Bored of Gal-Civ. End Game needs work

Well.. Looking at your metaverse score table, might I suggest you try something a bit challenging than "normal" ?!? Upping the AI difficulty really puts some meat in the game.

~SDC~

I get this guys point. The victory conditions are too steep. Once you are dominating the galaxy,
the game should end. This is regardless of difficulty level, you get to a point where none of the
other civs has even a remote chance of beating you, but you still have to spend hours of tedious
mopping up to get to the victory screen.

~SDC~

Banana,

I have played my last 5 on Cripping Level. I now quit games when i know i have won them, if i wanted the points i could load them play the 2 hour clean up on them all and submit.

This isnt anything to do with difficulty, its about a basic end game mechanic As Kevin Below you specified.

(Guess i should have expected the obligitory "play a harderlevel comment" hehe)

~SDC~

Ok.. I figured that might be the case. Actually the last game I played did have that two hour mop up period also. So I do know what you mean. It is a bit tedious to get those last few techs. But I actually would have lost the game if the Arcean empire had had the guts to attack me. They would have wiped the galactic floor with my ass but they were propably too concerned about losing the trade income.. But yes, you are basically right. Towards the end some games do get a bit dull.

~SDC~

I can agree, but that's where you do something a bit wacko for your empire, e.g: attack your own trading partner (et tu Brutus? Then fall Caesar!)

That's what I did with one of my saved games... It's like a choose your own adventure! Use the AI to your advantage. If you are dominating, then go... okay, who is the next big kahuna, let's go after him!

Of course, if you've done that, then well... (shrugs)

*goes off to mop up stupid Torian starbases once again*

~SDC~

How about when you totally dominate (however Brad defines it), all the planets offer to submit to you and you can either accept or reject the offer of mass submission? If you reject, you can still crush them culturally, militarily, or technologically.

It would be called "Submission Victory"

Or "Total Domination Victory"

If you really are dominating the galaxy, it doesn't take more than half an hour to mop up with combat transports and a handful of capital ships. The end game will look ugly with lots of ships idling in space and your empire not running at top efficiency, but once you conquer a single planet in enemy territory, the rest will fall to culture must faster. Even if they aren't affected immediately, the number of transports required for full military conquest will be far less than the number of constructors required for a cultural victory. Quick and dirty is still the way to go, so if you don't want to get your hands dirty, don't expect it to be quick

It's been my experience, having played this game longer than anyone else...that often times just because you think you're going to win doesn't mean you're going to win. In my game play examples, that happened to me twice. I was winning the game, thought I was going to dominate and the AI ended up winning because its strategy became ripe.

The AI will surrender if its population is <15% and its at war for example.

I'll definitely look at things for a future update but I don't forsee a scenario where we're goign to have the AI start surrendering simply because it only has say 30% of the population.

~SDC~

BTW, if someone wants to send me a game in which they think the AI should have "given up" I can take a look at it and either conclude the same thing you conclude and make the AI more intelligent about conceding at that point or disagree and explain why.

~SDC~

Does the AI know how close the human is to victory? For example, if the human is at peace with everyone and starting to research "beyond human" will the AI at higher levels start attacking the human merely to stop the human from reaching tech victory? I have not seen this happen, but am still playing with normal. Maybe this king-of-the-mountain type strategy could streamline the endgame. As any one (AI or human) culture approaches dominance, the others band together to prevent it.

Frogboy, I think one of the challenges of determining dominance is the random event/UP factor. If my pop is ahead (40% of total and my tech is well above 200), there could still be a UP that we all share techs. Perhaps dominance has less to do with each AI's perception of its chances (15% vs. 30%) and more to do with that a single AI/human has over 50% of the total pop and controls UP and has more tech and econ.

Of course the "artifact with increasing strength" random throws a wrench into a peaceful tech victory, so if you want to avoid assuming any victories, maybe the way to go is to say that when the human becomes dominant, those allied with the human submit and those who are not allied with the human go to the second most powerful civilization, setting up a showdown. This would lead to more military endings, because a cultural or tech win while waging war would be harder than a military win, as has already been noted.

