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Join Date 04/2006

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Victory conditions and cheap shortcuts to victory

One aspect of game that feels underwhelming to me are victory conditions.

1) Conquest

Closest to "hardcore" victory for any 4X game, with only difference that killing sovereigns destroys their nations.

2) Master Quest

Too easy to start. Usually, adventure tech tree is beneficial whatever you do in the game (conquering, expanding, building up), due to amount of gold that can be unlocked through goody huts, so even if you don't beeline for it, at one point you'll be tech or two away from activating it. And techs aren't really that much expensive to get.

At that moment, you get the quest, do some battle and win the game. Only potentially difficult battle is at the end with the hermit, due to him having 100 defense, but if you have some true damage attack (dragon, vigilant demons), it's not really difficult.

3) Diplomatic Victory

Get alliance with everyone. This was cheap victory in GalCiv2 too. Only challenge here is getting contact with all major factions (can be tricky on large maps), and having bigger army then anyone else. After some time, everyone will love you, and there is victory.

4) Spell of Mastery

This one is a bit more balanced end goal. Unlocking high level spells takes a lot of time, so without having good supply of arcane temples and all types of shards it's not practical to go for it.

Still, if you do meet all conditions, there is not much to do. Just end turns, build up empire and that's it.

On plus side, if you do not meet all conditions (not having all shards, low on arcane temples), this could be a good reason to get into late game war, which can be fun.

To sum up, if I would rank victory conditions from cheapest to most rewarding this way:

-diplomatic

-master quest

-spell of mastery

-conquest

Ways to improve them:

Diplomatic:

Just because you have big military doesn't mean that other factions should like you. There needs to be serious diplomatic investment in getting other factions to like you, instead just building more units.

Master Quest:

The main problem is that it can get unlocked too quickly. Exempt sufficient tech, there really needs to be some other condition added that can't be achieved too quickly. Maybe counter that will track amount of notable locations visited, and when it passes some point, it makes it possible to find location of ancient ruins where forge is.

Also, sub-quest locations really need to spawn all around the world, not just in territory near player (which can be bypassed with teleport). Quest really needs to feel like big voyage. Think of Marco Polo voyage and his life in China, and how many years it took him.

Spell of Mastery:

This one is fun, if you don't meet all conditions, so you need localized war to get missing shards or snatch a few arcane temples. But after that, it's just a big wait till the end. There needs to be something else to do at that time.

Also, there is small balance issue with discovering spells. Unlocking any spells of Nth level costs same as unlocking new N+1 level. It shouldn't be like that, since it makes 8-10 spells highly undesirable.

Conquest:

Only one thing. Killing sovereigns should not end their empires.

elemental

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Conquest - Maybe killing Sov's should force them into stasis for maybe 100 turns to be reborn, this way their kingdom doesn't die but Sov's still can't be thrown into battle without fear of death as death could fatally cripple the kingdom.

Diplomatic - unfourtunatly this is how it works in real life more or less, big army & massed resources = Allience or treaties. Almost every 4X game i've played works the same way. The A.I can't win this way so its up to you if you want to cheap it or not.

Master Quest - I agree i stumbled on to my first Master quest win as i love adventuring,quests and goodie huts. No suggestions on how to improve though other then add more quests so the tech tree doesnt seem so short.

Spell of Making - I have no problems with this as it it.

One thing though, can the A.I win in way? I'd love a few "Umber are nearing completion of the Spell of Making" type messages or " The other Kingdoms are allying against us", things to force our hand.

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Quoting Thizzbaby,

reply 1

Not really. Big army and can lead to many allies, but also to many enemies. Real world example: USA.

P.S.

I've got idea how to improve Diplomatic Victory: Have as goal, instead of global Alliance, a specific amount of Diplomatic Capital. Make it possible to earn Diplomatic capital, exempt by direct production and trading, by doing favors to other factions.

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Question: I should really know this as I've destroyed numerous enemy sovereigns... but what happens to their cities when they die? Do they just disappear (if you haven't already taken control of them)? I feel like an idiot asking, but well whatever. I just never paid attention.

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They just get razed.

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See, they should either continue to exist and find new leadership or become neutral. Disappearing doesn't make sense.

Oh look, our sovereign stopped existing, let's burn the place down, Woo!

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Quoting Jandurin,

reply 5

See, they should either continue to exist and find new leadership or become neutral. Disappearing doesn't make sense.

Oh look, our sovereign stopped existing, let's burn the place down, Woo!

