Like LordTheRon points out, giving the AI the ability to score a techvictory will put up a challenge. If the AI beats you to techvictory, you loose.

Let's say you get a sort of warning saying that one of the AI are close to techvictory, you must either put all you resorces on research, to try beating AI to techvictory, or exterminate him by military or culture means.

Just like in the civ series.

If the human player are the only one allowed techvictory, that's like a free win. Just stay in peace and survive long enough.

I agree Vladnaq, sort of a warning would be nice, but this could also be a part of the spying game.

I think having the AI go for a tech victory would end up being a big mess. I'm not even going to go into the details of it, I can just see about 50 unbalancing and game-degrading aspects of it. It's about as bad an idea as that of the bombardment ships, and hopefully it won't ever be implemented. I don't think the people who support this idea have actually stopped to think of what a game under those conditions will really be like.

My guess is that if this is ever put in that the main effect it will have will be to have 95% of the human players turning off the 'tech victory' in the options menu.

Vorlin can you give me ONE single argument for that? As you say a lot in your last post, but there isn't a single argument there!

I don't think that there would be any inbalance when the AI can go, just like the human player, for a tech victory. What would be wrong with that? It's just fair. Like the AI can win allied, military and cultural victories it should be able to win techvictory too.

The poll is looking promising though.

I think Solitair's idea is much better than either of the poll choices right now. Hopefully someone from Stardock is keeping track of this thread and doesn't allow AIs to end the game with tech victory. The similarities between that idea and a certain Orion council is just too disturbing to imagine

Za I think you cannot compare this in anyway to the Orion council. There are several ways in this game to stop a cpu player from reaching techvictory.

Thru spying, warfare and culture flipping you can stop a cpu.

The Orion council cannot be stopped, it just happens, so this is incomparable.

For me it's not about the Metaverse score in the first place. I just want to play a fair game vs the cpu players and that includes them being able to win thru techvictory.

LordTheRon:

Let's not kid ourselves. If Brad really programmed the AIs to go for a tech victory, you'll be hard pressed to stop them if they turtled well. Everything you listed as a method to stop the AI from achieving tech victory can be applied to the Orion council too, yet the later is still just as annoying.

To be honest however, my personal preference is for games to not end involuntarily unless the player loses all his planets. We are playing for fun after all, and having a long game ended abruptly is not fun. If you don't think it's "fair", the game can always be marked as a tainted one in the metaverse. This is basically akin to letting the player fool around after the game objectives have been achieved, either by the player or the AI, and I don't see how this could be construed as "unfair".

In the "Tech Victory Poll" thread, LDiCesare suggested: "if you look at it, the tech victory is "beyond human", so you no longer care about the silly small planets and suns. I'd rather have an alien race that technologically reaches "beyond the Yor" to vanish and leave for another space time continuum or whatever and leave the pesky small humans and other carbon life forms to play by themselves. Then the score could be divided by 100 or 1000, but let me keep playing afterwards."

For those who oppose AI Tech Victories, would the sudden departure of a race from the game (with appropriate warnings) and a diminution of score be a problem still be a problem so long as you could keep playing (and building transports/colony ship for the new expansion into the vacated space)?

How about this then Za H and others:

Maybe it would be a good idea to disable techvictory after an AI has outrun you. That way the game continues but the techvictory isn't an option anymore. How about that? Wouldn't that make everybody happy.

That way you can:
- Still win a techvictory, but you have to outsmart the AI for it.
- Continue playing after an AI has reached "Beyond Yor/Arcean/Torian/Altarian/Drengin", but without the techvictory as an option for you anymore. You would have to go for another victory then. I think that would make the techrace interesting.

LordTheRon,
your suggestion has plenty of merit but for some people if an AI achieved a tech victory they would just quit the game. They WANT to achieve a tech victory and an AI reaching it first shouldn't stop them. Possibly it should just acknowledge that they weren't first to reach 'final frontier'.

What to do with the AI race is interesting. Should it vanish? Get a huge bonus? If it vanishes and you then get a military victory what happens to your score? Should it reflect the fact that another race already 'transcended'

Paul.

~SDC~

But Solitair,

"They WANT to achieve a tech victory and an AI reaching it first shouldn't stop them."

It doesn't STOP them, it just stops them from achieving techvictory because they weren't good enough to beat the AI in it.

I think the biggest problem is that people see their game end abruptly. With my suggestion you can still play the game and go out and win it. I think it's a good compromise between the poll options.

Also this doesn't give any complications for the metaverse scoring. A techvictory is still a techvictory.

Solitair (no edit post)

"They WANT to achieve a tech victory and an AI reaching it first shouldn't stop them."

Well there are more people (look at the poll) that DO want the AI to be able to score a techvictory. I think the suggestion I made here is trying to make the best of both worlds.

Just some of the reasons I think this AI tech victory is a bad idea:

1. Any level above intelligent the AI gets bonuses, the human player is always coming from behind, and since noone will want the game to end early, and noone will want their score reduced after playing for hours, people will just disable tech victory, thus making it a change that required effort just to give people a game that is -less- than before the effort.

2. Currently AIs go for military and expansion, that is why they are so competitive. Any AI that is implemented that goes for a tech win is going to be weak compared to the other AIs and thus will be conquered by them. This results in military-oriented AIs gaining momentum faster than before.

