I've been thinking about ways the game could be more balanced to support both "micromanagers" and people who only play a few minutes a day. In particular, I find the "land grab" strategy really distasteful, mostly because it locks less dedicated players out of contention, but also because I just don't find it fun.
I'm still thinking this through, but the main gameplay issue I see with with "land grab" is that there is absolutely no downside to it. It is pretty trivial to grab empty planets, and gets easier the more you grab. There is nothing to lose by claiming as many outposts as possible. Where it gets a little crazy is the way tech skills are implemented in this game. Skills like Advanced Mineral Collection are applied immediately to every one of your planets, which means the bonus is multiplied by the number of planets you own, boosting your advantage even more.
I realized today that this is a significant departure from how other 4X games (like MOO2 / Starbase Orion) work, in a couple of related ways:
1. The MOO2 model builds in expansion limits by requiring you to keep your expanding empire fed, and the production of food draws from the same resources required to expand.
2. In the MOO2 model, tech research requires resources, drawing from the same pool used to "fund" production and expansion.
What this means is that you have to balance research and production objectives, which effectively puts limits on what you can do in either axis without gimping yourself. This is what I think is missing in Empire of the Eclipse, where if you spend the time it's possible to "do it all." I think this game would do well to add more checks and balances of that nature.
One interesting implication of the MOO2 model is that expansion wasn't strictly necessary. While you could focus on expansion, which would provide more resources and certain strategic advantages, you could also focus on research that would increase production efficiency and provide technologies that would allow you to do more with a smaller empire.
For example, terraforming was a very advanced technology that you would only reach by devoting a lot of resources to research. So, to get great planets, you could either explore and find naturally abundant worlds, or you could use research to turn your existing crappy worlds in to great ones. Either way was a perfectly valid strategy, they just involved different ways of making your way through the game.
It's also important to note that very few technologies immediately applied to all your colonies or ships in the MOO2 model. Instead you had to build something that applied the new tech.
I was hoping Empire would include this kind of parity, but it doesn't. Since research and production are decoupled, you can (and should) do both. I thought refineries and science labs would allow you to "do more with less," but their influence is so insignificant, there's hardly any point in building them.
Anyways, I'll leave it at that for now, as I mainly wanted to generate discussion. What I am looking for is a way to be successful without land grabbing. Putting research and development on the same axis seems like one way to do it. I would love to see the mechanics retooled a bit so that research has a cost associated with it (other than time), and that focusing on research could be an alternate route to victory.
