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Author Topic:   Sid Meier's Galactic Conquest?

DerekM posted 03-31-99 09:32 AM ET
I had an idea for a sequel to SMAC that would be really stellar (pun intended)!
I have yet to see a really good sequel on par with MOO or MOOII. Ascendency was pretty, but the AI was truly bone-headed. I would like to take some of the innovations of SMAC and have them applied to a galactic empire-building game.
So how is this related to SMAC? The game allows you to start on Planet, with your starting position equivalent to your victory level in SMAC. The first few levels of the tech tree would be equivalent to the tech tree of SMAC, so your progress there would reflect. Production and world population would also be set based upon your victory. You could use surrendered faction leaders as colony governors, each of which would have a certain set of benefits based upon their history.
None of the technology is so advanced that it would preclude future advancement. SMAC civ was pretty much confined to Planet, so there is a lot that could be done -- manufacturing planets, bioengineering life to live in space, developing hyperdrive, Dyson's spheres or ringworlds, probability weapons, interplanetary psionic networks, triggering artificial novas as a weapon, turning gas giants into new suns, many enhancements to the existing techs, etc.
You could build structures that enhance your colonies, but they would be massive, wonder-type buildings. For example, building a bulk matter transmitter, a space elevator, orbiting spacedocks, planetary university, etc.
Convert the production window to build spacecraft (getting rid of the scrolling interface at the bottom, please).
Earth could start out in a few different ways, depending upon difficulty level. At the easiest levels, Earth is just a burned-out husk. At higher levels, they become more and more of a threat. At the top level, you start with a high-tech, hostile society right next door -- whose only disadvantage is a lack of hyperdrive, and that won't last long.
I'm sure the Firaxis team could come up with some truly bizarre alien species, beyond the usual "intelligent animals" types.
Of course, it's all up to what Sid and Brian really want to do next. I would definitely buy a game like this, though, and drool expectantly until it came out.
Monolith posted 03-31-99 10:03 AM ET
If you buy Civ2 with the "Fantastic Worlds" add-on, you get a scenario which is a MOO clone under Civ2 rules. I've not played it, so I can't say if it works or not. It might work as a protoype for DerkekM's idea.
Milamber posted 03-31-99 05:46 PM ET
I have played the MOO scenario, and it is pretty cool.
I also think this would be a good idea but it would be very difficult to get it to handle trancend victories, on huge planets, at the same time as quick military victories.
sandworm posted 03-31-99 05:49 PM ET
Cool/kewl!(couldn't resist)Tsurani handle, Milamber.
wkehrman posted 03-31-99 06:24 PM ET
Also have Fantastic Worlds and MOO II. The problem I have, or rather the thing I would like to see, is a true global exploration and conquest game. MOO II ALMOST has it, but it is just sort of one big battle then it is all over, you either build ailen management centers or kill everyone off. Blowing up the planet with the "Stellar Converter" was nifty a couple of times, but got old. But I digress. MOO II treated every world as though it had one great big population center. The MOO II scenario of CIV II:FW was basically CIV II with units, improvements, wonders and races modeled on the MOO II game. IMHO, nothing special beyond either CIV II or MOO II. (Both of which are decent games, don't get me wrong). It would be nice if it were necessary to establish "space"heads, worry about uprising and the like. In other words, expand the continent to continent invasion strategy to the planetary level.
From what little tiny bit I know of programming (i.e., I took a BASIC class in college) it seems that this idea might be prohibitively large. The computer would have to remember thousands of units and hundreds of cities on dozens of worlds at minimum. I could see my computer going through several hard disks as the program beat it into submission with swap files.
But don't let me stop you guys at Firaxis from solving the problem. I'll buy it.
Zoetrope posted 04-01-99 05:59 AM ET
The Universe project is attempting to build a (free, open source, cross-platform, extensible) game system along these lines. Early days, but lots of ideas, and additional contributors are very welcome.
http://shell.rmi.net/~starkey/Universe/
Firaxis (and others) are welcome to make use of concepts they find useful.
A recent issue raised in the Universe forums on SFF net is how to scale a game's mechanics as empires grow, so that micromanagement can be avoided. One suggestion is to _abstract_ activities to the larger scale for empires that require it; an interesting challenge then is how to integrate huge and tiny empires in the same game.
Masakari posted 04-01-99 08:24 PM ET
Emperor of the Fading Suns (by Segasoft) was a galactic empire building game that have what most of you guys are clamoring for. It had a galactic map with stars and planets and each planet was its own hex map. The concept was great, I'll give it that, but one a whole, it was too tedious - too much micromanagement and a limited tech tree.
