Is Tier 10 Empire Focus even possible?

[Forblaze]

So I've played 4 games since 4.0 came out, and in every one of them I felt like my empire focus tiers very quickly fell behind where I would want it to be to be able to get any advantage out of it. I chalked this up to being poorly balanced and too many end game cards (kill a fallen empire, research crisis debris, etc) being given too early. I decided to test this further used console command to complete all of them, initially wanting to just get a full list of objectives, and found there may actually just not be enough points to reach tier 10 in any of the three paths.

I stalled out at around tier 8 exploration, tier 7 conquest, and tier 5 development with no new cards being offered.

Maybe I'm missing something using console commands though. Can anyone confirm that they've successfully reached tier 10 in any of the three focus paths?

 

[Red Death]

No, can confirm that in normal gameplay, I eventually just run out of cards long before completing any of the three.

 

[Dragnar]

Yeah. The concept is great, but balancing is in the same early-release state as everything else. There are just way too few tasks, which also makes specialising much less useful as it should be, as you'll still get tons of tasks in the other categories and barely get ahead in your chosen area.
It'll probably get some touch-ups after the more serious bugs and issues are fixed.

 

[Dr. B]

Agree with above posts.

The balance is not there. The system is not finished.

You have decent and natural early game focus options, but already from very early mid-game, you get ridiculous tasks, and not enough progress for it to matter at all. Also, some are still impossible to do for certain empires.

This is a feature that is just slapped on, and not at all tuned to work in a full playthrough. False advertising at best.

 

[DelphineasSD]

Yeah, and a few of the cards feel a bit undercooked as well. Gestalts being asked to Hire a Merc Enclave, Build a Dyson Sphere when you don't have that AP or open slots for it...

 

[VexacionRT]

I thought it was neat that they added a way to guarantee mega-engineering...and then I started to draw cards that required mega-engineering to complete while being at like tier 4 lol

 

[ToneyT]

No, can confirm that in normal gameplay, I eventually just run out of cards long before completing any of the three.

This is both hilarious and, sadly, very telling of the whole 4.0 development process. I don't want to hold it over the probably small QA team, but it's fairly obvious that the thing needed anywhere from 2-4 weeks more in the oven.

 

[Falrinn]

The big problem I've run into is that I will inevitably end up with 5 cards that all give tasks that I don't want to do because it would either be a significant side track or would be actively detrimental to my strategy. At that point the current reroll mechanic just can't keep up and I find it's better to just ignore the system completely.

 

[ItThatAltersSanity]

What would be a good direction for this system to go? As a tutorial it's serviceable for earlygame tips. As a system to guarantee research options, it's somewhat unreliable if you get an irrelevant card and don't want to spend the unity cost to reroll. Should this system even try to cover midgame and endgame tasks?

 

[Nabil ad Dajjal]

What would be a good direction for this system to go? As a tutorial it's serviceable for earlygame tips. As a system to guarantee research options, it's somewhat unreliable if you get an irrelevant card and don't want to spend the unity cost to reroll. Should this system even try to cover midgame and endgame tasks?

I would prefer if it focused exclusively on the early game and had more customization for civics and origins with different playstyles.

Having different decks of cards for e.g., Fanatic Purifiers versus Inward Perfection would be a fun easter egg but more importantly also give a wider range of tasks for play styles beyond generic wide.

There's already some of that for Wilderness but doing a pass for all of the origins and civics which change how the game plays would be great.

 

[Red Death]

As a tutorial it's serviceable for earlygame tips.

Not even, really. Because it gives you a random selection. It doesn't even really try to give you the most relevant objectives first. And when you finally do complete one, you get a chain of objectives you actually completed afterwards.

What would be a good direction for this system to go?

Apart from the individual cards that need to be reworked, I see two things:

1. The random draw system needs to go. All objectives need to be completable at all times, with the ones displayed just being the most relevant ones/the ones you are closest to completing.
2. The development category should be split into development, they're honestly not that overlapping.