Role of planes

[Seravy]

See Life thread for start of discussion.

Basically, we think we should firs discuss what our intended role is for having 2 planes and then adjust the game to match that, instead of the opposite.

My view :
Planes are a game mechanic to separate travel between locations, similarly to continents, and distance between star systems in space games, but on a larger scale. Continents are very easy to navigate in this game, no research of technology or high tier buildings are needed - ships are the lowest tier unit, and several realms have waterwalking or even flying creatures at the lowest tier, so continents do fill this role in the game.
However this separation is necessary to ensure proper pacing of the game - making it possible to have strong late game enemies without the possibility of the other players to run into that enemy and lose the game (or beat it and literally win the game through that immediately).
Thus, the "other" plane should be richer in resources, not accessible until the late game, and contain fewer but stronger players than the original plane, if and only if the human player starts on the original plane.
If the human does start there, they should still be richer in resources (they paid in picks for this), but the "fewer and stronger" players should happen on the Arcanus plane instead.
On flavor side, planar travel should be a big deal that's hard to access and difficult to achieve, but what promises vast riches to those successful at doing so. Thus towers need to be heavily defended, the lairs and nodes on the other side need to be stronger and more rewarding, and planar travel spells should be expensive to research and use.

[Nelphine]

I don't think this statement is actually good:

Planar travel should be a big deal that's hard to access and difficult to achieve, but promises vast riches to those successful at doing so.

Any time we've had a situation where someone has had the ability to access those 'vast riches' then either it's been war, which isn't really accessing riches at all, or you've (reasonably correctly) identified that this allows the person to get excessively strong too early.


I actually AGREE with the statement, but in all our discussions, you have repeatedly proven it isn't a good statement.

Actually, I think if you could figure out a way to make that statement true, I think that would be helpful. That's one of the reasons I was trying to suggest such complicated solutions to planar travel - ideally people WOULD gain riches without having to go to war to get them, but that needs to be balanced so the person doesn't simply use those riches to conquer their original plane. My suggestions were to put in associated costs that were high enough that those riches would basically end up neutral until the towers were broken - and then what it has done is allow the planar traveller to have a headstart on getting those riches compared to his enemy.



However that's fairly minor. You haven't really put anything concrete into your view, which may actually be a portion of the issue. For instance, you haven't stated here that you want an 'end game boss', even though in the past you have stated that. This unclearness I suspect is part of the problem with figuring out what to do with the planes, and particularly, the Myrran retort.



So my view:

2 planes should offer unique game play. In other games, space and continents end up being relatively similar. However some games also offer wormholes/lanes, that control where units can go. In this game, we don't have wormholes/lanes. Instead we have different planes with connecting towers. This offers a completely unique set of restrictions on travel. In some ways they are similar to wormholes, but without any other choice - you can't simply fly slowly to the location (a la MoO2 wormholes) but you also normally never interact with the tower restriction (unlike something like Ascendancy where that is the only possible form of travel).

However, by itself, tower travel is still very similar to MoO2 wormholes. So, we need something extra to make it unique - other forms of planar travel offer this. Planar travel offers effectively limited teleportation. This is unique (and of course, extremely hard to balance) to any game I know, although it's somewhat akin to the way point system in diablo style games, but those are completely a different genre so the comparison doesn't completely hold.

Now, I think we have a choice. We can either leave this secondary planar travel to the side, and discuss the rest of the planes roles (this is what is currently done, and what I believe the original game developers did). In this case, due to the fact that planar travel is effectively teleportation, it will always have severe balance issues. Or we can decide how this secondary planar travel works first, and fit the entire rest of the role of the planes to suit it. I think this will actually end up with a much more balanced game... but it could theoretically means completely re-writing the game, which is probably outside the scope of this thread.


So I'd start from there.

Planes offer unique game play, by changing up travel options. Towers by themselves are a little unique, but planar travel is what sets the game apart. Do we leave it as a loophole, a way to break other balances of the game (in which case we need to embrace that, whether as a Rare tier spell or not, and simply be ok with it when we find new ways to break it at the Rare tier)? Or do we consider theorizing what basing the game around planar travel would actually look like?


