Predictability of War, Starting Location and Tech Victory Suggestions

from Stardock Forums
Noticed some interesting discussions going on in various threads and not knowing which to throw my suggestions to, have decided to start my own thread. I’ll try to be concise.

Issue 1

Comments about achieving military parity with AIs to prevent war are valid. It would seem that it does not really matter if all you have are starfighters or AMMs and that they are all parked in the corner of a gigantic galaxy leaving all your colonies undefended. Your comparable military rating gives you good deterrence against the AI declaring war and adds an element of predictability to military dynamics.

Suggestions

Other than the impending adjustment of military rating computation, could we get the AI to devise joint attacks (ie. My strength is on par with Humans but hey if the Altarians attack from the rear, this could prove interesting…). This should be a tactic used against anyone, not just Humans.

Could we get the AI to declare war based on targets of opportunity? (hey, there’s an undefended resource starbase or colony, could I pull off a lightning raid and sue for peace?)

I’m just suggesting some things that we human players do.

Issue 2

Starting location (like all 4x games) has a big influence on the game (Ctl-N is just the tool, not the problem) and thus impacts scoring significantly.

Suggestion

Scoring to take into account the cumulative PQ of systems colonized by player. My problem with the systems proximity solution proposed is that it is going to penalize the middle starting location as opposed to corner starts and we all know that there is only a theoretical possibility of colonizing all those systems proximate to you. So in my 35k game in which I colonized 104 systems, my score is going to be hugely impacted for that great start. Side effect of this would be to penalize 1mil colony ship multiple colonizing cheese and crappy planet culture bombs.

Issue 3

Tech victories obtained by human through trading end-tree techs with AIs.

Suggestion

Some previous suggestions about penalizing players based on number of AIs who reach Final Frontier first are good and should be considered. My suggestion is to stop the AI (take out of their research priority list?) from researching Beyond Human and Final Frontier as those techs mean nothing to them currently. That at the very least would require Humans to research two techs to win by via Tech and stop the situation where a player wins because he gets Final Frontier from AI through invasion.
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Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
For the control N issue, as the starting PQ has such
a massive impact on early success, simply making it
not random would take away alot of the desire to
use control N. I would perfer making the starting
world a base PQ of 20 + racial bonuses, but any
static amount would work.

I've never seen a computer get final frontier, but I
would greatly perfer that if they got it, they win
you lose, game over. As it stands right now once you
get past a certain point, there is no chance of losing.
Once you are too big to be dominated militarly, the
AI has no capacity to win. It is simply inept at
cultural domination and alliance and tech victories
are only for humans.

I think it would add a real spice to the game if you
could actually lose it, if you had to actually worry
about getting to that beyond human tech first. And
people could always turn tech victory off if they would
rather not face that risk.

As for PQ, I have long posts discussing the merits of
using PQ in the score instead of pop, and I wouldnt
count any PQ below 15 towards the score but I would
include systems taken over via cultural or mililtary.

This would also have the effect of ring military
domination more inline with cultural, as with military
you have to elimanate the pop on the conquested planet
giving the cultural style an inante advantage as they
gain the pop rather then destroy it. Using PQ ignores
this difference.

I would make cultural flipping harder and make the
AI more adept at defending against it, perhaps not
to the extent that they declare war, as this would
ruin one of the 4 pathes to victory, but at least
make them better at making their own cultural starbases

And reducing the effect of influence resources, last
gigantic masochistic game, entire galaxy flipped
using only 2 cultural starbases and those 2 only
because I got lazy and let the computer build 2
influence wonders and fell just a tiny bit behind in
his last sector. Only need to get the wonders, the
resources and a silly little bomb planet.


I do like the idea of trying to base score on starting
location, hope that can be worked in, better then
making some kind of artifical penality based on using
control-n, though again, i think making the Earth a
static PQ would eliminate much of that problem.


Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
"Suggestion Some previous suggestions about penalizing players based on number of AIs who reach Final Frontier first are good and should be considered. My suggestion is to stop the AI (take out of their research priority list?) from researching Beyond Human and Final Frontier as those techs mean nothing to them currently. That at the very least would require Humans to research two techs to win by via Tech and stop the situation where a player wins because he gets Final Frontier from AI through invasion." How about this: The AI can research a tech victory, but rather than winning the game, their star systems and resources are either freed up for exploitation or disappear. The remaining civilizations are then penalized an arbitrary amount, say half the points of the vanished civ?

End transmission.

~SDC~ Editted, as the quote button doesn't seem to function properly; messes up the formatting actually.
[Message Edited]
[Message Edited]
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Wonder what that little gray icon that says
'posted via stardock central' when you mouse over it
has something to do with his ability to edit?

wonder what it means.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Don't think the edit function is only available by posting using Stardock Central cause I've seen others editing theirs without SDC.

