Tech victory too easy?

Beyond Human gives you the most points.
For the simple reason you get points for techs and the game takes longer to play so your final population is going to be higher. If all you are worried about is points nothing stops eveeybody for going for a technology win every time so the playing field is level.

I think the metaverse is useless anyway.

1) The Top players exploit the game you can read how the blockcand planets with freighters etc..
I played the game long enough to know you can not win at a painfull level any other way.

2) Not everybody plays the same game. People edit terxt files download events, so play evil some play good. So really what are you comparing.

3) Lots of players still have problems sumbiting scores.

Some valid points there Technician.

I cannot understand how people use these cheesetactics and still have fun. But it happens with every game so I guess with GalCiv too.

That said I'm having a great and fun time while playing the game at intelligent (without using any exploits) but I must admit that when I'm outnumbered I tend to go for the easy way out every once in awhile myself, thus going for tech victory, since it's doable even if other civs are superior.

That's why I would mostly love the option of a tech victory for the AI. That should make the game more challenging and won't give people the (very) easy way out.

Technician wrote:
"1) The Top players exploit the game you can read how the blockcand planets with freighters etc..
I played the game long enough to know you can not win at a painfull level any other way."

It is possible to win at higher levels without using tactics such as those. I personally have never used freighter blockades, blockades of planets with other ships, or massive amounts of starbases to win.

And in my experience I don't think the tech victory is too easy to win at. By the time you've actually gotten through the tech tree, you should usually be close to winning by another way already.

~SDC~

What do you mean you can't win any other way? I just finished a painful gigantic game via tech victory, but could easially have won through any other victory condition. The main reason I didn't go for military conquest is mostly because mangaging the fleet necessary to perform proper military operations is timconsuming on larger maps. On smaller maps there are less objectives you need to keep track of, and shorter distances. If you are at war with an empire on the other side of the galaxy getting ships there takes forever.

I did end up in a few wars, resulting in the destruction of the Yors and the Arceans were left with 2 systems after they lost one to conquest the rest to my party palace i built in the middle of their system where i now owned a planet. Getting 20 systems in 4 turns.

The alliance victory was possible as well, just had to clear off the Drengin and the final Arcean systems as the Altarians and Torians were friendly/close. Just again that meant war which would have taken longer than going for the last 3 techs at full research. When playing a game for 4 days the end game takes to much time. The more powerful ships take several turns to build even on the most productive planets and then getting them from one end of the galaxy to the other takes even longer. My newly constructed fleet of Overlords only arrived at the front in the Arcean war after my dreadnaughts had cleared up all the starbases and destroyed the defenders and corvettes they had. Then I just had to keep clearing out the ships they manage to build while waiting for my combat transports etc.

Besides the time it takes to move fleets around I think warfare isn't really viable on the larger galaxies early on. By the time you reach any of the other major races with your fleet they have defenders or battle axes spread about making it a tough war. The early attack ships are pretty weak against the early defense ships, making it a costly war. Its pretty apparant if you watch the AI races go to war early on, unless one is a lot more powerful than the other they rarely make any significant victories in the war. They just waste resources that others use on building.

Maybe ill try a military victory on a large galaxy next just to see how it plays.

~SDC~

The point about the AI players attacking a player which is approaching a tech victory is probably valid, although on Gigantic galaxies its unlikely that even a coalition of aliens could trash a player empire fast enough to stop the research from completing unless they started the crusade rather early.

That's why I think they SHOULD start their crusade early or the very final tech should be made much more expensive.

That and the fact that the AI can persue tech victory too is what I think would make the tech victory harder and more balanced.

Any other ideas?

I'd personally like the tech victory to be automatically disabled if the other races have higher tech than you. Perhaps allow a lesser secondary victory which gives a victory but halves the score for every AI with higher tech. I would agree that is is a bit easy to kkep the AI players sweet with bribes, allow them to take dominate the galaxy and sneek a tech victory in despite them having higher technology. The fact that you then get a higher score for this is a major issue with the metaverse.

As for Technician's statement that cheese tactics are the only way to win on the hardest levels, this is untrue. I don't use cheese tactics but often win on hardest levels. OK, I often loose as well, but it is possible and I've won every size galaxy on Incredible. Yes a lot of people could potentially be abusing these tactics, but many people are not.

The other potentially cheesy 'easy' victory is the party palace cultural victory. It is fairly straight forward to research and build ALL cultural bonuses on starbases. This made them far too powerful. Thankfully this has been reduced in the latest build. I still limit myself to not building any influence bonus abouve +20%.

Paul.

~SDC~

On a small map, I find that I always win a cultural victory before I have the opportunity to research all the techs.

