The past few years have seen a sort of re-awakening in this segment, so I think it should be interesting.
The big challenge will be building excitement for the game.
Hot posts in thread: Pre-made maps and a map editor
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My post was looking at this from a different point of view, with emphasis on the “strategy” part as a genre or sub-genre if you will.
One could say that all 4x games are also strategy games, but that does not mean they are equally good at both.
Look at MoO2, It was a great Space based 4X game… but as a strategy game? not even close to great. After all, there isn’t much strategy involved in building a “doom stack” and taking out the enemy doom stack, whereby you win (or lose) a war in a single battle.
ISG on the other hand shows every sign of avoiding this downfall and stands as a good strategy game in its own right.
The quality of life features are important but by no means enough to mask deficiencies in other critical areas. (Like having a hot girl-friend who is an embarrassment as a human being) -
I think that a modern strategy game today means, well, the gameplay and quality of life features that you'd expect.
Take the best elements from the legends of this field, such as the Master of Orion games, but not just them, also very highly regarded games such as Alpha Centauri, integrate their best elements into a game.
Another important thing is that you expect aspects such as a good, easy to learn UI. The game may be hard to master, but the learning curve should be fairly attractive to new players. -
Somewhat off-topic,
When time permits, I am going to expand on this tremendously as ISG is showing the potential to be one the better strategy games I have encountered in a long time now.
Not only will this please fans of space based 4x games, there is a pool of players that will play and enjoy it just on it's merits as a "modern strategy game"
The ability to add custom maps would be useful to both those type of players. -
Thanks.
It doesn't have to be in the final release at launch. The only issue I see is if the game is missing features that people expect from a modern strategy game, but this is not game breaking.- Agree x 2
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The ability to save maps and a map editor are interesting features, that should not be very hard to do. Saving maps for later use should be easier to achieve. Custom made maps would take more time.
I'll add these features to the CFL to be considered for the final release, or beyond.- Agree x 1
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I think that a well designed map greatly adds to the game the way that allows for players to design their own creative maps.
I wonder how hard it would be to implement this feature. -
A few sessions I had already were quite excellent, and the map played a huge role in that, I wouldn't mind the ability to save maps for future use.
I also wouldn't mind being able to custom make same maps either, I do it on many games I play anyway and believe that they add quite a lot to the re-playability of those games. -
There is currently a random map generator, but there isn't a large number of pre-made maps (actually not any in the current alpha state).
Many games do have pre-made maps that the end player can play on for a certain experience. Examples include a historic story map, a map with certain conditions (ex: perfectly equal tournaments), or that force a certain playstyle.
If multiplayer is ever introduced for example, a perfectly symmetrical map would be in demand, as multiplayer requires competitive play.
Do you think that ISG needs some pre-made maps?
Another option is to release a map editor for players to play around with and make their own maps. For Steam, this could be integrated with their workshop, where users can subscribe to other people's maps.