Utopia 2

[1980gamer]

If you have night clubs....  You will need police, court houses and prisons.  As a half Irish person, I think I can say patty wagons?  It is St. Patrick's Day after all.

 

So much for UTOPIA

[Special Teams]

On 3/12/2021 at 5:41 AM, Steve Jones said:

Don’t trust Rev’s spelling ?

[+cmart604]

9 hours ago, Special Teams said:

Ummm. Dana that's his proper name. He's Aardvard the aardvark. 

[Special Teams]

1 hour ago, cmart604 said:

Ummm. Dana that's his proper name. He's Aardvard the aardvark. 

Oh, ok that's what we're going with...

[Gernot]

Pardon me for putting this on top of the stake but this sounds interesting even if i only peeped into Utopia (since it is a little boring to play it alone).

 

Personally i wouldn't implement to much varying things like different sorts of industries, i loved (not only liked) simulation games mainly in the period 1990 to 2000, what i experienced is that when the games grow in to much microsimulations the gameplay gets lost, though the original SimCity is still the best of all and the original Settlers as well the games are fluid to play and do not take to long you don't have to care to much about each aspect of the game and can let it run, to play them you won't need to read a manual or dive into explanations it is all self explaining. What i do still like and is ranked top by me is Populous (as well the initial one) it is such a cool game to play, another i still rank high but is little played by me now is Ecolopoly which is rather an educational game as a strategic simulation. What is also worth to take as paragon is "Kaiser" (dunno if that is known to you all respectively how it was entitled in english) which was a ground breaking game for the C64 (imho). Sidenote; in Sid's Simgolf Sid likes "round based strategy". One i like very very much is "Colonial Conquest" (for the Amiga designed by a biology student from the ETH) which is a sort of civilisation in space, what i like about this game is exactly the fluid play, you can produce units, you have to take care for food to grow fast, schools and discoveries bring you technology points - that's it. Another round based strategy i played to the excess is "Lords of the Realm" but this game leaks already of what i good game shouldn't it is far to long to play, played single you need more as a day (session time), two players won't finish it and it isn't to imagine how this would end up for four players.

 

Let's take a closer look at "Colonial Conquest" and why i like it so much, instead of a landmass you settle space each game you start is setup new from a list of planets which exceeds the planets used in the game by many (personally i even exceeded this table of planets and designed some own hard to settle and fast growing), like i said it is self explaining, the symbols used are easy to understand and you don't have to many different things to care for in fact already a little to much. As example you have three different ways to earn crops, do that with a settler which can only feed himself and produce one extra unit on fertile ground or in the sea by fishing, use a robot to double the amount on grass and in steppe or or the thing you will use for sure greenhouses they will give you most crops on any ground fertile, desert, ice, lava no matter (they will produce one unit extra on fertile ground since the for maintenance needed settler can add one unit). Personally i would leave away the robots since no one will use them, you produce food with a settler when you start out but as soon as you have material enough you will only build greenhouses, in fact you will do it right at start with the amount of reserve you have. Similar for material units, robots produce extra units so this will be the thing apart from greenhouses en masse at first. You will need some buildings for you settlers, housing if your settlement should grow over a certain population and medical centers for the next step of amount of settlers, schools to gain tech points which are finally the most important thing for this game, the tech points allow you step by step to build weapons, at start only weak things like transporters and each advance needs the doubled amount of tech points (NOTE!). You have a quite large list of things in which you advance but in my opinion you will only need half of them and having it played one or two times you will exactly know which makes use so this is a useless element in the game. No pubs, casinos or night clubs pardon me and if i would give you credits but lower your reputation for this, this is the standard for entertaining elements in such games and finally reputation is always what is more of need as material or credits. You don't have different industries you simply earn material from mines that is your "industry", much more of importance are medical bases and schools as well as at least one food storage for the overproduction which will be else lost, each certain amount of settlers needs a city (for this game each 6000) without them your growth will stop and this you like to keep at maximum

 

Erm... keep it roundbased, sure real time strategy like settlers is somewhat cool but a split screen on the Inty i imagine simplified said as shit. A leakage of roundbased strategy is that you see what your opponent does (unlike for the AI which works hidden), this simply needs an agreement between the (usually two) players not to peep into the map of the opponent to make the game interesting (especially if you know the game well and your opponent is a beginner).

 

A few thoughts to the "AI", which is rather a "AS" (artificial stupidity) for this old game, he solved the problem quite simple the AI can produce units of material twice as fast as you and won't need any food since it is a population of machines which can enslave your settlers when they occupy a planet from you, while he won't care for them and they will die very soon, as soon as he has produced the classic "tripods" he won't need the slaves. Planets are settled by the machines with a mothership which can easy travel the longest distances therefore the mothership is as stupid as the AI in the IntyBASIC "Battleship" game, it moves totally random in space.

