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[umiman]

It's certainly a step in the right direction.

Maybe 4 or 5 more of those kind of content DLC and we'll finally have some meat on these bones.

[ZeroGravitas]

sadly the name "War in Heaven" just reminds me of Banks' Surface Detail, which just makes me think of a bunch of cool ideas that could be in the game, like a victory-by-sublimation for a tech victory condition

[Retropunch]

Yeah, it does look to be heading in the right direction and I'm glad they've obviously realised that they need to release the lions share of content/new features for free.

Automatic exploration will be a big boost, and the combat changes do sound as though they may make a real difference. I'll probably go back to it on the patch after this one, as I imagine by that point it'll have gotten pretty different from the state its in now.

[forsaken1111]

sadly the name "War in Heaven" just reminds me of Banks' Surface Detail, which just makes me think of a bunch of cool ideas that could be in the game, like a victory-by-sublimation for a tech victory condition

The whole 'technological ascension' victory has never struck me as very interesting from a gameplay mechanic. I've never seen a game do it well. Usually you pour a lot of money into science to unlock some device then you pour a lot of resources into building the device and you 'win'. Does that feel satisfying? It certainly didn't to me in Civ, where you fire off a space ship and hey look you won. I guess. I'm not sure WHY a distant colony with a few hundred people means you've suddenly won on earth though. I've had other games where I am dominating the map militarily and economically but someone finished a special project on the other side of the world so they 'won'.

[Retropunch]

The whole 'technological ascension' victory has never struck me as very interesting from a gameplay mechanic. I've never seen a game do it well. Usually you pour a lot of money into science to unlock some device then you pour a lot of resources into building the device and you 'win'. Does that feel satisfying? It certainly didn't to me in Civ, where you fire off a space ship and hey look you won. I guess. I'm not sure WHY a distant colony with a few hundred people means you've suddenly won on earth though. I've had other games where I am dominating the map militarily and economically but someone finished a special project on the other side of the world so they 'won'.

Agreed, I always turn it off in my games as it's always super boring and can just lead to some annoying surprise wins for the AI. It also seems to be pretty much just an economic victory in most cases, but where you press the 'turn economy into science' button instead.

I believe the only way you could do it would be to give a player pursuing it a very different set of rules, or a strong chance for all sorts of disasters/end game events occurring from pursuing it.

[ZeroGravitas]

sadly the name "War in Heaven" just reminds me of Banks' Surface Detail, which just makes me think of a bunch of cool ideas that could be in the game, like a victory-by-sublimation for a tech victory condition

The whole 'technological ascension' victory has never struck me as very interesting from a gameplay mechanic. I've never seen a game do it well. Usually you pour a lot of money into science to unlock some device then you pour a lot of resources into building the device and you 'win'. Does that feel satisfying? It certainly didn't to me in Civ, where you fire off a space ship and hey look you won. I guess. I'm not sure WHY a distant colony with a few hundred people means you've suddenly won on earth though. I've had other games where I am dominating the map militarily and economically but someone finished a special project on the other side of the world so they 'won'.

I thought it made sense in Civilization because the idea is that you're now on more than one planet, so the scope of the game is "over" - and yeah, it felt pretty fair. I mean, you got plenty of warnings, and many of the variations had some rule like, "once the space ship is launched, you can still lose by losing your capital within X turns." Which leads us to Alpha Centauri, where the Transcendence victory was integral to the plot and did an amazing job of tying up the story themes.

As a gameplay mechanic, it works well enough. It's a game about building an empire, which you then use churn out military units that are mostly identical between equiv-tech civs. The victory typically goes to civ with the materiel advantage anyway, so why not just say, "hey, let's skip the foregone conclusion wars, and just let the most technologically and industrially advanced civ win? so long as they can get by dumping resources into a project that does nothing BUT let you win, they're already ahead anyway."

So long as the various special projects/techs/events/etc that end the game are well-written and consume sufficient resources over a long enough period of time, it'd be a good way to end the game. Instead of the insane end-game slog we have now. And if it followed Banks' sublimation model, the other players could keep playing, but the "winner's" empire would be removed/deprecated/converted to a fallen empire.

[Virtz]

So uh, I know this is old news, but is nobody concerned the new combat balance sounds like total nonsense? Like the ships are now being broken up into mumorpeger classes based on size? Like why even have the whole module system then? Can a big battleship seriously not be decked out in hundreds of smaller turrets that could massacre corvettes like a Star Destroyer? Or have torpedoes like the Enterprise? Instead they're now "artillery and carrier ships that provide long-range fire support", like some kinda wizard or necromancer.

[ZeroGravitas]

It also seems to be pretty much just an economic victory in most cases

Unlike military victories?

