mdlake.net

I continue to plumb the shallows of Sins of a Solar Empire, the RTS that seeks to capture the slow, strategic thinking of turn-based 4X games. The depths will have to come later; SoaSE is a multifaceted game, with a steep learning curve. I’m making progress; I can reliably beat a single, easy computer opponent on a small map, although I still find playing as the Vasari tricky. Buoyed by this success, I threw caution to the winds and sampled a three-cornered game—it was either that, or move up to medium difficulty. The results were not pretty.

The first few minutes of the game were no different from a two-player game: pop out some essential basic structures, send a scout to explore the map, build a small fleet and a colony ship to snatch up some neighboring real estate. Then things began to go to pot.

Problem one: my scout reached my rivals’ home territory, and they seemed to be way ahead of me. Perhaps their positions held hidden weaknesses, but the visible signs of growth looked bad: whereas I had a single, semi-developed homeworld and was just beginning to settle some outlying planets, both my opponents had two heavily developed worlds, with three or four defensive platforms apiece (I had none, even on my homeworld) a couple research stations (I had one), and an extra shipbuilding facility. I didn’t bump into any starter fleets in this time, but either my opponents had built some, or they got their initial colonies without a fight. Over the long haul, the resources required to build these things are rather small, but in the short time we’d all had from the game’s beginning, they represented somewhere in the neighborhood of two or three times my own resources. I’m reluctant to cry “Cheat!” before getting knowing the game more intimately…but it certainly looked like an arbitrary and sizeable imbalance of starting resources. (As I’ve written elsewhere, that’s appropriate for games played on a “hard” setting, but not an “easy” one.) With more insight into the game, I might find a build order that increases my early resource output by 20-50%, maybe enough to develop my single homeworld to the point my rivals had developed two worlds, or enough to get bare infrastructure on two or three worlds. No degree of increased efficiency would allow me to afford the kind of buildup my neighbors had. Not that quickly.

Problem two: about the time my material disadvantages were showing, my rivals began making demands. This was new to me. “Diplomatic” demands are a way to earn favor with your neighbors; they set you periodic tasks, and if you complete them, they like you better. Some of the tasks are quite simple—which is not the same as easy—“Give us 1000 credits,” for example. Some are much more complicated: “Destroy two research stations belonging to player X” doesn’t just require enough ships to blow up the stations, but enough ships to survive the fleet that comes to their rescue. I did the first one, earning some brownie points from enemy X, but really had no chance of doing the second one, so I blew it off, earning disfavor from enemy Y. 1000 credits was a painful fee that early in the game, but I figured it would earn me preference from X, if not eternal friendship. My hope was that X would then focus his efforts on Y, reasoning that he, X, might not like me, but he disliked Y even more.

No such luck. Remember how I’d just launched fledgling colonies at the time? Well, X began bombing one immediately, using a ship he’d had to research as well as build. (I didn’t have the resources to do even the research.) No, the 1000 credit bribe wouldn’t explain this siege fleet; research and building take time, time he didn’t have between receiving his payola and attacking me. Not only had X built a fleet capable of taking out the small ships defending his early colonies, but an additional fleet designed to bomb planets. Hm.

A couple more attempts at the same map produced the same results: two enemies with a huge head start, extorting serious demands from me, and not paying much attention when I agreed but definitely taking note when I refused. Nor could I return the disfavor; there is no mechanism to make similar demands of computer opponents. Simply doesn’t exist. Like the pirates I complained of earlier, this game element effectively only works one direction.

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that the “diplomatic” system is insuperable; I know other players have managed to perform enough missions to transform one or more enemies into allies, although keeping an ally happy becomes problematic as his demands to strike distant foes in a timely fashion increase, and two allies will each almost certainly ask you to attack the other. Presumably, as I get better at SoaSE, I’ll be able to win allies to my side, too. I’m already getting better at manipulating the pirates, to the point where I’ve won a few early bids, although they remain a distinct advantage for the computer. (Happily, they aren’t in every scenario.) No doubt the alliance system will likewise get easier. But the alliance system remains arbitrarily asymmetric, and that bugs me.

Quantitative computer advantages are bad enough, a way to conceal weak AI; qualitative computer advantages are just bad design in a 4X game.