I disagree that it's cheesy to build a Party Palace. It was put in the game for you to research, how can it be cheesy to build one?

You don't have to build multiple party palaces per sector, or even in the same sector you want to convert.

It seems like all I have to do is put a party palace in an adjacent sector, and the planets start joining up with me.

I don't see, anyway, how it's less cheesy to research the final frontier. After all, it takes more work to build stuff, than to just keep hitting the next turn button until you've won the game.

If you have enough resources to build party palaces all over the place, it probably also means that you had enough to take over the enemy militarily. (But with military takeovers you lose a lot of population.)

Maybe the AI players have to react more strongly to your cultural dominance, by attacking your starbases.

One of the things this thread brings us is how a number of people want the AI to behave more like traditional 4X games by not playing to survive or win themselves, just to mess with the human - something that the game was designed to avoid and I personally love.

If I win via tech win, then I've had to put plenty of resources into making sure that is possible by having a strong defense, "bribing" the other AIs, forming strategic alliances, etc. - why shouldn't I be able to win that way?

Between the SB tweaks and the fact that AIs do get mad unless you use culture strategically on higher levels, again, why shouldn't I be able to win that way? Should European nations launch a war against the U.S. over EuroDisney and McDonalds? It is illogical that in the presence of peaceful relations that cultural assimilation should not be possible bloodlessly unless the other nation has a significant military advantage.

I personally have seen enough of the sort of backstabbing you think we need more of on Tough and above (and, yes, Technician, you can win by normal, fair strats on Painful) - is it really necessary to take one of the neatest features of the game: smart playing can make war largely a non-factor on your path to victory, and turn it into every other 4X TBS that's ever existed where as you approach the finish line everybody starts pounding on you to try and stop the inevitable?

Code Monkey has an excellent point in that a military response to a cultural attack is not "realistic" Perhaps the issue is that the AI is not countering cultural attacks as effectively as it is countering military attacks. For example, as you approach cultural dominance, at higher levels, is the AI maxing out propaganda on its planets and contructing party palaces to counter your party palaces?

I think there is a tension on this thread between expediting mop up (AIs unite - making end game shorter) and AI survival instinct (AIs survive - possibly making endgame longer but more realistic). The alliance victory sounds like the compromise position in that it is realistic and can expedite mop up.

To solve the Metaverse tech victory overuse, listen to Solitair - halve the Metaverse points for each other culture that already has Final Frontier.

In a Roddenberry sense, everyone should be able to win and "ascend." The Metaverse is a relatively anti-Roddenberry notion in that "we all can't get along", so it is hard to reconcile "everyone wins" with "I did x better than you, so I deserve more points." Solitair's solution makes sense because everyone still wins (no lesser victory), but your points are lower if you choose to compete and other ascend before you.

Hmm... why would I ever go for tech victory in that case unless I was *really* ahead if I cared about score.

Make a penalty like that and you just introduce another illogical mechaninc for getting high metaverse scores: kill off the guys with Final Frontier, then win by tech. Besides, I don't know if you paid much attention, but this ain't Roddenberry's universe

I'm personally against trying to do anything to fix the metaverse scoring beyond game balance issues (and halving score has nothing to do with game balance). When you change one rule to eliminate a way of getting a high score, you just push the people who care about score into aiming for another victory strat. It just becomes an endless nerfing cycle until we all just get 1 point for playing. Besides, the higher scores for beyond human are purely an artifact of game length and population - you can get the same sort of effect by boxing in some weak civ and hoping it doesn't surrender while you hold off a cultural or military victory.

I took their using "Final Frontier" as a Roddenberry tribute, not to mention all the other ST references in the game. The addition of a non-competitive victory condition seems like a very conscious choice, rather than just having tech facilitate conquest, permitting human tech victory even when AIs reach transcendence first is a philosophical game design choice.

The only problem I see with the Technology Victory is that it is the one victory condition that does not require the human player to confront the AI races in some way, shape or form.

Conquest, Political and Cultural victory all require the player to interact with and overcome his neighbors in different ways. Moreover, each of these victory paths can be countered in various ways, from military force to planetary and starbase development.

Scientific victory on the other hand only requires the player to stay out of trouble, research, and win the game once enough time has gone by. The fact that the AI nations will not deliberately try to stop the human from ascending and cannot actually ascend before the terran player (ie. win the tech race) only makes this victory path more broken.

Think about it -- 75% of the galaxy can be inhabited by a vastly powerful and wealthy empire with nearly unlimited scientific capability, yet the human player can will still win instantly if he just stays on their good side. Can any other victory path accomplish this?

Duh.

Just to answer my own question: Obviously a political strategy can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. If the other 75% of the galaxy is inhabited by a superpower and you are allied with him, you will still win.

