Some First Impressions

[HitmanN]

I found my first game quite enjoyable at first, until about mechanization/transendence era. Played on default settings. Here's a list of the biggest enjoyment killers for me:

* Native aliens are basically nothing but a stepping stone. At first they're scary obstacles, but once they become a global threat, it takes a mere dozen turns for all factions to wipe out 90% of them off the map. The rest of the game they're nowhere to be seen (at least until the point I've played). Considering the theme of the game world, I would've expected the aliens to be a constant long-term nuisance, rivaling the threat of other factions. It would make things tons more interesting if all factions had to constantly balance their military efforts between aliens and other factions. Think of it as the planet fighting back as its own faction, more and more fiercely as time passes. Also, consider gradually introducing tougher aliens, instead of everything being around from the start.

* Nukes, orbitals bombardments, etc. Total gameplay killers. After spending hours organizing and designing my forces and defenses, eagerly anticipating a fight where I could put them into use, I get these insta-kill weapons spammed at me, leaving me less than 50% of my military on the entire map in one turn. Now, this is all 'realistic' warfare and a valid tactic, but there's ZERO FUN in being defeated (or defeating someone else) by such cheap methods. All my cities had both of the first two defense buildings built. They apparently did not lessen these attacks at all. I felt totally cheated for all the effort and resources I put into my military and defenses. Imagine yourself going to a movie theater to watch an epic war movie, expecting tank battles and huge firefights. What you get is a few pictures of tanks and soldiers, followed by a huge nuclear mushroom cloud and end credits. That's what the experience was like for me. Needless to say, I'm not eager to watch that movie again. At the very least, please make these an optional feature, or considerably limit their amounts (one-per-empire stuff, one-time use only, etc), or make anti-nuke tech easy to acquire, like at the start of mechanization era, way before the actual nuke tech (example: in many RTS games anti-nukes are easier and cheaper to build/get than nukes, requiring players to find or create weak spots in their opponents' anti-nuke defenses in order to use the nukes, because everyone gets their anti-nukes up in time if they're smart. Mobile forces go first, nukes second. Not the other way around. The alternative is to try and rush the nuke production, before the opponents have all their anti-nukes built, but this is usually HARD to achieve.)

* Endgame seems a drag, like many have suggested in other threads. Aliens are gone, there's no plot elements, most of the land is colonized, and so on. There's not much to do but to but to hit 'End Turn' repeatedly, waiting for something interesting to happen. How about random events that affect specific land types and such? For example, all fungus grows more potent for ten turns, producing more resources, but also dealing more damage to units. Or negative variants, like drought, reducing food production from farms by 25% for all factions for a while.

* Dialogue kills the immersion. Pretty much every faction that communicated with me seemed incapable of real diplomacy. Everything they said seemed like an insult or a really crappy joke. The end result was that I wanted to reject 99% of their offers, simply because they didn't seem serious about anything they said. Here's an idea: Create alternate dialogue that is serious, and let the players choose in the options which they want to use.

[jdmillard]

I agree with your points and I like your ideas.

[Evrett]

I LOVE the "operations" mechanic...its like spell casting from Warlock:Master of the Arcane. Cant disagree more with you more on that.

Otherwise ya..I think there is a concensus forming that there needs more content added somewhere (aliens, faction flavor, random events) to spicy up the mid-late game.

Dialog is character fluff from SMAC. They need to illuminate better the actual option the fuff is referring to so your eyes can jump to it first once you've read through the fluff several 100 times..otherwise its a plus for immersion.

[HitmanN]

I LOVE the "operations" mechanic...its like spell casting from Warlock:Master of the Arcane. Cant disagree more with you more on that.

It's not the mechanic I disagree with, but its current power level and frequency, which are beyond Insanely OP. A tactical missile strike to weaken defenses (similar to debuff spells) before an assault would be all fun 'n games, but when the missiles simply disintegrate everything in a hex in an instant, it makes having ground forces pretty pointless to begin with. Units can pretty much only be used to block enemies from entering a hex. Oh, except... sorry, the nukes make even that function obsolete. I just fail to see how they are in any way in balance with the rest of the game.

[jdmillard]

That's exactly what I was going to say. It's too powerful. I love the operations, they are one of the best features. However, there needs to be noticeable diminishing returns for using bombardments in the same hex in the same turn.