The Foundation Principle: Empires should die

[vee4473]

Originally posted by Sikander


(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.

I understand fully that civ and moo try to simulate society from early to late stages. for petes sake

moo does a better job because it doesn't make each turn skip 20 years.

civ does, so if you want to make such a deep simulator on the level that your speaking of, you need to make each turn be less than a year. maybe a month?

perhaps going down to the day?
where you control day to day senate meetings?

making each turn skip 20 years at the start proves that the developers of civ had no intention to get too deep into any type of real social simulation in the early game.

they wanted you to advance fairly quickly, then slowed the turn rate down as the game progressed.

and that is how the game is played by all. advance as quickly as possible or be crushed.

whether you agree with this or not, i think this is how the civ games are designed.

they are not designed for detailed social or political simulation.

i don't think moo is either, otherwise why the strong focus on tech advancement?

if you don't get the advanced tech and weapons in moo, then you can write yourself off.

i still think these games were always designed for advancing technologically in order to crush your foes militarily, with the other victory conditons (diplomatic, space etc.) being a secondary challenge for those tired of the race towards military dominance.

But, to make a great game based on diplomacy and social and political factors is different from the genre established by civ and moo i think.

that would be great, i certainly agree, but out of line with these games' already established methods of play.

is that ridiculous on its face?

[rhofman]

I don't think your being ridiculous but it does seem simplistic.

Some of the best games played in both civ and moo series have been when the tech levels are close and military conquest just isn't possible. Defensive technologies can force entrenchment and other methods of victory must be employed. I agree that military conquest is the simplist (if not the fastest) way to win these games. Being able to alter stratagies both increases the enjoyment and longevity of a game. It's six years later and I still play MOO2.

On the point of great games based on diplomacy, social and political factors your right that is not civ or moo, but such a game would have to remove contol of military and technology elements. If they aren't removed they will dominate play. Look at history, nobody remembers the social and political circumstances that led to most conflicts. They remember the waring factions, battles and to less of an extent the technology involved.

[vee4473]

oh, i also think that sikander's preference of simulating the internal power struggles and dissent within an empire changes the established theme of the moo or civ games from "your empire against theirs" to "your empire against your empire".

and i agree that this would make a very interesting game indeed!

However, i still maintain that this type of detailed simulation would dramatically change the type of game that moo and civ have established themselves as.
Because, although these games have always had internal unhappiness and minimal foreign diplomacy as a part of the game, they always had the overwhelming theme of "advance or die" at the core.

that is my only point.

perhaps a new game that is designed around day to day politcal and social factors is in order, but i'm not sure that changing moo or civ in such a dramatic way is a good thing.

perhaps it is, and if i played it , maybe i would love it.

who knows...

[vee4473]

Originally posted by rhofman
I don't think your being ridiculous but it does seem simplistic.

Some of the best games played in both civ and moo series have been when the tech levels are close and military conquest just isn't possible. Defensive technologies can force entrenchment and other methods of victory must be employed. I agree that military conquest is the simplist (if not the fastest) way to win these games. Being able to alter stratagies both increases the enjoyment and longevity of a game. It's six years later and I still play MOO2.

On the point of great games based on diplomacy, social and political factors your right that is not civ or moo, but such a game would have to remove contol of military and technology elements. If they aren't removed they will dominate play. Look at history, nobody remembers the social and political circumstances that led to most conflicts. They remember the waring factions, battles and to less of an extent the technology involved.

good points!

my main point is that moo and civ have military advancement at the heart, so no matter what kind of great diplomat you are, an empire with a fleet of doomstars will cancel your ass out if you don't have the tech to counter them.

but you said it yourself...the best games are when tech levels are close...

meaning you have NO CHOICE but to advance or die...

because if you play against a guy in MP who is of the conquer mentality, no matter what you say to him, he WILL kill you.

It seems that some want to convert moo into a gamew that keeps the militaristic tech advancements in place but also adds a detailed internal politcial simulation.

like i said , sounds interesting. but, wow, that would be a detailed game!

and be as stressful as leading the free world.

i might go gray overnight.

[rhofman]

I don't think you can get around the "advance or die" even in an internal empire struggle. Any game that has long term goals or ambitions (long term meaning the underlying circumstances can change) will require a "winning" party to advance in tactics and/or technology. If you know what your enemy is capable of you can counter (baring major differences in ability).

If my point above is true (willing to consider it's not) then that would be very restrictive on a strictly "short term" game.

An example to illustrate. Humanity would be the empire in MOO context. Let's add that the UN is the undisputed dominant political structure (never happen but that's another argument). A short term internal struggle would be for the leadership of the UN. The month or two run-up to the election would restrict the amount of change that will occur on earth. A long term internal struggle could take the form of secularism versus religious doctrine. I think this translates very well to today's very real struggles. Technology and military will play very important roles along side social and political movements.

Try to find a scenario that is short term and would be interesting to play more than a couple of times.

