Advanced Save Game Six Empires Huge Map and Minor Races

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RMwREfkbI-Q
The likely basis for alien abduction accounts is sleep paralysis, and so that has been the excuse for the incubus myth. But what if interdimensionals pass into space time and so harass human beings. And Dr. Jacques Vallee believes the interdimensional hypothesis is far more plausible than the extraterrestrial hypothesis. He believed alien abduction, fairy myths, all manner of unusual stories associated with ufos are really tied together. That is what John Keel believed too and tied the Mothman to this.

So BotE could have both show up in its mythos too as a credible threat as sentient species begin traversing spacetime.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zWZ0bJWQ-oA
Skinwalker Ranch and UFO activity

Whatever UFOs are, and some subset may be some kind of unknown atmospheric plasma like spirites at high altitudes or the Hessdalen lights in Norway, or even earthquake lights caused by a piezoelectric effect, it is less likely that a pure extraterrestrial explanation is 100% valid, and more likely an interdimensional explanation is at least some subset of the explanation. It is far stranger then simply aliens from other planets traveling at warp speed.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hessdalen_lights
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprite_ ... e%20ground.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_light

[UesugiKenshin]

https://wwnorton.medium.com/an-interste ... 0d0d99f847
The science of Interstellar and bulk beings who are higher dimensional sentient lifeforms.

Notice the section on spatial distortion which is an aspect of ufos sightings where this occurs and seems to alter the dimensions of the unknown vessel.

[UesugiKenshin]

A Common Theme In BotE

Khaoran "The best warrior is what matters in leadership and we have determined that is a Khaoran virtue."

Omega " We are a superior species; deal with it."

Rotharian "Those other people are the problem!"

Terran "Unless we unify by the rest of you letting us lead, then the other major races will lord their superiority over you. What? No, I am not being ironic."

Heyoun "Discrimination is a distraction. Power is about money, and we are the best at making money.,"

Cartare "We do not discriminate. You are all slaves to us."

This is the fundamental flaw with 4X games. Kind of ugly, right?

[UesugiKenshin]

Old philosophy: Playing a game determines, "Who is best", when the player has determined that one trait will be what settles that question. It begs the question, thus inherently is a flawed proposition based on philosophy. It is an informal fallacy.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

New philosophy: You play a game to maximize pleasure. The best game pleases you the most in many categories.

It doesn't matter who is best, the joy is competing, and largely is a social activity, which is why playing single player is often self defeating. You don't want the AI to beat you now. You want to have an enjoyable experience with the AI in some fashion. Or you play multiplayer to get that social activity, and preferably with your buddies.

The fundamental flaw with pleasure seeking is hedonism or it can be a kind of snobbery like being an epicurean. No one will argue against actual social contact as that is an innate human need.
https://sites.psu.edu/aspsy/2018/05/24/ ... anionship/

[UesugiKenshin]

Because of the Federation and humans being the most visible species in Star Trek, the science fiction serialized drama became about embracing technocracy. It was leftist and humanism, which was simultaneously problematic, sometime jarring as obviously the officers were in a paramilitary organization that insisted they were explorers. It's disingenuous. At least the Klingons were honest and above board.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technoc ... 0knowledge.

The citizens do not want to be led by technocrats. But the appeal was the technocrats did humanitarian missions and viewers could live vicariously and this softened the logical inconsistencies.

This is why human players want a mission based game that appeals to their pleasure, and not just kick alien asses.

[UesugiKenshin]

The most successful game today will be one in which the AI recognizes the worth of each human player and the player thinks they are playing with an opponent that seems human. That means the AI is competitive, but likely loses, though powerful, and even relates or respects the actions of that human player. It will likely be like social media, strangely enough.

The human player wants to relate with the unique extraterrestrial species in some complex but understandable way. Otherwise you have the preachy nonsensical garbage Hollywood makes now where no one can relate to the characters. You want to like the characters even if they are antiheroes like Walt on Breaking Bad.

Players who want to just eradicate the galaxy, then grow bored, which is why "god mode cheats" ruin games. Meglomania is not a desirable outcome.

The German tv series Dark has universal acclaim in America because you immediately like all the characters, though are troubled by the oldest ones (without spoiling the show).

[UesugiKenshin]

Wargamers tend to be conservatives and likely have served in the military. They don't genuinely want to conquer as they know that is impossible. They want to win scenarios by applying military principles coupled with logic and feel victorious. Not be conquerors as nobody wants to be a despot.

Those folks respect the opponents and enemies. Not bash their brains in. They likely have read history books and want to learn about all the empires in a war.

[UesugiKenshin]

Trade was incredibly important in Medieval 2 Kingdoms so one needed that income to build up military forces and infrastructure, and so this limited one's empire and military aspirations.

