Welcome to the Home of Game Strategies and Stories
3 Feb 06
I've been working on the site again. I put up a news wire page over Here. Let me know if there's any value in it. If not, it's not hard to remove.
I know we've done pretty well around here covering the strategy side of Talk Strategy. We cover the games. We discuss design. We analyze hardware, software, business decisions and marketing. There's a little bit of everything.
However, I'd like to get more on the talk side of Talk Strategy. I realize a lot of strategy games don't have much to say at times. But there are times for all gamers when they really like to talk. I remember those times and miss them occasionally. I'm talking about great expectations.
Great expectations is that phase when an announced game just meets exactly what you're looking for in a future game. Every detail is new and exciting. You pour over every screenshot. You find every interview, comment and news piece on your new, most anticipated game. You post about your game on boards. You defend it from naysayers. You might even start a fan site.
Once upon a time, I was even like that. I have to be a bit more balanced and less biased now to be fair to all developers. I also just don't have the time necessary to delve into that depth on one game. I know a little about a lot of games, but I can't claim to be an expert on any one upcoming game.
Everyone knows someone like that if they talk about games. In fact, sometimes it's hard not to trip over them. I'd love to be able to tap into that resource. I'd like to start something called Fanfare. Fanfare is a a simple idea. We'll give the subject matter experts a stage. They can then sell us on the virtues of their favorite upcoming game through text, links, screenshots or movies.
Since this place is about sharing your passion for gaming, I'm not interested in being too critical about the types of games for Fanfare. As I said, we're trying to balance the strategy out with a little more talk. So whatever the game or genre, let your passionate friend know we have a place for him or her to share the word of their favorite upcoming game. Tell them to get in touch with me and we'll sort out the details. I'll contact the fans I know; please do the same. I think it could produce some very interesting articles. As always, your feedback is appreciated.
Jason
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2 Feb 06
Happy Groundhog Day to everyone. Instead of me trying to make bad jokes about repetition or seeing my shadow, you are saved by Brad Wardell of Stardock who also happens to be the designer of Galactic Civilizations II: Dread Lords. Despite working feverishly to finish the game, Brad took a few moments of his time to grant us an interview.
1. TS: Galactic Civilizations came out of nowhere and went head to head with the highly anticipated Masters of Orion III. By most measures you won, how do you account for that?
Luck. What happened with Master of Orion is that the people involved in MOO3’s design did not have a background in game development (actually making games). As a result, they had a lot of really cool concepts that were nearly impossible to translate into game play.
Eventually, Atari had to ship the game and so what they had was streamlined as much as they could and released with few people completely satisfied with the result. It’s not that MOO 3 was a bad game, it’s just not what people were expecting.
By contrast, our design of Galactic Civilizations was much more conservative. We took the design we had had from the OS/2 days and modernized it. I suspect if Master of Orion 3 had been essentially Master of Orion 1 or 2 with updated graphics and effects that it would have become a modern classic.
2. TS: It's hard to miss that you have the word 'civilization' in your name as a 4X game. Do you think Civilization IV raised the bar for the whole 4X genre? Has it made you rethink anything?
Definitely. Civilization IV is the best turn-based strategy game I’ve ever played. I love it. And it has been to everyone’s advantage that it came out when it did because it has raised the bar so much.
A lot of people don’t know this about the game industry but game developers don’t look at each other as “competitors” like you have in other industries. We were involved during the Civ IV beta and they’ve been involved in our beta. Soren from Firaxis has been very supportive of our efforts and has given us a lot of very useful suggestions and feedback for Galactic Civilizations II.
The two games are different enough that someone who likes Civilization IV won’t feel like they’re retreading on the same ground when they play Galactic Civilizations. But we’ve tried to make sure that quality and polish level of the two titles are similar.
3. TS: Some have complained that the space 4X genre has grown too stale and spreadsheet oriented. How does Galciv II avoid that pitfall?
