After action report #1: Humans

[Aroddo]

Ntronium allowed me to post my gameplay experience from the beta phase. It's played on the Twelve Races scenario, which according to Bob, is supposed to be a "quick game".
Well, it is, compared to how incredibly large custom maps can be, but for casual gamers it would constitute an 'epic' experience.

This is the first "real" game I played - all the others before was just playing around. This one was played with the intent to win ... or at least play long enough to give some feedback.

Oh, and remember, this is from beta. Several new revisions since then.

Game 1:

Race: Humans
Difficulty: Normal
Scenario: Twelve Races
Version: Beta 2

The humans get a small bonus to research in every science field. This advantage is offset by their disorderly nature, meaning that they tend to complain and riot pretty fast. They start out in the upper right "edge" of the galaxy map, keeping the number of possibly hostile alien neighbours low.

All races start out with one well populated and somewhat developed home system and a couple of ships: 1 Scout, 3 corvettes, 5 transports and 3 Arks.

I immediatly grabbed the three better planets next to Earth, one ideal, one habitable and a barren but rich one. My home system started building 5 additional transports and after that a couple of corvettes. I also started building several research centers.

(Building several things simultanously doesn't slow down the construction speed of each item, so if you have enough production facilities, you can build several things at once.)

I transported colonists to the rich planet and kept doing so until the system could support a mine (for income) and two shipyards. The point of this was that production at rich planets is cheaper than elsewhere, so building two shipyards while ignoring the original one at the home system can save resourdes later on.
My research mainly focused on weapon and shield technology because I wanted the destroyers and cruisers - the one to kill, one to protect the killers.

To the "west" lurked the QuaQua which immediatly befriended me, offering me money so I wouldn't shoot at them. I took their money and shot at them, steamrolling over their pityful empire with a small fleet of corvettes and destroyers, which I researched and built just a few turns earlier. They were gone before turn 70 and their neighbours - the Xpectrada - were gone before 100. I barely bothered colonizing anymore ... I took what I needed and no one could stop me.
My empire prospered and I made contact with the Jellyfish-aliens, the AROM, the Klurgu, the Walden Forest and the Cryocon - all of which were only too happy to give me money for exchanging maps and/or not killing them. I didn't even have to ask.

Due to some defensive alliances I made (for cash), I got into several shootings anyway without damaging my reputation and my new Dreadnaughts were just awesome against their puny corvettes. I had a distinct weapon tech advantage at that time.

However, I was feeling the strain of fighting war on two or sometimes three fronts and my conquered subjects were not happy at all. The increased bureaucratic load didn't endear the public to me either. They barely paid their taxes - I suspect some of them ate my tax collectors - and I had to commit more and more resources into security buildings, weather stations, entertainment centers and whatnot - all in order to prevent them from burning down my security buildings, weather stations, entertainment centers and whatnot. That's the problem with conquered citizens as opposed to native population: They are not as happy as my iron fist would like them to be.

To make matters worse, attrition weakened my forces to the point where a sizable fleet of nearly 40 corvettes (yeah, they still didn't have anything better) nearly obliberated my main fleet ... and reinforcements took ages to arrive.
I realized I had to build some forward shipyards, but the conquered planets were either full of prisons and disneylands - or constantly rioting. That's when I decided to finally start building arks again to nurse a couple of rich planets into formidable shipyards and money makers. Of course, the previous owners had to go and I didn't bother with asking and eliminated the aliens that sat on good real estate. I guess you can say I made use of the fourth X.

However, getting the new planets up and running proved quite tedious and time consuming due to my strained finances and my recently destroyed transporter fleet. Without transports I couldn't shuffle population to the new colonies - and without population I couldn't build all the structures I wanted. In addition, even the new colonists of my own race think that burning down my buildings is a good pasttime ... I only have a few turns before they start to riot again ... barely time enough to erect entertainment centers and other things to improve their moot. Ok, their planets are a bit irradiated, but come on, they are RICH irradiated planets. Dropping marines and building security centers first to squash riots seemed like a better idea than appeasing those suckers - until I noticed that in addition to being unhappy with their environment they also felt surpressed, making them unhappy enough to burn down the security center.

By that time - turn 200 - I was number 1 in the universe. Largest empire, most victory points. But damn, I was a giant on clay feet.

That's when I shelfed this one game. I simply overstretched and mismanaged my colonies. And getting things sorted out was just too tedious ... and my enemies were surely building up their fleet while my decimated one couldn't get their reinforcements fast enough due to long supply lines and a strained budget.

All in all, a damn fun game even though I sucked.

[Tom_Holsinger]

Very nice. [8D]

[martok]

Thanks for the AAR, Aroddo, and thanks to Ntronium for allowing you to post it! This does give a slightly better idea as to the game's pacing and "feel".


Just out of curiosity, approximately how large was your empire at the time you quit the game?