There is no actual trade in BotE. At first, I thought adding slots for trade and resource routes was the answer, but one actually does better by my methodology.

This means there is no discernable reason not to wage war, which is problematic. There is so much income in commodity manipulation, that treasuries are seemingly endless. Thus even if trade were a factor, it likely would be miniscule.

There is no current mechanism to engage in joint missions, thought I think an extremely hostile interdimensional force could be a factor in alliances. If there were an editor, you could have "locked alliances" thus have 3 vs 3 games emulating WW2 or have complex diplomacy and proxy wars.

[UesugiKenshin]

The idea of trading raw materials is funamentaly flawed. There is no logical reason to send resources 20 light years away. Not in a galactic setting. Even if you had finished goods and services, where you contracted with minor races to get a boost in research, I don't see the AI as utilizing this without complex programming.
https://galciv.fandom.com/wiki/Trade_(game_feature)

What typically happens is generating finished goods and services is a double edged sword that may produce income but then causes pollution or raises corruption.

GalCiv2 created an ethical alignment situation where you would colonize a planet and doing so might potentially harm colonists or exploit indigenous sentient lifeforms. So all that did was make all empires to be malevolent as that system was not balanced and the more evil you were, the higher your attributes. All major species being evil is not ideal. The evil Yor often won as did the Korath.
https://galciv.fandom.com/wiki/Race

What limited war in GalCiv2 was players chose government systems. So these governments had valuable modifiers to one's race and so based on popularity, then one's political party could falter and so be unable to wage war as you didn't have a mandate or consensus. This likely mostly affected the human player and so kept human players from dominating too early.
https://galciv.fandom.com/wiki/Governments

[UesugiKenshin]

Civ4 and GalCiv 2 introduced influence victories where you could modulate your sphere of influence by doing wonder projects or use influence starbases to act as propaganda through information warfare. In GalCiv 2 then had a major effect on diplomacy. In Civ4, it mostly moved your borders and the result was "culture flipping" of cities as your culture then made that foreign region join your empire.

One could gain late swaths of territory just by doing great humanitarian works. In BotE you offer gifts and terraform and using diplomacy gain acceptance and when the minor races only get devoted, then they may join as members. Even if devoted, seldom will that work for the human player as the Omega.

[UesugiKenshin]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/789 ... us-by-age/

Statistically in the US, here is snapshot of 2020 trends.

On average, people aged 15 to 24 years in the United States spent 39 minutes per day playing games in 2019. At the same time, 25-to-34-year-olds spent 19.8 minutes daily on this leisure activity.

This totally eliminates BotE as a contender UNLESS a modder creates scenarios. BotE has a huge time commitment as a game appealing to turtling builders which are a miniscule subset of wargamers.

A scenario should last 40 minutes times 10 sessions or some increment of ten like no more than 100 sessions so that is as low as 400 minutes as as high as 4000 minutes.

My present game has taken 60 days at about 8 hours a day or 28,800 minutes. And it isn't complete yet. I could reasonably expect 30 hours more so 30,600 minutes.

[UesugiKenshin]

Do you see why advanced save games and scenario modding are so vital to increasing BotE's popularity and making it relevant? That is the only reasonable way as that turn#1 to turn #300 period is likely not pleasurable to most gamers. Most players would like a turn #400 start as they might finish that for a total galactic war.

But a 10*10 map of the Terrans versus Khaoran or Cartare as an advanced save game might then only take 400 minutes so 10 days if playing 40 minutes a day. One could finish that over a weekend and drinking beer and eating pizza just to relax especially as a multiplayer game.

[UesugiKenshin]

There are many Android space games having a million who downloaded it. That doesn't mean they regularly play it.

https://steamspy.com/app/261470
Distant World Universe has about 50,000 to 100,000 players.

GalCiv 2 sold 150,000

GalCiv 3 sold around 100,000

Stellaris sold 200,000 but has lots of indifferent or angry customers.

By comparison, Civ 3 sold 550,000. That would be a better paradigm to emulate and largely due to scenarios by modders.
Civ 4 is the most modable 4X game and has sold 3 million copies. All the Civ games combined sold 33 million copies.

The Total War series up to the release of Attila sold 11 million copies, but that is a very robust RTS game, not a purely turn based strategy game though that is the majority of the game. Based on all reports, most do not actually play the RTS battles (which is the most thrilling part).

A million people paid for Europa Universalis 4 which has the largest DLC of any game and made their programmers a tidy sum.

[UesugiKenshin]

From 1992 through 1999, one commonly paid $40 for a computer game. Based on inflation in 1999, that would be $64 today (53 €). Many games are in the $15-30 range which are considered bargain prices.

I would gladly pay $40 for a fully realized BotE with an editor.