Tech Victory Poll

My variance of that:

Go ahead and give the AI a tech victory option, but give us a countdown. Starting 6 techs away (or whatever) a pop up should notify the player that the AI is so many techs away. That pop up should be repeated as each tech leading to victory is researched.

This gives the player time to try and react- declare war, targeting research planets, bribe other AI's into declaring war, etc.

What do you think?

C&P

I sure hope that *if* the powers that be go with permitting AI a game-ending tech victory, that there will be a countdown just as you suggest. In fact, it would be cool if it started 6 techs away, but projected a final loss date: "At the current research rate, the Torians will achieve Beyond Torian in 54 months." Just think HAL's voice.

If that does not send shivers down your spine, you are not human.

I would actually like to be able to choose between my hybrid and your total AI victory on the settings screen, with some Stardock genius figuring out how those choices should affect the Metaverse.

Actually, I would like it even without a countdown because it makes espionage more useful.

However, I think there should be an option to continue playing the game even after someone wins (a la civ), to prevent people from getting upset when their game suddenly ends.

How about if we could see how close to each victory condition the AI was, like the report about your victory conditions on the menu screen?

My point about distance to victory was that, unlike cultural or military victories, tech can sneak up on you. Clegg's idea would be fine (no notice unless sufficient espionage), but if there is sufficient espionage, your intelligence network should give you increasingly urgent messages, rather than forcing you to seek a single number buried three screens deep.

Call me 'species-ist' but I think that the technological victory path should be reserved only for the human race. Why? Because... well... we're superior. Yeah, that's it.

Really though, for gameplay reasons the 'Beyond Human' victory should not be allowed for all races. While it is not an easy victory to accomplish, I would say that the tech victory is far less risky than the other three paths. The other three victory strategies all require the player do directly confront the alien empires in some way, whereas scientific victory can be achieved from a position of stalemate. Worse still, the AI is not programmed to respond to imminent scientific victory. The AI will respond to cultural attack or military attack - it will even anticipate such attacks - but the AI does not care if the Terran Empire is about to ascend to Godhood and turn them into newts. The fact that the AI is not preditory to the human player (a good design decision otherwise imo) only makes the one non-confrontational strategy easier. All things considered, the Beyond Human victory is only the most time-consuming of strategies, not the hardest.

If scientific victory were allowed for all races, I would likely disable it for my games.

Thinking about it a little bit, I would much rather add an option (d) to that poll. Option D: Change how the scientific victory operates and then allow it for all races.

The core problem with the science victory is that neither the political landscape of the galaxy nor the relative power of the races matters if one of them happens to ascend. I would **hate** it if I were 20 turns away from victory and one of my weaker opponents instantly won via the tech race. The fact that I have 3 times his power and he has the estimated lifespan of a mayfly is rendered meaningless. The corallery is also true, it is more than a little cheesy that the human player can do this to the computer on a regular basis.

How I think science victory should work (Option D):

Once someone researches Final Frontier it starts a countdown. Maybe not a countdown, but perhaps a certain number of research points (a rather huge number) must now be accumulated by the ascending race in order to win the 'Beyond Human' victory. During this time, all of the AI races that are not allies should go absolutely psychotic on the ascending race. Allies of the ascending race should merely declare themselves neutral.

This would be a much better scenario in my opinion. Instead of the challenge merely being to perserve a balance of power until you win by default, the challenge would be to secure a politically and militarily defensible position to whether the sh*tstorm that comes when you try to 'go where no one has gone before'.

If nothing else, the supposedly 'most difficult' victory would be a lot more interesting, especially if one of the aliens attempted it. As is, Beyond Human is the one victory path that is not a form of conquest, contrary to the stated goals of the developers.

Actually you seen the cyberpoll on the galciv website, for allowing the computer players to win by it?

I'd be really annoyed if they did, as bang and it's happened. Should be some kind "end game" to actually achieve it. I'd like it if You where building a machine like the Tyrathca "Sleeping God" (anyone read Peter F Hamiltons Nights Dawn Trilogy?) to actualy help you ascend, you'd have to defend it which would be fun if the computer went nuts trying to destroy it.... They could even unleash the Draginol, if they haven't already......

~SDC~

Or you vice-versa. Give you a chance to stop them. You can theoreticaly stop the other conquest forms, just not this one. They get the tech, they win.

