When I think of perfect gameplay, I think of a game in which players really have to be tactical. They must find a balance in building trees vs using seedlings for attack, between turtling on a few astroids or expanding, they have to choose their planets carefully and they really have to manage their seedlings, always trying to attack a small group of seedlings with a large group.
Instead what happens is that the optimal tactic is just to begin building as much seedling-growing trees as possible, until you have an unstoppable flow of seedlings. This makes the game to easy and boring, with little tactical decisions.
I think I have a good solution to the problem. I wonder what kind of gameplay you get when you set the cost and grow time of the trees alot higher, like 5x grow time and 25 seedlings needed. Suddenly the balance between building seedling trees or using ur seedlings to attack is shifted. It now takes a lot more time for a tree to pay itself back. This way you really have to be thinking about where and when to plant ur trees. For example, if I have a starting planet with say 100 seedlings and 1/5 trees, if i immedeatly build 4 trees im screwed because my planet is defenseless for quite some time. If i dont build trees I will eventually run out of seedlings. In the normal gameplay, its just always best to instantly use all your seedlings to make trees.
Ok so I think upping the grow time and seedling cost of trees will introduce some interesting gameplay elemets. But now im imagining how a game will go. If nothing else about the gameplay is changed, I think the game will be too slow and boring in the beginning. I think we need something to promote exanding. I think a good idea is to make the trees cost progressivly more seedlings. I mean that the first tree on a astroid costs 10 seedlings for example, the second costs 25, the 3d costs 50, the 4th 100 or something like that, just putting random untweaked numbers there. What I hope this will do is promote a kind of 'skirmish war' on the unoccupied planets, with players trying to get the best astroids, flanking, attacking small groups with large groups etc.
Oh and im thinking of another thing. Maybe its a good idea to get rid of the rule that you need to build something on a astroid to make your seedlings move from it. This promotes expanding and adds some tactical twists (flanking?). Dunno what other unexpected gameplay elements this will bring, and maybe this will not work.
Ok so let me know what you think.
By the way, is there any way for me to implement these gameplay changes myself?