The next step I'd look at is, that planes offer literally two worlds. We can (and have) made the rules different. One is distinctly stronger than the other. The graphics are different, the resources are different. Ideally, I'd like to say the game play should be different, but I don't feel that is the case. If we could figure out a way to make the game play on the two realms subtly different (Like giving all fantastic units +1 to all stats when on Myrror, although I'm not seriously suggesting that, I'm just suggesting we do something that makes game play different, so that a strategy that works on one plane, may not be so effective on the other), I think that would be a huge step as well. A slightly more serious thing would be to make it so that coal and gold is prolific on Arcanus, but rare on Myrror (and gems would be rarer on Myrror than Arcanus); so Myrror gets more mithril than Arcanus, and 90% of all adamantium in the game is on Myrror; Myrror gets many more crystals than Arcanus; but Arcanus gets the other ores. However, that really only impacts early game decisions, not long term game strategy, so that isn't exactly what I'm looking for either.


Only once those 2 steps are done would I look at the 2 planes in terms of 'standard' game mechanics, such as balancing different opponents for different tiers.

[Nelphine]

Actually, I think that may be a way to make 'vast riches' work. You don't make Myrror have MORE minerals; you make them have different ones.

Give Arcanus gold/silver/gems/iron/coal/wild game. Give Myrror Mithril/Adamantium/Blue Crystals/Yellow Crystals/nightshade. Not 100% obviously, but make it so that each plane has roughly the same amount of resources, but distinctly different resources. Then, you want to get to the other plane in order to gain different resources, as opposed to better ones.

However, that doesn't solve getting more cities than expected, so not overly useful. Never mind.

If you could make it so that choosing to settle the other plane, meant sacrificing settling your home plane, that would work. But that's not the case, and with the fast pace of the game (which I think we can uniformly agree is a good thing), I don't think we can make that the case. Unless you put in artificial limits like Civ does where bureaucracy and government size come into play.

[Seravy]

For instance, you haven't stated here that you want an 'end game boss', even though in the past you have stated that. This unclearness I suspect is part of the problem with figuring out what to do with the planes, and particularly, the Myrran retort.

I want some sort of challenge the player needs to overcome in the late game. Whether that's one final boss, an alliance of multiple wizards, or an external invasion from Antarans is not relevant but we can't have the latter two happen in this game for obvious reasons. So yes, I guess I do want a final boss.
Other 4x games have this final boss happen naturally - out of those 8-12 players at least one or two will snowball and conquer that half of the world/galaxy/universe etc that you cannot yet reach using your tech - or if not that means they allied and then you have that sort of challenge. (Planes are the replacement for having the appropriate long distance travel tech in other games that allow for this sort of game development)

Which is why I would be fine with multiple Myrran wizards - either they ally, or one conquers enough territory from the rest to be the final boss. However we don't have the available player count for this to work - we can't really put more than one enemy to the other plane otherwise the starting plane would lack enemies and the early game would suffer.
People play the game with 4 opponents 99% of the time for a reason - the game would ideally require something like 4-8 opponents for best balance, but we can't do higher than 4 so we are stuck doing 4 all the time.

[Seravy]

Give Arcanus gold/silver/gems/iron/coal/wild game. Give Myrror Mithril/Adamantium/Blue Crystals/Yellow Crystals/nightshade. Not 100% obviously, but make it so that each plane has roughly the same amount of resources, but distinctly different resources. Then, you want to get to the other plane in order to gain different resources, as opposed to better ones.

We have already decided against this because it wouldn't work well. Alchemy is a thing, and every city and plane produces a lot of both type of resource, so this wouldn't have a significant effect (except the mithil/adamantium) - also, we can either have "terrain type determines ore type" or "plane determines ore type", not really both, so it would mean losing the former which is the current system.

[Seravy]

Any time we've had a situation where someone has had the ability to access those 'vast riches' then either it's been war, which isn't really accessing riches at all, or you've (reasonably correctly) identified that this allows the person to get excessively strong too early.

Actually there might be one way to make this true.
Have everyone always start on the same plane. Have Planar Travel as a rare (or very rare) Arcane spell. Whoever researches it first can get a head start on colonizing that plane and gets to exploit the riches.

However in this system there is no endgame opposition. Either you are the one who gets to the other plane first and then, well, you won the game, or someone else does and then they are the "final boss". Unfortunately we can't have the AI get so much research advantage that they manage to get to the other plane first, plant cities, have them grow enough to be a threat, and turn into a final boss. If an AI would have that much research advantage, well, they crush anyone else anyway. 

Basically, this would be a "win more" game mechanic and those are never really good for a game.

