Unreasonable advantage?

from Stardock Forums
Before any of you think I'm complaining - I'm not, I just want to clear something up which has bugged me a little...

In a recent game I played there were just two Major civilisations left - me and the Altarians. They had a huge amount of influence (90%) even though otherwise we were fairly equal. The problem I had was that I had gone as low as 'Demonic', and suddenly the UP offered a vote on limiting the trade routes of Evil empires to 1. So, obviously the Altarians voted yes, and there was nothing I could do about it with my pitiful percentage of the vote.

Now is this something the programmers had considered? Obviously this is a major part of the game, but when there's only two parties left and one has the biggest vote, the smaller party will always lose out.

I think what I'm asking is, should this particular vote be taken out of the 'random' engine when the situation is like this?
210 views 7 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Just Stupid,

That's one of the downsides playing evil - another is the Fundamentalists. If you're really bummed you can always reload from a previous save... all and all, I think the bonuses are often too good to give up.

If I were if your position, I would take out the rest of the minors quickly -- now you're at no disadvantage. Quite honestly, when I play evil I usually don't do much trading - because I'm always at war.

Good luck,
Cypher

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
:) cor, you ARE evil

I kicked AI butt for making that vote.

To be honest it happened at such a late stage that I wasn't too bothered - with only the two of us left and at war we couldn't trade anyway. I think I was a bit miffed as I'd spent the majority of the game as a 'Neutral' and had decided that since there was only the two of us left it wouldn't hurt for me to make all 'Evil' decisions.... i was nearly caught out there!
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Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Well, relying on trade for income late in the game is a problematic strategy in any case. If you trade with a minor he might get taken over, and if you trade with a major he can always go to war with you.

Although I can win on Maso without using a cash exploit, I usually do for expediency -- F'rinstance, in the game I am playing right now a new minor popped up already at war with me, allied with my best friend AI the next turn, and boom now I'm at war.

I went back a few turns, waited for him to pop up again (Jarkians I think, I play pure good), and exploited 5K bc for 100 turns.

Cheers!
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
You could always leave UP ...
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Yeah, but then you get 0 trade routes instead of the 1 that was voted in....
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Another thing you can do is watch the pie graph on the UI (bottom left corner). It shows how much influence you have in the vote. If you don't have the majority, then start including IP in your trades. It is not hard to 100-2000 IP in addition to whatever BC, ships, ect that you get in trade. It's the icing on the cake.

"You'll trade 200BC for 38 turns for these techs? good. Toss in 500 IP and we will close the deal" ;)

I get my way in the UP votes 95% of the time. mwahahaha
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
I do the same thing. I like to keep the AIs level in techs as much as I can. There's often one AI way far ahead of the rest of us, and I don't want that AI to just stomp over everyone else, so I'm pretty liberal in trading with the other AIs. So, on maso, I generally just take all their IP when gifting them techs, and I rarely lose the UP vote that way.