Also on a related note: Does increasing bureaucratic overhead scale with map size, or is it an absolute progression?

In other words, does a 20-star empire in a 50-star map have the same bureaucratic overhead/penalty as a 20-star empire in a 200-star map? Or would it be more equivalent to an 80-star empire on 400-star map?

[Aroddo]

Uh, that was some time ago but I guess my empire was about 20 star systems strong or more. The problem was that I conquered myself a sausage of an empire with my production systems located at one end of that sausage. And although I was the most powerful faction at that time, I barely made a dent in that map.

And I think the bureaucratic overhead is not depending on the map size. Wouldn't make too much sense anyway since both galaxy size and number of players are freely customizable. There's nothing stopping you from creating a tiny map with 50 players if you so desire. I think there's a cap, though.

[Tom_Holsinger]

Aroddo,

Your description of the unhappiness problem in this scenario mirrors a discussion I had with MOO3 designer Alan Emrich over its “unrest” concept.

I argued that MOO3’s “unrest” was just a way of annoying players, in that it focused attention on individual planets when players really wanted to focus on the strategic issues posed by the enemy. His response was that it gave micromanagers enjoyment and wasn’t that distracting for strategists.

This is really a “feel” matter. MOO3 deliberately went for “epic” feel, and I very much objected to its colonial micromanagement requirements. Armada 2526 has a smaller scale intended such that colonial micromanagement is more addressable.

Do consider, though that its more detailed internal politics model will be off-putting for a considerable market segment.

Bob, I recommend you consider, for a patch, a “mod” which has more abstract internal politics and, instead of having riots & whatnot, simply hits the players with readily identifiable productivity decreases on affected planets, plus the expense of “political counter-measures”. That way players can see that planet 9 has lost, say, 25% production due to unrest, with another 30% of its production going to “political counter-measures” overhead, for a net production efficiency of 45% at planet 9, i.e. we gotta problem here. This would entail a single slider bar for each colony for the production cost of “political counter-measures” instead of having to do multiple things, and so reduce micromanagement needs at the expense of abstractness.

I expect a lot of players would shower you with blessings for such a feature. This would not replace the existing model, but simply provide an alternative to it for those who desire such a thing.

[Iceman]

Again, wait for the game and check what it has and what it doesn't have. It's no use trying to guess before release. Maybe some of the things you mention are actually alreay in? Maybe you should give Bob, who managed to make a bunch of successful games, a bit more credit? Maybe you shouldn't be giving yourself too much importance, instead of the game?
Sorry about that, but you should really wait for the game.

[Tom_Holsinger]

Iceman,
 
Bob, Erik, Sean and people subject to NDA's have already released information about the game's political model.  I think I even asked them some questions about it elsewhere, mostly about production decreases due to bureaucracy as empires get larger.  Plus I have experience with such games.  If a 4x game has a detailed domestic politics model, it will not also have a more simplified and abstract domestic politics model to compete with the complicated one.
 
I absolutely approve of production decreases due to bureaucracy as empires get larger.  The means of doing that, however, is also absolutely not something that players will agree on.  Some love complicated political models.  Some don't.  It is my experience in these matters that more than a few players of these games hate having to pay attention to domestic political problems, because they'd much rather pay attention to other things.
 
This is normal in turn-based 4x games.  That's why such matters should be moddable.  The problem here is that there MUST be some means of inflicting larger empires with production decreases, and the only means of doing so, at least in the game's initial release, is a complicated domestic political model.  IMO Ntronium should, at some point, provide an alternative method of achieving the same ultimate result which requires minimal player attention.

[Lützow]

Add screenshots to this AAR please.

[Iceman]

We all have experience with such games. We all have our own experiences in these matters. You're not any different from most people here.
All I'm saying is, wait for the game, then suggest whatever you don't find there already. I think when Sean mentioned unrest, he mentioned effects too - though I'm not sure.

"Public Order – Public order determines how well a colony functions on a daily basis. Unhappy colonies can still function at full efficiency as long as public order remains steady. However, if the ruling power’s popularity drops low enough and there isn’t enough security present, a colony’s public order will degrade. If the situation continues to deteriorate, the situation in a colony can worsen from general unrest, to rioting (which interferes with production and output at the colony), to full on rebellion where the controlling power is expelled from the colony altogether."

[Tom_Holsinger]

Iceman,
 
I really am different from most people here, with credits in board wargames, computer games and AD&D over a period longer than most who read this have been alive.  More to the point, I was sigificantly involved in all three Master of Orion games, and that provides me with experience concerning the turn-based space 4x game market.  There are a lot of players of such games who don't want to be required to pay attention to the local politics of their long-established colony worlds.
 
Hopefully this will be less of an issue in A2526, where a large empire has 30-50 colonies, than in MOO3 where a large empire has 150-200 colonies.

[Iceman]

Or maybe you just don't know all people around here.
 

[Aroddo]

could someone move this to the after action reports forum?