RT4X - understanding what it means

This kind of argument is how you guys sold me the game, and this kind of argument is why I was crushingly disappointed when I played it. I'm sorry Brad, but this game does not combine "4X depth" with anything. It combines a few very light 4X elements into a classical RTS. It may theoretically be possible to win by culture, but I've never seen any evidence that it's a useful avenue to victory. Gameplay here is "research some techs, build a big wad of ships, and throw it at your opponent's big wad of ships." That's RTS gameplay, not 4X gameplay. There's no empire building here to speak of, only combat.

I'll grant you that the pace is different, but since the mechanics are so simple the "strategy" involved is quite limited. I love Gal Civ 2, adore the hell out of it, and comparing something as shallow as Sins to a real 4X like that is... inadvertent distortion at best.

There's a good framework here, I'm still hoping that future patches or mods may add the depth and diversity of gameplay that is sorely lacking in the current version. To that end, and in the interest of not merely responding to Brad's well-thought-out post with negativity, here's what I'd have to see to agree that the game has "4X depth."

- The diplomacy system would have to be overhauled, right now I don't play with it at all as a result of the sheer volume of nonsenslical, strategy-breaking AI demands. Demands need to be context sensitive based on the current situation, so that you don't have allies who demand you open up another front in a war you're both losing or the like. Absent a diplo system, the game is at best 3X.

- The AI needs to be markedly improved. Part of the reason I think I don't see all this depth Brad is talking about is that the AI never gives me a reason to do anything but build ships. The influence mechanic seems interesting, but I've never seen it matter in 45 hours of playing the game single player.

- Planet development, and empire building in general, could use some more depth. As it stands, I build a few things around a planet, upgrade its infrastructure, and never look at it again.

- More needs to be done to make one game different from another. There are so few options in building your empire, and its so easy to pursue all the techs in a long game, that each game seems the same as the last. This is the biggest problem with the game, IMO, and the thing that most distinguishes it from "real" 4X games I've played. Branches in tech trees, better differentiation of the races, the aforementioned greater pool of empire building options, any of this would help.

I don't know that it's reasonable to ever expect to see any of that, but there it is. Maybe in a mod, anyway...

Just wanted to chime in for the first time, as this primary topic is the one that has me playing this game in the first place.

I'm terrible at RTS games...just not quick enough at managing the stuff I guess. It's not twitch reactions that get me, because I can handle that in FPS and action games. However, my friends and I were big fans of the old MOO games and we've been dying to play a multiplayer MOO since the first one.

Only problem was, those games were never realistically playable for us due to the time involved. We spent hours trying multiplayer MOO2 on a couple of occasions only to give up after getting the equivalent of 15 single player minutes into the game after being at it 3 hours.

Sins has filled that desire for us. It has the feel of MOO, but actually moves along at a reasonable pace without requiring the ability to keep up with the frantic pace of most RTS games.

I don't understand why people are demanding more of one style or the other, or arguing that this game isn't a compromise between the two. It's FAR slower and easier to manage than your typical RTS game with the focus on overall strategy, not granular tactics. At the same time, it's simplified enough to be playable in RT while being able to keep up with all the required tasks. If you would rather it have more depth, ie more races, techs, ship building, etc... there are plenty of standard 4X games out there for you. If you want faster paced tactical combat, there are plenty of RTS games out there. Why bash this game for doing exactly what it claimed to do?


I'm not saying the debating about balancing issues and such should not be had, because that's what makes the game better. But saying this game doesn't deliver on it's stated goal of compromising between the two genres doesn't make sense to me. The fact that most people are complaining that it doesn't lean enough towards one side or the other only seems to prove that it's done exactly as it claimed.

SoaSE a pretty good game, with canny borrowing plus some genuine innovations making a unique feel. I've had fun with it. I also have considerable respect for you personally from the OS/2 days, not least because of how you adapted and kept going.

"RT4X" though is mostly a marketing label[1], like RTS and 4X were before it. Appealing to the widest possible customer base you think you can actually please with the product is an excellent business plan, but don't invest too much in building up the tag "RT4X".

If you do succeed in "creating a new hybrid genre" on the shelves that just means the uniqueness of SoaSE is lost in a sea of clones, imitators and descendants... made by other developers and published by other publishers and all eating your picnic lunch.

[1] At least, it becomes a marketing label rather than a design vision once it moves from the meeting room to the outside of a product box and other public spaces. I don't mean to suggest it was always a marketing label - it's clear that the label was an important design focus earlier in the game's production.

