u/Idleverse

note: I am building a mmo 4X. I probably should have included that

One of the X's of 4X games is of course "eXpand". However, in my 4X game, you are managing a planet, and I really struggled to implement expanding in a way that felt realistic and thematically consistent.

For example, you cannot just "steal" land from another planet, and transport it back across outer space. And even if you could, why would you? There is plenty of land on your own planet to urbanize.

The solution, once I thought of it, was to drop the concept of land entirely, and instead center the game around population. Your planet's size is simply how many people live on it, and land (buildings) are just a derivative of it.

With this, raiding other planets and kidnapping their civilians makes total sense. You can either grow your population organically and/or by attacking your opponents for theirs, which fits right into the expansion mechanic of your typical 4X game.

Also, once I pivoted to a population-based system, a lot of other interesting mechanics emerged, which I tapped into, such as civilization tiers, and other fun stuff.

This honestly took way too long (embarrassingly long) to realize, and I almost re-themed the entire game around managing a space-station instead of a planet, but I am super happy I didn't.

I have a longer version of this in my devlog if you want to read more: https://blog.idleverse.gg/in-orion-online-population-is-power/

I wrote a blogpost on why we decided to not include the concept of alliances in Orion Online, our browser-based 4X mmorts.

TLDR:

When a game allows players to form alliances, it concentrates power, which eventually leads to stagnation. Ultimately, it caters to a (relatively) few powerful players, and creates a hostile environment for the rest of the player base, and most of all, for new players.

In Orion, you're placed in a planetary system with up to 19 other players, and you cannot control where you land (but it does carry over rounds (eras)). Your system have to communicate and collaborate to prosper. Any coalition beyond that, to whatever extent they exist, are social agreements, not a built-in game mechanic.

There are formal relations though. For example, hostility between rivaling systems emerge from actions: mutual raids and cyber ops push a hostility meter, and either side can eventually declare war, which ultimately leads to peace via truce or surrender. In other words, relations are organic and emergent.

Players can relocate their colony to another planetary system if they don't like their team, but ultimately, you have to collaborate to prosper. Planetary systems are kept across eras (game rounds), so groups that do collaborate, grow into well-oiled machines over time.

This system is largely based on the one in the old (and amazing) browser mmorts Utopia, and I do understand that you cannot fully prevent players from creating alliances outside the game, so this might all be for nothing. I'm interested to hear others experiences, thoughts and critic against this. There might be other games that have better solutions/system for this.

Full post: https://blog.idleverse.gg/kingdoms-systems-and-emergent-diplomacy/

A short write-up about monetization and p2w mechanics in (browser) 4x mmorts games in general, and our own game Orion Online. Nothing ground breaking, but sharing some thoughts / observations: https://blog.idleverse.gg/why-pay-to-win-killed-the-browser-strategy-genre/