Stardock's last chance... Elemental: Fallen Enchantress released

[Zeriel]

You hired a modder and put him in charge of all your game projects?

 

[Frogboy]

Actually, Derek was a senior project manager at Novell who happened to like game design and modding.

My own background was electrical engineering and I only got into making games because I liked modding.

A lot of what determines what's in a given game comes from what the game engine is capable of doing and how much it'll cost to add other features. It's the biggest reason our RPGs are first person -- we end up licensing most of our engines and those engines tend to be optimized for first person nowadays.

For FE, we have a pretty decent strategy game engine but it too has its limitations. That's one reason you wouldn't just jump into a FFH game. fFH uses Cic IV as its base and we didn't have the budget to write that right off. It's baby steps.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Derek already works on what he wants. He's effectively in charge of all our games projects, not just FE.

honest question (i know i often sound like an ass but i only want the best for my games and i'm an old time stardock customer who lately lost a lot of hope): then why didn't i feel like elemental had the same treatment civilization 4 had?
where are the radically different races? where are the countless diverse units? where are the many heroes? reskinning and adding a combat bonus here and there doesn't do much for variety. i know you can do much better than this because i own galciv2: if you pull the extremely poor equipping phase and the dull quests, what's left of fallen enchantress is much, much, MUCH less than galciv2.
no, "x had y more years to develop" isn't an excuse, it actually makes the things worse, especially if x is yours: did you just forget everything you did?


ffh2 still sits on my hd after years while fallen enchantress didn't last two weeks.


edit:

fFH uses Cic IV as its base and we didn't have the budget to write that right off. It's baby steps.

i'm not completely buying this.
what couldn't be implemented?
fe already has race specific traits, traits which lock weapons and lock tech brances.
what else would you need?

 

[Raghar]

Brad is chitchatting on RPGCodex? What happened?

 

[MaskedMan]

is he gonna sexually harass us

 

[Malakal]

Brad is chitchatting on RPGCodex? What happened?

Most likely the perspective of bankruptcy. It makes people want to be closer with their customers.

i'm not completely buying this.
what couldn't be implemented?
fe already has race specific traits, traits which lock weapons and lock tech brances.
what else would you need?

Be serious, they ran out of money to keep developing and released what they had. There is such a thing as budget you know.

 

[Frogboy]

honest question (i know i often sound like an ass but i only want the best for my games and i'm an old time stardock customer who lately lost a lot of hope): then why didn't i feel like elemental had the same treatment civilization 4 had?

Talent. We didn't have a Soren Johnson and Stardock didn't treat its games seriously enough (talking about Elemental: WOM here). For instance, I was listed as the "designer" on that game but I only spent a few months on it. My day job was/is the enterprise stuff we do (work we do for OEMs).

It wasn't until we brought in Derek that the games unit really had a day to day project manager. My "design" for War of Magic was 5 pages which amounted to Master of Magic with multiplayer and designed units. By the time I started paying attention to it, it had morphed into something very different. At one point, WOM had explorable dungeons (that didn't work) and a first person exploration mode (that didn't work) and in-tile adventures (as in, you could move within a tile and do things). I definitely didn't help since I kept saying "Yea, that sounds cool" and then would leave.

Civilization IV had Soren Johnson, the best game designer in our industry and Firaxis, owned by Take 2 with gigantic budgets and amazing development talent.

where are the radically different races? where are the countless diverse units? where are the many heroes? reskinning and adding a combat bonus here and there doesn't do much for variety. i know you can do much better than this because i own galciv2: if you pull the extremely poor equipping phase and the dull quests, what's left of fallen enchantress is much, much, MUCH less than galciv2.

This is where the user designed units come into play. Under the covers, game models have "skeletons" which have to be animated. They're extremely expensive to fully realize. Since equipment had to be fit onto these skeletons and work with their animation is cut drastically down on the amount of visual differences.

The factions do play drastically differently though. I mean, the Quendar employ slave armies. The Trogs have Juggernauts. But the units don't look visually that distinct and that undoes a lot of the game mechanic difference.

i'm not completely buying this.
what couldn't be implemented?
fe already has race specific traits, traits which lock weapons and lock tech brances.
what else would you need?