I tend to agree with those people. I think a lot of that comes from user interface design. Underneath everything, strategy games really are pretty much spreadsheets (so are RPGs). What strategy game developers have had to learn is how to put spirit into their games. We’ve taken a lot of inspiration from BioWare’s games. We take the excellence of Knights of the Old Republic and Baldur’s Gate for granted now. But it’s easy to forget that RPGs used to feel a lot like spreadsheets.
What we hope to do for strategy games is a lot like what BioWare has done with RPGs. Under the covers, the stats and details are there, but in the turn for turn gameplay, you’re immersed in an enchanting universe.
4. TS: Your website emphasizes increasing the strategic depth for the sequel. What will we see in GCII that we haven't seen before?
The biggest thing is the inclusion of the campaign. Galactic Civilizations I still had that spreadsheet strategy game thing going pretty heavily. This time, we are trying to put a lot of effort into putting spirit into the game. The campaign tells the story of the civilizations, where they came from and what their goals are. It enriches the game universe so that the players aren’t merely a bunch of stats.
We also allow players to play as any civilization. Nowadays, that’s taken for granted – being able to play as 10 different races or whatever. But we wanted to take this to its logical conclusion. Different civilizations don’t just have different units and stats and graphics. They have their own history and that history is reflected in their dealings with other civilizations. How the Torian Confederation talks and deals with you is very different if you are playing as the Drengin Empire as opposed to the Terran Alliance. There is literally a novel’s worth of dialog and text in the game, of which most people will probably only see a fraction, unless they play as every civilization in different circumstances.
5. TS: Tell us a bit about the background of the universe you've created and how it will affect the gameplay.
The first Galactic Civilizations was essentially a prelude. This is the main event.
In the first one, there were these ancient and powerful civilizations who have had space travel for a hundred thousand years. But they couldn’t really get at each other because they had to travel through Stargates. So if race A declares war on race B, race B merely needs to turn off their Stargate and voila, no war.
But then the reckless humans come along and when they learn how to build Stargates, they figure out how to create a propulsion system that essentially allows individual ships to travel great distances without a Stargate. Once this technology gets out there, the civilizations race to stake their claims.
Galactic Civilizations II starts with that as a given. And now the galactic powers have formed three factions: the Terrans and their coalition, the Drengin and their allies, and the neutrals. Galactic Civilizations II is about their war.
6. TS: There seem to be two schools of though on sides in 4X games. One has a small number of very unique sides while the other has many sides with minor starting differences. Why did you make the decision you did?
For us, it comes down to balance. Stardock developed the Starcraft add-on for Blizzard called Retribution. In Starcraft there were three races who were radically different. Blizzard was constantly having to balance things between the three of them and I remember during the development of the expansion how tricky it was setting up the maps and units such that it was “fair” to all sides.
If the different sides are that radically different, it puts a very hard limit on the number of sides you can have. And in a diplomacy-heavy game like Galactic Civilizations, we wanted to have lots of different factions.
That said, each race has its own ships and there are three ethical philosophies to choose from, which have dramatic repercussions on gameplay (though often subtle). So there are some stark differences between races. But at the end of the day, we wanted to make sure all the players were playing the same game.
7. TS: Master of Orion is generally considered the gold standard of the space 4X genre. Why do you think that is?
It was the first mainstream game in the genre. It brought the main game elements together in a package that was approachable for most strategy gamers.
8. TS: Please describe the tech tree. Will there be an optimal tech build order or will it vary from game to game?
The technology tree is really the root of the game. In most strategy games, the goal is to move through “the tree” as fast as possible in a specific pattern. In Galactic Civilizations II, the tree is too large to research through. You have to pick which paths you will take and hope they are best based on your strategy that game.
9. TS: What about upgrading ships as tech advances? Can they be easily and inexpensively upgraded or do they become cannon fodder?
You can upgrade your ships to new types of the same model. So while you can’t upgrade a fighter into a battle ship, you can upgrade a fighter into a more advanced model.
10. TS: Tell us about the AI and describe a time when it surprised you.
The AI has gone through an immense amount of work this time around. Because we don’t have multiplayer, the AI takes center stage for the game. The AI can’t just be tough – that’s easy. The AI has to play like a human would. It has to be challenging but also be suffering from the same problems that a human player experiences.