First time i played the game (v1.0) enemy sovereign enters my domain with a flimsy army, i win the battle, a message pops out that his kingdom ceases to exist. WTF? i think, but nevertheless i rush to his territory to get his cities before anyone else tries the same. NO CITIES, zero, nada, just a bunch of resources as a tell-tale that a city was probably there.

v1.07 and still the same frustrating emptyness. Thriving cities disappear from the face of the world in a single turn. It's a stupid and unrealistic mechanism.

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Diplomacy should require actual interaction and manipulation of everyone else. Civ (for lack of other examples) puts a few twists into diplomatic victory so that it's not just a matter of have the biggest army with the biggest wallet to buy off people. First, it requires a Wonder that's positioned where most end-games start. Second, it requires voting and not just making alliances; so it's no just a matter of having the biggest army, they have to have an reason to vote for you.

For Elemental, I would say turn diplomatic victory into something more than just browbeating everyone into submission. As p22, suggested, one way would be to abstract it into points so that many more things can affect it (Solirum Inferum and it's prestige system, Victoria 2 and it's). I would say allow for more ways to affect opponents outside of combat and war - a stronger economic system and one that encourages interaction with other factions would help here. I would say tying diplomatic victory into something of a hybrid diplomatic/cultural victory considering the game setting and requiring a high level city and some sort of population requirement structure; the idea being that by getting people and factions to acknowledge that you're the best hope to repair the world. They may not like it but taking you down would just be bad business.

Master Quest... I haven't played much of it but I would say, making it longer, make it multi-stage, and make it require more than one tech. Stage 1 might be the current tech. Another tech would be required to start stage 2. Perhaps these techs are semi-random. Making quest locations appear in other factions terrain would be good for forcing interaction. Perhaps even make the quest more complex by having non-questy, non-combat objectives. Perhaps you need to hold a tile, or you need to forge (product) something at a certain stage or perhaps you need to build a special vault for an object. This would at least tie the questing into the TBS side of things. Perhaps you need to go into unclaimed territory and do things there.

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Quoting Thizzbaby,

reply 1

One thing though, can the A.I win in way? I'd love a few "Umber are nearing completion of the Spell of Making" type messages or " The other Kingdoms are allying against us", things to force our hand.

I agree Some Factions should have a tendancy to achieve an alternate victory , If an indicator is provided to players as the AI nears an alternate victory then it can force a player to make a choice... Race to victory in the same route, Achieve another victory path quicker, or declare war on the faction about to win and take out the head gut "sov".

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As far as sovereign deaths = loss goes, I would really like if, when the sovereign died, the next in line for the throne took over that position (since the game orders their offspring in this way anyway..) and so on and so forth until there are no heirs left. Makes diplomatic relations more desirable as well.

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Quoting Rogueleader89,

reply 9

Only problem with that is it means enemy sovereigns that don't get married (do they do this automatically? I always see them with spouses so maybe it's all right) will not continue on. I prefer a splitting up of cities into individual, or perhaps 2 or 3 sections as otherwise killing the sovereign in the first place loses some meaning.

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Regarding the master quest... I had the subquests all over the world,I had to explore the rest of the world to finish it and make some wars/alliances. Sometimes findings those subquests was HARD, also there's a bug triggering quests when equiping quest items, which made it more fun

Since you can still turn off the offer to win after master quest, it feels the most interesting. It would be nice if the same applied to spell of mastery. It will be more interesting once the magic system is reworked, for sure.

Diplomacy ~ Conquest: If you already dominate the game it's boring to hunt everyone down, ally with everyone and kill the last one. The last faction won't ally, don't know if it was bug or feature, though.

The random monsters seem more problematic then fighting other sovereigns at this point

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Quoting p22,

reply 2

Quoting Thizzbaby,
reply 1
Diplomatic - unfourtunatly this is how it works in real life more or less, big army & massed resources = Allience or treaties. Almost every 4X game i've played works the same way. The A.I can't win this way so its up to you if you want to cheap it or not.

Not really. Big army and can lead to many allies, but also to many enemies. Real world example: USA.

P.S.

I've got idea how to improve Diplomatic Victory: Have as goal, instead of global Alliance, a specific amount of Diplomatic Capital. Make it possible to earn Diplomatic capital, exempt by direct production and trading, by doing favors to other factions.

U.S.A is a very bad example for you to use IMO, most countries in the world have some form of treaty with the U.S. They may not 'like' them but for diplomatic purposes most can be considered allied or neutral. Of course there are obvious exceptions like North Korea, Iran etc. U.S.A's actual enemies as in actual hostile nations are very few in number. While U.S.A's allies are mostly allied due to fear, debt, or resource dependantcy to the U.S. I would say this is reflected to an extent in the way diplomacy works in most 4x games like Elemental.