[ZeroGravitas]

So uh, I know this is old news, but is nobody concerned the new combat balance sounds like total nonsense? Like the ships are now being broken up into mumorpeger classes based on size? Like why even have the whole module system then? Can a big battleship seriously not be decked out in hundreds of smaller turrets that could massacre corvettes like a Star Destroyer? Or have torpedoes like the Enterprise? Instead they're now "artillery and carrier ships that provide long-range fire support", like some kinda wizard or necromancer.

It's a really new area for Paradox so it's unsurprising they have no idea what they're doing with it yet. Troop balance in CK2 never made sense either.

[forsaken1111]

As a gameplay mechanic, it works well enough. It's a game about building an empire, which you then use churn out military units that are mostly identical between equiv-tech civs. The victory typically goes to civ with the materiel advantage anyway, so why not just say, "hey, let's skip the foregone conclusion wars, and just let the most technologically and industrially advanced civ win? so long as they can get by dumping resources into a project that does nothing BUT let you win, they're already ahead anyway."

So long as the various special projects/techs/events/etc that end the game are well-written and consume sufficient resources over a long enough period of time, it'd be a good way to end the game. Instead of the insane end-game slog we have now. And if it followed Banks' sublimation model, the other players could keep playing, but the "winner's" empire would be removed/deprecated/converted to a fallen empire.

Does it really stand up as a game mechanic though? With a military victory you have dozens of decisions and player interaction means a great deal with regards to positioning, terrain, etc. With a science victory it's mostly about maximizing your production/science output and waiting. Sure in Civ you pick what parts to put on your rocket but really that only matters if you're pressed for time because someone else is trying to launch first or you're about to be wiped out. It still felt a bit shallow.

In most 4x games the tech victory is even less involved. You build buildings x y and z and you win. You might have to defend them for a few turns sure. I'm not arguing that it is easy/hard, just kind of boring.

[Retropunch]

It also seems to be pretty much just an economic victory in most cases

Unlike military victories?

As forsaken1111 said, military victory can and often/sometimes does mean more than that. Sure, if you build up a big enough economy to roflstomp everyone else then it's the same, but in a game like Stellaris/CK2 you can end up turning everyone against you and bite off more than you can chew easily enough. There's also a level of tactical maneuvering to do which isn't always easily achieved.

So uh, I know this is old news, but is nobody concerned the new combat balance sounds like total nonsense? Like the ships are now being broken up into mumorpeger classes based on size?

It might take a bit/lot of balancing, but I feel it's the right way to go. At the moment I feel its more of a mess, where there's no point in building anything other than one or two different types of ship. Sure, it's RPG'y, but it gives a lot more depth than 'spam most cost effective ship'.

[ZeroGravitas]

Does it really stand up as a game mechanic though? With a military victory you have dozens of decisions and player interaction means a great deal with regards to positioning, terrain, etc.

But those decisions and interactions are often no-brainers. Move units toward cities. Attack things along the way. Stand on the mountains; don't attack into the mountains/hills/whatever if you can. There are some decisions that are quite tricky, but not many. It's mostly a managing a traffic jam of units.

If Civilization combat were more on the level of HoI, I could see it. But at Civ's level of abstraction, it mostly comes down to number of units shoved against one another.

[Shadowlord]

See, when someone "wins" via the space race, what you're really supposed to do is shut down Civ and start up Alpha Centauri to continue your game.

[forsaken1111]

Does it really stand up as a game mechanic though? With a military victory you have dozens of decisions and player interaction means a great deal with regards to positioning, terrain, etc.

But those decisions and interactions are often no-brainers. Move units toward cities. Attack things along the way. Stand on the mountains; don't attack into the mountains/hills/whatever if you can. There are some decisions that are quite tricky, but not many. It's mostly a managing a traffic jam of units.

If Civilization combat were more on the level of HoI, I could see it. But at Civ's level of abstraction, it mostly comes down to number of units shoved against one another.

I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that you think the tactical and strategic decisions required to plan an execute a war in Civ are less complicated than building factories so you can build a spaceship?

[ZeroGravitas]

Does it really stand up as a game mechanic though? With a military victory you have dozens of decisions and player interaction means a great deal with regards to positioning, terrain, etc.

But those decisions and interactions are often no-brainers. Move units toward cities. Attack things along the way. Stand on the mountains; don't attack into the mountains/hills/whatever if you can. There are some decisions that are quite tricky, but not many. It's mostly a managing a traffic jam of units.

If Civilization combat were more on the level of HoI, I could see it. But at Civ's level of abstraction, it mostly comes down to number of units shoved against one another.

I'm not sure what your point is. Are you saying that you think the tactical and strategic decisions required to plan an execute a war in Civ are less complicated than building factories so you can build a spaceship?

No, I'm saying they're equally uncomplicated.