We’re a few months out from seeing culture and diplomacy at work, but since it sounds like beta 1 is pretty much complete and diplomacy will be a major part of beta 2, now seems like a good time to start talking about it.
I’ve been going back to GalCiv II a lot lately and from an RP standpoint culture/economy is my favored play style. From a gameplay perspective though, it feels like it needs some love. I don’t know if the GalCiv III model will be the same as the GalCiv II one, but since that is what I have to go on I’ll comment on that.
Issues:
1) No counter play, especially for AI. This, in my opinion, is the largest problem. Once you start moving toward cultural victory, the AI doesn’t even really try to stop you. There are counters to the strategy, mainly building up your own culture or going to war and blowing up influence star bases, but the AI doesn’t seem to do these things effectively. I think it is important to the flavor of influence that you can maintain good diplomatic relations with a civ you are dominating culturally, so I think there needs to be a few stronger non-military options to counter influence.
2) Not engaging enough. I think culture and influence are abstracted one level too far. I know that my civ is producing influence and I know that I have these bases that are pumping that influence out to other civs, but I have no feeling for the nature of that culture. Is if great philosophy, fine art, music, reality TV, pornography? Culture and influence could really use some flavor to make it come alive.
3) Influence from planets not connected to influence from star bases. I find that even if I am going for a cultural victory, I am rarely building influence planet-side. By bases but out the same 255 influence no matter what and flipping planets seems like a much more fun and effective way to increase the dominion of my empire.
Possible solutions:
1) I think adding a little detail to culture could go a long way to addressing my issues #1 & #2. What I’m thinking is that your culture has attributes. So say, your culture values individuality, creativity, and justice; and another culture might value productivity, cooperation, and education. These attributes might be set and the beginning, or unlocked through the ideology tree. Certain attributes could be strong and weak against others and could be strengthened or weakened by events, actions, and/or buildings. This could allow for some interesting counter-play as well as adding flavor.
Example: The freedom loving Terrans have been bombarding the Authoritarian Drengi worlds with music, television and cheap toys espousing their philosophy and politics. Authoritarian cultures are strong against Freedom cultures though, and the Drengi start erecting magnificent statues to Lord Kona to remind everyone of the power and fearlessness of their leader, keeping the citizens loyal.
1a.) Another level of complexity that would be interesting would be to have different kinds of culture (i.e. music, movies, philosophy) that would interact in different ways with the attributes.
2) The other change that I think would be nice would be to have influence star bases project a % of your civ’s influence rather than a flat number, this would encourage you to build up the influence of your culture as a whole and not just concentrate on building star bases.
What do you guys want to see from culture/influence/tourism in GalCiv III? Is there anyone from Stardock willing to comment on how the team is currently thinking about this issue?