The Foundation Principle: Empires should die

[campfreddie]

I hope they kept HFOG true to the spirit of Alan's design. One of the main things the devs wanted to avoid was the 'critical mass' domination of empires. It should be at least as hard to run a large empire than a smaller one.

I hate games that have an inverse difficulty curve. It's the one thing I don't like about Medieval:TW. It starts hard, but the more provinces you conquer the easier it gets.

However, now that 'the speech' and IFPs are cut I have no idea what HFOG is going to be like. Fingers crossed it'll be great!

[RolandtheMad]

Originally posted by campfreddie
I hope they kept HFOG true to the spirit of Alan's design. ...

However, now that 'the speech' and IFPs are cut I have no idea what HFOG is going to be like. Fingers crossed it'll be great!

All I know for sure is that it has been gutted. The old HFOG was dependent on IFPs I believe.

[Jamski]

Well, if critical mass is still a factor in MoO3, its not the end of the world. If you simply can't handle another game that gets easier as it goes on, then wait another month for GalCiv. Brad has practically promised to eliminate "critical mass" with the AI recognising when the player (or another AI faction) is reaching this point, and trying to do something about it, either surrendering to the inevitable, striking first, or maybe even trying to form a coalition against the leading faction. I'm reckoning that between MoO3 and GalCiv, there will be at least one good game.

-Jam

[Epistax]

I can agree that the deterioration makes sense in other games, but perhaps not Moo3. In Moo3, almost always an 'empire' is a race, not just a political entity. These races are often single minded, whether bent on destruction, trade, or research.
What it comes down to is the race with the most individual independences would be the most likely to become corrupt and split apart, and assuming no human progress, that's certainly us. They could make a few things unique to the humans, to make the game more interesting for them. Senate, anyone?
But anyway, I do not feel the current troubles of corruption and self-destruction rampant in the history of this world necessarily exist with other races, and certainly not necessarily with the higher technology. The power grab ambition is weak. Everything is already established.

</random>

[Jamski]

Actually, in MoO3, an empire is almost always NOT just a race, but may contain many (20+ ???) races in greater or larger proportions. Imagine the problems that us humans have, but multiplied by a factor of x for all the as yet unimaginable problems that an alien race would have, and then add in factor y for the conflicts between the different races in your empire. A big, mixed-race empire should be full of potential internal confict and divisions, perfect for collapse at any moment...

-Jam

[Epistax]

Originally posted by War of Art
Actually, in MoO3, an empire is almost always NOT just a race, but may contain many (20+ ???) races in greater or larger proportions. Imagine the problems that us humans have, but multiplied by a factor of x for all the as yet unimaginable problems that an alien race would have, and then add in factor y for the conflicts between the different races in your empire. A big, mixed-race empire should be full of potential internal confict and divisions, perfect for collapse at any moment...

Ilp. have to disagree. Empirse are very often a single race unless you decide to conquer population. Remember that the current popular notion that 'black', 'white', 'hispanic', 'asian', etc are races, is completely false, just incase you were going down that ally. Every human in the world is more related than any two breeds of cats or dogs.

Now I agree if you take over a huge chunk of another empire, then make peace, they'll be trying to convert back for a rather long time, and only military/police, or massive 'reeducation' would help. But I would argue this conversion is race independent: if you are reconquering a once long ago held planet, they will probably not come willingly even if they are your race.

[Jamski]

Read the AARs. In some of these the beta testers have 6 or more races in their empires, from conquest and from colonisation.

-Jam

[Jack Frost]

gah, hardcoded empire decay... can anyone imagine a less fun feature for an empire game?

As much as I agree with hitting the critical mass being sucky, that kind of solution sounds worse then the problem.

[Jack Frost]

i mean christ, just look at corruption in civ3...

[Straybow]

That's because you can't do anything about corruption in Civ3. Or c-flipping.

Suppose rebellions could arise in colonies. Not just Civ2 style revolts where you lose production and research contributions for a turn, and after turning a worker into an elvis or adding another martial law unit it ends. A real revolt, subborning troops and declaring independence. It doesn't automatically flip to another empire, but another empire might be willing to send it support, just to occupy the forces of their opponent (like France helping American Rev). You can reconquer by force, or diplomacy, or decide it's too expensive to keep.

[Jamski]

Exactly - you can't do anything about corruption in Civ3. If building a courthouse, or researching "Devolution" of something would actually work, then corruption would be an interesting game mechanic, another problem to solve in-play. As it is there's nothing wrong with corruption per se, just the tools the player has to combat it.

-Jam

[Sikander]

Originally posted by vee4473
It would seem to me that to make jscott's version of a game would be out of sync with the moo series.

Having an empire decay from within because of thousands of years of political and social deterioration would make the game more of a politcal/social simulator.

Moo and civ type games are more about shorter term conquest (military or otherwise).

(emphasis above is mine - sik)

This is ridiculous on its face. Civ goes from the first agricultural states all the way to human colonization of other star systems. Its scope is larger than all of human history to this point. It is not about short term conquest (though for some bizarre reason a lot of people like to play it that way), which is why even though it is one of the worst wargames ever coded for the pc people still love it. MOO is the same scale game, except it begins just at the dawn of space travel and continues until the galaxy is dominated by one power. It is a better wargame (I'm talking MOO2 here, I haven't seen MOO3 yet!), but it still spends most of its effort being an economic, diplomatic and technology driven endeavor.

I'm all for an empire simulator that spends some effort making the player deal with the problems of empire. As has been stated at length above, most of these problems do not come in the form of incompetently led troops from outside the empire, but from power struggles within the empire. Read some history and you will find that troops are deployed far more often against internal opposition than external. And that is just the troops, an enormous amount of energy is spent deciding internal policies as well. Interstate warfare and diplomacy pale in comparison, though when they flare up they can be decisive factors also.

[SoulFly]

I want to say that strategis games are very very creative. The can develop our mentality. CIV3 is a great game but I can't be satisfied with diplomatic options. It's a worst thing in all type of this sort of games. I want to say that diplomation is the best way to evolve in CIV3 world. It's key to success. I'm hope that Master of Orion 3 will give me this kind of satisfaction. Sorry for mistake but i'm from Poland. I want to greet you too!!!So I'm greeting you!!!

[jscott991]

Sikander makes the point I was trying to make very eloquently. The MOO series spans hundreds of years minimum. There should be some mechanism for adding in inefficiency and decay. That this would lead to unrest and then rebellions is axiomatic. I think most people who aren't looking for a mind-numbing RTS-like conquest sim would be very satisfied with some more internal policy management.

A simple way to build this in would just be adding monarchs who live and die and whose attributes effect the economic and social formulas in some way. I would like to see something more, but this would not be hard to put into place.

[Cymrean]

Sorry for mistake but i'm from Poland.

Beeing form Poland does not make you automatically a bad english speaker...