DerekM posted 04-02-99 09:31 AM ET
The question is, how do you create a galactic conquest game that seems vast without making it seem unmanagable? If anyone could do it, it would probably be Firaxis. I've actually thought about this at times, but I haven't got the programming skills to do anything about it. My area of proficiency is in databases, GUI client/server like VB and data warehousing. Not exactly common game development tools.
Faithkills posted 04-02-99 11:37 AM ET
I was about to mention EFS to wkerhman as what he was looking for, but Masakari beat me to it. The thing is though, you think you want that depth, but when you get it, it becomes tedious. Moving every unit on EVERY planet gets old after a while. Too bad because it was an interesting game.
Don't get me wrong, EFS is very playable, but it's replayablility is limited by the MM. Once you've played it enough to where you understand what's going on, you start resenting the MM.
BUT with sufficient automation a game like this would be very interesting indeed.
FK
DerekM posted 04-02-99 11:48 AM ET
Here is an interesting idea. What if every time you have a battle, the system calculates odds based on relative strength. If the odds are overwhelming, then the battle is handled automatically (and abstractly). If it isn't, then you get to run the battle. You should be able to set the odds you want, with a different setting for offensive engagements vs. defensive engagements (so that you can play out that last ditch defense at critical points, for example). You could also have an option to prompt you for automatic battle completion.
To use an example from SMAC, whacking a non-combatant former with a needlejet would be automatic. Going up against an experienced plasma garrison in a base with sensor support with your impact rover would be played out in detail.
What that would do is eliminate some of the tedium of mopping up mostly defeated enemies.
PrinceBimz posted 04-03-99 12:11 AM ET
Derek I like all of your idea, Sid Meier's Galactic Conquest. It even sounds like something that could come about. If Sid and Brian start on something like this I think we would finally have something better then MoO2. What do you say Sid?
wkehrman posted 04-05-99 11:56 AM ET
In response to Faithkills. I had thought about micromanagement, actually. In addition to computer wargaming, I also tabletop. I can envision a Galactic conquest game becoming unmanageable. The worst case scenario I can imagine is trying to play the ENTIRE Second World War using Advanced Squad Leader.
Another idea is to decrease management details as the game goes on. Supposedly Imperium Galactica did this, unfortunately, I was unable to complete the game due to hardware/software conflicts (I had a really slow CD-ROM when I started it out, and now it won't load using my Creative Labs 24x). First, one must conquer a world, a la CIV/SMAC. This would, perhaps, include moonbases. Then there would be system-wide expansion using planetary governors. For example, you might turn Earth into an Agricultural Planet and Mars into an Industrial Planet, but allow the planet's governors (president, illustrious potentate, whatever) to decide how and where cities should be placed, what imporvements and where, etc. THEN, move to multi-system conquest/diplomacy and control. The game should still allow me to interfere with "autoproduction". I have found, in a variety of CIV-type games, that letting the AI control things for too long tends to produce less than ideal results, at least IMHO. Personally, I'd rather the governors just switch over to Stockpiling Energy than producing large quantities of artillery units when my expenses begin exceeding my income.
Faithkills posted 04-05-99 12:12 PM ET
DerekM, not a bad idea. Actually a fine idea if you could set the low and high probability cutoffs. No reason to fight a battle you can't win either.
But the problem is the calculations. Many games don't figure the odds right. MOM was notorious for this. Certain types of units gota huge advantage in strategic, and you could win a fight that you couldn't possibly win in tactical. And sometimes you had units in a fight that was a walk in tactical (because they flew or whatever) that coudldn't win in strategic. SMAC does this right now, with the bad odds alerts, when you know you'll win, and you go ahaead and you do win. So it would have to be a very thourough algorithm, so that gamers would trust it, or else it would never be used. and so far there's never been a game I trusted for this.
FK
Monolith posted 04-05-99 12:35 PM ET
One feature I'd love to see implemented in an interstellar game would be communications lag. Eons ago, I used to play the RPG "Traveller" in which ship moved a handfull of parsecs in a game week and messages could only travel on ships. It used to take nearly a year to get a message from the captial of the main human empire to the borders, and civil and military society just had to adapt.
If you did this in a strategy game, you'd have a situation where the governers (planetary leaders) were alway "on" and could only be over-ridden after a delay. One would have to do a lot of guessing about where the enemy was going next, rather than just reacting to observed moves. It would be intensely challenging, in a vastly different way to semi-tactical games like SMAC.