3. AIs trade tech that humans wouldn't, what's to stop the Altarians from going tech, the Torians from going military, and then both trading in full? Even on the lower difficulty levels this would be hard to deal with.

4. AI's extort: one AI goes tech, the rest go military, the tech AI is weak so gets extorted for all their final frontier tech, results similar to #3 above except even more civs have the tech.

5. Lack of flexibility when playing. Right now I can start up a game and have no idea which way I'm going to go victory-wise. But if AI tech victory is put in then I know the clock is ticking, I have to choose a -fast- way to victory, or turn off the tech victory condition, either of which leaves me with less of a game then I started with. I don't want to play 'beat the clock' when I start up GalCiv, nor do I want to turn off a victory condition that I might need under certain game conditions.

6. Considering the 3000 things that currently need doing in GalCiv, I consider it a huge waste of the Stardock team's time to implement a 'feature' that gives absolutely nothing and in fact leaves the game less than it was before. A feature that I can damn near guarantee that if it gets implemented will result in the vast majority of players turning off the tech victory condition, because who wants to play for hours only to have the score reduced, or just plain lose, because of the implementation of this 'feature'?

7. Keep in mind, you -have- to militarily defeat a civ to stop it from achieving a tech victory, which is a whole different story from stopping a civ from conquering you (which is the only way they can beat you currently). If all 5 AI civs are going for a tech victory then you have to beat all 5 before any one of them makes it, good luck doing that in a gigantic galaxy unless you play a purely military game from start to finish.

I agree with Vorlin on pretty much every point. I did notice that most of the votes were for giving the AI races the ability to achieve a tech victory, but I'm also certain that little consideration went into why the AI can't achieve that victory (or, for that matter, Alliance). I don't think it's unfair that the AI can't achieve every victory condition that the player can - for tech, it's really irrelevant to humans if an AI race achieves it - they just go away. For the AI races, it's really irrelevant to them that the humans left - except they probably left some choice worlds behind. What they do is irrelevant to humanity, however.

ZaH has a good point with the comparison to the senate loss in MoO3. I don't know many people who played with that on after the first bad experience.

~SDC~

Also, and I might not be right about this, but as far as I know none of the victory conditions give you score points. They just end the game, at which point you race's stats are added up and the score determined from that. So lowering your score because the AI achieved a tech victory would make no sense because you never had a bonus for doing so in the first place. It's just a game-ending condition, not a thing of value in and of itself. Your score is your status when -your- game ends, regardless of the AI state or what the AI has done. Which is probably why there was no AI tech victory in the first place, it makes no sense with the current scoring system to have one.

I'll try to remember to save my next game before victory, then do tech and military conquests and see if I can figure out for sure whether there is a bonus involved or not. I can probably get both to end within a few turns of the same time (hopefully) so the variation due to time will be minimal. If there is any significant sized bonus to either victory condition it should stand out (the tech vic will have a signficantly lower military rating, the militar vic will have a lower tech score).

Well guys have the both of you read this suggestion. I think this solves all the critical points (and I agree with quite a few of them) you have risen.

Maybe it would be a good idea to disable techvictory after an AI has outrun you. That way the game continues but the techvictory isn't an option anymore. How about that? Wouldn't that make everybody happy.

That way you can:
- Still win a techvictory, but you have to outsmart the AI for it.
- Continue playing after an AI has reached "Beyond Yor/Arcean/Torian/Altarian/Drengin", but without the techvictory as an option for you anymore. You would have to go for another victory then. I think that would make the techrace interesting.
- It doesn't affect Metaverse scoring.

That wouldn't bother me, but I don't see the logic of it, because 'beyond human' is beyond human, their achieving their version won't stop you from achieving yours. But as I said, if that is put in that way it wouldn't bother me. But keep in mind that many people complain about the length of the end-game mop up phase, taking out the best way of dealing with that (no micromanagement, just hit end turn a few times) won't make you friends with that group.

Personally, I've never even got close to achieving a tech victory without already dominating the galaxy, at which point I could pick and a choose which victory to go for, and it's easiest just to gun for a tech victory rather than shuffling troops or constructors around.

IMHO, AI tech victories are completely untenable. If you lose the game when they TV, that's basically a death sentence for any player who's lagging behind technologically (and/or militarily) but is working their way to an alliance (or even cultural) victory. If you *don't* lose the game, what's to stop you from clicking 'end turn' 'til all the majors have vanished?

~SDC~

"Personally, I've never even got close to achieving a tech victory without already dominating the galaxy, at which point I could pick and a choose which victory to go for, and it's easiest just to gun for a tech victory rather than shuffling troops or constructors around."

That sounds like a personal problem to me

I've played my butt off on this current game I hope to have finished up before I go to bed. The Altarians have dominated the *whole* game. The only reason I'm still around is I made an alliance with them early on and we've been buds ever since. Should I not be eligible for tech victory because the AI is more efficient than I am?

I can still drag it out any number of ways (in fact I'm currently exploring if a cultural victory is even a remote possibility) - I guarantee you if I try to stretch this game into a cultural win versus tech my score will be as much as doubled over what it would be to take the tech win when it's available. Shall we nerf that one too?