GC4 has come a long way since its Early Access days, and with upcoming expansions around the corner will continue to get even better. So its a good time to drill in on some things that aren't working so great in the game. This post won't deal with individual balance concerns but look more holistically at systems in the game that could use some love.
Here is our top 5 (in no particular order) systems that could use a look.
Volley System
The volley system was GC4's attempt to add some tactical combat into the overlay, and it succeeded at this, though the implementation could still use some love. Some people really hate that volleys ignore defenses, as its an easy way to snipe starbases in the later game. I think Missiles and Beams are too similar in how they volley (though not everyone agrees in this point).
Probably though the biggest issue is that the overkill problem. Volleys can only kill a single ship at a time (and normally its the smallest ship). This means that the optimum way to volley is to break up your ships into small pieces, have each of them volley, and then recombine your fleet. This is a horribly inefficient way to play, but 4x games are notorious for attracting OCD players who love to optimize, and there will always be those people willing to commit 50 clicks to get the best possible result.
When your game optimizes tedium....your game become tedious. And so that alone means the volley system needs a look.
Invasion System
GC4 made the move to remove complex ground invasions....a decision I praise. I think its weird to make ground invasions a big thing when you have giant space lasers. But that doesn't mean the system couldn't use some love.
Right now planetary defenses don't do much, there really isn't much in the way you can do with a planet to gird up its anti-invasion strength short of killing the invasion force before it arrives. Further, soldiers (and resolve) seems to have painfully little to do with the strength of invasion or invasion defenses.
Lastly, there is no attrition in invasion combat, you can use a group of transports and just take world after world. This tends to give the aggressor a bit too much power, its too easy to get an advantage and just take a whole mess of planets with impunity. There likely needs to be some attrition here so an attacker has to feed in fresh troops to get the invasion going.
Farming System
Food right now is a pretty minor part of the game. With just a diamond of 4 basic farms you can often feed an entire empire. You never need advanced farming techs or farming buildings. Its practically a non-factor.
Now you could just lower the power of farms....but that also weakens the power of population, and then it becomes a seesaw of making food more important makes population less strong. There are also ideas of selling your food for money or having alternate uses for it.
But this is the time where I pose a serious question.... is food really needed in GCIV? Anytime you are trying to search for a niche for an existing game mechanic, the real question you should always ask is.... does this mechanic actually deserve to live? We humans have a very strong positive bias, we love to add and hate to subtract. Once a mechanic exists, we often fight to justify it and keep it in. And yet....sometimes the best design decisions are removals....less is more after all.
If you removed food today, left housing and hospitals to handle pop, removed the food line, removed the farming orbitals, would you actually care? And I think the honest answer is.... no, not really, the game would play out pretty much as it does today but with less clutter. Fewer but tighter and better balanced resources is not a bad thing.
Galactic Challenge System
When GC4 first came out, this was a cool innovative idea.... allow a player to push the game at their own pace. However, since it came out, this system has received very little love and has floundered over time.
First, the majority of challenges are wonder buildings. The issue is....its very exploitable for the human. You can buy all the resources you know you will need, get your supply ships ready, and then activate the challenge, immediately build the wonder without the AI having a chance to build it (and even then the AI is not very aggressive with trying to build them anyway, I think I've seen an AI sneak out a wonder one time from me in 20 games). What these wonders need is something that starts when you hit go. Perhaps there's a new resource that appears on the map that the player has to go and mine. Perhaps the wonder comes with special prereqs (such as a world has to produce 5000 manu before the wonder will unlock or something, and that clock starts when you hit the button) that the player has to work towards and cannot pre-game. In other words, wonders need to be sought after and earned, rather than just a shopping checklist where I buy X resources, build the wonder, and just move on (yawn).
The war challenges can be fun, but there are two of them that are practically identical, and they last quite a long time (88 months is practically 80% of the time of my entire gameplay).
The Orb of Draginol is probably one of the better challenges, forcing you to survey, fight, and then hunt down the orb (which normally starts a war with a race you might not have otherwise wanted to). Its a decent template for other challenges.
Overall, this system could desperately use some newer and redesigned challenges. Its a fun concept, but its being held back but the lack of attention.
Starbase Stacking
Influence has seen a number of tweaks in recent versions, and military SBs have gotten several nerfs. Economic starbases are pretty garbage at the moment, as their bonuses are incredibly expensive.
All of this can be traced down to a simple fact.... stacking starbase bonuses are really really hard to balance. Create a military SB that gives a reasonable buff to a fleet....and its horrifically overpowered when you have 3 of them stacking. If 1 economic SB gives a nice shot in the arm to your homeworld.... 6 of them gives you an unreal economy.
The game decided early on that mining starbases wouldn't stack, and it was a good decision. I now push the question to the others. Maybe its time to remove SB stacking entirely, and then you can design your SB modules to be fun and balanced without worrying about abuse.
Honorable Mention: Colony Rush
The colony rush is a stable of many 4x games, but GC tends to take it to the extreme. Every game starts with a frantic dash to get every single world possible. Now we can argue how fast or slow this should be....but that's not the point of this discussion. My issue is not how fast the colony rush happens "per say", but its that there is no secondary waves of expansion. The game handles 95% of expansion in the opening 40 turns, and then its over.
In theory there are tools that should help this. The subspace strings, exotic and precursor worlds. In practice though all of these come early in the game and really don't actually provide a true "2nd era of expansion". Subspace strings just lead to other places that are also madly filling up by the civs that are present there. Even on the most extreme settings, precursor and exotic worlds remain a tiny fraction of the worlds present....and often by the time you get them those worlds are swallowed in teh influence of other civs...so its questionable whether colonizing them is a good deal.
GC4 needs a "new world" type scenario where later in the game new fertile lands open that can spur new expansion....and new conflict.
Here's one such idea as an example: Imagine that a map came with some stars and planets completely invisible at the beginning of game (aka they exist in an alternate or secondary reality or perhaps its dark matter). And then at some point in the game, a tech let you see those stars/planets, and then a later tech let you colonize them. That is one way to open up a new exploration and expansion phase with some sci-fi lore behind it.
So there's my top 5 (with bonus honorable mention thrown in). Do you agree with my list, do you have own? Add a comment!