DerekM posted 04-05-99 01:28 PM ET
I remember Traveller. It was a very cool game. The idea was that a feudal society would work because the communication and travel times were similar to Dark Age Europe. Barons, dukes and such were expected to operate with autonomy. As long as they didn't get out of line, they were OK, otherwise there would be a BatRon of Imperial battle cruisers jumping in-system. What I loved about the game was the ship design and Striker vehicle design rules.
The problem with lag would be AI, though. Ask anybody who has played a strategy game whether they thought the AI was sufficient by itself. Wait while they stop laughing.
Here is another idea. In SMAC, you have to divide income between psych, economy and research, while formers improve your bases. CTP apparently allows you to apply points to terrain upgrades. You could abstract things even more:
Unify all energy, money, production, etc., into OUTPUT. Allow the player to devote certain percentages to support, planetary development, food, research, psych/luxury, tax, and construction. Support goes toward troop and ship support. Planetary development would enhance your planet's ability to provide any of the others (depending upon the type of planet, see below), food produces, well, food, similar for researh, psych quells riots, tax goes into a central fund for emergencies, diplomacy, etc. Construction is used to build ships, ground troops, and special projects that measurably increase system output.
These special projects are basically anything that would require MASSIVE outlays of resources, such as space elevators, system-wide shipyards, ringworlds, planetary formation, space-tolerant biospheres, terraforming, etc.
As for planetary types, Terran-type worlds would be better at producing food, asteroid belts would be great for construction, vacuum worlds provide better support (no concerns about pollution), etc. You could also designate worlds as a certain "type." Resort worlds increase tax income and add psych to nearby systems. Industrial worlds provide bonus to support and construction. Agricultural worlds produce food and support. Research colonies boost research.
Dealing with ground combat would be very cool, but also hard to do. You would have to have either small maps for each planetary battlefield or very bland maps -- unless Firaxis wants to create a 5 CD extravaganza! That type of thing is usually only done for RPGs and adventure games, though...
WyldKarde posted 04-05-99 01:30 PM ET
For a good MOOII style space conquest game thingy, drop by www.crl.com/~malfador/index.html and check out Space Empires III. The sound and graphics are nothing to shout about, but the game's big, complex and very engrossing. It's turn based, supporting multiplayer hotseat and other modes through PBEM. It's also very customisable, supporting custom faction graphics and a completely customisable tech tree, including the design of new gadgets for the ships.
SE3 is a shareware title, and until SMAC entered my life it was my most played game.
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Author	Topic: Sid Meier's Galactic Conquest?
DerekM	posted 03-31-99 09:32 AM ET I had an idea for a sequel to SMAC that would be really stellar (pun intended)! I have yet to see a really good sequel on par with MOO or MOOII. Ascendency was pretty, but the AI was truly bone-headed. I would like to take some of the innovations of SMAC and have them applied to a galactic empire-building game. So how is this related to SMAC? The game allows you to start on Planet, with your starting position equivalent to your victory level in SMAC. The first few levels of the tech tree would be equivalent to the tech tree of SMAC, so your progress there would reflect. Production and world population would also be set based upon your victory. You could use surrendered faction leaders as colony governors, each of which would have a certain set of benefits based upon their history. None of the technology is so advanced that it would preclude future advancement. SMAC civ was pretty much confined to Planet, so there is a lot that could be done -- manufacturing planets, bioengineering life to live in space, developing hyperdrive, Dyson's spheres or ringworlds, probability weapons, interplanetary psionic networks, triggering artificial novas as a weapon, turning gas giants into new suns, many enhancements to the existing techs, etc. You could build structures that enhance your colonies, but they would be massive, wonder-type buildings. For example, building a bulk matter transmitter, a space elevator, orbiting spacedocks, planetary university, etc. Convert the production window to build spacecraft (getting rid of the scrolling interface at the bottom, please). Earth could start out in a few different ways, depending upon difficulty level. At the easiest levels, Earth is just a burned-out husk. At higher levels, they become more and more of a threat. At the top level, you start with a high-tech, hostile society right next door -- whose only disadvantage is a lack of hyperdrive, and that won't last long. I'm sure the Firaxis team could come up with some truly bizarre alien species, beyond the usual "intelligent animals" types. Of course, it's all up to what Sid and Brian really want to do next. I would definitely buy a game like this, though, and drool expectantly until it came out.
Monolith	posted 03-31-99 10:03 AM ET If you buy Civ2 with the "Fantastic Worlds" add-on, you get a scenario which is a MOO clone under Civ2 rules. I've not played it, so I can't say if it works or not. It might work as a protoype for DerkekM's idea.
