Personal Interactions?

[76mm]

I am very interested in this game and want to like it...

But before buying it I wanted to ask about the "personal interactions" which seem to be an important part of the game (with governors, etc.). When I played Vic's Barbarossa game, I found the "personal interactions" aspect of that game to be superficial, repetitive, unrealistic, and ultimately, very annoying. How are the personal interactions in this game? Can anyone point me to an AAR where they feature prominently? It is hard to get a sense for how they work in practice from the manual...

[Silicor]

So far I find the choices to be implemented well. They are limited from a story perspective, but I like the way they help shape the character of your empire. 15-20 turns in I get 0-5 questions per turn and they usually impact leader or pop happiness or improve or degrade empire traits (mind, fist, etc..). Sometimes you will want to choose an option with bigger drawbacks to help meet promises you've made to the populace, other times you will want to keep leaders happy, sometimes you will want to raise your militia score, sometimes you will want to minimize the negative impacts. Best bet is to watch some gameplay vids to see what they are like. They are pretty quick to handle each turn but do drive a good bit of how your empire develops.

[AttuWatcher]

Just don't get an epoch of Egoism and you'll be fine. I just went through one and it was hell haha.

On the whole, I'm enjoying it. It seems like you have enough freedom to slowly shape things the way you want it to be without worrying too much if you occasionally anger someone. You don't need to obsess over every decision and they do provide some interesting flavor.

You have to be fine with a certain amount of randomness in your games, though.

[76mm]

Thanks for the feedback...have you guys played enough to get a sense for how much repetition there is? In other words, do you start seeing the same questions/answers repeating more than very occasionally?

I think it would be easier for me to accept the dialogs in this game since they are not pretending to be historical, which was a major source of my irritation with the Barbarossa dialogs.

I'm also disappointed by the lack of moddability--especially for these personal interactions, the ability to mod them would add a whole new dimension to this game.

[eddieballgame]

ORIGINAL: 76mm
I'm also disappointed by the lack of moddability--especially for these personal interactions, the ability to mod them would add a whole new dimension to this game.

Per Vic;
Complexity, partial hard-coding of the game is a big reason, but also the fact I am still expecting to add a lot of content to the game in the years after release and I don't want to invalidate any community efforts (which would had to be done again after each patch). Third but not least is I cannot turn all my games in little wargame design studios

On the positive side in time I am open to start gradually opening up some parts to editors. But I would like to do that in such way that these editors will be safe to use and any community work would be re-usable after official patches.

Best wishes,
Vic

I am a huge fan of 'dev's allowing their games to be...tweaked.
However, from what I have experienced, this game has so much "under the hood", that it will be awhile before any modding of the content offered will be necessary. imho
I think it is going to be a, long, while before many will have a clue what to mod. imho
Of course, in my case, I am a slow learner...so there is that.

[kaliyama]

if you didn't like the interactions in barbarossa, do you have examples of games with more complex interaction models?

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: kaliyama
if you didn't like the interactions in barbarossa, do you have examples of games with more complex interaction models?

No, but that doesn't mean that Barbarossa's was any good, it just means it is very difficult to do correctly. Sure, it is hard to do, that doesn't mean that inadequate interactions are a satisfying game experience. That's why I'm asking...

[Silicor]

There is some repetition in events but the effects from the options do seem differ a good bit. To be honest, I don't read the events any more. I just figure out the best course of action and move on. I had a turn with 10 actions to respond recently and I don't want to spend too much time reading.

[76mm]

ORIGINAL: Silicor
There is some repetition in events but the effects from the options do seem differ a good bit. To be honest, I don't read the events any more. I just figure out the best course of action and move on. I had a turn with 10 actions to respond recently and I don't want to spend too much time reading.

Thanks, that's interesting...but is are these events you're referring to "interactions" where your choices affect your relationship with another person, etc., or more technical, yes/no decisions? I am more worried about the former, but maybe they don't play as large a part in this game as I imagined? Or are you just not worried about the personal relationship aspect?

[AttuWatcher]

If you turn off corporations, crime syndicates, cults and epochs this portion of the game becomes much less busy and very easy to manage, granted after you've already gotten over the initial learning curve. I'm on my second game now. In my first game I had crime syndicates and cults and epochs turned on and it was much much more busy than my second game where have them all off.

This time I'll really be able to get deep into the ideological perks tree and focus more on my micromanagement.

The fact that the game gives you this kind of freedom and variation from one game to the next is incredible. You can really play what suits your mood at the time.

Also don't get the impression that having things like cults or whatever immediately makes the game much harder, because it can actually make it easier. For example in my first game, eventually most of my cabinet members were members of the same cult, and this resulted in very consistent and easy relationship bonuses whenever I would donate to the cult.

Basically my impression after around 15 hours is that corps, cults, epochs etc. make the game more randomized, but not necessarily harder, while turning them off makes the game more directly controllable by you.

[76mm]

Thanks, also interesting. I downloaded the manual the day the game came out, but haven't had time to dive in yet..hope to do so today.