"simplifying the fun away", by Amos

[TERMINALLEVY]

https://terminallevy.net/entries/simpli ... -all-away/

In chopping off all the “busywork” and not leaving too much of substance to focus on instead, most 4X-lites end up abandoning the main reasons I go to turn-based strategy in the first place. Circling back to the summary I wrote at the top, I rarely boot up a 4X game because I want to see a victory screen in an hour. I'd much rather just navigate a web of decision-making, feeling around in that space of shaping potential. For me, making choices in 4X is less about the possibility of making the right one and more about what scenario a particular choice will lead to.

Breaking out of our hiatus with the first TL entry in a couple months. Where's the line between complexity and busywork? Are there any Aurora 4X-heads on the forum?

[lynnedrum]

i find myself purely in the "nah i'm good" camp with 4x games, but i always find myself pouring so much time into them. i think you really hit the nail on the head with illustrating the moment you realize something like Civ isn't there to provide you for a good historical roleplay simulation. even still, i have a lot of fondness for Civ; even though i have never completed a single game of it (the closest i've gotten, by nature of its 3-act design, is Civ VII - a game i honestly feel is pretty misaligned)

but i feel very disconnected from the standard 4x enjoyer. because of the lack of nuance in games like Civ or Stellaris in how you interact with other civs, the game for me is largely over once I've finally cleared all the fog of war from the map. there's still a little futile magic for me in building up cities and making them work, but when it comes time to engage with the combat i almost always reload to an earlier autosave to make different choices or abandon the campaign entirely. truly i only enjoy the first 1.5 of the Xs. but i can lose so much time just starting a new save, building up some cities, walking a little guy around, and seeing who my neighbors are. i've never felt my money wasted even though that's basically all i ever want to do in these games.

i guess i'm just a drawing maps girlie. if gandhi wants my shit he can have it.

[amos]

I just wound down a Civ III playthrough (Inca, monarch difficulty) where I kind of gradually lost interest in several steps:

1. at the end of the expansion/settling stage once the lines had been fully drawn - expansion in Civ 3 is very fun, the maps are huge and cool looking, but once you settle in you're like "well shit I guess it's war time now"
2. after monopolizing my starting continent - you truly feel like Alexander in that moment
3. after finding the other continent and realizing I didn't snowball enough in the early-mid game to reliably continue rolling over there, but also not enough that culture or science victories would be realistic, and even then...
4. realising a science victory would just be what, me micromanaging 40 workers for 200 more turns to maximize my yields? I dunno...

the earlygame exploration period also tends to be my favourite. A game that just expands that into its own thing sounds like a great time, I'd be surprised if nobody's tried to make one yet.

[arbhor]

I realize this is a minor point in the argument of the article, but I was curious about the remark on the aesthetic appeal of Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I also remember some discussion in a stream (I also remember conversation on conventions for fog of war?). Would you be able to speak more about it?

I've been playing a bit of the first Age of Wonders lately and feeling a slight preference for it over the second entry and its expansion. At a purely visual level, there's a kind of toy-like quality to the first game that's diminished (although still present) when the sprites and environments are given more fidelity. I also find the look of HoMM3 compelling and it kind of merges the two approaches with the detailed renders but tilted perspective. I think a lot of the fun of a game might be wrapped up in manipulating a world that is visually responsive, even if it is work or strategically dull.

[amos]

I realize this is a minor point in the argument of the article, but I was curious about the remark on the aesthetic appeal of Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I also remember some discussion in a stream (I also remember conversation on conventions for fog of war?). Would you be able to speak more about it?

It is just top-to-bottom gorgeous to me. The very physical material red-brown-gold UI, the dense and vibrant picturebook quality of the exploration map... resource sprites that remind me of being 3 years old and sucking on marbles... I really love the prerendered 3D of the cities, though the battle maps and prerendered 3D of the units is just "charming" (i.e. it doesn't actively make me happy to look at the way the exploration map does) but it all comes together into something that's, at a baseline, just very pleasant to look at. Age of Wonders 4 gets the closest a contemporary strategy game has gotten to that feeling to me, but it's working at a fundamental disadvantage or being a contemporary release that has to fit into certain visual constraints.

It's a little sad to me that the art director for HoMM3, Phelan Sykes, has just been doing digital slot machines for the last 15 years. Then again, I'm not sure any of the big names associated with that game did that much "notable" work after the 00s.