[vee4473]

not to mention that the ai is hard wired into attacking all the time unless you bow to their demands or unless you have a decent military.

also, the fact that moo2 let you tactically control space battles right down to which weapon to shoot and how much of an arc the weapon had as it's range, kinda shows that they wanted to present combat and war as a very very big part of the game.

i was reading in the galciv forum and i believe one of the developers for that game said that combat in galciv is more like in civ, one side wins, one loses. No tactical control or anything, because he said it was about controlling an empire, not individual battles.

Perhaps galciv will have a deeper social sim for those looking for that.

galciv could be the way to go, im leaning towards it instead of moo3 anyway.

[rhofman]

I think the alien empire aspect is not as in depth as in galciv. Admittedly I haven't read much on it but I think that win/lose is too basic an outcome. Reading the AAR's suggests that there is a fair amount of destruction to the victors task forces in MOO3. Reduced combat effectiveness after every (moderately sized) battle is an appealing advance over past 4x games. I'm only going for one and that is MOO3, no doubt. (I like the combat aspects.)

[dowish]

I do like the idea of empires rising an falling and have always wished it was included in games like civ. It would make it a lot more interesting to play. It would need to be a differant style of game though. My thought is that it would have to be more civilization based than civ, more general. For instance, you would be the leader of Western Civilazation. You would then set up nations and empires to advance western civilazation. Sort of like how the Greeks rose to power, but then fell and the romans replaced them only to be replaced by the holy roman empire that was replaced by the 5 great powers, then by the U.S./NATO, etc.

[jscott991]

Galciv looks interesting and I might end up buying this summer, when the price is down and MOO3 is all played out (which hopefully will take at least until then), but I don't think it looks like it will be anymore indepth than MOO3. I would venture to say that MOO3 will probably be the more detailed empire simulator, even if its focus has shifted from Emrich's model to the more dumbed down, appeal to RTS and casual Civ gamer model we're probably going to get.

[Harry Seldon]

I think GalCiv holds truer to Emrich's model than MOO3. The diplomatic and social aspects in GalCiv are deeper than MOO3, and while there's no IFP in GalCiv, MM has been mostly removed to focus on the grand strategy of the game. I'll be buying MOO3 when it comes out, but I'll also be getting GalCiv. Unless MOO totally kicks *ss, you'll probably find my copy at Software Replays.

[vee4473]

it sounds like moo3 will have quite a bit of depth in all areas.

i just read this on the news section of yahoo finance after checking ig's stock. i'm sure some of you have seen this already. the third paragraph is what i'm talking about.

maybe those of you clamoring for an in depth empire social/political simulation will get it after all.

i'm still hoping galciv is better.

here's the yahoo link

http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/030124/242237_1.html

And, as for this notion that people who like RTS games are somehow more stupid than those who play TBS games...gimme a break.

It's not a one or the other type of thing.

They are 2 distinct types of games, both having great qualities and enjoyment.

It is possible to enjoy a somewhat detailed TBS game and at the same time enjoy warcraft, starcraft, Earth 2150 etc...

and RTS games require just as much strategy and thought as TBS games, just in a different way.

anyway, i'm just getting sick of people equating those who like RTS or FPS games with dumbed down retards who just aren't on "my level of gaming intellect"

[rhofman]

I don't think we have enough info to judge which is more in depth in diplomatic or social respects. Does somebody know of anyone who's played both? (if anyone has access to galciv)

[Jack Frost]

"meaning you have NO CHOICE but to advance or die..."

I hate to say this, but that isn't a flaw in these games. It is actually how the world works. If you look at history, if a people stoped advancing they were either conquered, collapsed, or were doomed to irrelivence.

As much as I think that social dynamics and diplomacy is interesting, I don't see how these factors can be accuratly modelled without military conquest.

Again, like it or not. Technology and military power have always walked hand in hand, from the days of the cave man - without the ability to make tools we would have never made it to the top of the food chain, and would never have been able to form the empires we're speaking of.

Not to mention, it'd be almost impossible to properly model the nuance of diplomacy and the inheriant irrationality and intrigues that happened in real life with AI thats on the level of anything we have currently seen.

Further, it wouldn't be fun. You need to be interacting with other humans for diplomacy to be really colorful. For anyone who ever played any kind of RTS FFA with diplomacy, just putting a human at the controls, and allowing chat can allow for some very interesting, very challenging diplomatic situations.

You can't have a political model without warfare. You can't have warfare over a long scope without technology. And with warfare, and technology in a large scope, you will end up with a game like Civ or Moo.

[Pax]

Foundation and Empire
Proposal: If we enter the idea the colonies can revolt for different reasons.
Similar to what the people at Galciv are working on. Maybe the planets can have some type of Representation. Allowing them to petition you on certain issues and if you don't respond enough, and the planets are close(i.e. in the same region), and there is a leader available, they revolt and form a seperate empire. You do get warnings in the form of protests/demonstrations

[auriga_m38]

I think all these ideas of modelling empire decline in some way are very interesting, but I do agree with others here that any detailed implementation of it into the MOO series would significantly change the type of game it is.

It's also very easy to talk about these ideas as abstract concepts, but once you get down to the nuts and bolts and details on how these concepts will manifest themselves in a game itself - it gets pretty darn difficult. Especially taking into account play-balancing and coding the AI to handle it.