End Game Critique: Victory Conditions & Pacing

mezmorki

Amoeba

8 years ago

Apr 24, 2017, 12:50:09 PM

I previously mentioned that the victory conditions and overall pacing of the game could use some additional attention. I finished another play through as the United Empire on hard difficulty on a median-sized ring galaxy. The game ended around Turn 190. Spoiler: I lost (initially) to an economic victory.

Here are some thoughts on the victory conditions and how they play into some of the core gameplay loops:

Victory Tracking

This applies to all victory conditions - but in essence the information given to the player about what the actual victory conditions are is WAY to vague and absent. For Conquest: how many systems do I need to control? For economic victory: how much accumulated dust? And how much have I accumulated so far? For Wonder: How many times do I need to build the wonder victory structure? Announcements say that "Empire X is close to victory Y!" What does that mean? How close?

Economic Victory

Others have pointed out that they achieve the economic victory condition too soon (assuming you go all in on economics + dust generation). I would further add that it’s also the victory condition that is the easiest for the AI to achieve.

In my last game, I was in third place for the economic victory for most of the game, although I should point out that I was NOT going for that victory condition. By about turn 170 I was producing about 6,800 dust per turn. Two different AI’s (Lumeris and another UE faction) were in the first and second place.

The concern is the way the economic victory is structured and balanced relative to the other conditions. It’s far and away the easiest (and safest) to work towards. The biggest issue however is that since it is based on total produced dust over the entire course of game, and NOT on current dust reserves, it’s very difficult to get ahead of an empire going for an economic victory. Nearly impossible really. Moreover, attacking an enemy short of out-right eliminating them, does little to slow them down unless you take over most of their systems.

In my latest game, I started getting messages that the Lumeris were approaching an economic victory around turn 165 or so. I spend the next 20 turns and captured all of their systems except for about 3-4 smaller ones. I never pulled ahead of them in the economic rankings. Note: I could have taken the remainder of their systems but I deliberately wanted to see if I could pull ahead of them (and FYI, the other UE faction won with economic victory, not Lumeris).

Suggestion #1

Capturing a system should reduce the original empires economic victory progress by however much dust has cumulatively been generated on that system. The game may need to track the dust generated under each owner of the system so progress towards victory can be regained if the planet is taken back (for example). One player’s progress should not feed into another's and the dust generated should remain linked to the owner at the time it was generated.

Suggestion #2a

Alternatively - scrap victory being based on total cumulative generated dust and switch it to a system based on stockpiling dust. Remember Alpha Centauri? The economic victory level was based on the cost it would take to directly purchase control of a all other cities on the planet (or something to that effect). This would make the threshold a bit more dynamic.

Suggestion #2b

Along with the above - make it so that when you capture an enemy system, you lose a portion of your dust reserve based proportionally on the amount of population in the system. E.G., if you have 10.000 dust in reserve, 100 population in your empire, and you lose a system with 15 population (15% of your total population), the conquering player would “steal” 1,500 dust from you (15% of your total dust).

As it stands, to stop an AI that is close to winning an economic victory you must effectively eliminate them from the game through total conquest or capturing so many planets that their dust generation slows to a trickle.

Conquest Victory

Aside from the fact that the UI doesn’t say how many systems you need to control - this victory condition is not very enjoyable. At the point that you are controlling more than about 20 planets, managing these players is an exercise in tedium unless you use the AI governors. I’ve never enjoyed conquering all of an entire enemy empire in the late game an inheriting all of their weirdly developed foreign systems. Moreover, the game just isn’t meant to be played and enjoyed when you have 30, 40, or 50 systems under your control - make no mention of the large overexpansion penalties that will diminish your empires happiness across the board (hitting influence and science output the hardest).

The conquest victory needs to be retooled as a sort of diplomatic victory in the following ways:

Suggestion #1

Factions that you are allied with should count their holdings towards the conquested region. Or perhaps there is an en even diplomatic level that gets added, akin to forming a European Union-like state.

