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Alpha Centauri

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Re: Alpha Centauri

#61

Post by Quarrelsome »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #40
Quarrelsome wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find that Lal quote quite ironic, given how the free flow of information has backfired somewhat in the modern world by devaluing journalism to the cost of nothing. This has resulted in misinformation proliferating online and the general population perhaps becoming even less informed than previous generations.

I’d argue that misinformation is a type of information control too. If you can’t stop information from spreading you can simply drown it in nonsense for the same effect.

I think some of the most harmful misinformation is organic in nature, it might be fuelled by propaganda but normal people are entirely willing to seek out and believe in information that supports their prejudices or opinions, irrespective of its truth.

As the good Prokhor put it:

> Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist.

Re: Alpha Centauri

#62

Post by colkassad »

colechristensen wrote: post #35

One of the best parts of SMAC was the game manual that came with the physical copy, sometimes I wonder if it's still hiding in a junk box somewhere in my parent's house. It wasn't only the expected kinds of controls documentation but mixed with game lore was real science. >If Alpha Centauri inspires a few young scientists and astronauts; if it convinces a few more citizens to write to their congressmen and work to re…

One of those youtubers that goes to old stores (Retail Archaeology or something like that) came across a boxed version of Alpha Centauri at a thrift store or something and bought it because he thought it looked cool. I couldn't believe his luck. I would really like to have that manual again. If I remember correctly, it was more than just a manual...it had a lot of backstory and whatnot.

Re: Alpha Centauri

#63

Post by bigstrat2003 »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #15

my favourite game of all time. However without the "plot" and the voice acting I wouldn't rate it anywhere near as highly. The "meat" of the plot was the audio snippets that would pop up whenever you researched a tech, built a facility for the first time or finished a secret project. Most of them were quite fascinating and had a haunting beauty to them [0]. The way that Chairman Yang half-laughs when discussing the g…

I don't personally think that the 4X genre needs to get away from the formula it has now. I keep buying, and enjoying, those games because I like the formula. I don't particularly agree, for example, that the late game is uninteresting in most 4X games. It's not as challenging, certainly, but it's great fun to watch the earlier strategic choices pay off as I come in for a victory landing.

I think it's fine if people don't like what 4X games are like currently, but I don't think that doing something different should be at the expense of those who do like what exists. One of my great frustrations with Civ VII was that they were attempting to solve a problem I don't agree the game had (boring late game), using methods that took away what I did enjoy about the game (building up a civ over time).

Re: Alpha Centauri

#64

Post by somat »

colechristensen wrote: post #35

One of the best parts of SMAC was the game manual that came with the physical copy, sometimes I wonder if it's still hiding in a junk box somewhere in my parent's house. It wasn't only the expected kinds of controls documentation but mixed with game lore was real science. >If Alpha Centauri inspires a few young scientists and astronauts; if it convinces a few more citizens to write to their congressmen and work to re…

The alpha centari manual was a beast, a regular novel at ~250 pages.

Your comment stirred a memory in the back of my head and I jumped up to check, and I still have it! I found it on my book shelf!

Baldurs gate 2 had a similarly impressive manual, if I remember correctly, it was spiral bound so it would lay flat and had tabbed sections. can't find it however.

Re: Alpha Centauri

#65

Post by Apocryphon »

colkassad wrote: post #62
colechristensen wrote: post #35

One of the best parts of SMAC was the game manual that came with the physical copy, sometimes I wonder if it's still hiding in a junk box somewhere in my parent's house. It wasn't only the expected kinds of controls documentation but mixed with game lore was real science. >If Alpha Centauri inspires a few young scientists and astronauts; if it convinces a few more citizens to write to their congressmen and work to re…

One of those youtubers that goes to old stores (Retail Archaeology or something like that) came across a boxed version of Alpha Centauri at a thrift store or something and bought it because he thought it looked cool. I couldn't believe his luck. I would really like to have that manual again. If I remember correctly, it was more than just a manual...it had a lot of backstory and whatnot.

Here you go:

https://archive.org/details/Sid_Meiers_Alpha_Centauri

Re: Alpha Centauri

#66

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

>Only the most disciplined security squads can overcome their fear long enough to trigger the flame guns which can keep the worms at bay. Clearly you will have to tend carefully to the morale of the troops.

This is an interesting lesson in game design. The reason the mind worms fight using morale rather that conventional combat is because otherwise they wouldn't scale as your troops get stronger.

Supposing the mind worms had fixed conventional strength--on par with that of an ordinary early-game scout, for example. Then as soon as you get proton missiles or whatever, mind worms would no longer provide a challenge. But if you made mind worms challenging for the late game, then they'd be impossible in the early game. Hence the creation of a parallel combat strength scale, to better manage the mind worm difficulty curve.