In terms of the most surprising thing I’ve seen, I should note that since I write the AI, I rarely get surprised. But one thing I had happen this weekend was a war I had with the Drengin. The Drengin had been focusing on phasors for weapons and shields for defense. In preparation for war with them I amassed a huge fleet of capital ships filled with missiles which go through shields like paper.
But when I finally launched my attack, the Drengin had amassed a fleet of “Mark VI” Battle ships which were equipped with Point Defense technology. That had spotted what I was doing and adapted before my attack. Things didn’t go well for humanity.
11. TS: If I understand correctly, there are no tactical battles or multiplayer in GCII. Could you briefly explain why and go over their prospects for the future (either in an expansion or the next version)?
Sure. The problem with tactical combat is that it tends to consume the overall game.
Picture this – you’re in a galaxy-wide war. There are literally thousands of worlds. Thousands of ships. A given game turn might have two dozen battles.
Now imagine if the player had to tactically fight each of those battles? Most of the player’s time would be spent there instead of running a galactic civilization, which is what the game is all about. Now, you say “well, just put an ‘auto fight’ button.” But using Master of Orion, the gold standard of 4X games, we know that tactical AI is almost never as good as a decent human player. So good players would feel like they had to fight the tactical battles if they were going to be remotely close in order to maximize their results.
12. TS: Normally 4X games start slow, have a great middle and a somewhat tedious end game. How did you address this problem?
The problem you describe is scaling. Most games don’t scale well as the game progresses. What we’ve done in Galactic Civilizations II is make sure that the game interface and game mechanics scale.
At first, players manage individual ships and planets. The fun at the start is exploring the galaxy, designing ships, negotiating with aliens and telling planets what to build.
The fun in the middle is fighting wars where players are managing fleets of ships (the number of units remains the same, but now they’re fleets instead of individual ships). The planets don’t have the micro-management issue because the buildings automatically upgrade themselves based on technology. So the middle part of the game involves only sporadic interaction with planets.
The fun at the end of the game is using the rally points to tell various fleets of ships and planets to automatically send ships to certain strategic points. Giving orders to your governors to switch production from one thing to another or telling ships going to rally point X to go to rally point Y. Players in essence deal with task forces of fleets and groups of planets.
The computer players know when they’re beat and will surrender. They won’t hold out until the end most of the time. So mopping up isn’t as much of an issue. They play as humans would… Well not quite; when I play online in strategy games, human players tend to quit the instant that the tide starts to turn against them, while our computer players will at least give you the satisfaction of knowing you have definitely defeated them.
13. TS: Take us through the beginning of a sandbox game. Let's say you're playing the humans. What do you start off with? What's your first concern? How do you get your empire started?
When you first start, you have a colony ship and a survey ship to explore anomalies. I would explore the galaxy for good planets. My first tough decision is whether I colonize Mars, which isn’t that great, or whether to take a chance and send my colony ship to one of the nearby star systems that might have better planets. If I wait too long to colonize Mars, someone else will.
I then go to Earth and build up its infrastructure. Earth, unlike colonies, has a lot more resources, so things tend to get done faster. But I build factories and research centers to speed research into new technologies.
I usually pursue technology for the Universal Translator, then to Diplomatic Relations and finally to Trade so I can build freighters to trade with the aliens I am bound to meet. Trading is key to building a strong diplomatic relationship and helps keep me out of war.
14. TS: Describe a recent 'epic' game or struggle.
I had a long drawn-out game where I played in a medium galaxy with all 10 players. I played as the humans and was in the middle of the galaxy. I worked hard to keep the humans out of war and eventually the Drengin, Arceans and Iconians wiped out the other players, leaving only me and them.
I had built a network of military starbases around Earth so that when I occasionally got into a border war, usually with the Drengin, I could give them a black eye. My ships were well suited to fighting the Drengin and I was slowly building a network of military starbases into the Drengin sphere of influence (GalCiv II doesn’t have “borders” ala Civ IV; it has sphere of influence). The idea was that I would be able to project my military might into their space and eventually conquer their key planets.
