First impressions

[TeeWee]

I've just been playing through two game years of 4X on my phone (OneX+). I must say it's amazing that you're able to do this on a phone. I'd like to offer some first impressions.

First off, 4X is just about my fave genre. I've played Civ in several versions, Alpha Centauri, GalCiv2. This gives me a certain intuition to many aspects common to 4X: exploration, settling, research, building economy. I also understand the need to research invasion tech before being able to invade (as I've worked this with GalCiv2 as well).

But what I cannot stress enough, something which you probably already realise more than anyone else, a good manual and ingame help system is absolutely critical to make me understand some of the basics and some more subtle implications. Things I need to know are what numbers mean when they're being presented, what upgrades do exactly, etc. As it is, the game is very much trial and error, thinking of a good explanation of a number and seeing if that is indeed what is happening by changing something and looking if that is indeed what it's doing.

In any case, on to the game itself. I have played ST RPG, so the setting with the syndicates is known to me. This makes for a very interesting mechanic, something which I don't think I've seen articulated so explicitly before: your empire is not homogenous, but is divided into three different "factions" which do share your overall civilization goal (be the most powerful civ), but also have a lot of internal rivalry. I didn't realise this on my first go though: I had three colony ships, settled three planets, all having a different syndicate! Later on, when I was building more Colony ships (ICS in space strategy), only when I was on a certain rythm, did I notice that I was sending out far more Cadar ships out, thus having more Cadar colonies. A very interesting mechanic, something I will need to exploit better in a future game.

What I also really like, is the ship design aspect. I have always loved meaningful customizations. I don't like putting lots of effort into graphically designing my ships, which can be fun on occasion, but not constantly. But customizing to fit my purposes (Glass cannons vs ultra-behemoths) is always fun.

The research tree looks nice with lots of branches, so that's nice as well. There is some structure in this, so after a few plays, I'll expect to be able to wrap my head around it without needing to know every single tech by heart.

There are a lot of parameters to juggle. CP, Income, Maintenance, RP, TP, EP. It's not always clear to me yet what generates what; this is familiarity, but also a problem with the help system.

For example, the colony detail screen shows a summary, but there's just too many things lacking that I can't figure out. The two numbers for Spice are a nice example. I have a colony with 10/9 spice. I guess it's refined vs unrefined, as that's the only distinction I can find about spice. But then, I can't figure out what it does. Is it good? Is it bad? DO I need to work on changing the ratio? How would I effect this? So many questions, and that's just one number. Factories Active / Built / Max is another. I think it's the amount of CP your pop is contributing, excluding bonuses (like Cadar-bonus). But it's not explicit. I also thought at first that a Factory gives 2CP per 2 pop (4 pop gives 4 cp), but I've now figured out it doesn't scale. Defense is another number I can't really make sense of. Other things on this screen are the income / maintenance. I understand these in principle, but not in detail: when I add up the numbers I know about, I'm not getting the same results. I think the numbers between parenthesis behind the CP-number is a bonus, but I'm not sure where the bonus comes from. Treaties I'd guess, but I can't check.

Other things I don't know how to control is population growth. Maybe it's by design (something about population growth representing "stragglers" coming into this system rather than autonomous growth by the colonies themselves) but then, it's not clear.

In more advanced stages of the game, I'm foreseeing a little problem with moving entire fleets of ships across the maps. It may turn a bit tedious, but I'll have to see if that's the case.

AI is always a worry for games like this. But that's to be judged later on when I get more hours into this game.

Anyway, this looks like I'm complaining: I'm not. I'm finding I'm enjoying myself, but probably not on this platform: I'm going to wait for iPad. It's probably just a touch too complex to be comfortably handled on the phone for my tastes: it will be perfect for iPad, where I have a larger screen and hopefully have easier navigation between elements. An iPad also is a more "serious" platform in the sense that sitting with an iPad is a more serious activity than sitting with a phone, as that's more of an opportunity-based gaming (hence casual gaming is so big on phones).

I also love your ambition and the unique multi-faction civ is something that you really need to learn and play, I look forward to that. Juggling the syndicates with their own petty battles with your grand plan looks fun.