Suggestion #2

Rather than outright conquering a foreign empire, winning a major war with an empire should provide some mechanism for making that empire a vassal empire or something. Their systems would count towards your control, and a large percentage of their output (dust, science, etc.) would flow into your coffers - but they would still technically remain their own empire and provide an alternative to being forced into inheriting a large foreign power.

The combination of the above to mechanics would make conquest victory far more interesting and less tedious and frustrating for the player.

Influence Spread + Buy-Out

The imbalance and power influence of been raised a number of times. In my last game, my influenced from my home system covered nearly half of the galaxy. I peacefully “bought” the entire Craver empire in a single turn, paying a paltry 200 influence per system. Their entire empire cost me less than 3,000 influence to purchase. This is ridiculous - the influence costs need to go WAY up.

Moreover, despite being called a “peaceful conversion” - this is nonetheless a hostile action and the AI should respond accordingly. Relationships between empires don’t seem to suffer in the slightest when annexation occurs. Talk to the Ukraine about how the “peaceful annexation” Crimea worked out for them. Anyway - this needs to be looked at in terms of its diplomatic repercussions.

Science Victory

The science victory is a freaking joke to accomplish - as in it is impossibly hard, boring, and time consuming relative to any of the other victory conditions. Let’s assume that you managed to unlock all the science tiers in a reasonable time frame. Let’s say you did an amazing job and unlocked all the tiers by turn 100. In my game, by the end of the game I unlocked all of the tiers around turn 150 (with some nefarious tech trading - more on that in a moment).

Now, you have to research four technology items that cost hundreds of thousands of research points each. I was generating around 8,000-9,000 RP’s per turn and adding ONE of these to my research queue said it would require 62 turns to complete. 62 turns * 4 Techs = 248 turns to complete. Seriously? Has anyone EVER achieved this victory condition in a legitimate play through?

Also - technology trading needs to be severely scaled back. You can offer the AI some ridiculous tech trade deals, which I’ve never had it refuse, and which are stacked massively in your favor. The biggest one I managed was trading a single tech with a RP value ~13,000 (Tier 3 tech I think) for THREE other techs with an RP value ~33,000 EACH (Tier 4 techs). This is also crazy overpowered IMHO.

Suggestion #1 - Overall Tech Pacing

I think the costs for the later technology stages (mostly Tier 4 and 5) need to be scaled down a bit. By the time you start getting towards the end of the game (Turn 200 roughly) you’re barely able to get many Tier 5 technologies researched before the end game hits. In particular, accessing the top level strategic resources and the technologies that use them are practically out of reach. The game will end before you even use them.

Suggestion #2 - Reduce cost of Scientific Victory Items

The cost of these needs to come down massively.

Suggestion #3 - Tech Trading

The influence costs for technology trading needs to be scaled to the tier of the technology being traded. It costs 500-600 influence to trade a tech, whether that’s a Tier 1 tech or a Tier 5 tech. Costs need to escalate a lot more. Also - the AI needs to base its trade value decision based on the RP values of techs being traded. I shouldn’t be able to trade 10,000 RP worth of tech for 100,000 RP worth of tech (and also have the whole thing only cost me about 2,500 influence!).

Wonder Victory

I was never able to build this one because for some reason none of the Tier 5 strategic resources spawned in my galaxy. Or I couldn’t find them? I researched the relevant technologies, but at least in my half of the galaxy they were not be found. Are these resources even enabled in early access version?

I also wonder about the feasibility of building the wonder victory victory structure (assuming you have all the right resources in the first place). I believe it costs around 24,000 (or was it 240,000?). Systems would be hard pressed to generate more than about 1,000 industry per turn (I think my biggest was around 700). Either way, that’s 24 turns (or 240?) to build the wonder structure - and that’s AFTER unlocking Tier 5 for two technology fields (since you need the Tier 5 strategic resources unlocked as well - I believe). Am I missing something here?

Also - the game says I need to build the wonder “a certain number of times.” How many times is that?

Supremacy Victory

This is the one where you capture all opposing empire’s Homeworlds.

