When I get this event notification I buy a colony ship, then load the whole colony into it and send them off somewhere nearby to wait. Then I get 2 transports, 1 full up and sit it next to the colony and wait for the takeover, and the other I use to ferry off every 10M colonists to another colony close by and return with the empty transport.

Then all that you need to do when the evil takes over is invade quickly and make sure no ships are near any of theirs - their ships disappear the turn after the colony is retaken.

Nothing like a bit of spice to make life interesting

When I get this event notification I buy a colony ship, then load the whole colony into it and send them off somewhere nearby to wait. Then I get 2 transports, 1 full up and sit it next to the colony and wait for the takeover, and the other I use to ferry off every 10M colonists to another colony close by and return with the empty transport.

Then all that you need to do when the evil takes over is invade quickly and make sure no ships are near any of theirs - their ships disappear the turn after the colony is retaken.

Nothing like a bit of spice to make life interesting

Citizen beanball on 3/31/2003 12:51:28 AM said:
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I just played my 2nd game of GalCiv ever today. Medium galaxy with all other civs set to beginner. I spent all day pressing forward with this game, trying to get some first hand experience with all the tech.

Then I got reamed by a Draginol event (took a 4 planet system). They started with at least 6 dreadnoughts. I hadn't even built any yet because the AIs were so far behind me in tech. In just a few months they'd destroyed my entire fleet, destroyed all my starbases, and invaded one system.

It sounds like an interesting event to toss into to the game, but when I'm playing on "simple", it would be nice if I didn't get an embarrasing beatdown (esp. when I think I'm just playing out to the end). Maybe I'm just mad because I wasted my entire day playing this game. Just gotta vent.
________________________________________________________________________

Maybe you should try divorcing the idea of having "fun" from the idea of "winning". If I played a game all day and then lost because of a random event it wouldn't mean that the "fun" I had never happened.

Some of the best times I've had in games were trying to overcome impossible odds.

Try looking at it this way. People have had a lot of fun playing "Pacman" and yet they don't even have a chance of exterminating the l'il munching buggers.


Elrikk

PS.

/ pithy platitude mode ON

"It doesn't matter if you win or lose it's how you play the game."

/ pithy platitude mode OFF

But winning is a bit easier to live with.


~SDC~

Well seems to be the same strength, and in my current game it came much much later, and it was hard, but i overcame them. It was a fun little side quest MUCH better than having it pop up whilst my best ship is a defender, as it did in 2 previous game.

I love these events so long as im able to deal with them, i like them to be hard..just not "Oh crap, Good game and resign" hard

~SDC~

I definitely love these events !

Once upon a time when the Arceans were a lonely 4 system race with no chance to withstand the drengins ... until they get the +15 PQ for all non-colonized planets 2 sectors around their cobra system !

I managed to "steal" one of those with 21,22,26 and 28 P and they got the others ... no need to tell you that our alliance is going very well (even if i give money from time to time to the drengins to keep those arceans occupied while my tech is boosting...)

Elrikk - fun is different for different people. In Civ terms, I'm a builder. The fun I have is building up my planets and empire. In this particular game, I just wanted to finish it up to see all the tech, but now I'll have to start a new game.

I just don't see how a random event that just ends your game in the middle is fun in anyone's book. It's like running a marathon and someone kneecaps you midway through. Now that I've seen it, the surprise factor is gone and it's a totally different situation.

Right now, I'm still kind of bummed, so it may be a few days before I start a new game.

Loosing a game that I've already invested several hours of my limited free time in for what feels like a completely arbitrary reason isn't fun if you're anything like a normal person. Keep in mind many of us are talking about our first encounter with this event, so we didn't know the tricks of how to handle it and didn't have the tech to deal with it militarily. In fact, that's the majority of my point. This event will never challenge me again because now I know how to prevent it from happening *EVERY* time without needing any tech that you don't start the game with, but the first time it slaughtered me.

beanball, Popup Target et al,

But isn't that a bit like saying that if I race with a friend for 150 laps, darting in an out, taking and losing the lead and then have a random part failure on the last lap, that I wasted all that time and didn't have any fun ?

Could be the difference between goal oriented people and process oriented people I guess.

I have fun even in a losing effort.

Elrikk


~SDC~

Well, having reloaded my game...I was able to beat the Draginol, but only through extreme measures. After they had sprung up on one of my systems, they took over another major system before I made peace with them by giving them 2 more. So they then went on to attack the Altarians and the Torians, obliterating their fleets. THe odd thing was that they conquered 4 more Altarian worlds, but stopped conquering any planets after that, as if they were out of transports. But their overlords were swarming the galaxy.

So, I devised a drastic plan mentioned above. I put all my ship building efforts into constructors and spent years building 8 terror stars. The Draginol must have been too busy dealing with the other civs, because they didn't seem to notice me building and then moving them inch by inch to the borders of their territory. Once they were all complete, I moved them into Draginol space, right next to the planets. The order was given...

And the $@%&!*# senate overruled me! Stupid fools, I was trying to save the galaxy from unparalleled evil! So I went to the Torians, asked for an Alliance...got it! And a turn later, I went to war with the Draginol. However, this unfortunately caused them to unload all their ships from their worlds (how they are allowed to do this when it isn't their turn, I don't know).

But it was too late for them. I had all 8 terror stars fire at once...and obliterated all 8 Draginol systems. Billions of those bastards were vaporized, along with dozens of planets, including the original Altarian homeworld, which had over 100 billion in it alone. The next turn, the Draginol ships made their last dying gasp, destroying every terror star...but then they vanished. They are gone.

And I am left to weep at the unparalleled destruction. 8 suns obliterated...

Well, the rest of the game will be a pushover for me, as the Torians are down to one world (thanks to the Independent League), and the other civs are already gone...

Oh, I have fun loosing (in a grouchy sort of way), when I can say that I lost because of my own failure (including that I didn't thouroughly check out all the parts on my car before doing a 150 lap race). This just felt totally out of my control, so it wasn't me that lost, it was as if all of a sudden, just as I've finished beating off a savage offense in chess, the ref comes over, flips a coin, and says "You loose." Now that this event has been toned down from what I understand, I don't have a problem with it.

Elrikk flips coin to see who is right and who is wrong.

"Tails"

Damn! You win!

Elrikk

PS But wait. A strange change in magnetic flux combined with an earth tremor generated by the near miss of a huge, fast moving asteroid flips the coin back to "Heads"

Sorry, You lose


Now wasn't that fun ? Just a bit even ?



~SDC~

Ah yes, this event.

In the middle of smacking the Drengin and holding off the Acreans politically... so the grand fleet is away on operations. Event hit. I said, "feh, I'd like to see this one."

Then evil came... and surrounding star systems, including my industrial one and my home one, all became unhappy. Then the dreadnoughts came... then my grand fleet got squished by the black evil... then the Drengin came back...

Wonder what this event does if you're evil? Free dreadnoughts?

hey since were talking about unfair, game ending random events (hell I got the "terrible evil growing-youre screwed" event playing on FOOL level fakrissakes.)
why not have an event pop up (after you've invested a dozen or so hours)that says:

You wake up one morning and realize that you never conquered the galaxy; you never made any progress; you never came just THIS close to winning. IT WAS ALL A DREAM. You have one star system with two planets and they are both at 10 morale. Go back to bed sucker.

You guys sound like Arthur Dent when he found out the his house (and the entire planet Earth) was to be destroyed to put in the new throughway.

But it WAS posted . . .

Elrikk



~SDC~