~SDC~

The countdown would give you a chance to stop them- assuming you are still in the game. If you cripple their research capabilities- I suppose it would have to be through military means- you could catch up.

But- it would give all of the games an end point, where someone is going to finish up the tech. If you wanted to fly around in Excaliburs for years, you might not get much of a chance.

I think as long as the option to disable that victory condition is there, no harm, no foul.

C&P

If you give up on the happy "everyone can ascend" model, which I am not sure I am ready to do, you turn the universe into a giant Colosseum with no exits and only one winner. Alliances make sense, but don't seem very popular with the AI or many humans on this board.

If we go the single ascent route, I like the idea of fighting fire with fire. How about a final killer tech that closes the Final Frontier forever, locking everyone into a future to be determined by cultural or military victory. This tech would permanently block "Beyond" if it is reached before someone gets to the end of Final Frontier.

"How about a final killer tech that closes the Final Frontier forever, locking everyone into a future to be determined by cultural or military victory."

As said before, that's called disabling the victory condition. What good is it to prevent the AI's from acending when you can't either? Or how about the AI's doing it to you?

As for the poll, thanks for opening up old emotional wounds. I had to say the newt quote in the sixth grade, in front of my class, and it was really embarassing. (:(

I am strongly opposed to allowing the AI to win through technological victory. I would find this to be extremely annoying, especiallly since i tend to be a bit behind the curve in technology (i play on Crippling Difficulty).

Even the option to have a countdown i find inadaquate, despite the theoretical notion that it could prompt me to action. Often, By the end of my games, the only computer players left are all allied together and though i could perhaps take care of the single race attempting to ascend, it would be suicidal to take on the combined alliance. Because of this, i think enabling AI Transcendance would ruin much of the game for me.

I do have a proposal however. Perhaps, once an alien race reaches The Final Frontier, they should get a bonus to show that they are now more than human (or more acurately, more than torian/drengin/etc). This could be anything from a significant influence bonus to a speed upgrade to combat upgrades. This could make the game harder to complete once an AI player reaches that level of tech but would not be a simple "Game over, you lose. The past 14 hours of your life have been a waste."

Nick:

I think the bonus could be one way to go- you'd have to balance it so that it wasn't so much of a bonus it wasn't just 'tech' victory in another form.

And although I see your point, that a tech AI victory might not make sense for certain settings (crippling) on other settings I think it does. If you can disable tech as a victory condition depending on the game you want to play... then why not?

C&P

Nicolas Bossy:

I think the idea of the suggestion was that if the AIs get to the top of the tech path first, you don't lose the game, but neither can you win it via a Tech victory anymore. This sounds like a cool option to me, it gives you an incentive to sprint for the tech earlier that you might otherwise, but it doesn't totally screw you over if the AI beats you to it.

I also like Nick Tower's idea, and actually a combination of the two might be neat.

If you Ascend first, you win. If an AI Ascends first, they and anyone else who Ascends after them gets a ton of bonuses, and the new godlings have to fight it out (or culture it out, or whatever) amongst themselves.

Say something like +20 to every ability (including PQ!) and the ability to build stargates or have their ships teleport or something to speed up the endgame.

It ain't gonna happen i suspect, but it would be cool

The issue is whether tech victory is disabled at the start or only when you make a push for it at the end.

Imagine a penultimate tech with two final techs coming off it - Final Frontier and Final Closure. You start Final Frontier and if an opponent can get to Final Closure before you get to Final Frontier, then you cannot have your tech victory (not that the game is over, just that you have to win via culture, military, or alliance). That is very different from turning off the tech victory condition at the start. It would make tech victory a gamble. Of course, to counter this, I could see players stockpiling BC to then complete FF as quickly as possible.

My complaint is not that the AI can win via Tech Vicories, but that a tech victory is not subvertable by the time it would make sense to warn about an impending tech win.

Someone mentioned the possibility of a prior warning, but in order for it to be effective, it would have to be so far before the actual victory to be meaningless.

Once a race gets within five or six techs of a tech win, you can't simply culture bomb them because they'll have a hideous Influence bonus from techs. Likewise with trying to conquer someone sitting at Near Omniscience...you're going to have to power through insane Attack, Defence, HP, and Soldering boni unless you're close enough to a tech win yourself to set off the warning too.

