Anybody having a easy time on Endless difficulty? I have been playing multiable races on random galaxies and most of the time the AI is pretty passive. Sometimes I join alliances and sometimes I don't.  Also once an allaince starts between you and AI. That group quickly expands to be a huge alliance with other races as well. Would be nice to have a limit on ally sizes . Like only set races to be in alliance of two.   Tell me how your games are going on Endless.  

lets start from the end.. alliance can contain only 30/40% of the max players in the game.
so if you play with 6 players, the alliance can only have 2 empires. and with 10 is 3 or 4 and so on.
in addition, the AI would build is own alliance to conter yours
not sure if the alliance mechanice is realy balance. but defenetly not broken

"the AI be to easy on endless"... yea it's kind of is, after you play enough game. the problem is that the AI know only how to expend. and not how to finish the game.
so after the start and mid game, you can say the AI dont take any priority to any one of the victory conditions. and just play as it would play at the mid game.

but the devs give as not long ago the abillity to modimg the AI in the game. so be expect to get a mod that "fix" the AI in the near future :)

BlueEyeD wrote:

lets start from the end.. alliance can contain only 30/40% of the max players in the game.
so if you play with 6 players, the alliance can only have 2 empires. and with 10 is 3 or 4 and so on.
in addition, the AI would build is own alliance to conter yours
not sure if the alliance mechanice is realy balance. but defenetly not broken

"the AI be to easy on endless"... yea it's kind of is, after you play enough game. the problem is that the AI know only how to expend. and not how to finish the game.
so after the start and mid game, you can say the AI dont take any priority to any one of the victory conditions. and just play as it would play at the mid game.

but the devs give as not long ago the abillity to modimg the AI in the game. so be expect to get a mod that "fix" the AI in the near future :)

It's pretty broken. You can join an alliance, enjoy all the benefits until it's time to win, and then leave the alliance to reduce the requirements for victory - winning the next turn.

It's pretty broken. You can join an alliance, enjoy all the benefits until it's time to win, and then leave the alliance to reduce the requirements for victory - winning the next turn.

yea you're right, mybe we can add same sort of panelty. if you leave an alliance you now required +25% more "stuff" to achieve on every vicroty contribution, for an X number of turns. 

But that is true if you came from a point that the other empires dont realy contribution alot for the victory.
if we go from the premise that both empires equally contribution for the victory condition, every empire will only needed to get 75% of what it would normaly needed to win.
the promlem is (and we're beck to square one) that the AI dont want to win xD he just expend. so he will not help you to reach the victory contribution, and everything falls on your shoulders.

Perhaps more simply, when leaving an alliance you keep the same victory requirements for 10 turns (scaled by game speed)

It would get canceled if you joined an alliance in that time (the old or a new one) 

It could either be an effect that just lasts the full 10 turns or slowly scales down linearly to the default values each turn.

A note on the leave alliance screen could mention the victory condition scaling.

I'd personally prefer if allied victory was its very own thing, an altogether different victory condition rather than a simple extension of normal victory conditions. Various exploits and AI's unwillingness to pursue victory aside, even with a timer that temporarily affected victory condition thresholds after leaving an alliance or additional members joining, it feels very "gamey" in a bad way that to assert galactic hegemony a faction needs a certain number of wonders, techs, systems etc. whose requirements suddenly get higher or lower simply depending on how many factions they're currently allied with. 

A timer wouldn't really fix the problem with new alliances being practically uncounterable either: f.ex. two strongest empires that have never worked together can suddenly decide to join hands and they're posed to win together the next turn (or after a few turns with a timer) with no real way for others to counter the newfound alliance simply existing (aside from destroying one of the offending empires completely), if both empires already have the required amount of techs or produced Dust. On the opposite end a militaristically weaker faction can also exploit a big strong alliance until reaching personal victory (that alliance members have no way of tracking), leaving and holding out for a handful of turns without having to defend anything concrete if they already possess the required amount of Dust or techs.

Allied victory in its current form is inherently flawed and needs a rework from the ground up: it's boring, it's easily exploitable in both single- and multiplayer, and fluctuating victory condition thresholds have a disconnection between gameplay and lore.

hera35 wrote:

I'd personally prefer if allied victory was its very own thing, an altogether different victory condition rather than a simple extension of normal victory conditions. Various exploits and AI's unwillingness to pursue victory aside, even with a timer that temporarily affected victory condition thresholds after leaving an alliance or additional members joining, it feels very "gamey" in a bad way that to assert galactic hegemony a faction needs a certain number of wonders, techs, systems etc. whose requirements suddenly get higher or lower simply depending on how many factions they're currently allied with. 

A timer wouldn't really fix the problem with new alliances being practically uncounterable either: f.ex. two strongest empires that have never worked together can suddenly decide to join hands and they're posed to win together the next turn (or after a few turns with a timer) with no real way for others to counter the newfound alliance simply existing (aside from destroying one of the offending empires completely), if both empires already have the required amount of techs or produced Dust. On the opposite end a militaristically weaker faction can also exploit a big strong alliance until reaching personal victory (that alliance members have no way of tracking), leaving and holding out for a handful of turns without having to defend anything concrete if they already possess the required amount of Dust or techs.

Allied victory in its current form is inherently flawed and needs a rework from the ground up: it's boring, it's easily exploitable in both single- and multiplayer, and fluctuating victory condition thresholds have a disconnection between gameplay and lore.

Would be interesting to have to buy your way out of an alliance. So you basically have to give your alliance partners a number of systems to pay them for your betrayal.