To answer that, I'd ask this: Could you make a Civilization IV mod with the FE engine. And of course, you couldn't because there's so much different still.

We want to do FFH. It's a long-term goal of ours. But we have to first build up the assets to that place. You talka bout Galactic Civilizations II being really good but bear in mind, GalCiv II was the result of over a decade of work (I made the first GalCiv from my dorm room back in 1993 -- 20 years ago). Look at GalCiv I and then look at GalCiv II. Huge difference. And future GalCiv's will benefit further from existing knowledge/assets/etc.

Even Civilization V shares a ton of code with Civ IV which in turn has code from Civ III and so on. Hubris is what caused us to think we could just create a fully realized, 4X fantasy strategy game from the start. We should have started with some small piece of a larger fantasy strategy game and started with that.

Warlock, a good game, is part of a larger family of fantasy strategy games they've been developing for a long time. It just takes awhile for this sort of thing to gel together.

I think Fallen Enchantress's general success puts it in a good place for future endeavors. All I can say is thank goodness we didn't start trying to make FFH or even MOM. It's bad enough we had a big scope for our first land based strategy game.

Now that the games has Derek, it's getting a lot more resources (financial and manpower) since the projects are being run more like the non-game side. Fallen Enchantress and Sins Rebellion came out this year (both developed internally) and have done very well and Derek oversaw both.

 

[Frogboy]

Brad is chitchatting on RPGCodex? What happened?

I lurk on RPGCodex from time to time. I started out as a Usenet user. That's how I started in game development. I wanted a space version of Civilization. Back then, I was in college so I just picked up Teach Yourself C in 21 days and the rest is history.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Brad is chitchatting on RPGCodex? What happened?

Most likely the perspective of bankruptcy. It makes people want to be closer with their customers.

Probably not since the vast majority of their money is made on Windows reskins sold to OEMs and other interface improvements. With how bad Windows 8 is and how popular Start8 must be as an alternative, they're probably doing pretty good in fact.

 

[Marsal]

Civilization IV had Soren Johnson, the best game designer in our industry and Firaxis, owned by Take 2 with gigantic budgets and amazing development talent.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-05-16-soren-johnson-why-ive-left-ea-for-zynga

Someone may be looking for a job soon...

1. Hire Soren.
2. Snatch MoO licence.
3. Remake MoO2 with fancy graphics and minor changes to its mechanics.
4. Call it MoO 4.
5. Profit!
6. Let Soren design next MoO.
7. Profit!
8. Repeat 6. and 7. until Soren has had enough, then let him make whatever game he wants.

I've always appreciated Stardock games, but they have all felt "soulless" to me. They always lack a certain quality MoO 2, MoM and Civ 4 had, that made them more than spreadsheets with graphics. It's a very subjective and not easily quantifiable quality. Maybe it comes down to a overarching vision of a single great designer?

Speaking of great designers, I see that talentless hack Jon Shafer works on Elemental. Why the fuck would you give the lead designer of Civ V chance to butcher another game? He's Jay Wilson of 4X games, FFS!

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

honest question (i know i often sound like an ass but i only want the best for my games and i'm an old time stardock customer who lately lost a lot of hope): then why didn't i feel like elemental had the same treatment civilization 4 had?

Talent. We didn't have a Soren Johnson and Stardock didn't treat its games seriously enough (talking about Elemental: WOM here). For instance, I was listed as the "designer" on that game but I only spent a few months on it. My day job was/is the enterprise stuff we do (work we do for OEMs).

i've been misunderstood, let me rephrase it: "why fallen enchantress hasn't the same degree of difference with elemental which ffh2 has with civ4?". that's what i meant. of couse i saw the evolution from elemental to fe but i wasn't satisfied, i hoped for radically different factions which required totally different approaches to the game.
you chose to show off with the thingies who uses slaves. all right: could you, in all honesty, say that quendars are different from other races as much as "pick 2 random ffh2 races"? that's what i was hoping for, maybe i aimed too high with my expectations because past led me to do so.