Frogboy, the end game really isn't that bad. Its a mark of how fast the rest of the game is that people complain about the tediousness of the end game. The WORST degree of tedium experienced in GalCiv is a far cry less than the late game of CivIII or MOO2.

One thing that would speed things up ENORMOUSLY however, is rally points. Its not enought to simply autolaunch constructors. They need to autolaunch AND head out to one of the 54 Starbases I'm building throughout the galaxy...with some sort of easy interface. Say a button marked "autosend" which pulls up a list of all starbases with a note that indicates what resource they have (with current mining bonus/culuture bonus/production bonus to determine state of completeness) and sector location.

Similarly with Combat Transports. The autolaunch function for them is useless...how often do you want to launch a transport 1/2 full. Bul an "autosend" button would be key. Since you can't put loaded CTs in orbit around a planet anyway without them landing the men, I always route them to frontier starbases (where they serve as mighty find defenders). It is the 14 Constructors and 10 Transports a turn (at least) that have to be individually launched and routed to the appropriate starbase that takes forever.

Other than than, it would be a simple matter of clicking next turn a dozen times to speed through the last tech.

THIS is the single most important UI improvment you could make to the game and IMO would COMPLETELY solve all hint of endgame tedium.

I don't agree with the 'it takes hours to mop up', that's only true if you have terrible influence and insist on taking each planet by transport one by one. As ZaH mentioned, take key planets and let the rest fall to your culture. Or go for the research victory which is certainly not hours, from the point where you know you've won you should be able to beeline for Final Frontier in about 20-30 minutes. Or you can have terrible influence but just beat the AI silly then demand systems when it surrenders, then repeat.

BTW, you don't have to scout the galaxy looking for civs, once you contact any civ you can see where any settled star they have is (even in 'black' map areas) just by using the Population or Production view in the upper-right map on the main display.

The only time the end game is tedious in GalCiv is if you are milking the map for a high score on the Metaverse, and any person doing that has to accept that price. Heck, I turn off cultural victory because it was ending my games too fast.

It's also good to keep in mind human psych: of course there is a certain let down in the excitement level once you get to the point where you know you can win. But that has nothing to do with GalCiv, any game is that way, it's just a basic emotional response. The biggest thrills in any game as a rule occur in the early-to-mid game time period.

I have to agree with the rally points comment. The worst part about the end game for me is the over-micromanaging you have to do to get your fleets into position.

jason

~SDC~

I think there are several difference scenarios where the endgame feels like mopping up (although I agree that GalCiv does it better than almost every other civ).

1. Large/Gigantic where you are a massive resource creation machine spreading starbases and improvement across a huge number of sectors.

2. Tiny/Small where you are going for a tech victory instead of military or cultural.

I am sure there are other mopup scenarios, but these are two of the most common.

Rally points (or a tech that permits instant starbase creation/upgrades in distant sectors) helps with #1, but not #2.

To get planets to convert, you have to have cultural influence. To get planets to convert and speed up the endgame and still with with tech, you have to turn off the cultural victory at the start and still play a culture game. What happens if I want to play a xenophobic technocrat in a tiny universe? I can fund it with trade, but it leads to a very long endgame.

To solve #2, I would add a few milestone techs to tiny/small games so that when you hit one of them (preset or random), it starts a period of intense discovery, unveiling the next 10%-20% of the remaining tech tree. These milestones would be available to all remaining cultures (SMAC: Secrets of the Human Brain, etc.). That would expedite the end game of tech victories. I am sure others will have better solutions, but more wanted to highlight end game issues in smaller universes.

Bobo say play other game now and then. Even Bobo get bored if do nothing but same thing over and over.

