So don’t! Think of it as an investment into better strategy gaming if you must. :-p
-Steve
Is this where we are supposed to be buying the game right now? $10 seems a little low; presumably you’d rather people back a higher amount when the Kickstarter comes out? https://allianceofthesacredsuns.com/shop/
Hey KevinC! Great question. Essentially, the AI works on several levels - there are really several AIs working in tandem. First, there’s the Viceroy AI. This is a specific AI built to ensure that characters who are in charge of planets can create reasonable build plans, enact Actions for their planet, handle potential issues (like riots and insolvency) relatively well, and act in their House’s best interest when needed. Next, there’s the House AI. Houses act in a way like Civilizations within your Empire. Each House has an ultimate strategy that they determine every year (or when a break event happens) and then they must determine the best secondary strategy to attain that goal. Each secondary strategy has several ‘nodes’ that the AI can work through to determine the ‘best’ way to do sometime; e.g. expand to other planets, attain wealth, stockpile materials, build trade infrastructure, etc. This strategy then is sent to the House holding viceroys to do as they see best, although different characters will have varying amounts of success implementing high-level plans.
One thing that I want to point out is that the AI will have EXACTLY the same rules and barriers as the human civilization. It’s somewhat asymmetric gameplay - you are the ruling House, but there’s 5 Great Houses and 5 Minor Houses of whom most don’t care for you all that much. Make no mistake: You’re not starting from the catbird seat, and the AI reflects this. So for example, Houses enact Projects exactly as you would - they must expend an Administrator and managers, they must pay resources from their reserves just like you, and they get no special time breaks.
Next is Character AI. This is similar to House and Civ AI, where Characters have an ultimate strategy such as wealth, power, survival, status, etc. There are also special ‘break’ strategies that kick in when external events happen like a challenge, a threat to the charcter, an opportunity arises, etc. Again, the character will iterate through a ‘strategy tree’ of internal Actions to attempt to obtain the goal.
There are also low-level AIs for Pops to determine migration patterns, riots, training levels, etc. Finally, the Xyl will be a dynamic entity in the end game that you will actually fight to save humanity, though that will be the last addition to the game.
Does that answer your question somewhat?
It’s anyone’s choice; it’s low right now because it’s an alpha and incomplete, and I want people to have confidence that they are getting appropriate value for their money. Yes, it’s probably low given the depth of the game, but I’m very sensitive to developers who have ripped off their customers by charging near-full price, taking the money, and running, leaving a half-assed product that never gets updated. I’d rather show my commitment by rewarding people who take a chance on me by giving them what I believe will eventually be a seminal strategy product at a price that doesn’t involve a lot of risk on their part. I’m not doing this to get rich; I’m doing it because I love it and I love creating things that others get joy out of using.
-Steve
So do House AIs have an Action Point limit?
What does unifying the Empire look like? Do you somehow win the loyalty of the Houses, or the loyalty of specific characters, or just get more and more resources controlled by your own House? Do you have your own House? Is everything owned by a House or are some areas controlled by the Empire directly?
Yes, well, more specifically House Leaders do.
Yes. :-) There are numerous paths to unifying the Empire - through diplomacy, war, intimidation, secret ops, assassination, rallying your Pops so that they back you ruling the Empire forever (Lazarus Project, not implemented yet) In other words, you can win as the Galactic Empire or the New Alliance, but the play styles and the demands on you will be different.
I’m sold. Will have to wait until Wednesday, though, when I get my Social Security.
I think I’m going to try the Alpha as I’ve been following this one for a while. I do have a question which might come off as rather shallow, though and I apologize in advance if I offend. I remember viewing your 2017 update and I loved the character portraits. It looks like you’ve gone a different direction with the portraits and I was wondering why. I’m thinking it’s because it looks like you’re able to get a lot more variation from these portraits but I might be way off. Are you able to go into any detail regarding this change?
I personally think the old portraits had much more personality.
What, wait? This is $10, with an eventual Steam key on release?
Those screenshots are amazing.
Take my money.
I’m past the point where I want to read lengthy documentation. This probably is a sillyu question but I don’t suppose there’s a tutorial yet?
And bought!
Also bought, but might wait closer to release to play.
WOW!!!
You guys are AMAZING!!! We sold more copies of AotSS today than any other day since its been released, including the actual release day when we had a lot of people who were following the development of the closed alpha. I can’t thank you enough for your support and all I can say is I better get to work to make AotSS even better!
-Steve
Unfortunately, there are no plans to mod the AI. You will be able to mod numerous aspects of the game, including cultures, House names, Character names, Ideas, all stellar names, and Ideas with simple text and XML files. Actually, technically you already can - I haven’t documented it but the game will look for external resource files for modding purposed. I really should document this, but it’s been low priority.
Thank you! No rush! - S
It’s incredibly basic, really: the original artist didn’t like the direction the game was going (he was more about the original game, called Imperia, pre-move to Unity) so he asked that his character work be removed once the .7 version launched. As such, since I am not an artist, I am now using face generation software to make the characters by hand. If I had the budget, I’d write a facegen program but someone would need to make all the art for each piece and I don’t have the budget (yet)!
Thank you! I will, and I hope you enjoy the evolution of the game! :-)
-S