It wasn't until we brought in Derek that the games unit really had a day to day project manager. My "design" for War of Magic was 5 pages which amounted to Master of Magic with multiplayer and designed units. By the time I started paying attention to it, it had morphed into something very different. At one point, WOM had explorable dungeons (that didn't work) and a first person exploration mode (that didn't work) and in-tile adventures (as in, you could move within a tile and do things). I definitely didn't help since I kept saying "Yea, that sounds cool" and then would leave.

looks like you people didn't even knew what you really wanted. damn, i write longer and more detailed design documents for my imaginary games, i thought a serious and much richer than me company would do better.

where are the radically different races? where are the countless diverse units? where are the many heroes? reskinning and adding a combat bonus here and there doesn't do much for variety. i know you can do much better than this because i own galciv2: if you pull the extremely poor equipping phase and the dull quests, what's left of fallen enchantress is much, much, MUCH less than galciv2.

This is where the user designed units come into play. Under the covers, game models have "skeletons" which have to be animated. They're extremely expensive to fully realize. Since equipment had to be fit onto these skeletons and work with their animation is cut drastically down on the amount of visual differences.

not what i meant again. what the hell, i must be some sort of delphi oracle today.
i couldn't care less about graphics and skeletal animations, what i meant was actually "give me races with radically different units". i don't care if they look all the same, i care if they play all the same.
wild example: men in mount & blade look the same, but different weapons are very different to be played with.

This is where the user designed units come into play.

if i'm supposed to come up with my own flavour units to spice my own games, then the background has done a terrible job.
and yes, i long for the day somebody'll ask me "could have you done a better job?", as an amateur writer i'm *that* arrogant.

i'm not completely buying this.
what couldn't be implemented?
fe already has race specific traits, traits which lock weapons and lock tech brances.
what else would you need?

To answer that, I'd ask this: Could you make a Civilization IV mod with the FE engine. And of course, you couldn't because there's so much different still.

"from necessity the virtue" as we daigo say.
of couse i can't ask for a ffh2 total conversion, that would be stupid. i'm asking for "the same treatment": with the engine at your disposal, create races, units, spells, things, stuff... anything! what did fe offer? some photocopied races with the same units, which play all the same and with something like 3 different weapons. equipment-wise even eador has more customizability than fe, and eador is a one guy effort.

Now that the games has Derek, it's getting a lot more resources (financial and manpower) since the projects are being run more like the non-game side. Fallen Enchantress and Sins Rebellion came out this year (both developed internally) and have done very well and Derek oversaw both.

then i wish you good luck with the future expansions. you're going to need lots of it.

 

[Frogboy]

i've been misunderstood, let me rephrase it: "why fallen enchantress hasn't the same degree of difference with elemental which ffh2 has with civ4?". that's what i meant. of couse i saw the evolution from elemental to fe but i wasn't satisfied, i hoped for radically different factions which required totally different approaches to the game.
you chose to show off with the thingies who uses slaves. all right: could you, in all honesty, say that quendars are different from other races as much as "pick 2 random ffh2 races"? that's what i was hoping for, maybe i aimed too high with my expectations because past led me to do so.

For that, you would have to ask Derek. I didn't design FE. But I think the races in FE are more different than what you find in most games (certainly more so than in Civilization or GalCiv which has aliens). If we could have gone with pre-rendered models (like in GalCiv) you could give a much more visual distinction.

not what i meant again. what the hell, i must be some sort of delphi oracle today.
i couldn't care less about graphics and skeletal animations, what i meant was actually "give me races with radically different units". i don't care if they look all the same, i care if they play all the same.

Then I don't know how to answer that. They seem to play pretty dramatically different, at least, for a 4X game. One race collects population by enslaving those that fall in battle. Another race gains its units from the shards. Another race can conjure outposts. Another race can train its own champions. Another race gains units via bribing them in battle. That seems pretty distinct to me.

if i'm supposed to come up with my own flavour units to spice my own games, then the background has done a terrible job.
and yes, i long for the day somebody'll ask me "could have you done a better job?", as an amateur writer i'm *that* arrogant.

What's stopping you? I mean that seriously. Why haven't you made a game? That's how I got started.

then i wish you good luck with the future expansions. you're going to need lots of it.