I have supported your Steam Greenlight-campaign, but on Steam, you might have problems where this will compare badly against much larger productions like GalCiv. Also, I'd really want a much better manual system in place before launch there. Good 4X games have nice help pages and a working encyclopedia which can be accessed from each screen by clicking on the relevant game-term. Civ4 wasn't perfect, but had most of the information at the tip of my finger. I understand platform limitations are a harsh reality though, but PC customers (rightly so!) don't want to be hindered by limitations because your engine needs to run on Android phones as well.

Turns out to be a rather long post. I will end the post here on a final note: I can't wait for the iOS version to hit the market for me, as that's when I'll fully jump into this game. As for now, I'm playing it as a teaser when I'm not in the mood for HoS (when am I ever not in the mood for HoS?!?) Thanks Cory and Andrew for making what looks like another very good game.

[beuns]

Just to help you figure out some numbers :
- the spice is split between what you need to entertain and what you are i.e : 10/9 means that you can entertain 10 pop and that your pop is now at 9 so it's good. If you can't entertain enough of your pop, each bad news (war, overpopulation, report of Xeno activity, etc...) will hurt your morale.

-about factories what you are reading is : what you have already built/what you can build to be efficient/what pop you need to fully work at your factories. Your goal here is to have this bar full, that would mean that each of your pop units is working. When 2 pop are at work you get +2 CP which mean you can build faster. The number in parenthesis represent your Trade Points (TP) that you obtain by building exchanges. Those points cannot help build but only gives you money each turn by a variable amount dependent of politics (embargo get the number down while trade route/alliance raises it).
- on CP if a planet is not building anything, each CP raises income.
- each mine also gives you income whatever your doing.

Hope that helps

[Cory Trese]

The in game manual is a work in progress and we'll deploy it with the game as soon as possible. We make our games based on player feedback and how much of an actual manual is required remains to be seen.

It sounds like you may not have found the Library yet, which defines all those numbers in exact terms. If there is something missing from the Library, I'd love to add it.

I am fully aware that our game will be compared to Gal Civ 4, a game by a large team with a many millions of dollars invested in their 4X engine and graphics library.

By the time we reach Greenlight we should have finished the first major updates push and the game will have developed substantially. Enough for the people who want another GalCiv? Probably not. Enough for people who want a tactical empire builder with a focus on turn based battles? Maybe. I hope =)

[TeeWee]

I have found the library. I'd like it to be more internally linked by hyperlinking key words to other entries. But there's only so many hours in your day I suppose :-)

Being able to jump from, for example, a mine to the library entry for minerals would be very useful.

Personally, the things that I missed most was information to help me interpret the screens. I know what CP is, but the CP: 4(2) is not clear. Or the colony list. Only after a while did I figure out the the B stood for the length of the build queue (BTW, I'd rather have the name of the current item than the size of the queue here!). All these small things add up to make a dense game.

Now, an observation on the game play. I find it difficult to grow colonies from factions other than Cadar. With just 1 build point, it takes 25 turns to get a simple factory up and running. Apart from initial subsidy, I haven't found a way to increase the speed. I haven't seen a "hurry" type function. Also, since I don't get to influence pop growth (I think), sometimes you just sit on that single pop point for ages waiting for the colony to grow, or conversely, having a colony gain 2 or 3 pop points while you're still building up your infrastructure like factories or housing. Unless there's some late technology I'm missing, this is bordering on frustration for me.

But I'm still playing :-)

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[fallen]

TeeWee - CP 4 (2) indicates 4 CP points and 2 Trade Points (TP). There are definitely rough edges on the UI, and we'll keep working on them.

[Cory Trese]

Now, an observation on the game play. I find it difficult to grow colonies from factions other than Cadar. With just 1 build point, it takes 25 turns to get a simple factory up and running. Apart from initial subsidy, I haven't found a way to increase the speed. I haven't seen a "hurry" type function. Also, since I don't get to influence pop growth (I think), sometimes you just sit on that single pop point for ages waiting for the colony to grow, or conversely, having a colony gain 2 or 3 pop points while you're still building up your infrastructure like factories or housing. Unless there's some late technology I'm missing, this is bordering on frustration for me.