Re: Alpha Centauri

#67

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #15

my favourite game of all time. However without the "plot" and the voice acting I wouldn't rate it anywhere near as highly. The "meat" of the plot was the audio snippets that would pop up whenever you researched a tech, built a facility for the first time or finished a secret project. Most of them were quite fascinating and had a haunting beauty to them [0]. The way that Chairman Yang half-laughs when discussing the g…

>I agree with the article in that the mechanics of the game weren't ideal. Personally as someone that LOVES 4x and has spent _way_ too much time playing them, I think the format is fundamentally flawed and cannot be saved (e.g. expanding is too overpowered, games become too dull to close out - given the win was effectively gained hundreds of turns ago, AI being too costly to implement and difficult to balance). IMHO the best 4x game that will come out at some point in the future won't actually follow the 4x format.

Yeah, your decisions are very important in the early game (because that's what determines the speed at which your snowball grows), but as your faction grows, your individual decisions become more and more meaningless and monotonous.

One possible approach is to have the player's role gradually shift somehow, from micromanagement to providing overall strategic direction.

OP states:

>Meanwhile the automation functions are undermined by being abjectly stupid more often than not. Your governor will happily continue researching string theory while his rioting citizens are burning the place down around his ears. You can try to fine-tune his instructions, but there comes a point when you realize that it’s easier just to do everything yourself.

I wonder if turning it into a programming game could help address this problem? Then again, I'd be tempted to re-use my "code" across various playthroughs. Probably most players would go to the wiki to copy some "code" which is known to perform quite well.

Re: Alpha Centauri

#68

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #60
Quarrelsome wrote: post #15

my favourite game of all time. However without the "plot" and the voice acting I wouldn't rate it anywhere near as highly. The "meat" of the plot was the audio snippets that would pop up whenever you researched a tech, built a facility for the first time or finished a secret project. Most of them were quite fascinating and had a haunting beauty to them [0]. The way that Chairman Yang half-laughs when discussing the g…

> IMHO the best 4x game that will come out at some point in the future won't actually follow the 4x format. I think the problem is that the playerbase seems to want both "fair rules", where every ai you meet is playing the same game as you, and an experience of exponential growth. I think these two demands are fundamentally impossible to do well at the same time. Too small differences early on snowball into too large…

>My wishlist for a proper civ successor is a game that takes you from a single village to a globe-spanning superpower, not on a single map with a single handful of opponents, but starting as a village with village-sized opponents which you will conquer or co-opt, expanding the scope of the game, the map and creating new opponents matched to your progress as you progress through the eras.

In principle this could be achieved through the agar.io approach. Spawn the map with 100s of small fish. Small fish either swallow or get swallowed, and increasingly over time, you get fewer and fewer, bigger and bigger fish.

Re: Alpha Centauri

#69

Post by tetha »

Quarrelsome wrote: post #15

my favourite game of all time. However without the "plot" and the voice acting I wouldn't rate it anywhere near as highly. The "meat" of the plot was the audio snippets that would pop up whenever you researched a tech, built a facility for the first time or finished a secret project. Most of them were quite fascinating and had a haunting beauty to them [0]. The way that Chairman Yang half-laughs when discussing the g…

> I agree with the article in that the mechanics of the game weren't ideal. Personally as someone that LOVES 4x and has spent _way_ too much time playing them, I think the format is fundamentally flawed and cannot be saved (e.g. expanding is too overpowered, games become too dull to close out - given the win was effectively gained hundreds of turns ago,

Avid Civ/Paradox-Player here as well. I've been banging my head into 4X design for a while as well, and it's hard. In the somewhat classical formula Civ, Master of Orion, Stellaris and such provide - and even many RTS, it's always the same situation as you have in chess: The better executed early game usually wins.

And strangely enough, in a chess middle game, you have better comback opportunities. In Stellaris, you can at times lose a fight, but if you have enough defenses left and sufficiently more production than your enemy, you still win, just slower than you might have. In Starcraft, you may be able to pull out of a bad fight, If you can, and have good production, you stay ahead. Giving back a piece advantage in chess is a much bigger deal and a much bigger loss.

From there, I can't help but think that many, many 4X games in the classical formula boil down to the right few choices in the early game and then it's about correct execution/conversion. And I haven't really found a way around that.

Or, rather, a way around that is to make the situation asymmetric or rather to change the formula. They are billions comes to mind, or Against the Storm. Don't fight equal and similarly shaped empires, but something else.

Re: Alpha Centauri

#70

Post by Quarrelsome »

tetha wrote: post #69
Quarrelsome wrote: post #15

my favourite game of all time. However without the "plot" and the voice acting I wouldn't rate it anywhere near as highly. The "meat" of the plot was the audio snippets that would pop up whenever you researched a tech, built a facility for the first time or finished a secret project. Most of them were quite fascinating and had a haunting beauty to them [0]. The way that Chairman Yang half-laughs when discussing the g…

> I agree with the article in that the mechanics of the game weren't ideal. Personally as someone that LOVES 4x and has spent _way_ too much time playing them, I think the format is fundamentally flawed and cannot be saved (e.g. expanding is too overpowered, games become too dull to close out - given the win was effectively gained hundreds of turns ago, Avid Civ/Paradox-Player here as well. I've been banging my head…

Milennia has a mildly interesting approach, where you can settle or conquer cities early on, but to turn those into productive cities that you directly control creates a maintenance burden that is extremely hard to afford in the early game. Otherwise they just give an incredibly small passive income.
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