Since the devs have talked about an expansion to the game (and I'm not sure if that means its in development or about to start), I thought I would mention my "wish list" for such an expansion. Now of course I could mention a dozen little things, but instead I'm just going to focus on a couple of core things that I think would provide the most benefit. End Game Victory Conditions I am going to quote myself from my review of this game on Steam. "The "Late Game Desert" Problem: ISG suffers as many 4x games do from a lack of "end game drivers". Sure you can create whole new planets and terraform every dirt ball in sight, but at some point you go "is there anything else"? You just feel like its either time to conquer the galaxy or keep working on your pretty space garden until your ready to start another game. The game could benefit from some more victory conditions and late game effects that push you towards a conclusion." This to me is the number 1 issue in the game currently, and its the last piece of the puzzle from making the game truly great. And its a common 4x problem, so if handled well is a real way to differentiate the game in the market. I'll also note that you could keep using the council mechanic, but perhaps add different ways to vote. Maybe I can build late game wonders that add votes. Maybe I can buy votes with cash. So the council is still the "victory condition that isn't just conquering the galaxy", but you add some options to allow different playstyles to contribute. I would say on the council, I really would like it to be more consistent (it seems to just pop out of nowhere, is it on a random timer or something as I have no idea when it will occur). If nothing else, somewhere that tells me what turn the council will appear next on, so I can try to prepare for it. Waypoints The main QoL improvement that I would enjoy is the inclusion of waypoints. By that I mean I can click a fleet and say "go to this planet, then go to this planet, etc". This would be especially helpful for your scout ships, but still would be useful for main fleets as well. If not this, than at the very least adjust the pathfinder to include wormholes. Its annoying that in order to utilize wormholes you often have to do double the work, sending the ship to the wormhole planet and then clicking it over to the planet you want. More Planet Modifiers Exploration is one of the strongest elements in this game, I will once again quote myself from my review: "Exploration: This is my number 1 favorite add to this game. I thought I liked the probe system in Endless Space 2, and this blows it out of the water. You get to select sectors of the galaxy that your probes scan behind the scenes. Overtime you will find new stars, planets, wormholes, etc that organically surprise you as the game goes on. Even as you finish the core exploring, you will keep finding new places to explore throughout the game. No 4x game I have ever played has kept the "eXploration" part of the game going as long as this one does." So anything to enhance this will just magnify the strength of your game. So I would like to see a wider variety of modifiers for the planets. It would even be great to allow 2 modifiers on the same planet, as that hugely increases the variety of planets you may find. If you wanted to take it a step further, it would be interesting to see modifiers on asteroid belts and gas giants, to again shake the map up with some more variety. Diplomacy Diplomacy remains one of more limited aspects of the game, and I would love to see more options here. More Ruin Options Similar with planet modifier, this is an area where more is better. Ruins are a lot of fun, but does get stale after several gameplays. I would especially like to see less "oh you found nothing, but over here might be something!" ruins in exchange for meatier benefits. More Leader Desires Leader desires right now are very limited and extremely predictable, so again more variety here would be very welcome.
Victory Conditions are always kinda boring to be honest.Most tech or most pops for a senate win or kill everyone..I think by the late game about in most 4x games you tend to be winning baring a few cases. It sucks because it's when you get the cool tech and biggest ships.I just like the rather simple solution of the reapers,etc with a late game menace.Stellaris does this well.I beat the end game threat and feel satisfied.
Thanks for the feedback on what you'd like to see. I'm pleased to report many of those items are on our big list of potential improvements, so we are aware of them. The first expansion is actually right around the corner and we will be sharing a lot more info about it soon. What we've already revealed is that it is focused on adding more variety and flavor to the game. It will include 2 new races, each complete with everything you'd expect to see such as new art, unique abilities, a new fleet, new titan abilities, and affinities. We're also adding more characters to choose from when creating custom races. In addition, we have a number of significant features already designed and finely tuned for inclusion in future expansions. I really hope we are fortunate enough to be able to continue to expand this series for some time to come. I can help with this. If you check your empire overview screen, it will tell you when the next one will occur. It always occurs the first time the next turn after you have met all the empires present in your galaxy. Thanks again for the feedback, is it appreciated!