This one is interesting, but really open to being cheesed for a quick victory. You can fly your fleets to opposing homeworlds during peace times with open boards. You can stage your fleets - and in a single turn declare war on everyone and invade the homeworlds. With manpower modules, you can often win ground invasions in a single turn (I had single battleship fleets with 9,000 invasion power for example).

Suggestions:

I’m not sure what to do about this one. It could be that there needs to be a delay between declaring war and when you can initiate an aggressive attack (even a single turn would give the AI time to try and respond to your fleet).

Or perhaps you need to control the captured homeworlds for a certain number of turns first - for example until the invasion / mutinous penalties wear off (about 5 turns?). There needs to be something to give the AI a chance to respond to you rushing their homeworld - because otherwise this victory condition is a pretty lame “I win” button.

Score Victory

This one is fine - but needs more data and information about what the breakdown of your score is so that you figure out how to get ahead. Seems like the biggest impact is simply how big your empire is, which makes it roughly analogous to the conquest victory already. The fastest way to boost your score is simply capturing more planets.

Suggestion:

I’d consider retooling this as a sort of happiness victory condition - or heavily weighted towards maintaining a stable population with happiness values? I don’t know - something to help with peaceful and “tall” empires.

Picking a Victory from the Start = Not Dynamic

Overall, I think the more dynamic and interesting the late game can be as you trying and hit a victory condition the more interesting the game will be. As it stands, the problem (frequently seen in 4X games) is that your faction selection basically suggests what victory condition to go for and/or you need to decide what victory to pursue right from the start of the game and go immediately towards that. This doesn’t make for very interesting or dynamic strategies and gameplay.

I think rebalancing the victory limits to bring them closer together in terms of their achievement timeline would be a big step forward in making the end game more interesting - and making the overall gameplay loop more varied and exciting.

Updated 8 years ago.

Sulendil

Finder

Sulendil

Finder

25 000g2g pts

8 years ago

Apr 24, 2017, 1:51:14 PM

Hi memzmorki, it's nice to see your thought on the end game!

For supremacy victory, the issue is that compared to civ series, it's way easier for your military to gain access to the home planet without any penalties on the offensive side. At least on civ series, the cities have capability to slow down or even completely annihilate invasion forces just by itself, a feature that is currently absent on Update 3. Right now the only way to stop an invasion fleet is to have another fleet to intercept them or having a large manpower so that the invasion fleet couldn't invade your planet in time before your reinforcement fleets arrive or the invasion fleet manpower depleted. I hope in future release there are options for more passive defensive structures for planets to fight the invasion fleet with didn't involves manpower or for AI to be more aggressive in requesting/forcefully eject your military fleet out of it's influence zone if it spotted you amassing huge military fleets around the border or within their systems, even if you're in alliance with them (unless you're currently having a co-op war with a common enemy).

As for quest victory, I have this feeling that it's not really fully implemented on Update 3, and we might only see the full implementation of it at Release build, since it's probably tied with ES2 overal storyline. The Academy "meta" quest, is only available on Release build, and most faction's final quest reward is still not yet implemented yet on Update 3, so I will not be too concerned with that victory condition at this moment.

VIPGroo

Enthusiast Survivor

May the force of Auriga be with you, young Padawan !

VIPGroo

Enthusiast Survivor

53 400g2g pts

8 years ago

Apr 25, 2017, 7:27:09 AM

mezmorki wrote:

Wonder Victory
I was never able to build this one because for some reason none of the Tier 5 strategic resources spawned in my galaxy. Or I couldn’t find them? I researched the relevant technologies, but at least in my half of the galaxy they were not be found. Are these resources even enabled in early access version?

Don't remember exactly if you need both techs, but I remember you need one of these to uncover the tier 5 strategic resources.

Evaporation inhibitors (science tech area 3)

* Sets the Curiosity Detection Level to 4

* Sets the Curiosity Expedition Power to 3

Psychohistory+ (science tech area 5)

* Sets the Curiosity Expedition Power to 4

I guess it was the second one, to be able to "uncover" the detected curiosities by use of explorer.

Updated 8 years ago.