Real time is not an excuse for a lack of depth and diversity in game play. Look at Paradox's Europa Universalis series, for example. The pace of this game is more than slow enough to accomodate a greater variety of game play options. I spend half my time just watching the battles (which look great, I should add). Some of that time, anyway, could easily be spent on other game elements were they present in the design. For pity's sake, you can pause and issue orders in this game, there's no real way for it to be too complex to manage since you don't even have to play it in real time.

Thank you frogboy for a wonderful post.

I think alot of people complain that it doesn't have the qualities of a 4x game because everyone is thrown into one star system and expected to build an empire. Its just not going to happen. If you play a big enough map then yes you get all those elements (but it will also take longer to play).

I'm sure someone could probably win a game by sitting around and scratching their balls until the opponent got bored and left but in reality, this isn't a very effective way to play. Not that I don't appreciate culture being a feature (I rather like what it adds to the game) but only against the most inept (or already defeated) opponents are you actually going to win a game solely by taking advantage of this. And beyond that, what other victory conditions are there? Everyone clicking the equivalent of the 'ally with player X' button?

In any case, I enjoy the hell out of this game and I do appreciate the added scale but I think it's a little hard to argue that it doesn't play like a conventional RTS. Yes, I exert a little more effort on managing resource income (although, I wouldn't argue that I do much more of this than in, say, Age of Empires) but when you get right down to it, the vast majority of my time is still spent moving ships around, researching upgrades, and trying to destroy the other guy in real time.

Vinraith-

While there are certainly less things going on and features than Gal Civ 2, the real strategy here is how you choose to take actions. Which tech is best to research now? Which AI should you ally with or pick on? Is it best to spend money on a bounty or a military? Where should you send your fleet? Should you build defense in a certain location?

The questions above are present in other RTSes to some degree, but many RTSes devolve into a click-fest or are single-minded in the "best" strategy to pursue a win. Sins gives you time to think through strategies rather than just running the same old option every time or trying to beat the computer at micro-management. You could boil Gal Civ down to a colony management game where you either destroy, ally, or overtake the enemy. There are many paths to do this, but that's true of Sins as well.

Gal Civ 2 is fun. I really like it for a turn-based strategy game. But it takes *forever* to play, even on a small map. Sins takes the strategy elements of Gal Civ, strips out features that would be too time consuming or micro-oriented, and makes a playable, epic game that embodies 4x, but just does it real-time.

What would Sins need to meet your expectations? I'm curious.

There's a list in my first post in this thread. I've also addressed the idea that a real time game can't support more depth than this in my previous post.

I respectfully disagree. Let's take GalCiv 2 for example, since it was brought up already.

The combat there doesn't really have much depth, diplomacy is rather heavily influenced by the military. Colony management is pretty good, and one of its key points is the ability to create your own ship designs.

In GalCiv 2, all of these tasks are completely separate so that you're only doing one thing at any given time, while everything else is essentially on 'pause'.

Now let's try to compare that with Sins:

In Sins, everything happens at the same time. There's no splitting tasks. If someone attacks you in GC2, you have your combat turn where it's resolved, then you go back to what you were doing, say designing a new ship. In Sins, there's no such thing. You can't pause combat to spend half an hour tweaking a ship to your own perfection, nor can you spend half an hour while someone's busy invading your territory negotiating a technology trade with some other empire.

It just doesn't work that way. The very nature of Sins being completely realtime (rather than half/half, like Sword of the Stars attempted) simply makes it impossible to incorporate some traditional turn-based 'depth' into its gameplay. I'm not saying Diplomacy in Sins can't be improved any more, but the expectation of having a system as robust as turn-based games like Civ, GC2, etc is unrealistic and unfair.

So, while you may be correct in your analysis that Sins doesn't reach the depth of turn-based games (and really, it doesn't claim to), you don't take into account that it's similarly distant from traditional RTS games of the Starcraft, Warcraft, C&C kind. There've been a few games that tried to break from the mold on either side, but none have resulted in a blending as convenient as Sins'.

You can do that, but I've already given examples of real time games with massively more depth than Sins, so there's really nowhere for you to go with this argument.

I don't expect this game to have the depth of a Gal Civ 2, let's get that strawman out of the way right now, but I definitely expect it to have a lot more depth that it's presently got if it's going to claim to be a 4X hybrid. I've given specific, concrete examples of changes that could be made within the real time format as it presently exists that would address my concerns, what else is there to do?

No, you've given *one* example, and a game that I admittedly haven't played and therefore can't comment on.

Regardless, it's far from effectively countering the point I made, especially since you are the one who brought up the "real" GC2 vs "shallow" Sins.

