Oversized Screenshot Alert!!!
![[Image: 36EF92058F71384287AEA4A6FC57903C8657E261]](http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/547556781804831488/36EF92058F71384287AEA4A6FC57903C8657E261/)
(pictured: AI not winning. It fought back though, and sure didn't go down easy.)
Pandora: First Contact was released in 2013, and got an expansion, Eclipse of Nashira, in 2014. Just in time to be buried under the wave of hype surrounding Beyond Earth. It was similarly heavily inspired by Alpha Centauri, and it's not hard to see those fingerprints on its setting and backstory.
The game was released to mixed success, often being dismissed as a "shallow Civ5 copy", or another "look, I have hexagons TOO" strategy game. And in its initial release, it had numerous problems with balance and a weak AI.
But these have all been fixed. Recognizing the potential of the game (the underlying mechanics are totally solid), a german modder going by the name of 'AIL' decided he wanted to try his hand out at AI programming and was able to make sweet with the Devs and get access to the source code. He now had all the tools he needed to make the AI as smart as possible, and over the course of 2015, the AIL's AI slowly transitioned from the industry-standard incompetence to a lean, mean, killing machine. He taught it how to Fight, he taught it how to Grow, he taught it how to Harness the terrain, and He taught it how to win.
There's an interview with him here: http://explorminate.net/2016/02/08/monda...s-pandora/
A year ago, I wouldn't have recommended Pandora. It would have been a shallow experience where you can futz around aimlessly and still win. Without challenge, there can be no depth. The sad thing about Pandora's story is that its a game with hidden depth. On the surface it looks like a generic scifi civ-clone, and you could play it sort of casually and come out with a win. But that was only because the AI was bad. The core gameplay of Pandora is a solid and subtle system of resource management and economic growth. This is what attracted AIL to the project in the first place, seeing the untapped potential and an opportunity to test his AI-making skills. The AI is good now, and so to win you have to actually play the game, and that's where the fun begins.
At its core, the mechanics of Pandora are a series of simple but interlocking systems (as opposed to the complex and unrelated systems of Civ5). Population units in cities work the terrain to gather Food or Minerals, or work in the cities to make science or to convert minerals into production. Pretty simple, though you do have a two-level resource chain and the inherent dilemma of "do I focus on researching for the future or building things now?"
But there are some costs that go along with your people's work: Pollution and Housing. When your industry pollutes (and each job pollutes differently) beyond what your forests and purifiers can handle it will hurt your city's morale and penalize its production. Same too with housing: if your population grows beyond its bounds, though in general population is power, your city will suffer. You have to carefully balance your industrial growth with your population growth.
The catch is though that you're not actually in direct control of your growth. Population grows independent of food supply (neglecting starvation) and independent of space (so long as morale stays positive) and it flows and migrates from old crowded cities to new empty ones. Managing your population is like tending to a flock, sending it to greener pastures and dividing it so that it doesn't overgraze one area. Your cities can only hold a certain number of people before you have to convert productive terrain into costly maintenance structures which cut your efficiency.
You have to build more cities, but more cities don't give you more people, just more places to keep them, and when new are devoid of infrastructure and become liabilities where your people's potential is wasted without production bonuses, and a small army's worth of minerals must be funneled into them before they bloom into the mature flowers of long-term strength that you need. Pandora takes the age-old question in Civilization of whether to build Tall or Wide and forces you to walk a middle path, following a shifting crest of maximum efficiency as your flock swells.
Similarly the Combat follows a middle ground between "Stacks of Doom" and "Carpet of Doom". There is, rightfully, no limit on how many units can share a tile, but artillery deals splash damage and so a large stack is a vulnerability. You keep your units spread out in the field for safety, but your maneuverability isn't compromised by arbitrary restrictions and there is no limit to the amount of force you can bring to bear on one target. Artillery able to attack with impunity is powerful, but it isn't lethal, is vulnerable to counterattack, and most importantly: the AI has been instructed fully in its proper use and avoidance. This is not a game where you will be killing wave upon wave of suicidal fools until your opponents bleed themselves dry and crumble. The AI is capable of making calculated attacks of opportunity, and will pounce if you show weakness.
Overall the AI is good enough that new players complain that it cheats (it does not), the economic bonuses on higher difficulty levels had to be turned down, and Very Hard difficulty is nearly impossible to win.
I will undermine my point slightly by telling you that the screenshot at the top of this post is from the final victorious turn of a Very Hard game. However, I was playing that game for the purpose of getting the "I Survived Pandora and all I got was this Achievement" award, and neglected to tell AIL about a couple of exploits I was using until I had secured my advantage. Needless to say, these have been patched, some quirks in its Naval Maneuvers have been ironed out, and I don't think I would be able to win on Very-Hard difficulty a second time.
