The State of SMAC 2

[Yitzi]

and loath the direction strategy games have taken since 2000.

Ok, now I'm curious, what direction is that?

[Dale]

and loath the direction strategy games have taken since 2000.

Ok, now I'm curious, what direction is that?

Well as far as I'm concerned, the two worst offenses strategy games have made since 2000 are simplification ("they" call it streamlining) and hybridisation (combining two genres into one).

The root cause of these changes in direction are purely about mass-market appeal and profits.

[Yitzi]

Well as far as I'm concerned, the two worst offenses strategy games have made since 2000 are simplification ("they" call it streamlining) and hybridisation (combining two genres into one).

What are some examples of each?

[Dale]

Well as far as I'm concerned, the two worst offenses strategy games have made since 2000 are simplification ("they" call it streamlining) and hybridisation (combining two genres into one).

What are some examples of each?

Simplification:
- Civ series (need I mention CivRev and CivWorld?)
- Civ4Col
- Age of Empires (now a monetised crappy game on FaceBook)
- WotA
- EWOM (partly rectified by the sequel, but still a hybridisation)
- Patrician series
- Anno series
- BlueByte games
- Many many many others.

Hybridisation:
This is so obvious I'm not listing examples.  Any game that advertises "combining strategy with RPG" or any of the other combinations.

[Earthmichael]

and loath the direction strategy games have taken since 2000.

Ok, now I'm curious, what direction is that?

Well as far as I'm concerned, the two worst offenses strategy games have made since 2000 are simplification ("they" call it streamlining) and hybridisation (combining two genres into one).

I called this "dumbing down" the 4x games.  I was shocked to see the Civ III had only maybe 1/3 of the complexity (at best) of SMAC/X, the immediate predecessor!  And it has not gotten better, but mostly dumber and dumber with each new product/release.  None of them have even a fraction of the strategic complexity of SMAC. 

So I was hoping a new game would emerge that was not dumbed down.  Maybe it has a normal (dumb) mode for mass appeal, and then an expert mode where the strategy of the game comes alive!

[ete]

That sounds very ambitious, and a SMAClike game based on an engine capable of doing that with community input (ideally plenty of values tweakable by non-programmers to help you make it balanced) and reasonable multiplayer support (synchronous turns would be _amazing_) would be truly spectacular.

[Dale]

and loath the direction strategy games have taken since 2000.

Ok, now I'm curious, what direction is that?

Well as far as I'm concerned, the two worst offenses strategy games have made since 2000 are simplification ("they" call it streamlining) and hybridisation (combining two genres into one).

I called this "dumbing down" the 4x games.  I was shocked to see the Civ III had only maybe 1/3 of the complexity (at best) of SMAC/X, the immediate predecessor!  And it has not gotten better, but mostly dumber and dumber with each new product/release.  None of them have even a fraction of the strategic complexity of SMAC. 

So I was hoping a new game would emerge that was not dumbed down.  Maybe it has a normal (dumb) mode for mass appeal, and then an expert mode where the strategy of the game comes alive!

I consider CtP2 the last of the Great Strategy Games.  The 90's were a fantastic time to be a strategy player.

After seeing the design for Civ5 shaping up, I actually did argue for a "dumb mass-market" mode and a "grognard" mode.   

Guess where THAT got me!

[Dale]

That sounds very ambitious, and a SMAClike game based on an engine capable of doing that with community input (ideally plenty of values tweakable by non-programmers to help you make it balanced) and reasonable multiplayer support (synchronous turns would be _amazing_) would be truly spectacular.

Firstly, I will say, I'm a hardcore modder.  Please don't ask if any game I make will be moddable again. 

The engine I'm making will support a very complex MP setup.  I've written a blog post about it actually, check it here.

The most relevant part is this:

We are entering the age of true Multi Player – Multi Device!

And this is one thing that BRR Games upcoming A New World will feature.  Players will be able to start a game on one device, save it to the cloud, and then continue their game on another device.  So start your game on your Mac at home, continue playing on your tablet on the train, then during your lunch hour play some more of your game at work on your PC: true multi device playing.  But not only that, A New World will feature a multi player system whereby it doesn’t matter what devices your opponents are playing on anymore.  In one game you could be playing on your Mac, against other players on PC, tablets or any other device that the game is published to.  Combine that with the ability to move to different devices during the same game, and you have one extremely powerful system.  All that is required, is one code base published to multiple devices.  Each and every player can play on any device (even changing device mid game), against many other players on many other devices (also able to change devices mid game).

