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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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. 

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.

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.