These are all things you can improve with better tactics in your empire build.

With only 1 build point, you should be in the first 16 turns of the game, maximum. Subsidy is the only "hurry" function that will be added to the game, outside of future politics options that won't be available early.

You absolutely have control over the population growth on your core worlds, which are the ones that are most important. Build your Hab Units quickly, and then use those expanded populations to increase your CP rapidly. I have all worlds making 3-6 CP in the first 20 turns.

If you find your expanded Colonies are deficient in this regard, you are not researching the Technology required to design better Colony Ships, and that's a choice you made in prioritization of your research approach.

The correlations to these are so strong with ST RPG I have to smile and pat myself on the back. Keep working at it and you'll find there are tools in your toolbox for almost every issue you enumerate.

[lazarus]

Jun 17, 2014 16:55:52 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Now, an observation on the game play. *Snip snip*

These are all things you can improve with better tactics in your empire build.

With only 1 build point, you should be in the first 16 turns of the game, maximum. Subsidy is the only "hurry" function that will be added to the game, outside of future politics options that won't be available early.

You absolutely have control over the population growth on your core worlds, which are the ones that are most important. Build your Hab Units quickly, and then use those expanded populations to increase your CP rapidly. I have all worlds making 3-6 CP in the first 20 turns.

If you find your expanded Colonies are deficient in this regard, you are not researching the Technology required to design better Colony Ships, and that's a choice you made in prioritization of your research approach.

The correlations to these are so strong with ST RPG I have to smile and pat myself on the back. Keep working at it and you'll find there are tools in your toolbox for almost every issue you enumerate.

Which upgrade enhances your Colony ships? In what way does it improve them? I've been running into the same issue as this guy and some of the Tech Tree upgrades aren't clear on what they do for you. The Tech Tree upgrades tend to get expensive later so trial and error to learn what some of them do can be quite detrimental mid to late in the game.

[fallen]

lazarus - Space Colonization branch, requires Planetary Construction 4. This gives you Upgrades you can design into a second wave of Colony ships.

We are putting a big focus on trying to make these things clearer! Thanks for the feedback!

[TeeWee]

Jun 17, 2014 16:55:52 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Now, an observation on the game play. I find it difficult to grow colonies from factions other than Cadar. With just 1 build point, it takes 25 turns to get a simple factory up and running. Apart from initial subsidy, I haven't found a way to increase the speed. I haven't seen a "hurry" type function. Also, since I don't get to influence pop growth (I think), sometimes you just sit on that single pop point for ages waiting for the colony to grow, or conversely, having a colony gain 2 or 3 pop points while you're still building up your infrastructure like factories or housing. Unless there's some late technology I'm missing, this is bordering on frustration for me.

These are all things you can improve with better tactics in your empire build.

With only 1 build point, you should be in the first 16 turns of the game, maximum. Subsidy is the only "hurry" function that will be added to the game, outside of future politics options that won't be available early.

You absolutely have control over the population growth on your core worlds, which are the ones that are most important. Build your Hab Units quickly, and then use those expanded populations to increase your CP rapidly. I have all worlds making 3-6 CP in the first 20 turns.

If you find your expanded Colonies are deficient in this regard, you are not researching the Technology required to design better Colony Ships, and that's a choice you made in prioritization of your research approach.

The correlations to these are so strong with ST RPG I have to smile and pat myself on the back. Keep working at it and you'll find there are tools in your toolbox for almost every issue you enumerate.

Thanks for the feedback. I've just researched and built an improved Colony ship to try out one of the stars that's still empty to see the effects. 

I'm not saying my core worlds are staying at 1 pop point, but I'm not seeing any correlation between what I'm doing and the amount of pop growth in my colonies (both core and later colonies). So if there's anything I can do to help this, I'm open to every suggestion! An example what I mean: in Civ (up to 4), I can shift workers to get more or less food, so I can grow or stabilize my cities, according to my needs (mostly grow, but for some cities I might have a need to prioritise manufacturing over growth).