Unfortunately, things with the Iconians weren’t going well. They had become so powerful and I made a key mistake: I chose the “Evil” ethical alignment because I wanted the special bonuses. But the Iconian Refuge is Neutral and I didn’t really take into account how that choice would affect my relations with them. So just as I was about to go to war with the Drengin, the Iconians declared war. Their ships were very advanced in mass drivers, which I had no defense for because I’d been concentrating on dealing with the Drengin. And it’s not just a matter of redesigning my ships; I didn’t have the core technologies necessary to deal with advanced mass drivers. So they ended up wiping me out.
But I didn’t let them take Earth; I destroyed it myself. ;)
15. TS: How is colonization/colony management handled?
Players build colony ships and send them to habitable and unoccupied planets.
The planet class (1 through 20) determines how many useable tiles there are on planets. A good planet typically has 10 tiles on it. That means you can build 10 different things on it.
16. TS: How does diplomacy work? Espionage? Random events?
Diplomacy brings up the trade screen, where players can negotiate agreements with the computer players. You can literally trade anything for anything.
I’ve had games where I had so much money that I could buy planets. Sometimes I’ll be an arms dealer, selling weapons to various civilizations to fight their wars. Other times I distribute technology to losing civilizations to make sure friendly civilizations do well and unfriendly ones are thwarted.
17. TS: Let's go over fleet construction. How much control does a player have when designing their fleet? Sticking with the humans, what's an early assault fleet going to look like?
Fleets were one of the biggest challenges in designing the game. You don’t want a scenario where everyone has one mega fleet. So we limit the size of your fleet based on your logistics ability. If you want bigger fleets you have to research higher logistics technologies.
So early on, you would likely have a relatively low logistics ability. So your fleet might consist of a cruiser and a few fighters.
Later on, your fleet might contain a couple of battle ships with several fighters with them.
18. TS: While TS readers will think of Space Empires V or Sword of the Stars as competition to GCII, less strategy focused gamers might compare it more to Star Wars: Empire at War. Do you see any similarities there?
I’m not sure. Star Wars: Empire At War is an RTS. When I play RTS's I mainly think of playing it multiplayer, so I don’t tend to think of it as competition for GalCiv II.
Space Empires V really targets a different demographic, I think, than we do. I haven’t had a chance to look at Sword of the Stars yet to know how similar it is.
19. TS: How's development going and when should we look for Galciv II? Will there be a simultaneous retail and Stardock Central/Total Gaming.net release?
It should be out at both retail and digital distribution at the end of February!
20. TS: Is there anything you'd like to add?
Thanks for the interview!
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I'd like to thank Brad for making room in his schedule during crunch time to bring us all this information. Don't hesitate to head over to the Galactic Civilizations 2 website for more information. As always, please post any comments or feedback.
Jason
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1 Feb 06
Have I mentioned yet that Game of the Year voting is now open on the News Section? It's on the upper right. Please make sure your vote is counted.
I thought today I'd report in on the Civilization IV massive pitboss game I'm playing in. I mentioned it a while back. Nobody likes a whiner, but I'm feeling a bit put upon. Apparently, I'm the only person who's been attacked thus far. I thought if I held him off for a short period, he'd realize he wasn't getting a cheap, easy city and move on. No, I've been besieged for the last 1000 years. Now I'm cranking out warriors to see if I can harass his homeland into giving me peace. I've offered peace several times, but he hasn't taken it.
I guess the thing I don't understand is unit maintenance costs. Later in the game, having an army like his would be draining the treasury. But not this early in the game. I guess the feeling of the design team was that the penalty of falling behind in production due to early military campaigns would be penalty enough. That's not much consolation when you're on the receiving end of seven warriors being supported out of a small city far away.
Unfortunately, my one early gamble didn't pay off. Instead of going for archery right away when war was declared, I tried for axemen. It would mean I could clear forest to pump up production as well as field a more powerful army of axemen. The problem is that copper isn't revealed until you complete the research. If there wasn't any in my radius, no axemen. Unfortunately for me there wasn't any. Now I'm playing catch up trying to get archery to boost my army.