I feel like I got what I paid for when I fire up Sins every night. The level of depth is pretty good for an RTS port of a 4X game, considering the AI's intelligence from at least a military standpoint. The diplomacy section is a good bit simpler than I hoped, and the tech tree is a bit short if you're playing on a huge map; but I was expecting some sacrifices being made to allow for smoother real time gameplay.

All in all, I'm extremely impressed with what you guys have accomplished, and I look forward to future updates and even the next installment to the series.

Brad said "Sins of a Solar Empire is a game that combines 4X depth" I pointed out that "4X depth" was something that Gal Civ 2 has and Sins lacks IMO. I did not at any time claim that Sins could achieve the depth of Gal Civ 2 in a real time format, and indeed I gave specific examples of what I feel would be reasonable changes to properly fit the "RT4X" label as a compromise between the two. If you feel that those are unreasonable, kindly address them rather than portraying my position as something it's not. I'm trying very hard to be constructive, here.

I don't agree with you about EU.  EU simply substitutes tactical battles with diplomacy features. It's a trade off.  If EU let me manage formations in battles, then maybe you'd have a case. But it doesn't. 

I don't accept your premise that EU has more depth because you are making an arbitrary definition of what constitutes depth.  In Sins, scouting out what other players are doing, evaluating what technologies they've researched, what types of fleets they are building and choosing units to counter and such are a major part of its depth.

I really like Europea Universalis.  But to say it has more depth than Sins of a Solar Empire is not something I can remotely agree with.  The fact that you admit that you don't see what culture does in Sins I think makes the case that you haven't fully explored Sins or more to the point, have decided that Sins doesn't have the kind of depth you choose to have.

There are plenty of people out there that say Galactic Civilizations isn't a "real 4X" simply because it doesn't have the "depth" of Space Empires V.  But that doesn't make what they say true objectively. 

Sins of a Solar Empire blends the two together.  Stardock has made RTS's like The Corporate Machine that have a lot going on in them as well. But they don't involve any sort of seamless tactical battle system.  The Corporate Machine and Europa Unversalis are pretty similar in terms of game mechanics. But they're not "deeper" games IMO than Sins.

Unfortunately, I'd have to totally agree with Vinraith. I'd say that as a single player game Frogboys comments ring true. You can play the game in a 4x fashion against purely AI. However, in MP this game fails miserably at being anything but a rushfest. Forget eXplore, on maps designed for 3v3, 2v2 etc you know exactly where the enemy homeworld is. Forget eXpand, if you are playing a team game your Homeworld will be attacked around minute 6 of the game by a Solvo and/or a dozen frigates with cheapo tactics like embargo. Usually, before your first astroid is captured. Forget eXploit, in team MP doing anything except spamming ships is sure death. Build eco labs, do economy build first will mean sure death. I know a lot of people get away with it, but that is really due to the game being new and a lot of new players that are not agressive. Ok, i'll give frogboy eXterminate. The rush does that well, most the 3v3, 2v2 games i have played (against decent players) are over by 12 minutes.

I've played a ton of RTS games and this game supports the rush stronger than any other game i've played:

1. player placement on maps does not bunch allies near each other so they can support each other if rushed
2. homeworlds have no free/cheap defenses that are effective.
3. enemy homeworlds are easily reached, usually no more than 3 jumps away. ships can move through neutral territory with no damage or effect by the neutral ships defending the space
4. tech paths/capital ship effects give a few races a great early game rush advantage (ie, assailant spam, savo embargo etc.)

There are simply no effective early game defenses for homeworlds (maybe hangers, but they are very expensive to make and must be researched) or counters to rushing. The best defense a homeworld has is the time it takes to burn it down but that is of no matter once you kill the eco of the player by destroying his mines/embargo his capital/destroying his research stations etc.

I'm not sure who Frogboy is playing but it sure isn't anyone organzined. I'd say 90% of the games I play are over before culture could spread down one jumppath.....

Frogboy,

Good point about lack of tactical battles in EU, I retract the point. EU still has a greater empire-building depth, but I'll grant that that's not the only kind of depth a game can have. That does not change the fact that there's a lot of time where I don't need to be doing anything in Sins that could be given over to more options and greater empire building diversity, however. Any comment on my proposed changes in the first post, those are the only things I've said in this thread that I really care about anyway.

Yes, people underestimate the power of culture. It can completely cripple the enemy.

Amending my post a little... I thought you were listing culture as a win condition but on the second read, it looks like you were listing it as more of a tool which, I agree, is an interesting addition to the mix.

