Imagine the game going backwards:



It starts with huge empires taking up the entire galaxy, but some dust anomaly starts eating away resources.



It becomes a battle against time, struggling with ever-dwindling resources, dust bugs eating away stuff slowly, and the player necessitating to decide what structure or even which planet/system to raze to get some resource refunds, to keep paying for upkeep of the remaining structures. Pillaging would be another way to recoup resources.



Game economy would run on the negative with empires trying to outlast each other, until they start losing techs, and finally spacefaring techs, being removed from gameplay.

Like the way from ancient greece or ancient rome to the Middle Ages.

Brazilian_Joe wrote:
Imagine the game going backwards:



It starts with huge empires taking up the entire galaxy, but some dust anomaly starts eating away resources.



It becomes a battle against time, struggling with ever-dwindling resources, dust bugs eating away stuff slowly, and the player necessitating to decide what structure or even which planet/system to raze to get some resource refunds, to keep paying for upkeep of the remaining structures. Pillaging would be another way to recoup resources.



Game economy would run on the negative with empires trying to outlast each other, until they start losing techs, and finally spacefaring techs, being removed from gameplay.

I mean at first glance I can see why that'd be different to play, but why on earth do you think that'd be fun to play??

Dunno really, break new ground?



BREAK NEW GROUND.



Strategy games have a known DNA. A whole lotta resource management, fending off threats, Trying to broker peace with certain factions, trying to outdo the competition.



Survival games share a lot of DNA with strategy games, the main differences are which traits take the forefront, and the scale.



Survival usually focuses more on a few characters which are more fleshed out story, making the player care about it.



By reversing the tech arrow from evolution to devolution, you make the game more about survival.



How you outlast the grey goo (dust bug) eating away technology/resources? Can it be shut off? What it even is?



It would need a lot of story to it to make it interesting.





... possible concept:



What if the endless left behind a 'safety precaution' to the galaxy?



Whenever one of more empires get too powerful the dust bug activates and wakes up from the center of the galactic core, starts eating away those empires to prevent them from just taking over everything, until they no longer become a threat to the galaxy.



all this would be hidden and only little clues would be dropped through several gameplays until the whole story is unveiled.



Or, I don't know. Whatever. It's all an excuse to escapism, just like every other game.



Just though reversing the tech arrow backwards could make for a refreshing change to gameplay, and I have never seen a strategy game which goes this way, so you could be the first. It could work.

Theres also no reasonable cause to play ego-shooters. :-)

I believe that Civilization V actually has a scenario similar to this idea, about the Fall of the Roman Empire. Research and/or Social Policies have negative effects if you play Rome, but there's no way of stopping the research/policies.

Trying to stop the decline of an empire is a compelling idea, so I do think that this concept could work if done right.



That failing, an "Advanced Start" option could be interesting, where the game runs for 50 turns after generating the map (potentially in a simplified simulation, to save time), so that you jump into an established realm, possibly already with enemies and allies.

"Decadence" as a mechanic has been iterated in several GSG, CK2 comes to my mind, yet there should always be a way to circumvent its effect on you.

Endless Space gave us the possibility to become as great as the Endless and maybe in ES2 we will go further than that and a Utopian Empire building should be possible.

In the End i trust amplitude that they will include random events that reflect the state of our empire and might hit a bigger empire harder or worse if you suddenly loose a luxury resource people have become used to.

What I would like tho is not necessarily a decadence mechanic, meaning that big empires will sooner or later crumble but a consolidation mechanic that rewards empires that voluntarily stay small.

Frogsquadron wrote:
but why on earth do you think that'd be fun to play??

It's mostly just the thrill of taking familiar mechanics and tools and then being asked to use them to solve a problem that is wildly different from what you are used to.

Putting in a game mode like this allows us re-live the joy of discovery. New game modes don't have to necessarily be well balanced, just interesting enough to get us thinking, a fun distraction if we should ever feel the normal game is a bit stale.

It extends the life of the game and, on principle, would give the modding community interest in making their own unique game modes.



Eh, those are my two cents on it any way. A decadence mode would be pretty interesting in all fairness.

I understand what you mean. Late game challenges are interesting, and alternate game modes are too, although I'm still not 100% on the pure decadence bit.

As long as there's a NumberOfTechnologiesResearched variable in the xmls, I'm sure somebody will find a way to mod in a decadence game mode.