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I remain solidly in the camp that 4X has gotten nicer looking but the gameplay is not that much more interesting - and maybe is less interesting these days than a decade or two ago when there was at least novelty.
The only two 4X games I've played that I'd also call transformative / memorable from a gameplay experience are Distant Worlds and Star Ruler 2. I wish other 4Xs would pilfer the great ideas from these two titles... I also strongly suggest you try Distant Worlds, despite its rough edges and steep learning curve. Who knows how long we'll be waiting for the hopefully more polished sequel.
The article also reminded me that I have Total War Warhammer collecting dust in my backlog - got it on sale awhile back at a time I didn't have the energy to devote to even finishing the tutorial. The setting isn't my cup of tea but I consider your praise on mechanics quite significant, so will look into it this winter. Same for Age of Wonders.
I found it amusing that you brought up Stellaris and multiple end game crisis.
I play with a mod that allows all three to spawn and role play the survival of my empire against such challenges.
Yet the idea of adding a strategic layer of alliances , diplomacy and straight cunning to stay alive verse the conflict... well it’s brilliant.
I think that’s a perfect example of bridging that gap between the RP and giving the players the tools to solve it strategically.
Thumbs up all around.
This assertion could use some elaboration. I'm pretty sure that I disagree, but it's hard to tell without an explanation.
My favourites are still: King of Dragon's Pass, Dominions 5 and Alpha Centauri (gameplay is very dated now).
I'm thinking part of the lull with 4X is due to XCOM and tactics\roguelike games (Darkest Dungeon etc.) nailing turn-based strategy so well. They avoid turn-bloat and poor AI due to how the games are designed (the player and AI aren't playing by the same rules at all times).
Paradox is also in a golden era of sorts too, so strategy gamers have some real gems to play atm outside of traditional 4X.
I don't know if this is along the same lines as Mezmorki's idea, but I would like to see 4x games experiment with victory points more. They work brilliantly in 4x boardgames (Twilight Imperium, Through the Ages, etc.) - avoids the long drawn out endgame where the winner is known 100s of turns before winning, allows a diersity of playstyles instead of always degenerating into who has the biggest doomstack, and structures the game into a streamlined shorter experience with focussed meaningful decisions, rather than building endless incremental upgrades in all your cities. Some people find victory points immersion-breaking, but from a purely gameplay perspective I think 4x games could be taken in an interesting direction by borrowing this boardgame convention.
1. 4X gameplay itself has remained pretty static whilst only the visual presenation has evolved really.
2. The end game problem (victory conditions) remains a major issue - games are usually decided by one major play followed by a seemingly endless grind to the finish line of what is by then a foregone conclusion
I've said this before many times (sorry for the respins) but I believe analysis of cRPG is an important factor to consider.
cRPG (I am talking classic party based RPG modelled on D&D etc) is also mired in a treacle of tradition so that it is very dangerous and usually unsuccessfull to stray too far from the accepted true and righteous paths of classic RPG design and tropes. Is it like Baldur's Gate? It better be like Baldur's Gate, mate!
So it is with MoO2 and 4X. But cRPG has one huge advantage over 4X in that you can make a new one that follows very closely the true and righteous paths but it can feel wholly new and fresh at the same time becasue the characters are different, the setting and environments are differnt and the story is different.
By the same principle Agatha Christie could write book after book about Hercule Poirot.
But it is very difficult to pull this off in a 4X game. The characters, settings and story lines are typically not important enough to make it work to the same extent. Furthermore in a strategfy game narrative absolutely must be wholly emergent, and varied from game to game, which again is much harder to do. Particulaly as good stories tend to be written by good writers and good writers typically don't know how to write software that conconcts convincing emergent storylines on the fly.
Which, in the startegic play vs roleplaying debate we tend to have, my vote comes down firmly on the roleplaying side of things. Layers of chararcter, location and story are the way out of this IMHO.
Regarding the games in the article you've recently found appealing, I was curious if gameplay mechanics in TWWH1/2 are substantially different than prior CA Total War titles? I've bounced hard off of a few of their earlier titles. They always look appealing to me on paper, but when I actually start playing I find that their gameplay style just doesn't resonate with me at all.
I found a nice UI mod for DW that I got running and started going through some tutorials starting with a pre-warp, single planet game. It helps starting off that way. I found the game remarkably more like Stellaris that I assumed (in a good way) - but obviously there is a whole lot more going on. This is probably my biggest regret having not dived into this game earlier. It's on the to do list :)
What makes me want to smack my head with a book is that I think that doing something like the above is "obviously" what one would want to do when designing a game. It's frustrating because it seems unfathomable to me that the designers would create this interesting alliance/diplomacy and crisis system and NOT link them together into a victory trigger. So I don't view my suggestion as "brilliant" so much as merely "stating the obvious" for anyone that's actually thought about it and put 2+2 together.
Well - I spent the next several paragraphs in the article elaborating. But basically my premise is this: the victory triggers and system, for a strategy game, ultimately determines the kind or flavor of game that is being played. Most 4X games are of the "race across a finish line / victory threshold" flavor. And while there might be different themes, and settings, and mechanics - fundamentally we're playing the same basic race game over and over. And I think people are getting bored of it and wanting something different.
Which leads to...
I completely agree with this - and my favorite games (not just 4X games) from the past many years have been these sorts of strategy-tactical roguelike mashups. Invisible Inc. is probably my favorite.