DEVSchell

Dev

DEVSchell

Dev

30 300g2g pts

8 years ago

Apr 25, 2017, 1:35:12 PM

Hi there,

First of all, thank you for your feedback. It’s always a pleasure to have a well-structured post like this to answer to

Victory Tracking

The clarity of the tooltips is an issue that should be solved for release. We’re planning on implementing tooltips with numerical information updating dynamically to explain to you what your goal is as well as how far/close you are from it. As for announcements, you’re currently being warned when an empire has met 50% of the required conditions to win, then at 75%.

Economic Victory

We are currently focused on the balance around Dust, most notably the trade companies and the market place are being reworked so that the earnings you can get out of it are lower (while still being interesting. This compounded with changes made to the amount of Dust required to win should make the economic victory harder and longer to reach. However, we believe that there shouldn’t be steps back implemented to stop a player from reaching it. If an opponent is on the verge of winning, war is indeed the best solution (and/or cutting him from his allies to further reduce his gains).

Conquest Victory

As a matter of fact, all victory conditions already take into account the number of allies you’ve got (most of the time, an alliance will make a goal a bit harder to reach than if you were alone). In this particular case, an ally’s systems will be added to the count but will also make the number of systems you require slightly higher. All in all, if you’ve had difficulties understanding how this works it means that it isn’t feed backed clearly enough so we’ll have to work on that (those tooltips again ).

Influence has been rebalanced so that the sphere of a system cannot become so huge anymore and conversion prices have been upgraded. We also made it so that you cannot buy a system belonging to an empire with which you’re in cold war: you’ll have to sign a peace treaty before. As for the AI, we’re currently working on its reaction to player actions in general but this is going to be a continuous improvement.

Science Victory

The tech tree has been revamped quite a lot since update 3 and there were a lot of tweaks made around the costs of most technologies. Most notably the price of early tech has been lowered and the next in lines are the winning technologies. This should make the whole scientific victory go a bit faster.

As for the tech trading, this looks like a balancing issue. Technology tiers should be taken into account in trade agreement and the AI shouldn’t be so permissive.

Wonder Victory

The balance of the Victory Wonder (The Obelisk of All Space-Time) is still based on an older build so it’s not the most adequate right now. For release, the production cost should be lowered as well as the amount of each strategic required (you should have had access to all resources but most high-tiers strategic resources are hidden in curiosities). Finally, for now you have to build the wonder 3 time in normal speed and 6 in fast but this is definitely getting changed before release.

Supremacy Victory

While I think adding a countdown could help (this remind me of Total War: Shogun 2), I think it’s mostly a problem with the AI. No player in the world would let your doomstack roam freely inside his/her empire and neither should the AI. We’ve worked a lot on the way AI should handle war time and conflicts since update 3 so there should be some progress to be seen there. There will also be a limit to the amount of manpower you can bring to a ground battle so you shouldn’t be able to invade a system in one turn anymore.

Score Victory

The performance trackers (the little hexes over the victory condition) should contain some additional information but pretty much all of your actions are taken into account to calculate the score. With that said, the larger your empire, the more actions you can take and therefore, the more points you can add to your score. This could explain why you feel like taking a planet is always the best action.

Also this is a victory by default more than a real victory and while a happiness victory is quite pleasant to imagine, I guess the Horatio would have quite an edge then

I hope this answer some of your questions

Have a nice day.

mezmorki

Amoeba

To boldly go... Or something...

mezmorki

Amoeba

8 years ago

Apr 25, 2017, 1:53:53 PM

Thanks for taking the time to reply!

Schell wrote:
Hi there,
First of all, thank you for your feedback. It’s always a pleasure to have a well-structured post like this to answer to

Victory Tracking
The clarity of the tooltips is an issue that should be solved for release. We’re planning on implementing tooltips with numerical information updating dynamically to explain to you what your goal is as well as how far/close you are from it. As for announcements, you’re currently being warned when an empire has met 50% of the required conditions to win, then at 75%.

Sounds good - looking forward to how the victory screen and associated victory tool tips are enhanced for release.