He's had the units available to crush my city for a while. I think he's waiting for my city to grow enough to be captured rather than reduced to rubble. Too bad for him. I've stopped growth to increase production for my war machine.
Overall, I'm in pretty desperate straights. If I succeed in annoying him enough with my pillaging in his borders, he might still just crush me. If he doesn't go for peace soon, it will be costly to evict him from my lands if I can even do it. I'm pretty sure this early war is going to ruin both of us. In the short term, I concede he's out played me, but that's partially because I didn't take his initial threat seriously. It seemed to me at the time that a protracted early war would be madness so he wouldn't do it. I guessed wrong, and it's cost me. If I do recover and do well, it will be nothing short of amazing. Still it would be a great story to write up. Too bad dead civilizations tell no tales.
Jason
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31 Jan 06
Before I get back to the Xbox 360 impressions, I wanted to explain why I think this is worth the time and effort. There's a certain convergence between PC and console. This is getting to be more and more evident. One of the key selling points to developers for the Xbox 360 is the ease of simultaneous PC and 360 development. We've seen the incorporation of independent games into the XBox Live Arcade. Finally, the size of the combined markets makes multiplatform development almost irresistibly tempting. So consoles will have a greater and greater effect on what games even pure PC gamers are offered.
Yesterday, I discussed the hardware side of the 360. Aside from the heat and the size of the brick, everything there says success. They seem to have hit their design goals. They should be able to avoid the a backlash to the design like the 'big and ugly' one that hit the original Xbox. That means gamers will be able to focus on the gaming experience.
When you start up the 360 you have to sign into a profile. You can set up multiple profiles on a machine. You can even set up profiles for your kids that limits what they can play (including DVD's) and controls their Xbox Live experience. Your profile is deeper this time. You have a favored gaming zone, reputation, gamer score, games played, list of achievements and an iconic image. It also keeps track of personal settings like your theme, playlists and whether you like like to invert controls on shooters. Overall you have a lot of control over the system while giving more than lip service to customization.
The Live integration is a blessing and a curse. It really opens up the options for the experience, but if you can't or don't have it hooked up to the internet, you lose a lot of the experience and benefits. It's important to note that most of the Live features (with the exception of unlimited online play) are available in the free Silver membership. The features include the Live Marketplace, Live Arcade and Chat/Friends management.
The Live Marketplace is where you can find and/or buy all kinds of stuff. You have blade themes, gamer pictures, demos, arcade games, and bonus pack items. Some are free. Others are purchased with Microsoft points. Though points can be earned in some special events, most points will be purchased for cash. You can buy online or purchase a card at a brick and mortar store. Strangely, online there's no discount for buying points in bulk. Some of the smaller things like themes and pictures seem kind of silly to purchase, but I guess the points are supposed to ease the purchase by separating the fact that you're actually spending money on those items. Right now the best place to spend your points seems to be in the Live Arcade section of the Marketplace. The games all have a free demo. If you like it you can unlock the full game with a point transaction. There are also free demos for current and upcoming 360 games. Ironically, being able do download demos to show off the system for free eases the impulse to buy more games for that purpose.
That brings up the size of the demos. Game demos are huge. That's not a problem in and of itself, but it takes a long time to download them. Unfortunately, downloading isn't a background task. You can't keep poking around the marketplace, play an arcade game or watch a video. You're stuck waiting for the download to finish. You can keep chatting or listening to music, but the limit seems silly given the power of the system.
Live Arcade is an interesting experiment. The games are varied. They don't push the hardware. They generally don't cost that much, but they could eat up the bulk of your play time. With addictive games like Geometry Wars and Zuma it's quick and easy to jump into an arcade session, but not always so easy to jump out. It's also great to see some independent developers getting extra exposure and sales there. I can't say there's something for everyone, but there is good variety, and the selection keeps growing. Some offer online play. All offer leader boards. It's kind of neat to check out the friends leader board to see how you stack up to people you know.
Speaking of friends, the whole interface is much better than the original Live. You press the guide button (Xbox 360 symbol) and it brings up your options (except in backwards compatibility mode). You can alter the music, find friends, chat with them or leave them a message. It's pretty handy if you need to round up a crew. You can chat while doing most anything and all games support it. It goes a long way into making gaming a virtual hang out.