Every other victory condition has a foil (and most frequently is it's own foil). Tech victories can't be stopped by anyone that isn't basicaly already racing to see who can research that last tech or two the fastest. This is what I have the problem with tech win conditions, for the AI *or* the player. Whenever I play Alpha Centauri, the first thing I disable is the Transcendance victory, even though the AI never even tries for it.

When I commented on this back in the beta, the techs Galactic Domination and Galactic Peace were planned to be tech win for good and evil races. I suggested then that the two foil each other: That is, anyone with one of the tech list doesn't automatically lose when someone researches the other. I didn't have a suggestion at the time for Beyond Human, but depending on exactly how this 'transcendance' is envisioned, either _*D_Phasing or Near Omni* could fit.

An interesting possibility with the setup is that if someone does foil the tech win eliminating that race, which as noted above is likely to be a lengthy proposition, or giving them the win tech too if you're allied, might reopen the possibility of a tech win.

I think the main plus point of allowing aliens to win this way is it will add some urgency to the end game, and make it a bit harder for people to drag out the end game for years just to increase the population for their metaverse score.

To those worried it would be annoying for the computer to just suddenly "Win". I thought this too, until I realised its just like any other victory condition in the game... You take action to prevent the computer from reaching it along time in advance. When a single civ already has 3/4 of the galaxy under there control, its a bit late to decide that you should perhaps go to war with them to slow them down a bit.

Same with tech victory. From what Ive heard, most of the time humans get a tech victory, they have been dominating the galaxy for ages, and could of won by other means a long time before.

So I am for tech victory for the aliens: it puts a limit on the length of games.

I don't like any option which forces a war to stop a tech victory. The idea of the AI races attaking you or you having to attack them to stop final frontier goes against the idea of being able to win without fighting wars.

I rather like either letting the first AI race to achieve beyond human to block a tech victory for you, or alternatively to allow you to still win but reduce your score.

paul.

~SDC~

To solve the problem, simply have a continue playing box so that if I lose to a tech victory, I can still come back for the kill (abit harder). Final Fronteir can give some benifit to the first player that researched it.

~SDC~

I don't want the ai to win technologically.
If that makes it into the game, please let me disable that option while allowing me to win technologically. To me, the tech victory is just an "end game", like in civ you could go on playing after winning by spaceship, but this simply showed you had reached the end game.
The tech victory is a postmark for me. I will use it because the situation is a stalemate and I don't want to pursue another way to win the game. You can offer a draw in chess for example, to me, a tech win is a draw. So losing because the ai asks for a draw is something I don't want.

Additionnally, 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.

Sorry LDiCesare but I can't agree with a few things you say.

The tech victory is NOT just a draw. Many players focus on a tech victory and can achieve it with other empires having more planets, better military, larger culture. It's a well earned victory for many players based on their style of play, not just a postmark.

The problem is that unlike military or cultural victories, it's not an EXCLUSIVE victory. The AI can achieve it before you with NO negative impact on your play or score. This is what I feel needs to be addressed.

As for playing on after a tech victory, at the moment you CAN disable tech victories. Therefore they should never affect you! I do agree that the option to continue after winning (even if you forgot to turn off a victory) would be nice.

paul.

~SDC~

I personally believe that IF they are allowed to transcend to a higher plane, then they are removed from the game and your final score is lower - it shouldn't wipe you out or end the game for you. They have just left the galaxy - that doesn't mean that they destroyed the entire galaxy on the way out. The only reason that it is a winning condition for the human player is that he doesn't care what happens in the galaxy any more - he is already in a happier place!

I find it really disturbing that we have a group of people petitioning for a major game change just based on their idea that some people have too high a score on the Metaverse. That is -not- the kind of mentality that is going to produce a better GalCiv. Even more ironic, the best high scores don't come from a tech victory in the first place so not only are they pushing for a change for a very bad reason, it's not even going to have the effect they want in the first place.

All this is going to result in if it is implemented is players turning off the tech victory condition, which means that all the effort Stardock would have put into implementing the change will have been a waste of time, time that could have been spent making the game better instead of trying to please people who spend their time thinking of how to ruin other people's fun.

I also find it ironic that we have threads talking about how the final cleanup phase of GalCiv is too long and tedious, and then we have other threads trying to get the best solution to cleanup (tech victory) gimped down to where it won't be used anymore.