Economic Victory
We are currently focused on the balance around Dust, most notably the trade companies and the market place are being reworked so that the earnings you can get out of it are lower (while still being interesting. This compounded with changes made to the amount of Dust required to win should make the economic victory harder and longer to reach. However, we believe that there shouldn’t be steps back implemented to stop a player from reaching it. If an opponent is on the verge of winning, war is indeed the best solution (and/or cutting him from his allies to further reduce his gains).

Will there be anyway to tell (in the revised victory screen?) how much exact progress an AI empire is making towards this goal? If the goal is 500,000 accumulated dust, and an AI is in first place - beyond the 50% and 75% milestones it would be good to know at a glance other times where it sits.

Conquest Victory
As a matter of fact, all victory conditions already take into account the number of allies you’ve got (most of the time, an alliance will make a goal a bit harder to reach than if you were alone). In this particular case, an ally’s systems will be added to the count but will also make the number of systems you require slightly higher. All in all, if you’ve had difficulties understanding how this works it means that it isn’t feed backed clearly enough so we’ll have to work on that (those tooltips again ).

I'm assuming the changes will simply state for conquest "Control X Systems among your empire and your allies." Is the alliance contribution towards this victory condition already implemented in Release 3? I'll go back to some of my save games to check if you say its supposed to be working.

Influence has been rebalanced so that the sphere of a system cannot become so huge anymore and conversion prices have been upgraded. We also made it so that you cannot buy a system belonging to an empire with which you’re in cold war: you’ll have to sign a peace treaty before. As for the AI, we’re currently working on its reaction to player actions in general but this is going to be a continuous improvement.

Interesting - that sounds like a good change to couple conversion to peaceful status ... although I'd still argue that clandestine annexation of a sovereign state is rarely ever viewed as a peaceful act.

Science Victory
The tech tree has been revamped quite a lot since update 3 and there were a lot of tweaks made around the costs of most technologies. Most notably the price of early tech has been lowered and the next in lines are the winning technologies. This should make the whole scientific victory go a bit faster.

As for the tech trading, this looks like a balancing issue. Technology tiers should be taken into account in trade agreement and the AI shouldn’t be so permissive.

Sounds good - looking forward to these changes.

Wonder Victory
The balance of the Victory Wonder (The Obelisk of All Space-Time) is still based on an older build so it’s not the most adequate right now. For release, the production cost should be lowered as well as the amount of each strategic required (you should have had access to all resources but most high-tiers strategic resources are hidden in curiosities). Finally, for now you have to build the wonder 3 time in normal speed and 6 in fast but this is definitely getting changed before release.

Sounds good.

Supremacy Victory
While I think adding a countdown could help (this remind me of Total War: Shogun 2), I think it’s mostly a problem with the AI. No player in the world would let your doomstack roam freely inside his/her empire and neither should the AI. We’ve worked a lot on the way AI should handle war time and conflicts since update 3 so there should be some progress to be seen there. There will also be a limit to the amount of manpower you can bring to a ground battle so you shouldn’t be able to invade a system in one turn anymore.

How are the limits to manpower handled?

Frankly - I think a better approach is that when you take over an colony via invasion, you should have to maintain fleet & manpower presence for some amount of time before you are are formally given control of the planet. Think of the planet being in a state of Anarchy for 3-5 turns after being invaded. During that time, if the previous owner can get control of the planet back they could get it back without penalty.

Score Victory
The performance trackers (the little hexes over the victory condition) should contain some additional information but pretty much all of your actions are taken into account to calculate the score. With that said, the larger your empire, the more actions you can take and therefore, the more points you can add to your score. This could explain why you feel like taking a planet is always the best action.

Okay.

Also this is a victory by default more than a real victory and while a happiness victory is quite pleasant to imagine, I guess the Horatio would have quite an edge then

Well, the Sophons have an edge in science victory, the Lumeris in an economic victory, the UE & Cravers in a conquest victory, and so on.

I hope this answer some of your questions

Have a nice day.

Yes - thank you for your response!

