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[tergem]

First up what I want to know, then why the hell I'm tackling something so big (totally suicidal in other words).

What I want to know:
1.) What are some musts in your opinion for a 4X?
2.) What are some things that must never, NEVER be included in a 4X?
3.) How long would it take to make for someone with n years experience in programming?
4.) What graphics be desired for this here genre?
5.) Is it worth the effort?

Why the hell I'm thinking of doing this:
I have done small mini projects for years now, I am afraid of failure, and I want to get over that fear by plunging into something that I know I will fail badly. I hope to gain knowledge that can't be gained from micro projects. The final thing is that my idea has been stuck in my head for months, I want to kill it... and make sure it never comes back. So that I can turn my attention to more valuable things.

Also I have a few years free time, which might be wisely utilized.

[gimymblert]

A. 4X does not need to be massive, simple graphics can also do the job, try a proto with symbol. You don't need a lot of unit to.

B. Jasmine told you: attacking, defending, expending is the core gameplay. It's also a loose RPS system. The rational is that expending (doing research and scouting) beat defending (building wall and static defense) which beat attacking (building offensive unit) with beat expending. It's also known as turtle, boom, rush. Basicallyu if you rush (attacking) early you have less resource spend in the other 2 points, if the enemy has strong defense it would be able to retaliate before you could start building strong defense by rushing just after your attack. If you spend resource turtling, you will be able to face a rush but not if the opponent have spend time on research because he will have unit that bypass your defense you don't have the technology to defend against. Of course someone who spend to many time expending (booming) will face a rush and have nothing to defend. Explore, extend, exploit, exterminate, that's literally the name of the game with resource as a mandatory move. Actually you can simplify the game by having automatic resource and king unit to defeat to beat the opponent. It would had a new element to the loop as increasing/decreasing the resource flow by spending more resource on it (it would be part of the expending strategy).

Basically has long you can maintain that loop you have successful 4X.

[tergem]

  Thank you!
I never thought of that aspect before, but you guys are completely right! Please, please, keep the conversation going, I'm getting very good information here.

[Pishtaco]

I want to make a 4x too. So, go you. 

Why the hell I'm thinking of doing this:
I have done small mini projects for years now, I am afraid of failure, and I want to get over that fear by plunging into something that I know I will fail badly. I hope to gain knowledge that can't be gained from micro projects. The final thing is that my idea has been stuck in my head for months, I want to kill it... and make sure it never comes back. So that I can turn my attention to more valuable things.

Also I have a few years free time, which might be wisely utilized.

... But I think it's a terrible idea to spend years on something you are intending to fail.

On the questions:

1. A sense of the workings of history, and the feeling that the player is building something.

2. Tactical battles.

3. This is probably optimistic, but it feels to me like a prototype of a MOO1 clone, with an unsophisticated AI, shouldn't take more than half a year. After all, it's just a spreadsheet, right ?

4. Stylized but communicating the theme of the game.

5. Depends how much time you spend on it.

[drChengele]

Hello fellow 4Xers!

My answers are:

1) Simplicity of rules but emergent complexity in available strategies.
2) Slippery slope mechanics.
3) (20 / n) + 1 years, with a 2 year error bar.
4) As long as it is NOT 3d, which, you being indie and working on your own, I think you'll safely avoid.
5) Absolutely.

You are right in that it is completely suicidal. You need to have small, manageable goals. Make a simple 4x game first, expand on it later. I'd say 4x lends itself much better to iterative design than most other game genres, so use that fact.

[C.D Buckmaster]

1) Focus warfare on planning and tactics, try to avoid something where battles are as simple as "largest army wins".
2) See above.
3) Depends on the complexity of the project.
4) Simple, well done, snes style graphics are more than enough for me.
5) /shrug.

[brog]

Some general principles:
(I'm not going to put "musts" and "nevers" because there aren't any; these are my preferences.  Make it if you want to, take as long as you want, use whatever graphics you can - but simpler graphics will reduce development time.)

* The outcome shouldn't be decided too long before the game actually ends.  This matters more if it's multiplayer - it can be fun to spend a while at the end of the game steamrolling over the AI, but it's not fun to get steamrolled over yourself for very long.  (See also: "any game with >2 plyrs, 1 winner means >50% of your players will lose. Make losing fun.")  This is hard to avoid in games with a big economic buildup.

* 4X games tend to be really long.  If a game lasts several hours, by the end of a game you've made hundreds of decisions and it's impossible to tell which decisions were key to the outcome.  A lot of these decisions are busy-work that doesn't have much effect, maybe giving small efficiencies.  If a game is shorter and has less busy-work, it's easier to tell what you did wrong (or right), and therefore easier to improve your skills.  (My personal preference is for games that can be played a few times in one session; this gives a really tight feedback loop for trying out different approaches.)

* Following a set "build" isn't interesting.  Jasmine said up-thread to separate the players to give them space for an opening.. I don't agree with this.  If you start out completely isolated, there will be one or more optimal openings, and (once the game is understood) the first few moves will just involve executing one of these; whereas if the players are interacting from turn 1 they have to adapt their strategies to the situation.  (This can also be achieved by adding random elements - resource locations, power cards, etc.)

* It's nice if the different strategic options feel fundamentally different to each other.  Building spaceships with lasers vs. spaceships with rockets is not a big difference.  Diplomacy, covert ops, land grabs, high-tech research.. these can be quite different.

* Opportunity cost.  When you're balancing the cost of different actions, take into account the alternatives that an action precludes.  Particularly relevant if you have a limited number of actions per turn, or there are mutually exclusive research paths.

* Randomness is interesting, and can be nice to introduce uncertainty and risk into actions.  Also helps to avoid the first point (outcomes determined before game end) if there are high-risk options you can try in a desperate situation.  Simultaneous blind decisions can substitute for randomness.  It's nice if you have a chance of beating a more experienced player through luck - it's psychologically positive on both sides (you don't feel that it's futile to even bother playing, and they don't feel bad losing to a weaker player because they can blame it on luck).

* Recent board games have a lot of creative ideas for mechanics - play some of these and you might find useful things to borrow.  In particular, a lot of them avoid player elimination (because it's no fun to be out of a game already when all of your friends are still playing!), which has interesting consequences: it requires more interesting victory conditions* than just "be the last one standing", and players must still have a chance of winning (otherwise they're effectively eliminated but still have to keep playing - even worse than elimination).

* Most of them use a point scoring system to determine the winner, but the means of gaining points are many and varied.

[brog]

If you start in a vacuum, there will always be some number of best openings.  I didn't say "one or two"; this certainly would be very imbalanced - you need at least three for Rock-Paper-Scissors (typically: do the strongest thing < do the thing that counters the best thing < do the thing that counters the counter < ok just do the strongest thing).  But RPS isn't interesting, and it doesn't become interesting no matter how many extra options you add.  What you're describing is RPS with lots of options - and as you say, it doesn't really matter what opening you choose!  A choice that doesn't matter is not a choice worth making.  Interacting with other players is what creates meaningful complexity.

I guess this is a matter of taste.  I see a period of time at the start of the game where you're going through motions, not interacting with other players, and not making meaningful choices as a waste of my time.  I prefer not to play games that waste my time.

One way to do the sort of metagame you're describing without wasting player time is to have it as a pre-game decision.  Magic the Gathering does this - spend as long as you want building your deck, and then once you have decks prepared you can instantly start a game with metagame decisions already made and be directly affecting the other player on the first or second turn.  So: make any decisions that players make before first contact something that can be prepared offline, saved, shared.  Then start the game by choosing your initial build, then immediately interact with other players.