TBS Games - 5 Reasons Why Some Players don't like TBS Empire building games.

blog post : http://turnbasedstrategygame.blogspot.com/2018/07/turn-based-strategy-empire-building-games-bad-sides.html

Hi All,
Today we are talking about Turn Based Strategy (Empire Building) Games and why some players don't like them. What are those main reasons that people don't like or I can even say hate about them, what makes them unattractive and why they avoid them?

No 5: Specific Niche - Players either Love them or Hate them

This is not like one reason but more a combination of reasons, which is related to benefits and specific type of players that like Turn Based Strategy Games. From Game Pace to Slow Progress, A lot of thinking, planning and managing...

Check my post explaining those good sides: Turn Based Strategy Games - Good Sides

If you not finding yourself on any of those explained in the "Good Sides" post above, or at least on half of them, you are probably on the other side that hates those type of games.

I think that a lot of it has to do with fact that most of the players like fast, fun, adventurous, exploring and entertaining game, with an adrenalin rush and similar. It's not that TBS Games doesn't have at least some of those characteristics but on the other side, they often demand careful thinking, planning, management and decision making, step by step planning and patience. Again some of those characteristics are also in other games, but not in that scale as in TBS, Tycoon or Management Games. That's why you often find players that like TBS games also like all those Management like genres.

Why is that? TBS is a very specific Niche that's not meant to be for a very wide audience. Although there are very popular titles like Sid Myers Civilizations series, still it's not comparable to some popular FPS, or RPG Game in a number of players playing them.

Therefore like in real life when something is too specific or custom, and it's not that much commercial most of the people will not like it. You can find this often with music or movies. While a smaller part of the population still will love it, adore it, and create almost a cult around it, most of the people will find it not that special, or even boring.

No 4: Long Lasting Slow Progress and Time investment

Turn-based strategy games often have slow progress, patience and effort are needed. You are not getting instant results of your play. It is happening in small steps, every action, every decision that you made gradually ads up.

Although you play in turns and it doesn't demand your full focus and quick reaction and you control the speed of playing, still it demands long hours of a play session in order to accomplish something and have some fun in return. It will not happen like that You built your first city and the first unit, and you are cool, and you stop playing. You will want to invest more and be part of that slow process of building Empire by yourself.

Unfortunately Most of the people especially these days like instant fun without too much effort, like with most things in life these days, instant food, instant coffee, instant dating, instant everything.

They will prefer Angry Birds that they can play immediately, without too much thinking, and not spend hours or days on some Empire Building Turn-based strategy.
Don't get me wrong I love Angry Birds its a great game, I just want to make a point here....why people often avoid TBS Strategy games. And that's for sure is slow gradual progress that demands time investment.

No 3: Complexity - Often Unnecessary Micromanagement

I must admit that those games are sometimes unnecessary complex. Often there are too many things to handle that playing those games becomes really a burden. That's one of the first things that differentiate a good game from a bad one.

Creators of those games often mean that more is always better. And forgot an important thing that those games are firstly strategies and then management and progress games, if not then that game is probably in some other category, like simulation or tycoon management.

Nobody thinks it is fun to micromanage a pile of options or settings that have no or have minimal impact on their gameplay. Therefore it is important that a player has to manage only systems that actually adds a meaningful deep to the game and can have significant effects on strategy and impact on how games playouts at the end.

Unfortunately, some devs add things just to full fill game with features or because of reality and comparability to real life. All that often complicate things and makes games even look more complex then they are maybe, especially to newbies in a genre. This in combination with bad UI, that complicates gameplay instead to ease it, is a usual suspect for reason why people abandoning those games.

For Example why in Civilization Games I have to see every fuc.. shi.. I built in the city. My brain is screaming of all that detail when I look at the map, and I cant easily locate and identified my units, or roads or terrain, because of really nice life-realistic trading centar spawned around.... And you will agree that it is more important to have a brief and easy overview of your units/terrain so you can plan out moves (without going to different types of maps/overviews and similar please).

No 2: Simple AI - AI / Diplomacy is rarely good enough

I am not an expert for AI, but competing with AI that only trying to do things ideally without creativity makes it predictable opponent and not challenging and fun to play against.

Most of the time that is because AI development is the last thing to deal with in-game productions and there is never enough time for such a demanding task.

Second is that with complex system and to many things effecting gameplay like in those type of games it is very hard to program good AI, which brings us to the previous point that Games shouldn't be unnecessary complex and not only because that will ruin our gameplay experience but also will make programming an adequate AI if not impossible then at least very close to it or very challenging.

Most of the players that actually like playing turn-based strategies often complaining about AI. Developers then try to fix that Artificial Intelligence logic inferiority by giving AI ability to produce more and faster which makes the game more challenging and less boring, but on the other side create unfairness effect which sometimes ruins the game, even more, create a revolt within players.

Therefore the perception of bad AI and lack of good Diplomacy is often recognized as one of the important downsides of those games.

No 1: Multiplayer Struggle - Speed or Conflict Limits

Turn-based strategy games are traditionally bad at Multiplayer Mode. That is because they are slow-progressing and turn-based. Which mean that playing session will be very long in most cases, and on top of that half of that time you are waiting for other payers to play and that only in best case scenario when you play against one player. If there are more players then than the situation is even worse actually Num of Players times worse. That's a big problem.

The solution that helps to make a multiplayer game at least bearable is simultaneous multiplayer. Which means that all players play they turn in the same time, and when everyone is pressed next turn, that turn is played.
Which is fine in a way when you build things and similar, but is really problematic on units movement and war actions.

Because those conflict actions are then resolved by one of the algorithms depending on the game. But in any case, you can end up with some of your moves not possible because other player did something else, and because it is simultaneous you couldn't see it.

That makes things sometimes very unpredictable and some of your best planned strategic moves ridiculous, which can turn lost battle to lost war and defeat in the end.

It looks there is still not a proper solution for multiplayer, sometimes there are time limits or there are different variations on how those simultaneous moves are solved but they are often either unfair or hard for a player to understand, or still take to long and cause other players to wait.

Anyway, bad multiplayer is a big loss for Turn Based Strategy games and that is the reason why it is on No 1 of their downsides. Having in mind that almost all games today have multiplayer versions and that it is often the most popular and strongest play of today games its a real pity that it is not like that in this genre.

Although I used Civilisation 5 game for some examples of bad sides in TBS Games, many other titles suffering from it also, and Civ 5 is in my opinion still the best game in this genre.

That were the main downsides of Turn Based Strategy - Empire Building Games.

What is your opinion, which TBS Empire Building Games you find troublesome and why, let me know in comments, I would like to hear an opinion of real TBS Games fans or haters :) ? Especially if you put a lot of hours in those games, either playing or creating them?