing. We all complain about watscore shittery, but that's mostly because there is literally nothing to do but amass warscore.

>victory
>in a paradox game
theres no point talking about win conditions. What you want from stellaris is roleplay mechanics, because it is already completely void of strategy.
Other than map painting, which is redundant in a completely random symmetrical generated galaxy, theres none of the aspects of gs games that make stellaris fun.
A culture mechanic is great because it allows you to do rp shit like convert everyone without conquering them

AI not winning is perfectly fine.
The AI not wanting to lose is where emphasis should be

The saddest part is that victory conditions can be easily implemented through your National Modifiers. Like:
Xenophobic? Remove all aliens.
Materialistic? Have more income than everyone else put together.
Spiritualistic? Be more happy than everyone else.
Shit like that.

Sounds cool but the problem is that many of these aren't permanent, So really, what's the point.
Maybe win conditions should end the game for you, but the rest goes on. like ascending out of the universe or building a shielded world. Might be interesting for multiplayer.

Religious could add to Unity and Influence, maybe?

What the game really needs is something to fill the role in the mid-late game that exploration fills in the early game. Once you are in the mid game you are either at war or preparing for war. Culture, religion, some amalgamation, both or something completely different would be nice not just for rp but just as something else to do.

Listen man, it is what it is. I'd like it to grow into something more, and I'm sure it will, but I'm fine with war being the main goal. When I play Hearts of Iron 4, I'm not pissed that I can't peacfully tech up and go to the moon as Venezuela while the world burns around me, or that as Italy I can't just make everyone bow down to my mighty Neo-Roman culture or convert people to catholicism. Same for cities:skylines or anno 2070, I don't get pissed that there is no military side to the game. It's just not the focus. Can it expand and incorporate it? Sure. But just like CK2 has a shitty combat system, I'm not expecting much out of any non-war oriented mechanics for Stellaris.

What I absolutely don't want to see is the implementation of copied mechanics that were shitty in the first game they were tried like the religion thing. Mechanically, ethics give you the same bonus as religion in Civ minus the bullshit. It lets you customize your empire a bit further and helps shape your playstyle or compliment it. I have fun playing Stellaris and trying to spread my people throughout my federation and coopting leadership positions in other empires. I also have fun playing full on fanatic purifiers waging war on the whole galaxy and seeing how long I can last. I also have fun quietly teching up in my home cluster and accidentally kicking off an AI rebellion or venturing forth only when a major threat pops up. I also like engineering massive Galaxy spanning wars where everyone fights everyone.

But I understand wanting more. Hell, I want it too. There's a shit ton of potential in Stellaris, but I'm guessing like EU4 it will only come out over the course of several years and through DLC.

Leftover trait points can be used later when I get access to genetic modification, right?

Yes. But you probably shouldn't, you're hamstringing yourself for awhile.

Stellaris was marketed as grand strategy meets 4x. That is not what it is.

Sad, right?
Especially when the only difference between gs and 4x is a single X.

Even worse is the fact it is a barebones 4x.

It is that. You explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. You also deal with macro-level empire management in typical Paradox fashion. It is literally 4x and GS mashed together. Is it rough and lacking? Yup. But if you don't try to make it some sort of autistic simulator of life 300 years from now and just have fun blowing up space ships and committing genocide, you'll have fun with stellaris.

> tfw waiting for Utopia to hit

Meanwhile I tried playing civ VI over the last week, but the AI is unbearable. I'm just not having any fun. Is it bad that I still enjoy civ V a lot more than VI?

10/10 would murder that guy and rape the bitch while whipping her ass until she begs for death.
Or the opposite, I bet that guy is a real cute when you remove the gas mask.

There is nothing grand strategy about it. It's a run of the mill 4x. There is no in depth diplomacy. There is no espionage.

>t. Fat manlet Jew

You'll either be executed or she'll use you to test out her new stapons while keeping your tiny dick caged up so you can't even pleasure yourself as she throat fucks you.

It's a good 4x game, with a good setting, but it's not grand strategy. Do you honestly compare to let's say Vic 2?

Have you heard about Distant Worlds, our Lord and Saviour?

My first setup will either be a military republic with citizen service and aristocratic elite or parliamentary system.
Or an enlightened kingdom with philosopher king and distinguished admiralty.

One being space romans and the other space prussia. I will try to build somewhat wide but be as efficient as possible.

I'm neither fat or a manlet.

>Distant Worlds
Don't play that shitty, awful game.

Aside from CK2, NONE of Paradox's games have that either. So why is Stellaris different? Hell, DW is total shit when it comes to diplo.

>good 4x game
Tastes and opinions on this are vary.

Man, I'm not sure.

Psionics are going to be the strongest endgame, right? Because I'd focus on Spiritualist in that case for the benefit to Unrest.

But there's a civic there that also reduces unrest...

I might just focus on making my slaves more productive.

EU4 has it. You need to take espionage ideas though. The only ones that don't have it are the ones with a very narrow focus like HoI.

stellaris has civ style board game mechanics

>Don't play that shitty, awful game.
>DW is total shit

You have strayed from the path, children! You have been seduced by vile swedish perverts! How dare insult The Lord?

Distant Worlds is trash. You can't even play as a pirate!

You must play Distant Worlds : Universe instead! That game is so good it's like having an angel licking your butthole while massaging your testicles at the same time with her silky, smooth, soft fingers!

>no gravity wells
>shitty ship designer
>plays itself

EU4 is ok when it comes to indepth diplomacy, but far from good. Honestly, games in general don't pull it off.

Only in diplomacy does it fail, it nails everything else though.

>no restrictions on where you can warp
>simplistic ship designer that spares you many headaches
>he doesn't know the automatons can be turned off
Let me guess, you played it for five minutes before deciding it was shit?
Goi, at least reach the resort stations and the pirates before you start crying like a little bitch.

>Only in diplomacy does it fail, it nails everything else though.
Yeah, diplomacy is kinda meh, tho for me videly availible espionage options compensate for it.

It does rise an interesting quiestion tho.

How do you do in depth diplomacy between civilisation that only have use of violence to advance their goals in common?

A hive mind, a popular democracy and ascended technocracy walk into a bar, the fuck do they talk about?

>overly complex ship designer that causes you many headaches for little benefit
>can warp directly to enemy homeworld destroying all sense of strategy or tactics
>muh pirades :-DDD

>moving the goalposts
I accept your surrender.

take a page from economic competitive games like offworld, railroad tycoon, ttd and that sort of thing

have a system where you can gain political capital on other factions and use that to force them to do things