DEVSchell

Dev

DEVSchell

Dev

30 300g2g pts

8 years ago

Apr 26, 2017, 9:26:18 AM

Hello again

Will there be anyway to tell (in the revised victory screen?) how much exact progress an AI empire is making towards this goal? If the goal is 500,000 accumulated dust, and an AI is in first place - beyond the 50% and 75% milestones it would be good to know at a glance other times where it sits.

For now, it’s the only way to know where your opponent stands. We thought it’d be more interesting to keep the exact progress of other players a bit blurry to keep a sense of urgency that wouldn’t be so strong with a precise gauge.

I'm assuming the changes will simply state for conquest "Control X Systems among your empire and your allies." Is the alliance contribution towards this victory condition already implemented in Release 3? I'll go back to some of my save games to check if you say its supposed to be working.

It will be something among those lines or at the very least you’ll see the required number of systems go up in the victory tooltip. It was implemented for release 3 so it should work on your build.

Interesting - that sounds like a good change to couple conversion to peaceful status ... although I'd still argue that clandestine annexation of a sovereign state is rarely ever viewed as a peaceful act.

And it surely won’t be seen as such by the AI even in time of peace.

How are the limits to manpower handled?
Frankly - I think a better approach is that when you take over an colony via invasion, you should have to maintain fleet & manpower presence for some amount of time before you are are formally given control of the planet. Think of the planet being in a state of Anarchy for 3-5 turns after being invaded. During that time, if the previous owner can get control of the planet back they could get it back without penalty.

Basically, there will be a fixed maximum amount of manpower that you can bring to a "round" of ground battle. If you have more than this amount on your fleet, the manpower you lost during the last round of battle will be replaced by taking into your surplus.

Have a nice day

mezmorki

Amoeba

To boldly go... Or something...

mezmorki

Amoeba

8 years ago

Apr 26, 2017, 10:44:14 AM

Thanks again. I have a few other thoughts below that I hope you'll consider.

Schell wrote:
Hello again

Will there be anyway to tell (in the revised victory screen?) how much exact progress an AI empire is making towards this goal? If the goal is 500,000 accumulated dust, and an AI is in first place - beyond the 50% and 75% milestones it would be good to know at a glance other times where it sits.
For now, it’s the only way to know where your opponent stands. We thought it’d be more interesting to keep the exact progress of other players a bit blurry to keep a sense of urgency that wouldn’t be so strong with a precise gauge.

I disagree with this approach strongly. I understand your reasoning for it - but that reason is far less important than the player being able to effectively evaluate the board state at any given moment. This is a strategy game with goals, and players need to be able to understand where they sit relative to their opponents.

At a practical level, the current notifications do not say whether its at 50% or 75% of the goal. As it is, when I first got the notifications I had no idea if it meant the AI was going to win in 5 turns or 50 turns. And if players miss the notification, how do they go back and check? Or if 10 turns later I'm forget whether the notification was for the Lumeris or the UE?

The victory interface really needs to track all empires progress across all the victory conditions. I would've pressed this point earlier, but frankly I assumed since the beginning that this screen would eventually provide this information. That it isn't is worrying to me.

I'm assuming the changes will simply state for conquest "Control X Systems among your empire and your allies." Is the alliance contribution towards this victory condition already implemented in Release 3? I'll go back to some of my save games to check if you say its supposed to be working.
It will be something among those lines or at the very least you’ll see the required number of systems go up in the victory tooltip. It was implemented for release 3 so it should work on your build.

I'll have to go back and look. I don't recall seeing anything that said how many systems I needed to control.

How are the limits to manpower handled?
Frankly - I think a better approach is that when you take over an colony via invasion, you should have to maintain fleet & manpower presence for some amount of time before you are are formally given control of the planet. Think of the planet being in a state of Anarchy for 3-5 turns after being invaded. During that time, if the previous owner can get control of the planet back they could get it back without penalty.
Basically, there will be a fixed maximum amount of manpower that you can bring to a "round" of ground battle. If you have more than this amount on your fleet, the manpower you lost during the last round of battle will be replaced by taking into your surplus.

We'll have to see about this. Feels like an arbitrary restriction to me to force longer ground battles and takes some of the flair away from making manpower heavy troop ships and the like.