Though, I still feel that this is just a semantics game.

How easy is it to spot people that are going the spamming route, would you say? Spamming on-line does seem to be a typical route of exploiting, but how easy that is to counter and recognize is debatable. I suppose it depends on how much you utilize scouts and make a point of checking up on your enemies.

I can understand that defense shouldn't be too strong in this game, as it's already a slower game and making it more defensive would only slow the pace down more.

Looking at the points Vinraith brought up originally about why it's not a true 4X or what would make it more that way:

Diplomacy will be getting an overhaul in 1.1, so hopefully that addresses that point, even though that will take some time for us to see.

The AI will continue to be worked on in subsequent patches, so that should help there (I've played a lot of 4X games, though, with shoddy AI, so I'm not sure that is a 4X criteria or not).

Planet interaction is probably intentionally limited so you don't have to do as much micro on it as Gal Civ 2, but maybe that's an area that would help. I also assume it's meant to be more of a outer space game than a planet game, which is why there are so many space structures instead of planet ones.

And finally I think the different map types, plus being able to create your own maps, combined with the new speed settings for economy, research, etc. and the variety of mods out there make for quite a few different experiences in making games feel/play differently. I will say Gal Civ 2 excels in options on victory conditions (culture, research, military, diplomacy, and now Ascension), but maybe over time this will also improve.

I'd have to say, while there's been different opinions here, I need to congratulate everyone on keeping the tone pretty cordial. Keep up the good discussion.

Well, Some of the techs, like metal mining, a small 30% bonus is broken into 6 pieces. When something that would be 1 or 2 techs in any other RTS is merely broken into a lot of smaller pieces with the same overall effect, it doesn't really feel like it adds depth.



Culture in this game is treated fundamentally the same as just destroying a planet, only it takes many many times longer and is fairly easily stopped, as far as I can tell. If the enemy has two capital ships in a system, I've had culture pushing on it, and fired the super culture thing at it, and it was completely unaffected, it did not budge from the maximum.



How this game does it is equivalent to if you played a game of say, Starcraft on the slowest possible setting. Yes, it's no longer about how fast you can click things, but there's a lot less for the player to do, so he ends up spending a lot of idle time waiting. Playing against the AI in this game, I am always on at least the 2x multiple, sometimes the 4x, and one game I played entirely on 8x. I'm not trying to brag about skills, here, just pointing out that this game doesn't always have a lot to do if you're not interested in extreme micromanagement.

Lol @culture in MP. It's a secondary aspect, on very large games, gives you a 10% economy bonus and some time before the enemy can colonize in your empire to build ships directly on your doorstep. It doesn't win games vs players of equal skill.

If you want to depth of a 4x game you can find in single player, try out some mods. MP cannot be that, since human players are not predictable like the AI or better they are. Human players will do their best to find the most efficient path to victory.

About games lasting 15 minutes. Change the map. Don't expect a 2vs2 in a 16-18 planet map to last 3 hours, if the homeworlds are 2 jumps away from each other. If you still lose on 25 planet maps in 10 minutes then work on your defensive tactics. Repair platforms help alot. Choosing the right capital also matters, it's the first strategic choice to make and it's very important. Scout ahead so you know a few minutes before an attack is coming. Have your teammate either help you or attack one of the enemies.

To the devs, please don't stop working on sins. Don't go commercial thinking that you sold lots of copies and want to do that again with a new game rather than supporting sins which might give you a few more sales at best. That will hurt long-term business, as it hurts your reputation. Your good reputation made you sell this game in the first place. Work on real balance patches (like siege frigates are annoying in single player because the ai uses them 2 possible fixes : 10 seconds fix, nerf the ship. 8 hours fix, change and improve the AI, you did the 10 seconds one), find those crash bugs even if it takes time (and don't say there are no crashes, you have witnessed them), they are game-breaking. If your QA team is busy (if it exists), ask expert players if giving lrms another 30% range and making credits more powerful is a good idea. They would all tell you it isn't. Or ask them, what is more important exploit/crash fixes or adding new shiny ships/making a demo (what for, this game has no copy protection so who would play a demo for single player anyway ???).

This makes sense, though even with GalCiv 2, it seemed to me that AI "diplomacy" involved merely tributes/extortions based on relative military strength and threat of war. I do miss being able to bribe AI with technology, which leads me to the next point.