If all our expansions do as well as FE, the fantasy games are in good shape. I think FE crossed the 100k threshold during the holidays. The map pack (the DLC) did like 20,000 units over the holidays. And if we counted the free copies of FE, you'd have about 200k. Contrary to what some people claim, the PC game market is experiencing something of a boom right now.

FE is pretty dramatically different from Elemental: WOM. And the first major expansion for FE is already pretty different from FE. Once you have the engine nailed down, you can do some pretty dramatic things. Warlock, after all, uses the Elven Legacy engine.

 

[Frogboy]

Civilization IV had Soren Johnson, the best game designer in our industry and Firaxis, owned by Take 2 with gigantic budgets and amazing development talent.

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-05-16-soren-johnson-why-ive-left-ea-for-zynga

Someone may be looking for a job soon...

1. Hire Soren.
2. Snatch MoO licence.
3. Remake MoO2 with fancy graphics and minor changes to its mechanics.
4. Call it MoO 4.
5. Profit!
6. Let Soren design next MoO.
7. Profit!
8. Repeat 6. and 7. until Soren has had enough, then let him make whatever game he wants.

I can definitely appreciate that. Years ago, before MOO3 we pitched Atari to let us do MOO3. We would have taken MOO2, updated the graphics and multiplayer, and voila.

I've always appreciated Stardock games, but they have all felt "soulless" to me. They always lack a certain quality MoO 2, MoM and Civ 4 had, that made them more than spreadsheets with graphics. It's a very subjective and not easily quantifiable quality. Maybe it comes down to a overarching vision of a single great designer?

Our games have always been a bit soulless. This is something Derek has really helped with and I think you'll see this improve in upcoming game projects over the next few years.

Speaking of great designers, I see that talentless hack Jon Shafer works on Elemental. Why the fuck would you give the lead designer of Civ V chance to butcher another game? He's Jay Wilson of 4X games, FFS!

That's really not fair to Jon. One of the problem with forums is that there are a lot of assumptions that get treated as fact, especially if repeated a lot. If you don't like Civ V, talk to Take 2. Don't blame Jon. When Elemental sucked, I took the heat for it -- deservedly because it's my company and I am the theoretical lead designer. Yet, with Civ V, people yell at Jon and not at say Sid Meier or the Take 2 CEO (does anyone know, off hand, who the Take 2 CEO is?). There is a tendency to want to personalize everything in gaming that really just doesn't make sense. If you have to personalize, blame the guy at the top.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Then I don't know how to answer that. They seem to play pretty dramatically different, at least, for a 4X game. One race collects population by enslaving those that fall in battle. Another race gains its units from the shards. Another race can conjure outposts. Another race can train its own champions. Another race gains units via bribing them in battle. That seems pretty distinct to me.

i felt they more like "same as others but with a trick on top" than the ffh2 scale of difference. of couse your races are much better than civ4's (the 5 is a bad joke, not a game), yet given the premises of stardock + kael i was expecting more from a fantasy game.
i admit i didn't try all the races, the game wasn't mine, i had to give it back but those i tried left me with that feeling of underused, underdeveloped.

What's stopping you? I mean that seriously. Why haven't you made a game? That's how I got started.

not knowing what programming is, and not having money for expensive books and courses, that's stopping me.
hey, i'm a crippled ex-athlete, i'm not supposed to be doing smart things, being able to almost barely speak two languages is quite a feat already u_u

If all our expansions do as well as FE, the fantasy games are in good shape. I think FE crossed the 100k threshold during the holidays. The map pack (the DLC) did like 20,000 units over the holidays. And if we counted the free copies of FE, you'd have about 200k. Contrary to what some people claim, the PC game market is experiencing something of a boom right now.

FE is pretty dramatically different from Elemental: WOM. And the first major expansion for FE is already pretty different from FE. Once you have the engine nailed down, you can do some pretty dramatic things. Warlock, after all, uses the Elven Legacy engine.

can't wait for a "complete" edition then ^^ for now, i'm not that enthusiastic.