They scratch the same sort of "need to think hard" itch that 4X games do, but their asymmetric structures and clearer integration of narrative structures / plotlines adds a level of ... I don't know ... drama? tension? ... that most 4X games fail to have.
Totally agree. And for those not familiar with board games, here's the secret to why this works:
In most engine building, victory-point based boardgames - one of the principal decision point you make all through the game is when to use the outputs of your engine (resources, means of production, etc.) to reinvest back into the engine versus using those outputs to earn victory points. There is a tension and a 'press your luck' element to it. Do you invest more in the engine in hopes of making huge VP gains later or do you invest in points early on and hope to amass a bunch.
The KEY - and this is where 4X games really fumble the ball - is that spending resources on things that earn you VPs don't also build your engine (or do so to a much lesser degree). in other words, as the player, you have to make a choice. If you use the engine to generate VP's on a turn, you aren't also using it to build your engine.
4X games have a problem with snowballing - and this is directly related to this issue. Pick your victory condition in a 4X game: conquest, economic, technology, etc. Everything you do to work towards that victory condition is also simultaneously building your engine. In order win via conquest, you have to take over all the planets. But each time you take over a planet, you're also growing your base of production, which makes it easier to build bigger fleets and take over the next planet, and so on. Or with economic win you need to generate more money - and so you research the techs to grow your production which lets you grow money faster which lets you auto-build more buildings to more quickly grow production to turn into money.... and so on. It's a self-reinforcing feedback cycle - and it's terrible game design IMHO.
I'd LOVE to see a new 4X game implement a VP system intelligently - where the things you invest in to earn VPs are orthogonal the things you invest in to build your engine. That's what's missing. That's the interesting choice that few 4X games pose to players. And it's this way because they are stuck implementing the same race to victory system over and over.
Yeup, and upon reflection, Armada 2526 is probably my favorite "space" 4X game from the past decade - if I was forced to pick one. The basic design is chock full of interesting hard choices, and the unique points based scoring system is pretty unique - it's also on the sly and lot more narratively rich.
It dispenses with the colonization/conquest paradigm of most 4X games. A lot of the races earn points based on the size of their population multiplied by your primary species happiness! Conquering alien planets does jack shit for improving your score. Heck - the war itself might make your population less happy and you'll even lose points. The result is that different races have different incentive structures for earning VPs.
The game has it's flaws and is pretty rough around the edges, but the underlying design is rather brilliant in my mind.
EDIT: I was urging the Triumph (AoW3 devs) to consider a victory condition or game mode where empires/players earned points for being the first to complete a certain empire task (and maybe lesser points for the next person to do it). If the game was a race to 10 points (ala Settlers of Catan) it would be pretty cool. The empire quests require a great diversity of different things to be performed, so the strategy could get really interesting in how you use all the faculties of your empire to achieve these goals. And as with my prior point above, achieving these and investing in meeting them isn't also an investment in your engine - it's separated.
I think 4X devs need to get a lot more creative on the world building side and let the interesting goals/victory triggers come logically out of that.
I mentioned Emperor of the Fading Suns in the article. Let me expand on what I've found so incredibly fascinating about this game relative to this topic:
The game begins at the tail end of a dark age of technology (think Foundation or Warhammer 4k). Players start the game with remnant military units, buildings, and all sorts of stuff that they can't actually make new versions of yet because the technology has been lost. The empires/factions are all human houses competing to become the next emperor (think dune). At the same time, their is alien menace on the borders of the galaxy right at turn 0 that needs to be dealt with.
Ultimately, to win, you need to be elected regent of the known worlds (comprised of 5 houses, the church, and the trade league). Once regent you have to call a series of votes to anoint yourself as emperor. This is, in a lot of ways, like King of Dragon Pass's victory condition.
The interesting thing is that each house has 5 nobles - which if they are all killed the house dissolves into independent/rebel forces. Each faction has 5 scepters that are reflect their "voting" power. You can secure votes through diplomacy, you can knock out houses by killing their nobles and/or stealing their scepters (and thus their votes). You can persuade the church to sick the inquisition on their rivals. You can promise to support a house being regent in exchange for giving one the imperial lord seats - allowing you to immediately take control of the entire imperial navy, or military (mostly tied up in sighting the alien menace), or the spy agency. You can then use these assets to backstab the current regent, etc.
Long story short - the game's narrative/lore sets a victory condition that isn't arbitrary and that makes sense with the lore/storyline. Moreover, what you do to achieve victory isn't based on a steamrolling engine system. Becoming the regent makes you more of a target, puts the security of the known worlds in your hands (fighting off aliens). Gaining political support requires giving away tons of money or goods or technology to earn favor. None of that advances your empire building engine - but it does crucially advance you towards victory.
All in all, EFS is an excellent embodiment of this marriage between tough/interesting strategic challenges, emergent gameplay, and RPG-ish storytelling.
To be frank - I haven't played prior TW games all that much. I'm not in the best position to comment on them.
I will that I think the diversity of playstyles and faction mechanics in the TW:WH games probably sets them apart from the more historical games. To me that makes them more appealing from a replay standpoint. TH:WH gets criticized for simplifying the empire building/management side of things compared to prior games - but for me that's generally a plus. Simpler - more often than not - ends up meaning have to make more discrete tough choices (e.g. AoW3, Armada 2526, TW:WH) in empire management which is what I care about.