A New World could quite possibly be the first game that allows true Multi Player – Multi Device play.  The complete hybrid gaming system!

I do recommend reading the whole blog post though, as some of the bits above don't really make sense outside the scope of the whole post.

[Yitzi]

Simplification:
- Civ series (need I mention CivRev and CivWorld?)
- Civ4Col
- Age of Empires (now a monetised crappy game on FaceBook)
- WotA
- EWOM (partly rectified by the sequel, but still a hybridisation)
- Patrician series
- Anno series
- BlueByte games
- Many many many others.

I'm looking more for a sense of what features were simplified.

Hybridisation:
This is so obvious I'm not listing examples.  Any game that advertises "combining strategy with RPG" or any of the other combinations.

Ok, that I get, but why is it bad?  It shouldn't replace "pure" game types, but such games can be good in their own right.

I called this "dumbing down" the 4x games.  I was shocked to see the Civ III had only maybe 1/3 of the complexity (at best) of SMAC/X, the immediate predecessor!  And it has not gotten better, but mostly dumber and dumber with each new product/release.  None of them have even a fraction of the strategic complexity of SMAC. 

I think that Civ4 actually has more strategic complexity when it comes to improving squares; in SMAC, you generally want forests (if you're expanding fast and your formers don't have time for more) or boreholes (when you have more formers) or crawling nutrients (later in the game); Civ4 has a lot more options.  Certainly Civ4 seems better than Civ3.

[ete]

Firstly, I will say, I'm a hardcore modder.  Please don't ask if any game I make will be moddable again. 

Glad to hear it, did not get something clear before :p.

And I took a look around your site out of interest earlier, which did incidentally include reading through all of that blog post. Multi device is very cool indeed. But, my main curiosity was whether you have any intention to make synchronous turns possible in the engine, since that cuts down time taken for a game immensely (especially for games with a moderate number of players).

[Dale]

Simplification:
- Civ series (need I mention CivRev and CivWorld?)
- Civ4Col
- Age of Empires (now a monetised crappy game on FaceBook)
- WotA
- EWOM (partly rectified by the sequel, but still a hybridisation)
- Patrician series
- Anno series
- BlueByte games
- Many many many others.

I'm looking more for a sense of what features were simplified.

Well there's different features in different games, so you can't really come up with a "list".  But let's look just at Civ5.

- Lack of strategic planning (the "Panzer General" concepts make it a tactical game).
- Map, a lot smaller and "simpler" than they used to be.
- Diplomacy (enough said).
- Difficulty levels (enough said).
- Economics and trade.
- etc etc

Hybridisation:
This is so obvious I'm not listing examples.  Any game that advertises "combining strategy with RPG" or any of the other combinations.

Ok, that I get, but why is it bad?  It shouldn't replace "pure" game types, but such games can be good in their own right.

It's bad because they HAVE replaced the pure game type.  Also, just simply by the nature of combining genres (and why publishers think the more genres blended the better, I have no idea) it waters down the original genres.  So instead of a deep strategy game, or a deep rpg game, you get an average hybrid of the two.

I called this "dumbing down" the 4x games.  I was shocked to see the Civ III had only maybe 1/3 of the complexity (at best) of SMAC/X, the immediate predecessor!  And it has not gotten better, but mostly dumber and dumber with each new product/release.  None of them have even a fraction of the strategic complexity of SMAC. 

I think that Civ4 actually has more strategic complexity when it comes to improving squares; in SMAC, you generally want forests (if you're expanding fast and your formers don't have time for more) or boreholes (when you have more formers) or crawling nutrients (later in the game); Civ4 has a lot more options.  Certainly Civ4 seems better than Civ3.

Yes, Civ4 has "some" parts of it that have strategic depth.  But there are also chunks of Civ4 that LACK strategic depth.  For instance, religions.  The near complete removal of anything the player may deem "negative" is a massive simplification too.  No negative events.  No negative diplomatic responses.  And this removal creates brand new problems of its own.

[Dale]

Firstly, I will say, I'm a hardcore modder.  Please don't ask if any game I make will be moddable again. 

Glad to hear it, did not get something clear before :p.

And I took a look around your site out of interest earlier, which did incidentally include reading through all of that blog post. Multi device is very cool indeed. But, my main curiosity was whether you have any intention to make synchronous turns possible in the engine, since that cuts down time taken for a game immensely (especially for games with a moderate number of players).

