Mailed you 5 save Games Frogboy. Hope you can help end my tedium

Guess I should have submitted that http://www.galciv.com/forum.asp?BID=GF&id=50536 to this thread instead of opening another one :notsure:

Sensor drone + eyes of the universe + +2 sensor racial ability = easy detection of almost anything. And if you happen to get the super sensors random event...

I like the population/industry showing. It can be argued either way as to how realistic it is, but since it's a game I'm not going down that road, I'll just cast my vote to leave it in just the way it is. You get this info when you first contact a civ, for anyone who didn't know this. So I doubt it's a bug, if it showed right from the start of the game then I'd figure it was, but obviously it was coded to do just what it is currently doing.

Rainmanblack, I understand what you are saying, but one of the things I like about GalCiv is that you don't get that 'me vs. all the AIs' feeling you get from most other 4X games. And the reason you don't is specifically because the 'the human is headed for victory so let's all attack him/her' behaviour isn't coded in. You can see where it would lead if this was put in: the human has the most culture, everyone attack before influence kicks in. The human has the biggest military, everyone attack before he picks us off one by one. The human is leading in research, let's all attack before he gets a research victory. Some people might indeed prefer this type of behaviour, but I've had my fill of it in previous 4X games.

When mopping up at the end I find I'm clicking "turn" all the time. It reminds me of running a debugger, step through next line of code, repeat ad tedium. However my usual debugger has a "run until the following conditions are met" feature. Would it be possible to add a feature that just did "next turn" until say another races line on any of the graphs crossed yours or a limit of n turns or something? I don't think the halt conditions should be too detailed as there should be an element of risk to taking a back seat and letting the empire run itself.

I have the exact opposite problem of Nirvana CN, I often find the game ends too quickly. I want to have the satisfaction of wiping some major race off the face of the galaxy, I conquer one planet, steal Final Frontier, and automatically win the game because of a technological victory. Or I’m working with my “Allies” working to destroy the other races, all the while waiting for that perfect opportunity to stab them in the back and steal some of their choice planets, and all of a sudden our common enemies give up and I win via Alliance victory. Being able to turn off different victory conditions can help, but I’m afraid to do so because I don’t know what route I’m going to take to victory until I’m well into the game. Turning off any of the victory conditions severely limits your options.

It should also be noted that your “defeat” conditions are not necessarily analogous to your victory conditions. If another race researches Final Frontier first, you don’t lose. I don’t know about cultural “defeat”, but it has never happened to me. Once it was down to me and the Altarians, they basically dominated the galaxy and I was losing planets culturally left and right, but I managed to squeak out and Tech Victory before I was full assimilated. The only way I found to actually lose is to be completely wiped off the map. This is a big advantage us Terrans have over the other races, and makes up for the fact that the can do everything all at once and know where all the cool planets are. Imagine how much tougher would be if you had to actually try to prevent the other races for achieving similar victory conditions.

In all games of this type, mopping up was always a big pain.

In all the games of this type, like MOO, Civ, SMAC, I would always play on smallish sized maps, and always quit when it looked like I had won the game.

I've had a couple games where I had a somewhat tedious endgame... mostly 'cause I wanted to try out a different victory condition.

Currently, I'm in a game where I was dominating.
Then came the fundamentalist event, and 1/3 of my empire defected (note to Dev... I was NEUTRAL 40s not EVIL GRR). My military rating went in the tank, suddenly I'm getting requests for tribute.

I take back my worlds, take out the weak Drengin. Working on the weak Torians -- when suddenly the Arcaens launch a sneak attack (too many juicy transports?)... and since they are friends with everybody suddenly I'm facing 3 AIs and a minor race.

I get pounded until I get Rangers, then I start to get the upper hand as Arcaens just have dreads. A few fantastic wars, and now everybody is at peace.

And the Arcaens seems to be near Overlords just as I get Avatars.

By far the best game of GalCiv I've played. Not every game is that fantastic, but this one has me playing until late in the night.

#29

Vorlin,

I agree. I am sooo tired of games in which the AI exists just to wear different "faces" ("skins") to attack the player.

Although I too have encountered late/end-game tedium, it has ben due to my selection of:
(a) Map Size, and
(b) Play Style.

Once I changed these (small/medium maps vs. Large/Gigantic, and active warrior vs. passive culturalist or technologist), the game picked up again.

~SDC~

But you can always lose if a few bad random events hit you.

My answer to this issue is to play on small maps (tiny is a bit too small). I think the problem on larger maps isn't so much the actions themselves but the length of time it takes to execute them because you've got to send units across significant distances.