 

Randomness, without some random elements it wouldn't be half as good, for this game it is meteor impacts, you never know when your settlers will be hit by a meteor, at start this can be quite harmful later you won't care for 1000 settlers (depicted by a single one) more or less. You have a superintelligence watching you, which is the "centauri empire", they will buy from time to time your food reserves and you will be rewarded with material very useful at start but even this is quite random and it only happens if you have a certain amount of reserve. This superintelligence also rewards you for discoveries (the bio element in the game - if you like) as soon as you have tech points enough to build explorers, looking like the good old Enterprise you will send them out to search for lifeforms as higher their intelligence is as more tech points you will get as reward for it, this is even a rather random element and for some games you will find many with a high level in other runs only dumb sandworms, it depends on what planets are selected from the table, obviously lava, ice and pure rocky ones are hostile and house no indigenous lifeforms, so the list i made plays a strong role and with it you control a lot of the hardness of the game.

 

What i liked to point out here is what i said already at beginning - keep it simple.

 

For the offensive weapons you have space ships of various size and firepower, personally i do all just to get as fast as possible to the level where i can build Battlestars, their fire power is highest in the game and i don't care much for lower classes, while i lost games with this strategy to human opponents i never lost with this against the AI. A clever player noticing or knowing this will attack you with weak fighters even explorers and some troop transporters. What brings me to army you need to produce marines for this you need a base (and of course a spaceport) it costs quite a lot material to produce a single unit and you can only produce one unit per base and round, however if you have no army and concentrated only on growth and material reserves a single army can invade you without to battle.

 

An element which i wouldn't have implemented (after the many games i played) are the "planet destroyers" it's a rude weapon and spoils somewhat the fun, sure there is a defense against this a powerful planetary shield which costs double of tech points as the "destroyer" (since you have grown til that quite large you reach the levels quite fast even if each needs twice of points). But it is really a rude weapon and if a t all i would fine a use of such systems with restriction in reputation or growth in tech points, it's just not funny even not against the AI to melt all to a piece of lava, when i played it single against the AI my goal was always to win by colonization and not by melting down all what belongs to my opponent. As little balance to when you win a game in this manner with "planet destroyers" you will be rewarded with a far lower score, you played a faulty game, the goal is to settle on as many of worlds as possible, assumed the "empire" is interested in growth and not in destruction, personally i would turn the result from "game won" to "game tie" in such a case.

 

An important element is that buildings per planet are limited, in this game to 21 but how many ever this limitation causes you to plan a wisely what you will need, Assumed it would be a landmass one could limit the amount based on islands or based on the amount of sectors a landmass occupies. You win the game if you have occupied all planets (let's say sectors) of your opponent which can take some time and i imagine settled in a space (or a single world) with less planets (continents, islands) the game will be even more interesting to play.

 

Let's pause here and i add only that i played this game many many times against a friend of mine, that is because of simplicity and the result is a rather fast game which won't take longer as an afternoon, a quite long afternoon from 12 to 12 but this is in the limit which i would say is playable, if it takes longer like "Lords" you will never finish a session.

 

Guessed you (or the rest of kind readers) have access to a miggy (A500) here's a prepped spiced up HD image ready to use, since a play will tell you much more as thousand words can:

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AhX1Ed1178sOgWJRt-yR2zBT7iX_?e=ygFV4L

 

But all in all i just liked to say - keep it as simple as possible.

[Gernot]

Short add on to the Planets i created, one is a sort of artificial moon it consists only of base plates which likewise lava has no value only a ring of mountains is from what you can profit, to settle such a world will cost you half of the settlers until you have built your first greenhouse, it is seen from the point of material a rather lucrative one but it needs an extra amount of time to be settled since you lose half of your your colonists, starting then out with half costs some extra turns, the contrary to this are extremely fertile worlds with a very short amount of material resources, fast settled and fast growth but to less material to be rated as good, imho such extremes make the game more interesting as balanced worlds to settle. Ah yes since the game i offered you is the full version and not what circulated mostly (and still is) you will have a planet editor with which you can add own planets, but since i played this game for a very long time as free published release i edited my planets with a hex editor at hand. There is one planet in the game created by the author which looks like Switzerland, a nice addition which reminds you where the game comes from, it is as i guess a rare example since not many games was made in Switzerland in the early '90s (in fact it is the single one i know). "Zardoz" (which was in WWII the secret name for Switzerland) is a balanced world of which you shouldn't use to many they are to easy to be settled.

 

Peep into it, it is a good example which elements are useful and which elements of the game can be neglected.

Further, but i guess i don't have to point at this, it won't matter if you settle planets or continents as well as it won't matter if space or ocean which departs the to settle ground and requires a sort of transportation. The settling in space just adds some nice possibilities like stargates to shorten the travel time much, a pendant to this would be a difference from windjammers to motor crafts and later airlplanes.

Edited October 7, 2021 by Gernot