What do you want in a 4x game?

Discussion in 'Gaming Discussion' started by Ai chan, Jul 11, 2018.

  1. Ai chan

    Ai chan Queen of Yuri, Devourer of Traps, Thrusted Witch

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    Taken from wikipedia:
    Now, last week, Ai-chan met a friend who revealed that he was designing a 4x game called Cradle of Civilization. He said while he could program it himself, he was afraid he'd end up building a generic, boring, typical 4x that people would get bored of. So he wanted more input before he started designing it in earnest.

    The game is about you raising a bunch of cavemen from nomadic hunter-gatherers into becoming a major power in the ancient world. It's similar to Civilizations, except that you also have the city view where you can build up your village like a typical city-builder game. You're also not fighting against Nuclear Gandhi, but against saber tooth tigers, other cavemen and other primitive villages who think you're weak.

    It's also not turn based and unlikely to be a multiplayer. He described it as a city-builder in a 4x world. Ai-chan doesn't know how that would work, but hey, here's your chance to suggest what you want.

    You also get to choose which religion you want to support, suppress or ban, but he said this one is going to be very hard for his programming skill and will be implemented much later if he choose to implement it. He said it would be more likely he would include religion in the tech tree instead.

    Based on the above, what would you like in such a game?

    EDIT:
    Ai-chan's friend asked another question.

    You see, he's trying to make it so that when you save the cavegirls, and you decide to site your new tribe, the square you choose as your tribe's new location has unique resources that can be traded with other tribes. Each site should only have at most 2 resources.

    Right now, he has the resources: clay, wild grapes, rare herbs, stone, wood, river fish, salt, copper

    He thought of including sugar, but decided against it as sugar is a farmable resource and can be acquired through the tech tree.

    He needs more unique resources to make each tile unique and choosing a tile is significant to the game. What else do you think would fit?

    Please don't give troll suggestions such as 'trap' or 'loli'. You're just going to waste everyone's time.
     
    Last edited: Sep 30, 2018
  2. Viken

    Viken Well-Known Member

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    If it isn't turn-based, then it'll be very hard to balance while having large maps and many units/players going at the same time. Real-Time Strategy games are very limited in this regard, and even a 4X game like Stellaris is quite limited in its design because of this very reason.

    That said, a 4X with both a city-building aspect and a world-map style meta-game would be quite interesting.
     
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  3. Anra7777

    Anra7777 All powerful magic grammar hamster queen pirate.

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    Well, if you’re starting that far back, it would be cool to see other species of humans, to fight with or, as in the case of the Neanderthals, intermingle with.
     
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  4. camroc

    camroc Well-Known Member

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    4 player... split screen? so its not a multiplayer and i assume its not hot seat... what does each person do? first player is the builder and 3 are defenders? if so that sounds like dungeon defenders
     
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  5. oliver

    oliver Well-Known Member

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    Sounds like something along the style of predynastic egypt (Steam game) would fit, you can tell him to get inspiration for how to set the game systems up from that.
     
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  6. reagents 11

    reagents 11 disaster personified

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    Unit micro management. Good unit dynamic balance. Smart and smooth A.I units for each command transition. Unique opportunity and variable. Interactive world with change applied possible.
    As for religion seriously he could just come up with complete fictional one rather than what's available within our realm.
     
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  7. aegis062

    aegis062 Chaotic Demon Emperor

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    rise of nations would be a good game for him to study.
     
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  8. Inraviel

    Inraviel Well-Known Member

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    You can do something similar to Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth 2. In the gamemode: War for the Ring, you occupy territories in a turn-based strategy, but battles can be played in real time. You can use it as reference to do big maps and city managements and building could be done in real time with some other factions.
     
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  9. Ai chan

    Ai chan Queen of Yuri, Devourer of Traps, Thrusted Witch

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    He said it will be a broad religion type. His current design is where you'd get random religions with random properties popping up from time to time and you can promote it so that it gains more followers and you get boons from this god or stomp it. So from his description, it sounds like you can choose to have either a monotheistic God religion, polytheistic Gods religion or all your people can worship whatever trees or rocks they feel like with the player not supporting or suppressing any.
     
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  10. Inraviel

    Inraviel Well-Known Member

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    You can also refer some to some stages of Spore. The creature stage and later.
     
  11. Jojo775

    Jojo775 Honorary Algae Knight

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    Try Tetris % puyo puyo on Steam, it's a really fun 4p game especially with JP dub, also let me know if there is a "free" version.
     
  12. Suijin

    Suijin Blood God [Medic]

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    aliens
     
  13. TerraEarth

    TerraEarth Well-Known Member

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    Make it sim-city friendly and have a well developed resource system.

    I'm not sure how much you could build with ooga-booga cavemen though...
     
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  14. reagents 11

    reagents 11 disaster personified

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    I see template mode. That's even better.

    My own unique suggestion though yuusha and maou popping out of nowhere and completely out of player control. Their action will within some conditions but otherwise random.
     
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  15. RayPeest

    RayPeest Well-Known Member

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    If it is going to be like a city builder allow people to move buildings around later, since it most cases hindsight is 20/20.
     
  16. Digix

    Digix Owl-sama Follower

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    Like Ymir the turned based real time city building you play a pig and its turn based as well kind of game?

     
  17. Slayerwolfx2

    Slayerwolfx2 [Immortal Forever]

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    I would suggest this: Certain actions affecting the progression of the story in meanful ways, because I've had enough with "Quests" that change nothing in a linear plot.
     
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  18. DarkSanity

    DarkSanity Active Member

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    Sounds similar to the game Ymir, which is on steam or just google ymir game. It would be a good game for him to look at.

    As for what I would want in a 4x game, I guess three general things come to mind: good tools/management so setting up your city/empire doesn't become a chore, a lot of variety to give it good replayablility (events and a large world for example), good customization for said empire (a variety of civilization traits/starting options for example).

    I personally like large projects, such as wonders and a good military side to the game would be nice as well.
     
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  19. Alvastar

    Alvastar Well-Known Member

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    It'd be better to remove religion entirely out of the design at the beginning. Otherwise, you'll get too bogged into looking at trees instead of seeing how the forest is made.

    Have your friend watch a few seasons of Ancient Weapons/Ultimate Weapons/etc. on the History Channel. I forget the exact name, but they compete for different technology trees against one another. This show would give an interesting take on having cultures competing instead of thinking about how religion would affect a civilization's growth.

    Once he's actually built the various modules that would handle the game he could decide on what modifiers could influence direction.

    Honestly, it'd be better to have him develop an editor for the game, like Warcraft 2 had, that would let you set up campaigns. You could design your own civilizations, religions, etc. and whatever makes up the world. Then, play against a computer or others later on if the functionality is handled. This also comes with the bonus of him not having to hard-code all these modifiers into the game itself. He'd just need to reference an XML file with the values for each civilization, religion, etc. and certain settings could be toggled on or off by the user or due to a campaign restriction.
     
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  20. Ai chan

    Ai chan Queen of Yuri, Devourer of Traps, Thrusted Witch

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    No, 4X doesn't mean 4 players. I've already given the definition of the term in the OP. Took me some time to reply you because I didn't understand what you were asking.