I had DeValtos Prime sit at 2 pop points for ages, having spare housing and spice capacity. At the same time, some new colonies are getting pop points every few turns, even when the population will be condemned to live in the slums. It's this aspect that eludes me. I want the population to grow in certain worlds and stabilize in other worlds. And once a planet gets sucked into a "housing race" I find it very difficult to get out of it. 

I'm not that far into the game to have really tried all techs, but here's back to my original point: without good documentation, it's impossible for me to predict what techs, upgrades etc do, so all I have to work with is trial and error. I understand your design decision to release library entries per tech. This is good to keep the players from being overwhelmed, but at the same time, the lack of such information can lead to uninformed play rather than unskilled play. I don't mind the last (it's a sign that there's depth in the game), but the first is a bit frustrating to deal with.

As an aside: I find the colony dice rolls having a huge spread. Even fairly good prospects can easily get a <10 quality. Are there techs to either increase quality after colonization, or improve the dice rolls (especially increasing the lower bound!)

[lazarus]

Jun 18, 2014 0:15:58 GMT -5 fallen said:

lazarus - Space Colonization branch, requires Planetary Construction 4. This gives you Upgrades you can design into a second wave of Colony ships.

We are putting a big focus on trying to make these things clearer! Thanks for the feedback!

Cool! I'll have to head that way on the Tech Tree in the game I'm playing now. What does the upgrade actually do? Does it cause the new Colony to start with something extra? 2 Pop instead of 1? Start with Hab Units or a Factory?

[Cory Trese]

TeeWee -- thanks for the feedback, I will keep working on it. If your De Valtos Prime was at 2 population, you ignored the Advisor telling you "Build Hab Units." I haven't had a game since Alpha 3 where I wasn't easily able to follow the Advisor's advice and get DeValtos to 5 population by 1.16AE

lazarus -- Space Colonization makes available new Ship Systems which you put onto your Colony Ship designs. Then, building and using those Colony Ships will result in much improved Starports on your worlds.

Advanced Starports start with Mines, Factories, additional Habitation Units...

[TeeWee]

Do you mean that building Hab units will encourage growth? I seem to see just random growth, whether or not Hab units are present. Obviously, I don't do statistical data analysis on a gazillion games, but that's what the behaviour of the game looks like to me.

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[lazarus]

Jun 18, 2014 17:13:51 GMT -5 TeeWee said:

Do you mean that building Hab units will encourage growth? I seem to see just random growth, whether or not Hab units are present. Obviously, I don't do statistical data analysis on a gazillion games, but that's what the behaviour of the game looks like to me.

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Someone correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to be several things that influence Pop growth. Extra living space (3/7 has a higher chance to go up than 3/4) and how new the Colony is seem to be big factors in Pop growth. Just a guess based on my experience.

[pendell]

So, just played my first game. I'm afraid I quit before finishing the first xeno invasion.     This is the tutorial. 

The game started out fairly easily.  I concentrated on building my initial colonies and expanding to new stars as rapidly as possible. At first, I had plenty of money and things were going well, but I started pushing up against the edge of what I was capable of around 5 colonies.  I had only 1 or 2 mines on each planet, a few factories, but by midgame I was building hab, hab and more hab units everywhere. I had little money for anything else.  

I discovered a pair of alien colonies NW of my center colony.  At first I intended to attack them right out of the gate, but orbited their planet found I couldn't do anything -- I hadn't yet researched planetary invasion. I'd been researching politics in the hope of shutting down the $$%#%$ conflicts.  So I left them alone. I did not attack the aliens at all until their invasion started.  

I considered building more ships, but at this point I only had about $500 in my bank account and the cost for a cruiser's maintenance -- $85 per turn -- was 
unsupportable so I thought. Nonetheless, I expanded to 12 colonies, most of them small.  

So I confronted the Xeno invasion with 2 strike fighters and 2 templar defenders in the center of the map, and 2 other fighters in the far NW that were not within engagement range. 

I took down the world killer , and about 8 or 9 xeno mass driver and missile ships by ganging up on them one at a time. The weight of numbers told. Then an alien colony ship by itself came by in the SW corner. And it was that point I shut down the game.  

