Simple Solution:

Multiple Victory Options...

Currently you just have to destroy everything to win... They should have options like Civilization...

"Space Race Victory"
"Artifact Vistory"
"Control Point Victory"
"Conquest Victory"
"Control % Victory"

And so on...

Each of these options would be selected at the start of the game... For those ppl who want a 12 hour 5+ star system game that never ends... they can select conquest victory.

For those who want a "possible" 2-3 hour game (these are ppl with jobs, lives, school, and so on... They can enable all or most of the other victory options... If an opponent refuses to die... then you can persue an alternate method to win... (say researching a tech to become gods... or seek out... destroy... colonize and cap all the artifacts in the system...

IMO Artifact Control would be an AWESOME game mechanic / victory condition... as it would give players something to really fight for... making 1 planet much more valuable than others...

Currently... Most planets are just as valuable as any other. While Terran or whatever might have more upgrade slots... its really not "that" much better than anything else. But if a player could "win" by controlling all the artifact planets... then defending those (and not running away as this whole thread is about) would become much more important...

and i think catering to RTS players who will be gone the next RTS title that comes out is a waste=P

Spend more time making this a real time 4x game, not a slightly larger RTS.

If this game is supposed to be more grandiose and 'epic' than a RTS, its going to HAVE to take longer to play a game of. Risk takes longer to play than stratego.


IF you want a smaller, faster game. Then use the map creator. Make a game that has

1. 3 planets per player (which is what happens if you add players but no extra planet stuff)

2. fast everything.

There. Have fun rushing expansions and sending your streams of LRM frigates.

Some problems with this thread.

First, super weapon criticisms.

The TEC weapon is the best, yet does something almost entirely pointless? Blowing a capital up is nice, but blowing up 2 credits income isn't real great. If the place is already maxed out and you aren't killing it, you're basically just making them upgrade eventually. The Vasari and Advent weapons are more strategic in use, you can duplicate the TEC weapon by sending 30 siege frigates into a system just fine. The Vasari weapon allows you to briefly neutralize a system, and it's actually quite powerful, you can blow up a lot of stuff in 30 seconds with a big enough fleet. It's not just disabled turrets, it's disabled repair platforms as well. The Advent weapon is the most powerful though. Immediate recolonization of an enemy stronghold deep inside their culture. Can't resupply your fleet in an enemy controlled solar system and they get ripped to shreds before you can recolonize and start building? Not a problem, just pop that off first, wipe the culture out, take the planet, and immediately start popping out frigate factories instead of waiting a few minutes.

As to needing to be stronger. If you want to fire a second shot, build a second one. This is a big duh here, you could build 20 of the Vasari ones and wipe out one fortification after another with no losses, blow up worlds in rapid succession as TEC without even attacking. Wipe out the enemy culture from their own worlds with the Advent. They are already a game over weapon, you just need more than one of them. Kinda like you need a few hundred ships to actually assault a well fortified solar system, you'll need more than one super weapon to actually kill people with it.

Edit: whoops.

Second, taking too long to bombard planets. I thought people were complaining about them being too quickly dropped eh? Build more siege frigates guys... 10 following your fleet around is minimalist in approach, try 30 if you're bored. A novel idea, if you're winning big, use three or four fleets and drop them that much faster too.

I would like to see capitulation though, alternative win conditions and massecred ai offering a peace treaty with their conquerer would be great.

I strongly disagree. Not all players have infinite time to play games. I certainly don't. I love this game and larger maps, but the game simply takes too long to play. an AI surrender or having other optional victory conditions would speed things up immensely (and help pacing), and of course, it shouldn't be too hard to make those victory conditions optional so players can turn them on and off before starting a map.

In addition, it would give players something to aim for. Right now the game forces you to wipe out every last enemy. It's tedious for a lot of people as this thread is demonstrating. Victory conditions give players something to shoot for, and several different methods to beat the game. All good things in my book.

An AI surrender option is a awesome idea, though it would involve a lot of thought and variables to implement. Under what conditions would they surrender? Loss of planets? Control points, loss of capital? It's a sticky programming issue. I would say that loss of all planets (and their support structures) should constitute a loss, with all ships remaining of that faction turning into pirates in whatever system they're in. Also, surrender to a faction could come if they've lost a certain (high) percentage of their planets to a faction. Again, this victory condition could be toggable by the player before a game.

For multiplayer games, players should also be given the option to surrender as well.

Victory conditions are a great idea. Making them optional shouldn't be too hard for those who want to play the current style of play. I like the list the poster up the thread posted.

I think the key is to play with people who are willing to surrender once totally overmatched.

The other option my friends and I are toying with is allied victory win conditions... where once your beaten, rather than quitting the game on the spot or griefing and making it take forever to kill you, you make some sort of cease fire terms and ally with the guy who was killing you.

Thus the game ends when all players cede that their empires won't be getting any bigger and any further conflict will simply have a high cost for no gain. At which point they ally up and call it a day.


The key is that NOT surrendering when your beaten is a form a griefing, and we as a community should encourage people to surrender when they're dead, but not be jerks about it.

I'm loving the 'Domination' (control a adjustable % of planets) and 'Critcal Planet' victory ideas!

A 'control all artifacts' vic cond would be cool too. The more vic conditions the greater replayability IMO.

My only suggestion is that if a 'Domination' style victory condition is implemented that as you adjust the percentage "bar" it states the *actual # of planets needed on the game screen as well as the game-join screen in multiplayer.
(I.E. adjust to 50% on a 16 planet map would state 'control 8 planets to start dom timer'; while putting it to 75% would state 12 planets....so on and so forth)

I think this, and the option for "Loss upon death of Homeworld" are two of the best ideas for optional victory conditions so far. It seems very strange that the RT4X tries to bring in the best of both genres, but hasn't brought in the progress either have made as far as customizable victory conditions in recent years. It feels a bit like a next gen FPS going back to pure deathmatch/team deathmatch play and ignoring all the CTF, control point, escort, etc evolutions over the years (which people expect nowadays).