I have a question about the enemy (AI) goals I guess. As players, we play the game with the goal and intent of winning. We take into account the several different winning objectives available, and all of our efforts extend toward victory throughout the duration of the game. I'm not all that sure the AI does the same thing based on its behavior. If it did, then regardless of the economic impact, when the AI saw that it's #1 trading partner was about to win the game for whatever the reason, it would go all out and attempt to rid the universe of the human player. That's what any human would do if playing a multiplayer game when a similar situation arose. If you weren't an ally to share the victory, you do anything, even destroy yourself if need be to keep your opponent from winning. If the AI had that kind of ambition and tenacity, then we would have a formidable foe indeed. So many of the strategies now employed that are completely without balance (how many people winning easily with a cultural victory really stand a chance against the far superior military powers that exist elsewhere?). Perhaps there are a few, but once the AI notices it's losing the battle culturally, it should break the bank trying to use its military might to wipe your cultural tail out of existence. My point is, every game should require balance. Take our current world for example, perhaps certain cultural influences will come to dominate the scene eventually (if not already), without sufficient economic and military power to back it up, some wacko is going to snatch control of a strong military power elsewhere in the world and take advantage of these vulnerabilities and run wild trying to dominate the world. Presently the US and allies try to maintain supposed military superiority while also spreading their culture and trying to dominate economically as well. It's not a singular focus, nor should the game allow it. No human I know of would sit back and watch another player win the game simply because they didn't want to lose a trading partner!

~SDC~

I hope people take Frogboy up on his offer. I, too, have been in games where it was hopeless for my oponents IF I maintained my current strategy. Now, if for some reason I changed my strategy, it could unravel (like getting tired of sending out the endless barrage of constructors to build those cultural palaces).

The AI shouldn't "hope" that a random event occurs and changes the landscape of play. Otherwise, it might just hang on to the end.

/ds

Count me in as a rally point believer. Just finished a large map game with alliance victory and more often than not I had a combat troop transport just sitting there because I forgot about it. Rally points are easy to implement - a click with a star system selected on empty space could set the point for any planet in that system. I don't need to be able to set it on another star or starbase - that would require some more complicated mechanism. Just let me gather my ships somewhere nearby and I'll be happy!

I will only play small maps so I don't have to mop up at the end game.

P.S. That and the fact I can't get a score over 91 LOL

I think the problem I see with the so-called mop-up phases is that it literally takes soooooo long to scour the entire map. One would think that if you've researched worm-holes or got to that point in the game that you should be able to develop jump gates or something like that. As it is, it takes something like 8 to 10 + turns to cross the galaxy to get to the more isolated armies...and if I could've had it reduced to a few turns via a stargate, it'd make it alot easier.

As I suggested in another thread, to prevent the stargates from being too prolific, things like high maintanance costs, expense to build, and increasing cost with numbers of gates (costs 100 bc for first, 200 bc to build second and so on). The last can be justified as saying it costs alot to link it up with the other gates, etc. It'd certainly make the mop up phase alot less painful.

SeanB

I don't think it takes "hours" to mop up. If that's the case for you, then guess what; you're really not doing all that hot as you thought you were.

There is a major issue with the tech victory not being actively fought by the AI. They really should know when you are on the home stretch of winning. In my last game (genious level AIs if you care) I was getting gifts from essentially every surviving empire while I was researching the last few techs.

Honestly, if they had ganged up it would have been close, my military was distinclty behind but they were all happy being my trade partners.

It was silly.

Frogboy, do you want the game?

Nirvana:

As for scouting, you can easily locate enemy starbase when you switch "show sector ovnership" on minimap, then you can figure exact position of enemy starbase by influence scan (it will tell you how much influence enemy have and sector with highest is one where starbase resides)
Another usefull thing for this stage of game is sensor drone, cheap sattelite with long range sensors on it, no enemy starbase or planet (you can switch on show population button to see where enemy planets are located) can hide before your eyes.

BTW: show population feature is a little cheat - how can i know how many population aliens have on their planets and where ? maybe it is somehow connected with level of espionage, but i am not much sure...

"BTW: show population feature is a little cheat - how can i know how many population aliens have on their planets and where ? maybe it is somehow connected with level of espionage, but i am not much sure..."

How about traveller's tales from passing ships through your sectors?

M