 

[Frogboy]

i felt they more like "same as others but with a trick on top" than the ffh2 scale of difference. of couse your races are much better than civ4's (the 5 is a bad joke, not a game), yet given the premises of stardock + kael i was expecting more from a fantasy game.
i admit i didn't try all the races, the game wasn't mine, i had to give it back but those i tried left me with that feeling of underused, underdeveloped.

That's fair. I can't speak for Kael but I suspect the answer would be "time" and budget.

What's stopping you? I mean that seriously. Why haven't you made a game? That's how I got started.

not knowing what programming is and not having money for expensive books and courses, that's stopping me.
hey, i'm a crippled ex-athlete, i'm not supposed to be doing smart things, being able to almost barely speak two languages is quote a feat already u_u

I know what you mean. In my case, I was just a forum (Usenet) user bitching about there being no space version of Civilization. I was in college studying EE and working 3 jobs. I only started Stardock until I could get a "real job". I picked up "Teach Yourself C in 21 days" to learn how to program.

Of course, the same endless energy/passion that fuels doing all nighters to go to college, learn programming, work multiple jobs also has some negative side effects such as impatience and a bad temper.

can't wait for a "complete" edition then ^^ for now, i'm not that enthusiastic.

In programming, you just keep building off of what you have. Little by little. Demigod, for instance, was just a very fancy Supreme Commander mod (under the covers). Galactic Civilizations was a derivative of The Corporate Machine code-base. Warlock comes from Elven Legacy which comes from earlier games. Civilization IV owes a lot to Pirates (SM's Pirates that is). So you just build your games bit by bit, hopefully being able to survival the bad ones.

 

[Metro]

I'm a lawyer, you should totally hire me to fill out the Ken Levine role: you know, the guy with the liberal arts degree that doesn't really program anything or work on balance but just dreams up kooky tropes and plots. Anyway, nice to see another developer here despite the panning Stardock occasionally gets. Although I will say the fact that an expansion is on the horizon makes me less likely to buy it anytime soon and more likely to wait for the 'GOTY' version. I will probably get to it eventually but a whole new wave of competition has surged with the advent of Kickstarter and the new Eador is higher on my radar at the moment.

For the record I think Civ 5 is fine. Of course that's in the current state having not played the game on release and only until a while after they released Gods and Kings (which, quite frankly should have just been part of the base game). Perhaps it is the nature of the beast but as pointed out above most every 4x game seems a bit 'rushed' these days. Larger budget entities like Civ and Elemental/FE can ultimately be fixed but Warlock (although solid) sort of got hung out to dry since Ino-Co doesn't have a lot of money and Paradox have put it on the backburner for now as far as funding goes.

 

[Marsal]

Speaking of great designers, I see that talentless hack Jon Shafer works on Elemental. Why the fuck would you give the lead designer of Civ V chance to butcher another game? He's Jay Wilson of 4X games, FFS!

That's really not fair to Jon. One of the problem with forums is that there are a lot of assumptions that get treated as fact, especially if repeated a lot. If you don't like Civ V, talk to Take 2. Don't blame Jon. When Elemental sucked, I took the heat for it -- deservedly because it's my company and I am the theoretical lead designer. Yet, with Civ V, people yell at Jon and not at say Sid Meier or the Take 2 CEO (does anyone know, off hand, who the Take 2 CEO is?). There is a tendency to want to personalize everything in gaming that really just doesn't make sense. If you have to personalize, blame the guy at the top.

AFAIK Sid hangs back these days and acts like an advisor (I may be wrong, but Jake Solomon said as much IIRC). Take 2 gave them more than 3 years to develop the game. And it's not like they had to start from scratch. 4X games don't exactly "age" like FPS games.

The game is decent to good in most areas, IMO. Engine is not phenomenal, but it's good enough. Graphics are mostly fine. Interface design and overall art design is also good. Music and sound are ok. Bugs get fixed. It's a fine game until you start playing it. The only major problems are the design and the AI (and the only things that really matter in a 4X game). Who was in charge of that? The genius. I can appreciate what he tried to do with the combat, even if it didn't work out, but everything else is a vastly inferior and streamlined version of Civ 4. You might say that combat was the root of all other bad decisions, but it was ultimately still his stupid idea and his fault. If it was a good game, Shafer's brilliant vision and leadership made it happen.
But it's not, so off with his head

Now, I don't have sources within Firaxis and there may be more to the story, but it seems very straightforward from my POV. And I'm a fan of both Obsidian and Troika games. I don't automatically dismiss the game and curse the developers if the game is buggy or unfinished. Civ V is just a bad game.