But this is side tracking from the tread anyway sorry.

I like the favors idea but it shouldnt be like Sin's Of a Solar Empire's which was way too fickle, i mean years of friendship should not go out the window just because i couldn't kill 10 fallen units or whatever. Since the days of Civ 1 Allience has always been an easy win so i doubt the Dev's will want to spend anytime refining it. I mean Gal Civ2 had countless updates and the Ally win remained exactly the same even though most players could cheese it. The smarter A.I helped by not befriending you after betray them so often and such but it was still an easy win. Which was sometimes good if you didnt want to destroy or enslave the whole Galaxy.

BUT i think the main problem is conquest, no one want their whole game coming to a halt just because the other sov's wandered into their turf with grand ambitions. Adjustable slider for Sov rebirth time, if the capital is conquered while in rebirth mode then its game over. It shouldnt be hard to program the A.I to turtule main camp to protect the rebirthing Sov if they die in battle. This way we get some great battles and sieges with defenders and attackers. I think my rebirth idea would work and require a whole lot less work and complications then a succesion system would. I mean when would the succesion end since every child can get married and have another child.

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Quoting Rogueleader89,

reply 9

Agreed, I get the feeling that is what they are going to do. It just hasn't been implemented yet.

I also dislike cities disappearing. Perhaps a champion can become the new sovereign or they become minor city/states.

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I think we can all agree a sovereign's civilization disappearing after he is dead is a pretty stupid Idea. I think the devs realize this and I'm sure it will be fixed in one of the updates. Even if their is no line of succession the cities should still exist in some capacity. A war over succession would be awesome, with some warlord or unnamed hero fighting for control and taking over, That doesn't seem too likely though.

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Quoting Fenrirw0lf,

reply 14

Wasn't this almost how it worked in civ2? If you captured or destroyed the capital of a big civilization, it splintered into multiple small civilizations. I remember rushing oversized neighbours capitals with knights to get small competitors.

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Anyway, I just wrapped up my 1.07 game with diplomatic victory.

Have taken out 2 factions early, then became more powerful in military then anyone else. Many turns later I destroyed another faction, and got to contact with everyone.

After getting all trade/tech treaties up, a few turns later everyone was "close" to me, and I could form alliance with all major factions (even though some were at war with each other).

Result: "cheap" diplomatic victory

Who needs war when just having an army can lead to victory.

Anyway, the only challenge for diplomatic victory is getting good economy base to have best army, and deep scouting parties to get in contact with everyone (ships help a lot).

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Concerning the victory conditions ... let's just say, I find them to be very uninspired. They are in general all the same or at most variations on one theme, and that is ...

Conquest

Ah, the most basic one. And unfortunately also almost the only one as the other victories are - as said - just variations.

Diplomacy

The variation that is closest to the main theme. It is in no aspect whatsoever different from conquest, just a few notes shorter. Same tune, same rhythm ... but instead of conquering everybody you stop to talk with one or two AIs on the way and ally with them. Nothing more. Same basic strategy and the only difference is a bit of research in the Diplomacy tech tree. And a negligible amount of (committed and otherwise useless) research it is.

Adventuring ... aka Master Quest

Also does not really feel different from conquest. You can basically run a conquest strategy, never ever explore even one notable location or quest, just research up the Adventuring tech tree (again only a bit) and do the final quest chain ... with your basic conquest / diplomacy strategy enabling you to get to the relevant locations.

Thus, you do not need ANY history in adventuring to complete the game this way. No adventure experienced hero or sovereign, no special earned adventure skills ... just an army and a hero with enough experience from monster grinding, a few techs, a bit of travelling and e voila, Adventure Victory.

Magic ... aks Spell of Mastery or whatever

The final variation on the conquest theme ... and sadly nearly an identical piece of music as the adventuring theme. Conquer the world until you have four shards (which is nearly the conquest victory in itself regarding how rare shards are), research (again!) a bit in the Magic tech tree and cast one spell.

Hell, you sovereign could have never casted another spell in his whole life, but he would be the ... sorry to bring this game up in this way ... MASTER OF MAGIC. Am I the only one that finds this highly unsatisfying and unrealistic? Your sovereign should be casting magic left and right on the way to such a victory, have changed the face of the world to a significant degree with his powers and not just have been an exchangeable general that snapped his fingers once to a magic word.

I would like to have REALLY different victory conditions. Ones that feel different, ones that feel credible, ones that you have to a certain degree commit to ... and (maybe) also loose if your strategy fails. But not just one basic strategy and then at let's say turn 400 a decision on how to end the game after all this hard conquering.

Rabenhoff

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