Capt Bizarre,

The issue I have with transcending races leaving empty worlds/resources behind is the potential exploitation by humans by staging colony ships or constructors in preparation for alien transcendence.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, if the scoring penality for 'allowing' an alien
race to transcend was signifigant(and it should be)
then I really dont think this would be exploitable.

Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree on issue 1.

Couldn't care less about issue 2. That's a non-issue imho. I don't play the game to get a good score. If I want a challenge I'll take a bad start position.

Issue 3 is an issue, but for me once again it's not about scoring. The issue is to be on even footing with the AI. I have a feeling this will be solved in the X-pack where the AI can reach 'beyond mortality'.
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Issue 1 I agree with.
2 I don't mind as metaverse scoring will never be correct, and time'd be better spent on the game itself.
3 If you can become a godlike being by trading, that's OK for me. I just would like that the ai could wipe you out if they reached final frontier and hated you. If you penalize this, you totally screw any peaceful way to win (I consider culture win as not peaceful as it is in fact aggressive and taking the opponent's worlds away).
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
Issue 1 is one of the bigger negatives to this game, particularly as you go up the difficulty ladder. I've refined my research/build strategy to "keep up with the Joneses" but find something off about this. There's too little opportunity to actually pursue a diplomatic/tech path in the game - if you want to be certain of being able to win it's all military *and* (insert your particular strat here).

Issue 2 is completely irrelevant. Of course the overall quality/potential of the map and how much of it you control initially is going to have effects throughout the game that alter your score. There isn't a problem here - those that really want to max their score and/or chances of winning will Ctrl-N or start over repeatedly until they get the start they want. Those that like a challenge won't - why should anyone care?

Issue 3 - not a problem at all in my book. It takes a strong economy to pull this off so it's as much of a valid path to a tech victory as any other. If penalised, people would just make sure to research the latter tech victory path techs themselves and buy all the others from the aliens to increase their score. Same net result; silly rules would just alter the way the player went about getting that same result. Further, I'm still in the camp who dislikes the idea of the AI being able to win or otherwise penalise your score for reaching FF first - it's the peaceful 'everybody wins, nobody loses' path and it should stay that way. We'll be getting some sort of change as of the expansion anyhow with whatever the "aliens transcend beyond mortal" path event.

Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree with codemonkey in that I don't think good starting positions, or skill at colonizing early, should be punished.

I think issue 3 can be easily solved by allowing tech victory for the aliens, but I'm against it currently because it would seem to cut the game short because of how time consuming military conquest is. I think beyond human and final frontier should cost substantially more and be untradeable if the AI is not allowed to win tech victory.

The first issue is of course on everyone's mind. Having the top military (along with minimal spying) ensures that you will never be attacked. Not even if the computer could take 2 of your military resources in one turn, and put your military in 3rd. Not if your entire fleet is on the opposite side of your empire beating back another civ. Not if taking that one planet would shut down your ability to culturewhelm their entire empire. I'm led to believe that the expansion will contain significant AI upgrades, and I hope this is the case. The simple formula of attack or bully anything with a military rating below you and don't touch anything above you makes a fair amount of sense (why would mexico invade the US when they'd just get their ass kicked?), but it doesn't fit every situation. Sometimes you have to go to war with a superior power or lose everything.

And I think we're all aware that the AI needs to get better against culture, and I assume that this is being worked on.
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
Ray,

If I recall, I just hit the edit button, added/changed some text and inserted an extra line, and hit Update Thread. Unfortunately, the quoted text looked like guano until I edited it and the extra lines were suppressed - hence my comments coming directly after the quoted text. (We'll see if Bold works now.)

I figured the same thing about exploiting worlds left behind by transcended aliens, hence the vanishing star systems option.

Trading for transcendence just seems cheesy to me. To put it in Star Trek terms, imagine the Ferengi achieving Q status by trading for the right techs. Where's the research and corresponding technological comprehension? "It's just a game", but I prefer games that are constrained by logic. In any case, I can't picture anybody but a good-aligned civilization trading the technology for FF to an ally with the same moral/ethical/cultural alignment. That is, can you picture the U.S. trading/providing nuclear technology to Colombia just because they're both fighting "The War On Drugs"?

I agree that the military aspect of the AI needs to be more sophisticated, including its response to cultural aggression, real or imagined. Unfortunately, my programming skills are right up there with my "accept your lot in life" skills, so I'm just hoping the Stardock team pulls another coding rabbit or two out of the hat in upcoming versions.

End transmission.

~SDC~