I doubt synchronous turns for MP will make it into A New World, just simply because it is actually very difficult to do right.  Also, you have to consider that synchronous turns (if you apply how Civ/SMAC processes  a player's turn) creates a situation like RTS's where the fastest clicks win.  Or even worse, the double-attack!  These were problems highlighted in Civ4, and without proper methods in place to address these issues, it's pointless putting it in.

However in saying that, A New World is being made such that you can be single player "online" or "offline".  If "online" then you are connected to the MP servers, and if you have a game and your turn comes up you get notified and can switch across to it.  Once you finish your turn, switch back to your single player game, or any of the other MP games you may have going.  Think of it like multiple windows, where you alt-tab to the relevant window and can alt-tab to others.

[ete]

I doubt synchronous turns for MP will make it into A New World, just simply because it is actually very difficult to do right.  Also, you have to consider that synchronous turns (if you apply how Civ/SMAC processes  a player's turn) creates a situation like RTS's where the fastest clicks win.  Or even worse, the double-attack!  These were problems highlighted in Civ4, and without proper methods in place to address these issues, it's pointless putting it in.

Understandable, I see how it's a particularly complex feature both in design and implementation. One possible way of removing many issues (including the fastest click wins thing) would be having a mode to process turns differently (each player gives units movement/movement with auto-engage orders for a turn, and once all orders are locked moves are made. ideally apply this for only units capable of interacting with another player's units, so internally it would feel the same), though that does bring up separate issues like how to deal with various niche abilities and changes engagement significantly. Probably worth it for players because speed of play change is massive, but still complex to implement so fair enough if you're not building with that in mind.

However in saying that, A New World is being made such that you can be single player "online" or "offline".  If "online" then you are connected to the MP servers, and if you have a game and your turn comes up you get notified and can switch across to it.  Once you finish your turn, switch back to your single player game, or any of the other MP games you may have going.  Think of it like multiple windows, where you alt-tab to the relevant window and can alt-tab to others.

Having good ways of handling many games at once like that would help a lot with the slowness of MP games.

[Green1]

Does that answer your questions?

* apologies for spelling etc. Posting this from my phone.

Yes, it does. Do not worry about the spelling. I think smartphones are user hostile when it comes to posting.

I have one more question.

One of the weaknesses in Civ - and SMAX - I believe is the handling of aerospace and orbital "units"/ "improvements". I read WAY too much spacewar.com, nasaspaceflight.com, and watch a lot of near future war stuff than is probably healthy for me. I still do not think any 4 x game out there handles it quite right. I mean.. come on.... sattelites just "reveal" world map? what about special sattelites that reveal hard to find resources? What about spy sattelites that destroy fog of war on certain regions? Treaties where you can build space labs to give research bonuses? The sky, to forgive the pun, is the limit!

Think a true 3D sytem like what you are working on could handle orbital units? What about earth - moon conflicts ala The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Not saying all genres would need this capability, but near future and far future mods really hurt from not having a good engine for this. Not to mention the laughable "land on moon" then "land on Alpha Centauri" with no mention of all the cool gameplay you could have in between.

Something with that flexibility would be something I do not think any 4x has ever achieved before. Add that with the true 3D and alterable map, this would be grounbreaking stuff.

[Dale]

I doubt synchronous turns for MP will make it into A New World, just simply because it is actually very difficult to do right.  Also, you have to consider that synchronous turns (if you apply how Civ/SMAC processes  a player's turn) creates a situation like RTS's where the fastest clicks win.  Or even worse, the double-attack!  These were problems highlighted in Civ4, and without proper methods in place to address these issues, it's pointless putting it in.

Understandable, I see how it's a particularly complex feature both in design and implementation. One possible way of removing many issues (including the fastest click wins thing) would be having a mode to process turns differently (each player gives units movement/movement with auto-engage orders for a turn, and once all orders are locked moves are made. ideally apply this for only units capable of interacting with another player's units, so internally it would feel the same), though that does bring up separate issues like how to deal with various niche abilities and changes engagement significantly. Probably worth it for players because speed of play change is massive, but still complex to implement so fair enough if you're not building with that in mind.

It's not going to be an issue in A New World, hence why it's not important to get in.  But for other game ideas it will be important.  So at this stage it's penciled as a stage 2 engine update.