I see a different angle to this problem -- the need to build ships would be somewhat mitigated if the effects of research were more obvious in tactical battles as they were in GalCiv 2. It just seems that even with a deliberate choice to focus on research as much as possible, the technology advantage in mid- to late-game is non-obvious, and that's assuming the researching faction survives the initial rush in the first place. In other words, it's much harder for researchers to survive the rush than for rushers to catch up on research. This might be more realistic (e.g., Germany's last batch of jet-powered fighters were overrun by a greater number of U.S. propeller fighters), but I think long time players of 4X have come to expect sacrifices made with choosing a research path yielding nothing less than 1 or 2 technical marvels/pride of the galaxy type ships being able to wipe out an entire fleet on its own, as was the case in GalCiv 2 (how I miss being able to concur the galaxy with just 3 ships). That path is less obvious in SoaSE. It is a bit annoying/deflating to have my fleet of 5 mixed types maxed-out cap ships jump into the pirate colony and have their asses handed to them by 80 - 120 presumably early tech pirate ships.

In short, I think the typical quantity vs. quality dilemma long present in 4X games is largely absent in SoaSE. This is a game more about counters.



What would be the purpose of this other than to produce awesome ships?



Besides badder ships, what other purpose do those features serve? Not that I disagree, but perhaps I just lack imagination.

Emore,

I agree with your assessment of my first two points. As to the purpose of the second two, I'd like to see greater "empire building" depth, and those points would be necessary for that IMO. This would, of necessity, involve adding some non-combat victory conditions. Otherwise you're right, if the whole game is just about flinging big groups of ships at big groups of other ships (as it is now) there's no point in more empire building depth.

I disagree that RTS's somehow cannot be "deep" games. If we define depth to be along the lines of how many variations of play are available, then many well known RTS are deep games (while also being very fast paced and requiring a high APM). I think if IronClad wants to make sins have more variations in play and be more about empire building they would need to:

1. Remove rush tactics (cant build an empire when someone's just marza'd your asteroid :))
2. Buff culture (It is very rarely used in any serious fight).
3. Add strong defences (*cough* starbase *cough*)
4. Add non kill-everyone-else victory conditions, like transcendence or something.
5. BALANCE the game (atm... play TEC, go eco... gg)

These changes (except for 2. and 5.) would pretty much be an expansion. Also, these changes would have to be done as to not increase the time taken to play a game by any significant degree.

I will begin by saying that I too, like some who have already posted, have been a fan of MOO2. To me, MOO2 is the gold standard to which I will always compare 4X games.

That said, I find it a treat to see the space battles played out in real time, smoothly, as compared to the one-ship-at-a-time tactical combat resolution present in MOO2.

In addition to the real-time tactical combat, the "strategic" portion of the game is played out in real time as well. This does not bother me; the structure and research development times are long enough (or can be modded to be long enough) to where "twitching" between battles and development screens is not an issue. One should be able to effectively switch between tactical and strategic thinking given the pacing of the game, without too much trouble.

I do see what I consider to be key elements of the MOO2 style of 4X present with less weight than I would like. Specifically, in the area's of tech, race, planet development and ship design.

With respect to technology, I believe that more is better, AND branches are key. Choosing to develop one area at the expense of another I think, has always been an important 4X concept. It appears relatively easy to eventually develop every technology allowable for each race, thus making the end game fairly similar between games.

The ability to customize a race, which may affect your ability to research, fight or develop would be nice as well.

I would definately like to see more differentiation in the planets and their development. I would like to build specific structures that enhance the planet or shipbuilding around that planet, perhaps see some unique or mutually exclusive choices so that not every planet is cookie cutter.

Finally, within the limitations of fixed models for the 3D combat, some ability to customize ship classes with the game itself would be great... Add or remove special abilites, increase or decrease fire rates, etc. Generally give and take options that would not affect the graphics of combat, but would at least introduce some amount of mystery, when faced with a class of ship... Am I going to get hit with missles, or beams; does that ship have a super shield or not...

(My note on Fleet AI: While nice to be able to micro-manage the fleet and it's targets; if I don't want to, the AI NEEDS to be more intelligent in focusing firepower, in selecting targets. It's seems annoying that I have to manually send my capital ships in first to draw fire, before I send in the frigates and cruisers. Or, that I have to select my targets to make optimal use of my fleet; whereas the AI seems to select the closest target on my behalf. Perhaps a "fleet posture" at a minimum, or a per ship "role" at best.)

All-in-all, I am pleased with both the game and the community mods I've downloaded and played. Compared to MOO2, I consider it a 200% improvement in graphics and interface. The RTS components are a welcome addition to the genre. The 4X, however, only rates up to 85% of what I enjoyed in MOO2.