It's your company and your decision who to hire, I'm just a random forum poster.You get a lot of flak just by being "exposed" in public and posting on forums. I think it's great that you interact with players. Accepting responsibility for mistakes is also crucial in improving the future games. I'm not bothered by the "scandals" and other nonsense. I just care that you make games I enjoy playing. Best of luck in future game development.

 

[Frogboy]

The thing is, the designer normally doesn't write the AI. So if you don't like the AI in Civ V, that's not Jon's doing. Now, you could fault Jon for designing Civ V in a way that made it harder to write better AI for.

Being somewhat privy to the development of Civ V, I can honestly tell you that you'd be hard pressed to find anyone familiar with Civ V's development that would fault Jon with anything he's routinely blamed for. The "suits" typically pass down requirements (like "streamline this game so we can sell more copies") and designers then have to figure out how to do that.

If I were going to yell (or tease) Jon about, it would be the 1 unit per tile design requirement since that made path finding vastly more expensive (long turn times).

When we did Elemental, me (the suit) told the show runner (at SD, we call them project managers or producers) "I want Master of Magic with multiplayer and oh, that ship design thing in GalCiv? Put that in too." and then left for 2 years to work on Impulse. That one directive (player designed units) was the single most expensive and in hindsight, bad, decision that the team got saddled with and had to design around. The difference is that in the case of Elemental, the suit (me) took the blame (which I deserved) because that's my job. It's my company.

Civilization IV is pretty tough to beat. Jon wasn't given the option of "take Civ IV and make it better". the suits decide that. On Elemental, the position that Jon held on Civ V was held by Scott T (you can look him up in the credits). Someone way further up the chain in the company should have been making clear that the parts of Civ V that people were upset about had nothing to do with Jon in the same way I made sure Scott didn't get the blame on Elemental.

Or put another way, the guys who make the big bucks and approve/make the decisions are the ones who should take the fall. i.e. the suits. Imagine being 20-something (like Jon) and being hated on for years for things that you had either no control over or little say over.

 

[Zeriel]

While we're on the subject:

Why is making a 2D strategy game so verboten? It seems like much of the problems you experience in making an MoM clone that isn't a) ugly or b) soul-less are down to the cost of doing 3D tech well. Is there some compelling reason for doing 3D modeling with all its attendant problems (like the skeleton issue you mentioned), instead of a painted 2D look like Age of Wonders (1)?

While I understand in the AAA space the market expects great things, a lot of these indy projects that do strategy and RPG games are basically producing sub-standard 3D looks that could be done much more cheaply (and prettily) with 2D assets. The expectation isn't for great 3D, so why use 3D at all? I'm guessing your answer is going to be "well, that's the engine available to us", but I can't help but wonder what has changed when you had 2D engines of yester-year coded in the span of a year by teams consisting of 1-3 people.

 

[Frogboy]

While we're on the subject:

Why is making a 2D strategy game so verboten? It seems like much of the problems you experience in making an MoM clone that isn't a) ugly or b) soul-less are down to the cost of doing 3D tech well. Is there some compelling reason for doing 3D modeling with all its attendant problems (like the skeleton issue you mentioned), instead of a painted 2D look like Age of Wonders (1)?

While I understand in the AAA space the market expects great things, a lot of these indy projects that do strategy and RPG games are basically producing sub-standard 3D looks that could be done much more cheaply (and prettily) with 2D assets. The expectation isn't for great 3D, so why use 3D at all? I'm guessing your answer is going to be "well, that's the engine available to us", but I can't help but wonder what has changed when you had 2D engines of yester-year coded in the span of a year by teams consisting of 1-3 people.