Granted, if you were not allied with him in the first place, you may find it hard to appease him once he is a superpower. One assumes that the human player had to labour to build the alliance and then protect his ally.

I prefer to get a tech victory. I like to have done everything in the game, every time. The video is just so much better (sorry, but the others suck), and there's more fulfullment to be had in guiding mankind into a new phase.... But I also agree, it should be harder to achieve. Perhaps they could extend it by requiring you to enter into a construction phase to build the machines you see in the video? That could be a hideosly expensive undertaking, and could be something that could be stopped by attacking the construction site?

And I thought that the tech ending was more like the Babylon 5 final episode, rather than ST.

~SDC~

I agree with you Starvald, it should be harder. It is actually supposed to be the hardest victory to achieve, but it is actually just the most time consuming.

What should happen, in my opinion, is you should have to accumulate a certain amount of research points after acquiring the Final Frontier tech in order to win. While accumulating these points, the AI nations that are not your allies should be relentlessly trying to grind you under their bootheel. Keeping a powerful research machine going while trying to attend to the defence of your empire would make a much more interesting (and challenging) finale.

The way it is now, it is sort of like what Civ2 would have been if the first spaceship part built won you the game. No blowing up the launch site, no travel time to AC, just instant victory. Hmmmm...

I've been able to achieve all victory conditions except for the tech victory. I suspect the reason for this is because the largest map I've played so far has been medium. So I end up winning (or losing) the game long before I'm close to researching all the techs. Or maybe I just suck at the game.

~SDC~

Stevious, turn off culture victory at the start. That way you can use culture to convert AI planets to the Terran Alliance and have them support your research without worrying about a culture victory.

On smaller universes, culture victory comes long before tech victory, so by turning off culture victory, you can dominate in culture and then shift all resources to research. Get ready to click the turn button a ton while maintaining peace with everyone (and exterminating those who won't leave you to your research).

I think there is a misunderstanding in my opinion on many of the people posting in this thread, and that is that somehow the top players are 'abusing' the sytem by beelining for the 'easy' tech victory. I doubt that is the case, because although I have plenty of those types of victories only two of my 19 games have been from deliberately pursuing it. The rest of the time I ended the game with Final Frontier because that was the method I choose as most convenient. Usually I stop my research with everything but the last few techs done (I save the 2 +10% PQ techs for later), culturally flip 99% of the other races, then go for Final Frontier to put a cap on the victory. So almost all my tech victories are really cultural or military ones.

I always turn a jaundiced eye towards any post that boils down to "Please make this harder because I don't like it when someone else does it".

As noted above, if you can survive long enough to do the tech victory research then you probably could have won any other way as well. In fact, I've found that going for the tech win is the most dangerous method for me, because it tends to give me a turtle mentality which allows one of the AIs to possibly dominate the rest of the map and then come calling with an unstoppable fleet. I've had more problems on games that I focused on the tech victory than in all other games combined (2 of my 3 losses came from this), which is why I stopped doing it for the most part.

I think it's easier to get an alliance victory, but maybe it's my play style.

I think it's easier to get an alliance victory, but maybe it's my play style.

Really the issue is scoring and balance. It seems all are agreed that tech gets the most points merely because by taking so long, you have all the things that score more points. So the fix would be to issue a bigger bonus to winning faster. Also, they've figured out that bigger maps score more points. A simple fix might be to rank by category.

But no matter what you do, someone will figure out some way to exploit the point system used. That's just the way it is. But right now, if someone wants to deliberately take more turns just to get a tech victory vs another type for the points, it's his/her loss of fun not mine.

I have no issues with people getting a good score for achieving a tech victory. It's a good way to win the game and can be great fun. What I see as a bit unbalancing is the fact that that tech victory can be achieved ONLY by the human player. I believe that in most tech victories the human player was probably the most powerful, but in the cases where another race had superior research then I believe the score should be reduced. The human player still won, but not as powerfully. You'll notice that an alliance victory gives you a lower score!

As for scoring in general, I still believe that a particular set of starting conditions should have a fixed score. That score should be independant of the way you attempt to achieve the victory. If you brilliantly wipe out the enemy quickly or struggle to survive and eventually win by cultural victory you should still be competing for the same score. The current situation awards weaker players more as they will take much longer to win giving a much higher score (due to more research and population). WHY?

Paul.

~SDC~

Aha there's a poll up about techvictory now.
Needless to say that I voted YES.

Great Monty Python reference BTW LOL

I agree with Solitair on the whole scoring issue.
That was never my main concern though. The biggest part of my concern is right up there in the poll. The AI should be able to score a techvictory too and persue that victory condition every once in awhile. That alone can put up another (fair) challenge.