Also towers wouldn't work with this - even if the enemy breaks the tower first, they'll still let everyone else go through it. The AI doesn't and cannot know the concept of blocking towers.

So yes, I have to agree this "promises vast riches" is very bad for gameplay and we shouldn't try to go for that. However I did say it as "flavor". The Vast riches are certainly there on Myrror as is - it's just not worth exploiting. "Promises" is the keyword, it doesn't mean it'll actually deliver on that promise.

[Nelphine]

Right, but what you've just stated is that the Myrran retort has poor early game.

I would disagree with this. I've never found Myrran retort to have a particularly poor early game. So having only 2 opponents on the same plane IS viable - otherwise, the Myrran retort wouldn't be enjoyable.

However, the Myrran retort LATE game suffers. The 2 wizards on Arcanus aren't remotely a match for 1 wizard on Myrror.



(And yes, I realize a lot of this potentially means changing a lot of the current game; that's one reason why I'd like you to specify what your objectives are for each step. Start with travel gameplay. Then, rules differences between the planes. Then, and only then, look at how those 2 things work out for making the rest of the game work.)

[Seravy]

Travel gameplay...
Since we have no other way to ensure late game to be relevant, Planes are our only tool to make sure late strong game AIs happen. Thus planar travel is undesired to happen prior to that time.
Further more, we have previously agreed that players blocking towers is a desired feature we want to happen, but it should be "harder" to do. Which means towers should be the primary means of reaching the other plane. Thus, Planar Travel needs to be prohibitively expensive and very limited - useful for sending one doomstack a year, but not much else - as well as not happen any earlier than when towers can be reasonably broken.
Alternately we can overturn that previous decision and say tower blocking is not desired. In this case cheap and easy to use Planar Travel is acceptable - but timing still needs to happen after towers otherwise towers cease to matter at all.

If we want towers to be the main gateway, we are fine with a Life Planar Travel. If we want Planar Travel to be the main gateway instead, we need it in Arcane. So ultimately this seems to depend on whether we want tower blocking to be a thing or not.

Rules difference between planes is separate and don't seem to be relevant to actual travel mechanics. It affects what you do and how you do it once you are there, but not when and at what cost you can reach it. I don't feel the need for different rules - the game is diverse and difficult enough as is, and I don't think we can come up with a difference that's fair to all realms and races. But either way it's something we can have with regardless of what we decide for planar travel.

I'd say having 2 Myrran opponents when your are Myrran is fine because you don't do it often. I'm ok with games where only two wizards start on my plane every once in a while. I wouldn't be ok with that all the time as it severely limits diplomacy potential, trading, etc, and generally makes the early game more prone to luck.

[Nelphine]

Yes travel gameplsy should be decided before rules differences. Only if we choose certain sets of planar travel would that have any effect on the rules.

What you've stated us that you want travel gameplay to fit into the rest of the game, not the other way around. The pro of that is that all the work we've already done is relevant and won't need to be changed much. The con is that most likely either planar travel will be a usable, or it will be so expensive as to never be used at higher difficulties.


I think this is a very fundamental decision. I think that the only reasonable decision is the one you've stated, but I do believe this will keep dropping up periodically because if that decision, no matter what we end up with for planar travel.



AFTER that, we make different planar rules. We already have different rules, in how minerals are placed, in what species exist, in how nodes are placed, in how landmass is generated.

However, none of this actually changes gameplay.

For me, playing high elves or dark elves, is the same thing. Except dark elves are far superior. Yes there are differences, but not gameplay wise. (I think this is actually true of any late game race and dark elves actually, which is why I virtually never play on arcanus, but that statement is a lot harder to defend, nor is it relevant to my point).

I think if there were differences in gameplay between the two realms, that would make it a lot easier to identify what we want to do.


Finally, as someone who plays 75% or more of my games with the Myrran retort, what you've stated about early game just doesn't make sense. The early game plays out very similar to how my starts on Arcanus play out as well, except I can get more cities before I have to go to war (which for me, is a pro.)

[Seravy]

btw if we end up with late planar travel, then 3 myrran 1 arcanus becomes more viable. We were forced into the 2 v 2 setup because 3v1 with early planar travel was too easy to abuse even compared to the same on Arcanus. You have the better race, so if you manage to get there, you are almost guaranteed to KO the Arcanus wizard, winning the game right away. I guess there were other reasons behind that decision as well but this is the one I remember being the important one.

So then, first thing to decide, do we want tower blocking to be a thing or not?