Milamber	posted 03-31-99 05:46 PM ET I have played the MOO scenario, and it is pretty cool. I also think this would be a good idea but it would be very difficult to get it to handle trancend victories, on huge planets, at the same time as quick military victories.
sandworm	posted 03-31-99 05:49 PM ET Cool/kewl!(couldn't resist)Tsurani handle, Milamber.
wkehrman	posted 03-31-99 06:24 PM ET Also have Fantastic Worlds and MOO II. The problem I have, or rather the thing I would like to see, is a true global exploration and conquest game. MOO II ALMOST has it, but it is just sort of one big battle then it is all over, you either build ailen management centers or kill everyone off. Blowing up the planet with the "Stellar Converter" was nifty a couple of times, but got old. But I digress. MOO II treated every world as though it had one great big population center. The MOO II scenario of CIV II:FW was basically CIV II with units, improvements, wonders and races modeled on the MOO II game. IMHO, nothing special beyond either CIV II or MOO II. (Both of which are decent games, don't get me wrong). It would be nice if it were necessary to establish "space"heads, worry about uprising and the like. In other words, expand the continent to continent invasion strategy to the planetary level. From what little tiny bit I know of programming (i.e., I took a BASIC class in college) it seems that this idea might be prohibitively large. The computer would have to remember thousands of units and hundreds of cities on dozens of worlds at minimum. I could see my computer going through several hard disks as the program beat it into submission with swap files. But don't let me stop you guys at Firaxis from solving the problem. I'll buy it.
Zoetrope	posted 04-01-99 05:59 AM ET The Universe project is attempting to build a (free, open source, cross-platform, extensible) game system along these lines. Early days, but lots of ideas, and additional contributors are very welcome. http://shell.rmi.net/~starkey/Universe/ Firaxis (and others) are welcome to make use of concepts they find useful. A recent issue raised in the Universe forums on SFF net is how to scale a game's mechanics as empires grow, so that micromanagement can be avoided. One suggestion is to _abstract_ activities to the larger scale for empires that require it; an interesting challenge then is how to integrate huge and tiny empires in the same game.
Masakari	posted 04-01-99 08:24 PM ET Emperor of the Fading Suns (by Segasoft) was a galactic empire building game that have what most of you guys are clamoring for. It had a galactic map with stars and planets and each planet was its own hex map. The concept was great, I'll give it that, but one a whole, it was too tedious - too much micromanagement and a limited tech tree.
DerekM	posted 04-02-99 09:31 AM ET The question is, how do you create a galactic conquest game that seems vast without making it seem unmanagable? If anyone could do it, it would probably be Firaxis. I've actually thought about this at times, but I haven't got the programming skills to do anything about it. My area of proficiency is in databases, GUI client/server like VB and data warehousing. Not exactly common game development tools.
Faithkills	posted 04-02-99 11:37 AM ET I was about to mention EFS to wkerhman as what he was looking for, but Masakari beat me to it. The thing is though, you think you want that depth, but when you get it, it becomes tedious. Moving every unit on EVERY planet gets old after a while. Too bad because it was an interesting game. Don't get me wrong, EFS is very playable, but it's replayablility is limited by the MM. Once you've played it enough to where you understand what's going on, you start resenting the MM. BUT with sufficient automation a game like this would be very interesting indeed. FK
DerekM	posted 04-02-99 11:48 AM ET Here is an interesting idea. What if every time you have a battle, the system calculates odds based on relative strength. If the odds are overwhelming, then the battle is handled automatically (and abstractly). If it isn't, then you get to run the battle. You should be able to set the odds you want, with a different setting for offensive engagements vs. defensive engagements (so that you can play out that last ditch defense at critical points, for example). You could also have an option to prompt you for automatic battle completion. To use an example from SMAC, whacking a non-combatant former with a needlejet would be automatic. Going up against an experienced plasma garrison in a base with sensor support with your impact rover would be played out in detail. What that would do is eliminate some of the tedium of mopping up mostly defeated enemies.
PrinceBimz	posted 04-03-99 12:11 AM ET Derek I like all of your idea, Sid Meier's Galactic Conquest. It even sounds like something that could come about. If Sid and Brian start on something like this I think we would finally have something better then MoO2. What do you say Sid?