So ... my problem was I never had a big enough economy to support a fleet. I had about 3 really good planets -- the starting ones -- which by the middle of the game were simply cranking out as much CP as they could for money, to support building in the other colonies. But I simply didn't have enough of an economy to support the fleet I wanted. 

Thoughts? What could I have done differently?   

Respectfully, 

Brian P. 

[Jehuty]

I'm close to my second win on Normal (first was on the tutorial one-on-one. Second (now is on an elite 1v1 map 36x64 i think with abundant resources). Here's the deal:

1. play a scout game and find out where the damned xenos are then restart.

2. expand up to a safe zone where you control at least 1/2 (if on 1v1, that's all my experience so far, not ready for 2v1 yet) of the map AND hopefully the planets.

3. Expand on the border worlds FIRST and PRAY you get 12 or better quality. Build and FORTIFY your border zone and DO NOT go beyond your DMZ. First invasion should go off in 50-100 turns, second one by 150-200 turns. the tier one enemy ships are a joke hull-wise and 3-4 strike fighters (yes, the ones costing 119 a piece) can take them down and you will not cry too much if they die.

4. Research-wise, i prioritize getting the whirlwind guns first (requires elite but dat damage doe) and sticking them on my SFs (strike fighters) then alternate between ship and infra research (your mileage may vary).

5. now in early midgame here are your key words: DEFEND (I will stress this to exclusion), EXPAND INWARDS...SLOWLY in waves of 2-3 colon ships per wave (remember you ignored your whole backfield?), MINE MINE MINE, (max this out, this is your first ticket out of poverty once the war starts), and get that PLANETARY INVASION research going.

6. Once you're comfortable (hopefully before the 3rd-4th invasion, you may/should now have 12-15 colonies, 25 ships (at least 4 of them should be
MILITARY TRANSPORTS to sterilize alien planets) and start your counter-invasion.

7. On invading the alien space, QUICKLY gang up on alien ships and eliminate them piecemeal (they will try to do that to you too) and send in your transports to the nearest planet, rinse repeat when low on fuel (you may want to INVADE (not bombard) then RECOLONIZE an alien planet to use as a staging area. AT THIS POINT THERE IS NO GOING BACK. You will continue and keep up the invasion until they or you are dead, so ensure A ROBUST ECONOMY.

Keep pumping out upgraded FIGHTERS and very few cruisers or heavier to replace your losses and KEEP THE PRESSURE UP. Do not let a single enemy ship into your backfield, hopefully by now either you have swarmed them sufficiently to keep their ships (which they can pump out 1-4 a turn) bottle-necked or destroy them as they spawn. or you can leave a rapid response squadron in reserve along your border worlds.

-side note: Research of special interests are: FIGHTERS 3 (elite, you get yer whirlwind IIs here), PLANETARY INVASION (as mentioned), FACTION POLITICS 3 (exchange IIs are heaven for the TP AND RESEARCH +), SPACE COLONIZATION 2 (higher level starports mean you don't start with a shack for a startport!), MINING 3 (3 minerals plus a TP? yes please), MANUFACTURING 2 (factory 2s are a staple until late midgame for me), PLANETARY CONSTRUCTION 2 (Hab 2s are a must for the midgame).

-side note 2: DO NOT IGNORE TPs. When the individual economies of your colonies can only punt out so much, this will augment your coffers and is a game saver. SO. Corollary to that, morale should ALWAYS be an average of 9-10. Yes, Demanding but it works. Corollary #2, do NOT ignore the +TP in the higher upgrades like Mine 3, Factory 3, Exchange II.

Take not this is for 1-on-1 and on NORMAL. dunno if this will work on other difficulties.

My second game btw:
TURN 359
Colonies 16. Avg morale 9. ships 37. Treasury 35k. Income 1.1k/turn. maintenance rate 95%. Trade 139. Research 92. Spy 45. Pop 154/192. Minerals 178/211. Economy 8732(uhh, not sure about this value's meaning). Player invasion: 5/11 alien planets sterilized and they have NO ships on the map.