...Can you?
(pictured: AI not winning. It fought back though, and sure didn't go down easy.)
Pandora: First Contact was released in 2013, and got an expansion, Eclipse of Nashira, in 2014. Just in time to be buried under the wave of hype surrounding Beyond Earth. It was similarly heavily inspired by Alpha Centauri, and it's not hard to see those fingerprints on its setting and backstory.
The game was released to mixed success, often being dismissed as a "shallow Civ5 copy", or another "look, I have hexagons TOO" strategy game. And in its initial release, it had numerous problems with balance and a weak AI.
But these have all been fixed. Recognizing the potential of the game (the underlying mechanics are totally solid), a german modder going by the name of 'AIL' decided he wanted to try his hand out at AI programming and was able to make sweet with the Devs and get access to the source code. He now had all the tools he needed to make the AI as smart as possible, and over the course of 2015, the AIL's AI slowly transitioned from the industry-standard incompetence to a lean, mean, killing machine. He taught it how to Fight, he taught it how to Grow, he taught it how to Harness the terrain, and He taught it how to win.
There's an interview with him here: http://explorminate.net/2016/02/08/monda...s-pandora/
A year ago, I wouldn't have recommended Pandora. It would have been a shallow experience where you can futz around aimlessly and still win. Without challenge, there can be no depth. The sad thing about Pandora's story is that its a game with hidden depth. On the surface it looks like a generic scifi civ-clone, and you could play it sort of casually and come out with a win. But that was only because the AI was bad. The core gameplay of Pandora is a solid and subtle system of resource management and economic growth. This is what attracted AIL to the project in the first place, seeing the untapped potential and an opportunity to test his AI-making skills. The AI is good now, and so to win you have to actually play the game, and that's where the fun begins.
At its core, the mechanics of Pandora are a series of simple but interlocking systems (as opposed to the complex and unrelated systems of Civ5). Population units in cities work the terrain to gather Food or Minerals, or work in the cities to make science or to convert minerals into production. Pretty simple, though you do have a two-level resource chain and the inherent dilemma of "do I focus on researching for the future or building things now?"
But there are some costs that go along with your people's work: Pollution and Housing. When your industry pollutes (and each job pollutes differently) beyond what your forests and purifiers can handle it will hurt your city's morale and penalize its production. Same too with housing: if your population grows beyond its bounds, though in general population is power, your city will suffer. You have to carefully balance your industrial growth with your population growth.
The catch is though that you're not actually in direct control of your growth. Population grows independent of food supply (neglecting starvation) and independent of space (so long as morale stays positive) and it flows and migrates from old crowded cities to new empty ones. Managing your population is like tending to a flock, sending it to greener pastures and dividing it so that it doesn't overgraze one area. Your cities can only hold a certain number of people before you have to convert productive terrain into costly maintenance structures which cut your efficiency.
You have to build more cities, but more cities don't give you more people, just more places to keep them, and when new are devoid of infrastructure and become liabilities where your people's potential is wasted without production bonuses, and a small army's worth of minerals must be funneled into them before they bloom into the mature flowers of long-term strength that you need. Pandora takes the age-old question in Civilization of whether to build Tall or Wide and forces you to walk a middle path, following a shifting crest of maximum efficiency as your flock swells.
Similarly the Combat follows a middle ground between "Stacks of Doom" and "Carpet of Doom". There is, rightfully, no limit on how many units can share a tile, but artillery deals splash damage and so a large stack is a vulnerability. You keep your units spread out in the field for safety, but your maneuverability isn't compromised by arbitrary restrictions and there is no limit to the amount of force you can bring to bear on one target. Artillery able to attack with impunity is powerful, but it isn't lethal, is vulnerable to counterattack, and most importantly: the AI has been instructed fully in its proper use and avoidance. This is not a game where you will be killing wave upon wave of suicidal fools until your opponents bleed themselves dry and crumble. The AI is capable of making calculated attacks of opportunity, and will pounce if you show weakness.
Overall the AI is good enough that new players complain that it cheats (it does not), the economic bonuses on higher difficulty levels had to be turned down, and Very Hard difficulty is nearly impossible to win.
I will undermine my point slightly by telling you that the screenshot at the top of this post is from the final victorious turn of a Very Hard game. However, I was playing that game for the purpose of getting the "I Survived Pandora and all I got was this Achievement" award, and neglected to tell AIL about a couple of exploits I was using until I had secured my advantage. Needless to say, these have been patched, some quirks in its Naval Maneuvers have been ironed out, and I don't think I would be able to win on Very-Hard difficulty a second time.
...Can you?
