Early game - easy, late game - hard - Why?

[Looks like Duke]

I have read somewhere that this is the design philosophy for this game. And in patch notes I see that they want to make the early game even easier and the late game even harder. What I do not understand is why. Even now I feel that for a relatively novice player you play with little concern for anything in the beginning then essentially you hit a wall - you can't grow, because people do not like you enough, and you can't develop because you do not have enough science, and you can't have more science because you do not have enough people...

Anyway, I understand that as player progresses and their skill increases, they are supposed to have more challenges, but they are not supposed to play just one game! If I start another game, why beginning should be easy again? Would it we want more or less constant challenges through the whole game, rather than no challenge in the beginning and lots of it in the end? Would simply difficulty (or race selection) be better mechanism for difficulty grow for the player through time, with single game having only slight difficulty increase by the end (to indicate better understanding of the game in a single playthrough)?

[Catsander]

Originally posted by Looks like Duke:

What I do not understand is why.

I think there are many reasons, and here is my take on it, it might be wrong, though:

Because the developer is sick and tired of all the games that work in the opposite way: Hard in the beginning, then no challenge after mid-game. Because of snowballing many 4x games and even colony and citybuilders have their game decided, who is going to win, and who is going to lose, in the early game. Once the early game is complete there is no point in continuing.

I am glad SoS isn't going to be like that.

[Prisoner 76561197992841073]

tbh it makes sense that the game gets harder as you go... because you get better as you play

its weird for a game to start hard and get easy, thats just totally wrong.

[Looks like Duke]

Originally posted by Prisoner 76561197992841073:

tbh it makes sense that the game gets harder as you go... because you get better as you play

its weird for a game to start hard and get easy, thats just totally wrong.

That's not what I am advocating, but having completely screwed in opposite direction does not make sense either. It should be harder, but only a bit. It is already much harder, and they want to make it even more hard at the end and less hard in the beginning, when it is quite easy anyway.

[Watereaters]

Originally posted by Prisoner 76561197992841073:

tbh it makes sense that the game gets harder as you go... because you get better as you play

its weird for a game to start hard and get easy, thats just totally wrong.

I think he's more concerned about how the difficulty curve could end up becoming a lateral spike instead of a gradual rise

[OntologicalWeevil]

how's it getting hard? I'm at 2.5k pop with 500 slaves and I'm dandy. Some happiness issues but that's just a few benches and access.