Pandora: First Contact

[ThePowerofTower]

I'm a huge fan of Sid Meier's games, and I'm a huge fan of Sci-Fi. So when my friend told me that the two were happily married in this game, I kind of got excited. It's downloading right now.

Pandora's supposed to be an updated version of Alpha Centauri, with decent graphics, hexes, and some updated mechanics, and everything I've heard about it has been good.

Anyone else here into Sid Meier's/Civilization/Alpha Centauri/Pandora?

[FlowerChild]

Yes, very much so, but I absolutely hate hexes :)

Always struck me as a particularly unnatural way of measuring movement, all the way back to my table-top game days. Walking zig-zags for example in order to move along the horizontal. I just find it really skews perception and feels very gamey.

One of the things I really liked about Alpha Centauri and other similar games of the day was that they DIDN'T use hexes :)

[Sarudak]

This looks similar to Civilization: Beyond Earth which I'm rather excited to try.

[ThePowerofTower]

This looks similar to Civilization: Beyond Earth which I'm rather excited to try.

I'm so pumped for Beyond Earth! That's what really started my interest in these sorts of games again. 220 hours after Civilization V I stopped playing it for the most part, and when I heard about that, I just had to get back into the fix of things! :P

[MoRmEnGiL]

This game has had a lukewarm reception.. I believe the common complain was that it tried too hard to be SMAC, but turns out to be SMAC-lite with a lot of things dumbed down,a bit generic and with bad writing, which is worse than non existent writing. No personal opinion on it yet though.

Funniest thing is, on the matter of hexes vs squares, for exactly the same reasons as FC I've always strongly disliked squares, with the exception of fairly abstract strategy games. It's mostly the diagonals being 2 squares away that do it for me :P

As for this game, in the end it is a turn based strategy game though, and I will probably give it a try on that merit alone. Until Beyond Earth comes out, and I forget everything else,including food and sleep :P

[FlowerChild]

Funniest thing is, on the matter of hexes vs squares, for exactly the same reasons as FC I've always strongly disliked squares, with the exception of fairly abstract strategy games. It's mostly the diagonals being 2 squares away that do it for me :P

If I remember right though, didn't the original Alpha Centauri take that into account in movement point costs? It's a long time ago, but I vaguely remember something about that impressing me as a cool aspect of its design.

Wouldn't want to do that in a table-top game mind you as it would burden the player with excessive calculations, but for a computer game, it strikes me as an ideal solution.

I think that's one of the reasons I particularly dislike hexes in computer games, as I view them as an abstraction that while suited in some ways to table top as it simplifies certain things for the player, in a computer game there's no good reason for it IMO, as the machine can do all the grunt work for you that tend to bog down miniature games or what have you (no need to bust out a ruler etc).

Even table-top though, despite the above, I almost inevitably favored miniature style rules than hex based.

[ThePowerofTower]

I've always liked hexes for games, just because it makes the movement feel more organic without losing the simplicity of use. Ofcourse, I never minded squares in Civ II, either, but I think I give that game special consideration because it's older.

I like that Pandora manages to maintain fairly complex relations between countries, like Civ V, and the unit-design aspect is great (how you can custom-design units for certain purposes) but I really feel like there should have been more diversity of countries you can choose. Like the Capitalists, for example. "I make lots of money." Imperium. "We have professional soldiers!" The Academy. "We do science things." Compare that to any civ from Civ V, like Darius, who has the special bank building, really nice early-game spearmen, and the potential for infinite golden ages. That encourages you to play a certain way. Early-game warmongering, late game domestic development and Artist-pumping (and perhaps more warmongering). What do the Capitalists inspire? Ironically, high taxes, but that's it, really.

[MoRmEnGiL]

If I remember right though, didn't the original Alpha Centauri take that into account in movement point costs? It's a long time ago, but I vaguely remember something about that impressing me as a cool aspect of its design.

It did iirc, and it made sense there because squares were not mainly tied to movement mechanics, but in general if you have the game calculating movement like that, what's the point of squares again? ;]

I think that's one of the reasons I particularly dislike hexes in computer games, as I view them as an abstraction that while suited in some ways to table top as it simplifies certain things for the player, in a computer game there's no good reason for it IMO, as the machine can do all the grunt work for you that tend to bog down miniature games or what have you (no need to bust out a ruler etc).

Even table-top though, despite the above, I almost inevitably favored miniature style rules than hex based.

Well both squares and hexes are abstractions really, it's just that one clicks with me more than the other, but even then it depends on the game actually. For rpg games like shining force fire emblem or final fantasy tactics I've just grown used to them. For civ type games, Civ V hexes were a big relief for me. My brain can calculate better in hex terms I guess :P

On tabletop, hexes are quite rare (from memory.) Abstract games like risk chess stratego etc are better served by a grid, while I view any kind of miniature wargame that uses a grid instead of freeform movement as overly streamlined and simplistic. Remember, I grew up with games workshop games ;]

[johnt]

Always struck me as a particularly unnatural way of measuring movement, all the way back to my table-top game days. Walking zig-zags for example in order to move along the horizontal. I just find it really skews perception and feels very gamey.

Hexes don't really map naturally to keyboard controls for unit movement either.

[FlowerChild]

It did iirc, and it made sense there because squares were not mainly tied to movement mechanics, but in general if you have the game calculating movement like that, what's the point of squares again? ;]

Mostly to simplify stuff like collision detection.

I agree that they still aren't ideal, but I do think they're more intuitive than hexes in that they operate on the level of 2 axis for a 2D plane, which I think most people are more habituated to (other than hardcore gamers that have been using hexes forever) rather than 3. If you've ever used a piece of graph paper then you have a basic understanding of how a system like that works.

I guess at another level, that's what my objection to hexes boils down to: abstracting 2D space into what is essentially 3D space seems like a step in the wrong direction, and given you still wind up with the same problems with off-axis movement, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

At some level, hexes strike me almost as if I were to design an MC style game based around dodecahedrons instead of cubes just because they're cool.

[MoRmEnGiL]

Mostly to simplify stuff like collision detection.

Whoa. Never thought of that. I'm not used to thinking from the developers point, but this is a very good reason.

[FlowerChild]

Whoa. Never thought of that. I'm not used to thinking from the developers point, but this is a very good reason.

Yeah, it helps a lot in that area. Personally, while they also simplify things in the same way, I find hexes more trouble to develop for than they're worth though. I worked on one hex-based wargame early on in my career and at some point while working on the AI had a "ok...fuck this, I'm never using hexes again" moment, and I've stuck to that ever since ;)