Context: info on your favorite games

Talk about strategy games like MoO series, Civilization, Europa Universalis, etc.

Moderator: Oberlus

Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
eleazar
Design & Graphics Lead Emeritus
Posts: 3858
Joined: Sat Sep 23, 2006 7:09 pm
Location: USA — midwest

Context: info on your favorite games

#1 Post by eleazar »

:arrow: Especially when considering multiplayer, timing is very critical to make things work. Personally i've almost never had the patience to play a long strategy game with a live opponent.

But for those of you that do, i think it would be useful information, if you could keep track of some numbers next time you play, such as:
  • The length of the entire game
    The average length of combat
    The total number of combats
And then provide further context such as the number of opponents and the size of the galaxy, and whatever else would help make this info meaningful.
Of course it's doesn't have to be a space game as long as it's similar enough to be validly compared.



:arrow:Also i think it could be useful to examine the diplomacy options of 4X games, not so that we can copy, but so we have a tangle comparison of how many options feel restraining vs. overdone and confusing:



To start out here's MoO1:
Personally i think it's rather robust relative to the game as a whole.
  • Treaties:
    * Non-Aggression pact
    * Alliance
    * Peace treaty

    Threats:
    * Break non-agression pact
    * Break alliance
    * Break trade agreement
    * Threaten to attack

    Demands:
    * Declare war on another race
    * Break alliance with another race

    Appeasements:
    * Offer techs
    * Offer BCs (various amounts according to empire wealth)

    Trade:
    * Various escalating options of BCs per year depending on both Empire's wealth.
    * Can exchange techs

MareviQ
Space Kraken
Posts: 100
Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2005 6:47 pm
Location: Somewhere in Poland

Re: Context: info on your favorite games

#2 Post by MareviQ »

:arrow: Gameplay data
Game: Heroes of Might and Magic 3
Type of game: hotseat
Lenght of game: total of several weeks, but if played non-stop and without interruptions it would take a day or two, I guess.
The average length of combat: at the beginning about 1-2 minutes, later escalating to approx. 10 minutes
The total number of combats: too many, though only 3 were conducted as player vs. player
Players: 3 human players, several computer players.
While at the beginning it was great, later it tended to get a bit boring, due to lenght of the fights (yes, it was interesting for the person actually doing the fighting, but the rest of us sat with nothing to do).

Game: Civilization IV
Type of game: LAN
Lenght of game: approx. 8-10 hours
The average length of combat: irrelevant
The total number of combats: numerous
Players: 2 human, several computers
This time it was much more engaging, as game turns passed quickly.

My conclusion: the fights should be pretty quick (at least in multiplayer). This means that either the player who was fighting a prolonged battle gets less time of "normal" play (the fight would extend to the next turn time a bit) or the battles themselves should be quick, but that would usually mean reducing their strategical complexity (I think this might be a good thing - this is a turn-based strategy - the battle should be won before it even happens with economy, science and tactics on a grand scale, rather than fancy battlefield tactics - that's what RTS's are for. This would also mean that the ship design should be as simple as possible.)

:arrow: Now, switching to diplomacy:
It's not aviable in any game I know of but I've thought of two diplomacy options that could possibly be used (though it would be a bit hard for AI to evaluate if it should agree or not)

Demands:
  • request removal/reduction of military presence in an area (can create DMZs or just notify them you're not comfortable with their fleet next to your border)
  • request strenghtening of military presence in an area (most likely when allied with the other side and trying to cut off someone's supply line, reinforcements, or just to create a defence line)
As for diplomacy options from existing games I really liked the idea I first encountered in Civ IV.

Trade:
  • request/give access to a resource
It actually made diplomacy worthwile, as those were valuable and easily obtained in large numbers but little variety, which forced players to trade them (first time I opened the diplomacy screen myself in any civilization game). The only problem is I don't think we have any plausable alternative to that... unless it could be done with planet specials (crystals, rare minerals, spice, tydirium?), and some upgradeable ways of harvesting them (1 for just having a colony on the planet, 2 with lvl.1 mine, 3 with lvl.2 mine, and that's it).
abs(imag(ME) / abs(ME)) = exp(PI) - PI - 19;

Tsenzouken
Space Squid
Posts: 60
Joined: Sun May 25, 2008 10:15 am

Re: Context: info on your favorite games

#3 Post by Tsenzouken »

As far as battles go, I prefer player-driven strategic options with player-driven tactical AIs at the fleet level. So you do have a hand in battles, but mostly it's the fleets that do the work. This will, of course, require some significant design work and playtesting. Ship design is a large part of why MoO games were so fun for me, and why SMAC was cool.

Speaking of SMAC:
Game Length: Fairly Long
Avg. Battle Length: ~15 seconds.
Combats: Numerous

User avatar
kroddn
Static Linker
Posts: 347
Joined: Thu Jun 28, 2007 10:28 am

Re: Context: info on your favorite games

#4 Post by kroddn »

I mostly play browsergames. This has the advantage of not beeing beside the monitor all the time, but a game normally lasts about 3-6 months. So this is not really comparable.

I used to play Wesnoth some time and freeciv a lot. Both are getting boring if games get advanced, because sometimes you have to wait a long time for the opponents. But this could be worse, if the combats would be fought "realtime" between to players, while the others would have to wait. That should be thought about.

Does anybody know "Star Trek Armada" (DOS)? For me the best multiplayer 4X-game with realtime dogfight ever. I spent years of my live with that :-). But I do not know if it supports more than 2 players in a network...
If someone does not know it, here in short:
  • Strategic view, like other 4X games. Basic base-building, build fleets, expand.
  • If two fleets begin a fight, you are able to choose on of your ships and fight against the other in first-person view. Some ships have special abilities, like being able to cloak. I liked that very much ;-)
A very great feature in FO would be, that you can "pause" a game. That means you can manually disconnect saying "pausing", then the other players will not have to wait for your turns. Sometimes it is important to have such a feature, e.g. if you have to drive to supermarket quickly ;-).

I think the gameserver should be resistent to player disconnects, so that such a "pause" feature would be easily to implement. The server should wait one turn for the player to reconnect, but then continue without waiting for this (paused) player to submit turns.

Post Reply