Finally, there is backwards compatibility. If a game is on the list, when you insert the disk, Live will try to find the latest patch. You have to download and install it (if it's not already on the hard drive). Then you're off and running. I haven't tried too many games. The Halo 2 upgrade looks great and plays as well as on the original. Other games seem to have some frame rate or stability issues. Let's just say I'm not packing away the old Xbox yet. That's especially important to me since I own some weird games that likely won't be on the list any time soon. Given the limits of the set up, I don't think backwards compatibility will ever be the draw it was on the Playstation 2.
Overall, I definitely like the 360. It feels like getting a new computer. It doesn't open up a whole new world of gaming, but it keeps you on the crest of the technology wave with the knowledge you have a long ride ahead of you. It should be fun. Recommended.
Jason
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30 Jan 06
I wanted to give some overall Xbox 360 impressions. It will probably be a while before any in depth game impressions are posted here as the games I'm really interested in aren't out yet. Overall, it's hard to classify the Xbox 360. It truly is a love it or hate it kind of machine.
First, the box is heavy. I've hefted a few console boxes in my day. I don't remember ever feeling one that heavy. Sure, there's a lot in the premium, pro, platinum or whatever you call it box, but darn if it isn't heavy. Of course, the primary weight is the console and the power brick. The brick is even bigger than expected. On the plus side, I haven't found it to be as hot running as I feared. The box was well packed and even color coded. There was no media center remote in my package. That wasn't a problem since it only took a few moments to update my harmony remote.
Next came the hook up. The video cable comes with component and composite connectors. There's a plug for a digital audio cable on the system side of the cable, but the package doesn't come with that cable. There's a switch near the plug that selects high definition or standard TV. I'm not sure why a physical switch is necessary, but it's important if you want to get the most out of the system. There's also an ethernet port (that comes with a surprisingly long cable) on the system in the back next to the rear USB connector which is primarily used for the official wireless module. Finally, there's the power cable coming out of the brick. It appears to be a large shielded cable that terminates in a surprisingly bulky connector that locks into the 360. Other than not having an optical cable on hand, connecting the system was easy.
It's always nice to see a device work right away after hooking it up. Sure enough the Xbox 360 splash showed up. I remember some marketing hype about how you'll want to turn on your 360 just to see it. No, but it was nice that first time. The 360 registered the controller right away so I was off and running. You have to create a profile. Since I had linked my previous Xbox Live account to an email address, set up was quick and easy. I set the video output to 1080i and I was ready to go.
I have the wireless controller for the 360. Initially, they're the most impressive part of the system. They're very comfortable and have great response. The one time I was having trouble I held down the guide button. The controller reregistered solving the problem. It's interesting, the controller in the box comes with a pair of regular batteries and an adapter. Alternately, you can get the rechargeable battery with the play and charge kit that snaps on replacing the adapter assembly. Charging took a reasonable amount of time. Charge state is displayed on guide screen. Wireless controllers use the 'ring of light' to identify controller position. Player one is upper left and so on. The main change between the Xbox controller S and the 360 controller (besides wireless) is the movement of the black and white buttons to the upper shoulder position above the triggers. They now call them the left and right bumpers. The triggers and sticks still have the great tight feel from the controller S. Beyond that most of the buttons are unremarkable. The start and back buttons are a bit small and could be hard to hit in a hurry.
I'll wrap up part one with the sound and the fury. It seems there are at least three levels to the 360 in terms of noise and power. The first two aren't too bad in terms of heat and noise. Watching a DVD wasn't bad either. However, once the 360 gets into full intensive game mode, you will notice the fan noise as it spins up. There's also a sizeable increase in heat output. It was enough that I didn't feel comfortable leaving the glass door on the entertainment center closed. Once the game is going, you don't notice the fan noise at all. The heat is impressive if you check it. Hopefully, there won't be problems in summer.
Tomorrow I'll go over the Live experience and go more into the feel of the interface. Though I suppose if enough of you beg me to stop I will.
Jason
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