It really depends on the balance of how many invasion forces you can bring relative to defenders. If player's don't have to way to bring what feels like overwhelming force where appropriate, they aren't going to like that much.

Personally, I'd leave manpower as it is because I think it works well, and look into adding to the post-invasion mechanics. Having the system in "limbo" for some period of time after being conquered would be better IMHO.

DEVSchell

Dev

DEVSchell

Dev

30 300g2g pts

8 years ago

Apr 26, 2017, 1:30:31 PM

Schell wrote:
Hello again

Will there be anyway to tell (in the revised victory screen?) how much exact progress an AI empire is making towards this goal? If the goal is 500,000 accumulated dust, and an AI is in first place - beyond the 50% and 75% milestones it would be good to know at a glance other times where it sits.
For now, it’s the only way to know where your opponent stands. We thought it’d be more interesting to keep the exact progress of other players a bit blurry to keep a sense of urgency that wouldn’t be so strong with a precise gauge.
I disagree with this approach strongly. I understand your reasoning for it - but that reason is far less important than the player being able to effectively evaluate the board state at any given moment. This is a strategy game with goals, and players need to be able to understand where they sit relative to their opponents.

At a practical level, the current notifications do not say whether its at 50% or 75% of the goal. As it is, when I first got the notifications I had no idea if it meant the AI was going to win in 5 turns or 50 turns. And if players miss the notification, how do they go back and check? Or if 10 turns later I'm forget whether the notification was for the Lumeris or the UE?

The victory interface really needs to track all empires progress across all the victory conditions. I would've pressed this point earlier, but frankly I assumed since the beginning that this screen would eventually provide this information. That it isn't is worrying to me.

We'll keep that in mind

I'm assuming the changes will simply state for conquest "Control X Systems among your empire and your allies." Is the alliance contribution towards this victory condition already implemented in Release 3? I'll go back to some of my save games to check if you say its supposed to be working.
It will be something among those lines or at the very least you’ll see the required number of systems go up in the victory tooltip. It was implemented for release 3 so it should work on your build.

I'll have to go back and look. I don't recall seeing anything that said how many systems I needed to control.

Looks like I tripped over my own words here, sorry about that . I meant to say that this is how the system works in update 3 (alliances makes the total number of systems you need for a conquest victory go up) and how it should be feedbacked for release (IE, through numerical information in the victory tooltip). Therefore, it shouldn't be written somewhere specifically in the build you currently have access to.

VIPlo_fabre

Cosmonaut

This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGLYu94U3IU remembers us that "impossible" is only a word.

VIPlo_fabre

Cosmonaut

54 100g2g pts

8 years ago

Apr 27, 2017, 3:14:41 PM

Hi,

First my congrats to @mezmorki, good discussion about actual status and common issues. One bests post I've read about that.

I agree most of your suggestions and ideas, let me add my two cents.

About economic victory, played SMAC too. One thing I liked is that when you got enough money and "press the econ victory button" all other players declared war on you and you have to hold for some turns until you get the victory. This was a good idea and in the way @Schell is proposing.

About science victory, just add to what @Groo wrote that you have to reach stage 3 ont 3 branches: empire to get the tech for the wonder, science to get enough curiosity lvl and industry to be able to explode those resources (in case they're not in the market, which most probably will happen).

About traking victory, I have same feelings as @mezmorki, but IMO, and to clarify if you were supposing this, you only should be able to get data from empires you have met and have introduced yourself. Also a good think to have in mind if you're planning some espionage for future DLC.

mezmorki

Amoeba

To boldly go... Or something...

mezmorki

Amoeba

8 years ago

Apr 27, 2017, 3:18:48 PM

lo_fabre wrote:

About traking victory, I have same feelings as @mezmorki, but IMO, and to clarify if you were supposing this, you only should be able to get data from empires you have met and have introduced yourself. Also a good think to have in mind if you're planning some espionage for future DLC.

Yes, agree.

When espionage happens (gosh I hope so!) being able to collect intel on other empites (i.e, their progress towards victory) would be a great way to handle it.

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