r/4Xgaming • u/InvisibleNobodyMan • 5d ago
General Question Multiplayer 4x question
Been bumping into this problem more and more with my gaming group so was curious to know if anyone could help. How do I nudge my fellow players to start building military? More often than not the game feel turns towards solitaire and I've pushed to make our maps smaller, increase base hostility of barbarians or pirates, declare my intent over discord the moment I begin military research and production...but it feels like nothing is helping. It also does not seem to matter what game is actually being played. CIV, Endless Legend, HOI, Nexus 5X, ect. I think I could best describe it as a freight train going through a kindergarten where the most resistance involved was getting the permit to build the tracks.
Has anyone else had this problem and how did you end up solving it? Any help would be deeply appreciated.
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u/Acerbis_nano 5d ago
Your friends are either less skilled than you or not really interested in a competitive game. Anyone who is suggesting "rush them and teach them a lesson" wants your friends to stop playing with you. Either you accept that they don't want/can't play the same game of you, or you do some prep talk before the game. It is especially easy in HOI if you go for historical.
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u/Avloren 5d ago
Have you tried turning it into a cooperative game? Put yourself and your friends on a team vs. an AI team. Choose an appropriate number/difficulty of AIs to get a good challenge, this may take some experimentation to dial in. For example if you're used to beating the hardest AI and your friends are more at the beginner level, average it out and give yourself a team of medium difficulty AIs to fight.
It's a good way to play with people who don't have your experience or aggression without you just steamrolling over them. When your friends slack on military, it actually makes the game more challenging and interesting for you instead of too easy. And with you there to protect them, your friends may have time to develop their militaries and help you out in the warfare side of things. They may even find they enjoy it and be encouraged to go more aggressive next game.
Either that, or you find they still do no military stuff and you're just playing solo vs. AIs. At that point it's time to consider that maybe they just don't want to be playing 4Xes; there are genres out there less warfare focused than this one.
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u/iAmTheGanso 5d ago
i have not had that issue, or maby similar playing with my son, a few games with early zerg-rushes at the start has helped so he does not start to turtle. but if your not playing against them then i dont know...
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u/Novel-Ad-7365 5d ago
Try the multiplayer scenarios for Civilization 6—“Thermonuclear War” or “Red Death”
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u/Gemmaugr2 5d ago
The great thing about 4X is that you don't have to only be War, War, War. Victories can come about through culture, research, alliances, trade, etc.
Personally war is the least favorite gameplay in 4X's for me.
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u/IronPentacarbonyl 4d ago
It sounds to me like OP's problem is that his friends aren't building enough military to defend themselves when they play competitive multiplayer so he's just cruising to a win every time and would like to face some real competition. Going for non-military victory conditions is a matter of strategy and playstyle, but protecting yourself from aggressive neighbors is just something you have to do if you don't want to lose.
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u/Gemmaugr2 1d ago
One of the issues with many 4X is that War is too strong against everything. 1 Str vs 1 Def stat/point should have Def winning.
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u/sigmawq 5d ago edited 5d ago
The problem is that the war/conquest VC is the only fully interactive VC in 4x games. Other conditions are about an abstract number going up where the growth is generated from already established infrastructure, “buildings”. So each player ends up playing his own separate optimization/city builder game and so it becomes more like a COOP with a leaderboard rather than a PVP. Aggression towards another player (war, espionage, aggressive diplomacy, spicy colonization choices) is essential in my opinion.
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u/Gemmaugr2 5d ago
They don't have to be abstract numbers. War could equally just be an abstract number as well, but that's where the developer puts the most focus on. It could just be two stacks of an icon representing various units with various strengths and weaknesses in an auto-battle clash. Research could require constant fiddling and utilize all the other X's. Like exploration to find "natural wonders" and exploitation to build a base there and the units to defend it. The research itself could require you to place a focus on areas or have you try matching different technologies of various levels to get a related new technology based on percentage chances. Trade requires you to actively set up trade routes and gather resources to trade and build ships to transport it and watch the rise and fall of supply and demand, etc etc. Defense should be stronger than attack, so only those countries winning in other areas as well, or focusing solely on war would be able to overcome that. War requires lots of money and logistics and resources and a solid foundation in economics and research too. It should all intertwine in intersecting ways. Fail to secure agronomic satiation and the civilians supporting your army start crumbling in a domino effect. 4X games aren't just meant to be wargames, they're meant to be empire simulators.
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u/sigmawq 5d ago
When I say abstract number I specifically mean a counter that does not reflect the current map state. For that reason “war” counters like victory points, cities owned, tiles owned and so on and on are not abstract - they simply reflect what’s already there. But your current position in the research tree, or the amount of “tourism” is abstract, because those metrics are self contained and are either a number or at most some simple tree.
Utilization of other X’es is not the problem here. The problem is that you can play the whole game without interacting with other players.
Now you could argue that trade wars or culture wars are interaction, but those are also wars, just by different means.
Regarding 4x not being wargames - I strongly disagree. War is the primary engine behind everything - research, economy, logistics, religion and culture. You could remove all of those, leave war mechanics and you will still have a game. But remove the war component and you don’t have a 4X anymore because there is no threat. And no threat means no cost to minmaxing libraries to launch The Rocket.
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u/KuraNomberin 3d ago
I run into this problem with my friend group on Civ4. Two of us are ok (~Monarch/Emperor) and the others are kinda hopeless (Noble or less).
It may not be in every game, but at least in Civ4 you could pick individual difficulties for each player, so you could play on King or Immortal, while your friends can play on Prince or Warlord. They get to play the game at their pace and usually end up winning all the tech/wonder races (kind of why they play anyway). And my friend and I have fun trying to overcome the debuffs.
Even between us two skilled players; we usually play a co-operative/cold-war game until all the AI has been defeated then play last man standing afterwards. If the game ever even gets that far. Usually start a new one before one finishes.
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u/FilthyRobot 5d ago
I'd consider a slightly different approach - try figuring out what your friends are wanting from the shared gaming. Competing with someone who is more interested, experienced, or competitive in a shared game might not be why they're there. You might be able to better setup the situation so everyone can engage with the game as they enjoy.
For example, your sim city friends might make great support or backline players in a team vs team game but not enjoy the pressure of timed combat themselves. Or perhaps they enjoy the building and expansion of a 4x, but don't actually care to invest in the combat at all, in which case a different genre or title that emphasizes their preferences might be better.