MOO3 Gameplay Tuning Phase

[mactbone]

Look, the deal with IFPs was that any human given time can run an empire perfectly.

Guess what, in real life you don't have an infinite amount of time, so IFPs were almost like a time allotment for each task you wanted to perform.

Let's see, I could spend an hour (1 IFP) talking to Union Workers to increase production, or 3 hours (3 IFP) negotiating a truce between two warring nations.

See. Now, you have an infinfite amount of time, which is incredibly unrealistic and brings the game down a whole level.

[Ethelred]

In real life the people that you delgate things to can be fired for incompetence. Heck the Reagan administration had two cabinet secretaries swap jobs.

Did the IFP system allow me to fire the AI and replace it with one more to my liking?

Think of it as them now being pre-fired.

[Lemmy]

Originally posted by Ethelred
In real life the people that you delgate things to can be fired for incompetence. Heck the Reagan administration had two cabinet secretaries swap jobs.

Did the IFP system allow me to fire the AI and replace it with one more to my liking?

Think of it as them now being pre-fired.

wasn't something like leaders that could be replaced by you?
and now they added Council members that you can fire.

[madmario]

I liked the IFP idea A LOT for a number of reasons.

1) When the AI beat me up, I would know it wasn't because I didn't micomanage enough before (i.e. I can allow myself to enjoy the game and not have to clickfest to efficiency all the time).

2) I know that even if the governors are incompentent, they are equally incompetent for everyone and everyone has to deal with them.

3) If they worked, they would guarantee that pacing was solid in the game.

BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY:

4) They were an evolutionary concept, an insured the game would not just be a rehashing. It had potential to be different than SEIV or Moo2 or really, ANY EMPIRE GAME I know of. They had the potential to draw people into the hobby who wouldn't normally be able to enjoy it. The game model was a different one with IFP's. A game done in that model has yet to be made; and done well, it could be a real winner.

Now, they were probably dropped because they couldn't get them to work. Too bad.

-mario

[Harlequiin]

i really dont like that they have taken all that content out of moo3... i love games that give you a huge amount of options, even if its an option ill rarely use thats a good thing because if i want to use it its there... taking out the IFP and changing all the leaders into a council has totally changed what the game is... previously you were a guiding force behind an empire guiding its general direction... and now we are back at square one as a dictater whose rule is supreme and who spends a 3 hours micromanaging a single turn becuase thats what you have to do in order to have the edge over your oponants. condensing the leaders has taken a fairly large chunk out of possible espionage operations.. now what are we going to use as moles? if there were to many and they were overwhelming just have a system of tagging leaders who you especially favor or want removed so you can keep track of them... same with systems, tag key systems and whammo you can keep track of all the important stuff going on. blah.

[roalan]

IFP

What is IFP???

[Harlequiin]

erm... imperial focus points. a key part (USED to be a key part) of what set this game apart from others as being unique and innovotive (although it has been done before by some other game ive fergotten the name of, some ps1 game that has to do with ghengis kharn.

[roalan]

IFP

Interesting,but what does imperial focus points mean or do for you??

[Lemmy]

each turn you had a limited amount of IFP's to spend, every action costed a certain amount of points, for example leading a space battle, or ordering your ships around, it was part of the "you can do anything, but you can't do everything" phrase, to encourage macromanaging.

[TCO]

Wow! IFP sounds great! what happened to it?

It's a way to inject real time constratinsts without making things a clickfest.

[roalan]

IFP

Understood-to tell the truth I do not think i would like IFP. Moo2 did not have IFP and I like that game. Civ 2-3 doesn't have it.
Now 3R 4th ED and Advance 3R has a partical IFP and it is very good.

[Straybow]

roalan;
Uhhh, "3R 4th ed. and Advance 3R" is what????

GP;
They axed IFP because it made the early phases of the game too boring. Heck, the second time I played Civ2 I would've said the same thing. I suspect they looked at how much playtesting it would take to balance it and said, "We've got better things to spend our time on."

[Master Marcus]

Again, I'm still optimistic, but I suspect nobody will have the time nor the fast system required to run properly a non-IFP game on huge "maps" ( galaxies )...Remains to be seen, but let's hope that the coding system - especially the units pathfinding - is completely out of this world - and surely entirely different than Civ III's. Considering the number of colonies possible, I can't imagine yet playing a 250-star system galaxy ( huge )...aside macromanaging.

[roalan]

A3R- 3R 4th Ed

Advance Third Reich and Third Reich 4th Ed. are board war games,made by The Avalon Hill Game Co. There are many games of this type on the Market though most are not as complicated as The Rise and Decline of the Third Reich. An easier game could be The Russian Campaign.,Midway,etc, the list goes on and on . There is also several societies where one can compete with gamers all over the US or world. A.R.E.A. or AHIKS . Human players are much better then any computer and THERE ARE NO BUGS in board games.I am playing 3R 4th Ed. with three other players in the same game and this is much better then any computer game in existance. I am also playing two other 3R games and a Russian Campaign game .There is no stupid AI in a board War Game.

[Ethelred]

THERE ARE NO BUGS in board games.

Yeah Right. No one has ever had a discussion bordering on a fight over ambiguous rules. Ambiguous rules are bugs.