Currently you can track the progress of opponents to expansion, diplomatic, and economic victories by mousing over the top bar. Wonder victories can, in theory, be detected in the same way, as you get a notification when the first one is built and every further one adds another 20%.



Unfortunately, this doesn't really work - by timing the wonders to complete within a couple of turns of each other, you can get so close that no-one can stop you when the notification appears (made even worse by the fact that you can buy out the wonders... wasn't that prevented at some point?).



As for the science victory, there's no notifications at all. Someone just wins.



Could we get notifications added for the 5 end-of-tree techs (the 3 30%-off science victory techs, the wonder tech, and the 100% food-to-production tech thats pre-requisite for the science victory)? Then at least you'd have some indication of a potential victory before it happened.



As a further suggestion, if the Wonder victory was "build components for an improvement that has to be assembled in a central location" rather than just "build 5 system improvements", then people would have the possibility of intercepting the fleet transporting the component en-route to its destination (which would potentially need a custom model for the combat sequence for the thing being transported).

Turn them off, Supremacy or death.

Which'd be fine if that was the style of game we played, but with 5-6 of us regularly playing together, it gets very tedious for the people eliminated early if the game's going to go on for several further lunchtimes; therefore we tend to not continue games long after any players are eliminated and just declare a winner at that point (or call it a draw if we don't have a consensus on who'd actually win).



In that case, leaving on all the other victory conditions makes sense. But it does mean you can quietly sneak to a wonder victory with no-one the wiser.

Tiny, Low Density, Fast, Surpremacy, usually 5-8 players. Takes about an hour, less with the battle cards available in auto now.



I do understand your point but I'd argue fervently that if you left the option open and then someone decided to take it, then it is your fault for not using all the advantages given to you!

Medium, 8-spiral, normal speed, 8-players (or 5-6+AI); takes about 6 hours to get to the point someone might be reaching a victory assuming they haven't been dragged into an endless war.



Notifications might not be for everyone, but slower paced games need some feedback.

Waylander1982 wrote:
Turn them off, Supremacy or death.

While it is helpful to suggest a work-around for the problem the OP's suggestion is supposed to fix, that in no way invalidates his suggestion.



It seems clear to me that the game has made an attempt at notification of impending victory -- it just doesn't work well in some cases. Some means of avoiding "out-of-nowhere" victories would improve the game.

I never suggested that it did invalidate his suggestion, and it is invalid of you to invalidate the suggestion I made in terms of possibly invalidating his suggestion!



On topic, this has some merit but doing it wholesale would be dubious at best. Should we also have a notification for each time an enemy refits a fleet? Or one for when they're realigning their exploitations?



Few, if any, victories are out of nowhere. When a game progresses beyond a certain point, and you have the Wonder/Science options enabled, then you should anticipate a victory using those conditions.

Waylander1982 wrote:
you should anticipate a victory using those conditions.

...skipping the invalidation of invalid invalidations...



True; anticipating that someone might be able to get a wonder victory should be planned for. But considering that, assuming said player has enough dust and 5 systems, they can pull off a wonder victory in a single turn, it's hard to know exactly when you should abandon your own wonder victory attempt and throw everything at them in the hope of stopping them buying their way to a win. To be fair, the game in question, I was surprised how close I came (6 systems, 20 turns from victory; compared to the winner who bought out the wonders with 4 turns to go and had twice as many systems), but as there was absolutely no notification everyone in the game went from "someone's going to be in a position to win soon" to "Oh, was that it? Who won?". Not exactly a thrilling end-of-game (now, admittedly, this was before the "defeat" screens went it, but still...).

My suggestion: remove all indication for all victory types that already in the game for enemy win %, incorporate into espionage system using heroes and other generic spies that includes intel (discerning victory progress) sabotage (generally causing mayhem in any number of imaginable ways) misdirection (leading another empire to think someone else is trying to get them, and defense (anti-spies)



Edit: Just going to make own thread

Different playstyles obviously demand different approaches, and like any great game ES isn't a puzzle with just one way to play/win, its a crossword with blank clues everywhere.



Personally I'd find these notifications to be a bit OTT, so far as I'm concerned all the notifications are just annoying-silly, but I can imagine some would enjoy them. Just as long as they're optional.

RobM wrote:
Currently you can track the progress of opponents to expansion, diplomatic, and economic victories by mousing over the top bar. Wonder victories can, in theory, be detected in the same way, as you get a notification when the first one is built and every further one adds another 20%.



Unfortunately, this doesn't really work - by timing the wonders to complete within a couple of turns of each other, you can get so close that no-one can stop you when the notification appears (made even worse by the fact that you can buy out the wonders... wasn't that prevented at some point?).



As for the science victory, there's no notifications at all. Someone just wins.



Could we get notifications added for the 5 end-of-tree techs (the 3 30%-off science victory techs, the wonder tech, and the 100% food-to-production tech thats pre-requisite for the science victory)? Then at least you'd have some indication of a potential victory before it happened.



As a further suggestion, if the Wonder victory was "build components for an improvement that has to be assembled in a central location" rather than just "build 5 system improvements", then people would have the possibility of intercepting the fleet transporting the component en-route to its destination (which would potentially need a custom model for the combat sequence for the thing being transported).

Yeah I saw a Let's Player lose on turn 100 on Endless mode by Wonder Victory with no notification at all it seemed kind of cheap. Notification on the progress of the various victory types would be great.