Oh one more item for my wish list. Progressive AI Scaling: So right now the AI bonuses are jammed packed at the beginning of the game. This means super difficulty games are either complete failures (you start and then just got knocked out by the AI), or you overcome the slugfest and then get into a cruising position where you basically can't lose, its just a question of cleaning the board. Might I suggest looking at some progressive bonuses to smooth out the curve, making it more viable to compete early on, but give the AI progressive more bonuses so that the human can never get too comfortable in the late game. Aka less starting bonuses, but the AI adds more over time. Examples: 1) Gain 1 pop in your lowest pop planet every X turns. 2) Gain X gold every Y turns. 3) Start at 100% prod and research, which increases by 10% every X turns.
The difficulty level in ISG is actually thematic to a good extent in the sense the AIs start more advanced than you in the higher difficulty levels because you entered the galactic scene a bit later. Considerably later in Impossible. The reverse in the lower difficulty settings than average. However, after the ball starts rolling everyone should be "more or less" in equal footing. The difference is in the production and research efficiency, which you can say already scales with time, at least in the bonuses it grants, because since it's a percentage it will provide less total bonuses at the beginning and more the game progresses. So, I believe it will act similar to the gaining more POPs, gold or production you were suggesting. It's unlikely we'll change the way the difficulty settings work at this stage of the project, as they were the culmination of many design and playtesting iterations, and changing that may have unforeseen consequences. There are also many ways the game can be played and there are lots of options available to players for them to tweak the experience (e.g. reducing the production or research efficiency of the AIs is just one of them). Anyway, thanks for your suggestion. It's unlikely we'll add it in, but one never knows.
I respect the position as it is such a late game request, but I will make one more argument to dispute your note here. So what happens in an impossible style game is the following: 1) In the early game, any production bonus is exceptionally big. Every ship is an incredible multiplier, every tech can massively increase the combat strength of your forces. The AIs leverage this well (to their credit) by being exceptionally aggressive in the early game. The human is always behind, and usually have to cede territory to AI forces until he can finally build a fleet capable of competition. At this point in the game, tactics matter little, only raw strength is important...and the AI just has complete superiority over the human in this regard. 2) As the game continues, the human continues to play catchup. While the AI's bonuses increase, the variety of options starts to work against it. A human can leverage superior strategic play to develop better colonies, and tactical superiority to take minimal losses in fights. This allows the human to begin to overcome the AI advantage. 3) The tipping point comes in the mid to late game. As titans take the field, there is no longer a new horizon of massive combat strength increases. Each new military tech is useful, but pales in comparison to the early game increases. At this point, the human has filled in his supply cap (well usually into yellow negatives for most games I play), and has developed his "death fleet". At this point in the game, I play with the expectation of nigh zero losses. The AI no longer has a massive military advantage from tech, and no longer can field larger ships than I can. This is where tactics and strategy dominate, and though the AI has seen some big improvements in recent patches....it still pales to the tactical superiority of a good human player. So even though you are correct that the AI's production is now significantly higher than the humans....that increase is no longer enough to overcome the fact that I crush entire fleets with 0 losses, again and again. All of this is a very long winded way of saying....though it appears that the AI is getting a lot of bonuses in the late game, its really not in comparison to the tactical skill that a human playing at that level is expected to accomplish. Instead, you set a really large hill at the start of the game, sometimes insurmountable, but once I climb it and get to the top....that's game. What I am instead proposing is a small hill that continuously rises as the game goes on, creating an early game that feels more fair and less punishing, and a late game that continues to add more pressure to the human so that the feeling of "I've got this in the bag" is pushed farther and farther away. I work on a major rebalancing mod in Civilization 5 called Vox Populi, and progressive difficulty was one of its greatest implementations. It makes a night and day difference into the competitive nature of the game, and really breathes new life into the gameplay. So that's my spiel, thank you for listening. I'll drop the topic now, and leave it in your hands if you wish to consider it.
I would love to see a score-based victory (or something like it) where each race acquires victory points via unique/different objectives (rather similar to what it's in Armada 2526 and/or Distant Worlds: Universe). However imperfectly those systems were implemented into their respective games, they did give the player a way to win that didn't necessarily require them to "paint the map" and conquer/kill everyone. I also wouldn't mind seeing a genuine end-game threat or two, with defeating them possibly counting as (or at least contributing towards) a victory as well.