wkehrman	posted 04-05-99 11:56 AM ET In response to Faithkills. I had thought about micromanagement, actually. In addition to computer wargaming, I also tabletop. I can envision a Galactic conquest game becoming unmanageable. The worst case scenario I can imagine is trying to play the ENTIRE Second World War using Advanced Squad Leader. Another idea is to decrease management details as the game goes on. Supposedly Imperium Galactica did this, unfortunately, I was unable to complete the game due to hardware/software conflicts (I had a really slow CD-ROM when I started it out, and now it won't load using my Creative Labs 24x). First, one must conquer a world, a la CIV/SMAC. This would, perhaps, include moonbases. Then there would be system-wide expansion using planetary governors. For example, you might turn Earth into an Agricultural Planet and Mars into an Industrial Planet, but allow the planet's governors (president, illustrious potentate, whatever) to decide how and where cities should be placed, what imporvements and where, etc. THEN, move to multi-system conquest/diplomacy and control. The game should still allow me to interfere with "autoproduction". I have found, in a variety of CIV-type games, that letting the AI control things for too long tends to produce less than ideal results, at least IMHO. Personally, I'd rather the governors just switch over to Stockpiling Energy than producing large quantities of artillery units when my expenses begin exceeding my income.
Faithkills	posted 04-05-99 12:12 PM ET DerekM, not a bad idea. Actually a fine idea if you could set the low and high probability cutoffs. No reason to fight a battle you can't win either. But the problem is the calculations. Many games don't figure the odds right. MOM was notorious for this. Certain types of units gota huge advantage in strategic, and you could win a fight that you couldn't possibly win in tactical. And sometimes you had units in a fight that was a walk in tactical (because they flew or whatever) that coudldn't win in strategic. SMAC does this right now, with the bad odds alerts, when you know you'll win, and you go ahaead and you do win. So it would have to be a very thourough algorithm, so that gamers would trust it, or else it would never be used. and so far there's never been a game I trusted for this. FK
Monolith	posted 04-05-99 12:35 PM ET One feature I'd love to see implemented in an interstellar game would be communications lag. Eons ago, I used to play the RPG "Traveller" in which ship moved a handfull of parsecs in a game week and messages could only travel on ships. It used to take nearly a year to get a message from the captial of the main human empire to the borders, and civil and military society just had to adapt. If you did this in a strategy game, you'd have a situation where the governers (planetary leaders) were alway "on" and could only be over-ridden after a delay. One would have to do a lot of guessing about where the enemy was going next, rather than just reacting to observed moves. It would be intensely challenging, in a vastly different way to semi-tactical games like SMAC.
DerekM	posted 04-05-99 01:28 PM ET I remember Traveller. It was a very cool game. The idea was that a feudal society would work because the communication and travel times were similar to Dark Age Europe. Barons, dukes and such were expected to operate with autonomy. As long as they didn't get out of line, they were OK, otherwise there would be a BatRon of Imperial battle cruisers jumping in-system. What I loved about the game was the ship design and Striker vehicle design rules. The problem with lag would be AI, though. Ask anybody who has played a strategy game whether they thought the AI was sufficient by itself. Wait while they stop laughing. Here is another idea. In SMAC, you have to divide income between psych, economy and research, while formers improve your bases. CTP apparently allows you to apply points to terrain upgrades. You could abstract things even more: Unify all energy, money, production, etc., into OUTPUT. Allow the player to devote certain percentages to support, planetary development, food, research, psych/luxury, tax, and construction. Support goes toward troop and ship support. Planetary development would enhance your planet's ability to provide any of the others (depending upon the type of planet, see below), food produces, well, food, similar for researh, psych quells riots, tax goes into a central fund for emergencies, diplomacy, etc. Construction is used to build ships, ground troops, and special projects that measurably increase system output. These special projects are basically anything that would require MASSIVE outlays of resources, such as space elevators, system-wide shipyards, ringworlds, planetary formation, space-tolerant biospheres, terraforming, etc. As for planetary types, Terran-type worlds would be better at producing food, asteroid belts would be great for construction, vacuum worlds provide better support (no concerns about pollution), etc. You could also designate worlds as a certain "type." Resort worlds increase tax income and add psych to nearby systems. Industrial worlds provide bonus to support and construction. Agricultural worlds produce food and support. Research colonies boost research. Dealing with ground combat would be very cool, but also hard to do. You would have to have either small maps for each planetary battlefield or very bland maps -- unless Firaxis wants to create a 5 CD extravaganza! That type of thing is usually only done for RPGs and adventure games, though...
WyldKarde	posted 04-05-99 01:30 PM ET For a good MOOII style space conquest game thingy, drop by www.crl.com/~malfador/index.html and check out Space Empires III. The sound and graphics are nothing to shout about, but the game's big, complex and very engrossing. It's turn based, supporting multiplayer hotseat and other modes through PBEM. It's also very customisable, supporting custom faction graphics and a completely customisable tech tree, including the design of new gadgets for the ships. SE3 is a shareware title, and until SMAC entered my life it was my most played game.