On a Small map, I find *everything* runs at a faster pace, including the endgame, simply because you are so much closer to all the action. Sometimes this means its easier to attack, other times it means its easier *to be* attacked.

My only experience on a Large map (which I won, if that matters, on Crippling) was closer to Nirvana's post here ... and I honestly think it is more a function of distance between stuff.

Perhaps on larger maps there can be a higher tech to allow for faster ship speeds or something? By the way, I think I'll send Brad my save from that map because the AI did *not* quit even down to my having to take out its last planets...this added to the tedium, of course.

Also, I think it's too hard to make alliances. I another game, I had the last 3 AIs as "Friendly" and it would have been the PERFECT time to end the game. But since I couldn't form alliances, we eventually went at more and more war. It seems that I should be able to form alliances with Friendly AIs but perhaps at a higher cost or something?

I think the reason the small map isn't that viable is that the metaverse scores given for small map victories are so low. People go for the large/gigantic map wins because that is what yields the best metaverse scores.

Now I'm going to recount what happened when I played on the bright level. I started out in hyper expansion mode until I ran into the Torians to my left. My frontier world (Frontiers) was under cultural attack. There were 3 or 4 other Torian stars in that system, so it wasn't looking good. Luckly for me, Frontiers had something like 4 planets to work with, so I ramped them all up with News Networks, and as many + influence items as I could. I also spammed the sector border with as many + influence SB's as I could (I dont think the +5 BC per SB is in effect)

Not long after running into the Torians, they demanded 2000 bc from me (this was like only 3 or 4 turns after I found them). I told them no and rushed toward the defenders. Once I got a defender fleet ramped up, they backed off. The Acreans showed up and suddenly I was back in the hole and they wanted a piece of the pie.

Fortunately by this point my defender force was online and I ran into the Scotlingass. I wheeled and dealed with them to ramp up my technologies. I researched defensive phasers and then started bringing battle hammers online. Through all this I was able to get them off my back.

The next crisis that came up was that the Scotlingass became targets of the Acreans. I decided to blockade one of the Scotlingas planets (since it was my trading partner and making me lots of money). That caused the computer to go into a caniption and load that sector with 60+ ships.

Meanwhile, I was solidifying my starbase corps (About 3 per sector with stars) and started sniping Torian planets to my left through cultural influence. Eventually I started to push out against the Torians and take them out.

At this point the Acreans have the upper left and lower left corners. The Drengin has the upper right corners. The Yorr died early and the Altarians were in the lower right with what little is left of the Torians. I had a solid lead in tech, military, and influence.

It took me about 15 turns to get a sizeable enough fleet to the lower right corner, but once I got them down there, I killed off the Torians. I extorted the Acreans and then killed them off too. This left only the Drengin and the Acreans. The problem is the way the stars were laid out. I occupied a central cluster of stars and there were LARGE gaps between me and the corners.... so it took FOREVER to get any fleets to the area. I was so grossly supperior that they should've caved. Instead the end game took me something like 5 hours because it took that long to get all my ships moved in sufficient numbers. I mean when the Drengin had 4 worlds left, no military and no money, they should've surrendered.

I eventually got the conquest victory (as indicated by my metaverse scores). It was fun up until the mopup stage. Then it just got tedious.

SeanB

Ah, metaverse. Yes, since that doesn't upload for me, I ignore it. It is true, though, that smaller maps get far, far fewer points. My only question there is: What's more important? Metaverse score or an enjoyable gaming session?

In Nirvana's case, he gave up submitting the score because the end game was too tedius for him.

I want to put a vote in for the rally point. Stars! had the route command for this exact purpose. I normally assign a few locations near my planets as rally points already. These can not be planets (CT's unload) and they can not be starbases (constructors want to enhance) So I pick an empty spot with a BattleHammer for protection. Constructors should also have a Guard/sleep mode so I don't have to tell them to do nothing each turn while I am building up a fleet.

Bobo say many turn based games tedious (him use big word again!) when play large map. Civ take too long. MoM take too long. Sometime Moo2 take too long. Warlords take too long. EVERY game game take too long.
When Bobo find game too long, Bobo STOP and play other game. Other choice for Bobo is not play game. Him not like that choice.
Bobo think no big deal. Cure world hunger. Make all disease go away. Make funny little man in N Korea go away. Stop fighting in middle east. THEN make GalCiv endgame not boring.

Wise words Bobo

But the endgame can be a bit long

~SDC~