Mainly it's a sales thing. While hard core players don't mind, the general gaming public and certainly the reviewers would pan it and retailers would likely not stock it. It's kind of an arm's race in terms of visuals. Or at least, it was prior to retail being knocked down a notch.

On the other hand, look at FTL. It's been a huge success and it's just 2D. With the fall of retail, it's a whole new world.

 

[SCO]

I'd guess, artists that know the techniques and engines that can be licensed.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

When we did Elemental, me (the suit) told the show runner (at SD, we call them project managers or producers) "I want Master of Magic with multiplayer and oh, that ship design thing in GalCiv? Put that in too." and then left for 2 years to work on Impulse. That one directive (player designed units) was the single most expensive and in hindsight, bad, decision that the team got saddled with and had to design around. The difference is that in the case of Elemental, the suit (me) took the blame (which I deserved) because that's my job. It's my company.

i want to know more about this.
i've always thought about imaginary games and some years ago i started writing imaginary design documents for games which will never exist. a very close friend of mine, a coder, asked me to design something pretty easy, he asked "battlestar galactica strategy for tablet or smartphone" and i proceeded with a 25 pages long .txt filled with descriptions, mechanics, possible issues and debated solutions.
then i read this, gta's design document, which basically states "i want cars, violence and stuff. technical issues are yours, not mine". i was sure it was a joke.
now you're telling me in the industry it really works like this, aren't you?

 

[Marsal]

The thing is, the designer normally doesn't write the AI. So if you don't like the AI in Civ V, that's not Jon's doing. Now, you could fault Jon for designing Civ V in a way that made it harder to write better AI for.

I thought it was Firaxis "tradition" that the lead designer writes the AI? I know Soren wrote the AI in Civ 4. While the AI in Civ 4 wasn't spectacular, it was good enough. It was just competent enough for an average player on Prince and huge bonuses on Deity made it challenging for experts.

Speaking of AI, your games have always had good AI, but I feel you sacrificed too much to make it "easier" on the CPU. Do you think it was a good trade-off?

While you're here, I might as well ask. Would you be interested in doing an interview for our sister site, Tacticular Cancer (they are the strategy side of the Codex and I think this is technically their subforum)? They are trying to liven things up a bit with more content. Maybe in a few months, when you're ready to talk about the new expansion? Think about it, you might get your own MCA troll

 

[Frogboy]

The thing is, the designer normally doesn't write the AI. So if you don't like the AI in Civ V, that's not Jon's doing. Now, you could fault Jon for designing Civ V in a way that made it harder to write better AI for.

I thought it was Firaxis "tradition" that the lead designer writes the AI? I know Soren wrote the AI in Civ 4. While the AI in Civ 4 wasn't spectacular, it was good enough. It was just competent enough for an average player on Prince and huge bonuses on Deity made it challenging for experts.

In Civ V's case, the AI was mostly handled by the engineering team. Soren did most of the AI in Civ IV. But Soren is, of course The Man.

Speaking of AI, your games have always had good AI, but I feel you sacrificed too much to make it "easier" on the CPU. Do you think it was a good trade-off?

In Elemental/FE the hardest part for the AI is that I didn't do the detail game design so the games have a lot of min/maxing and "traveling salesmen" type issues. GalCiv, by contrast, was designed with the AI in mind and it shows. Plus, FE/Elemental both iterated (and in FE's case, continue to iterate) that it is harder to get the AI up to speed.

But all that pales next to the fact that FE doesn't have a scripting language (no Lua or Python) so if we want to support modders, I have to keep the AI itself fairly generic in C++ and try to deduce what I can from the XML.

While you're here, I might as well ask. Would you be interested in doing an interview for our sister site, Tacticular Cancer (they are the strategy side of the Codex and I think this is technically their subforum)? They are trying to liven things up a bit with more content. Maybe in a few months, when you're ready to talk about the new expansion? Think about it, you might get your own MCA troll

Sure.

As for trolls, as an earlier part in this discussion mentioned, I am pretty used to trolls. Ironically, most of the trolling I get comes from the non-game side of things. People get very...passionate about their operating systems still.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

If someone can survive on a lawless and brutal environment like Usenet used to be, the Codex is extremely weaksauce in comparison.