Question about victory condtions for the A.I.

The AI is AWESOME. You can set it to several difficulty levels, the highest I would describe as GODLIKE, because even Brad has problems defeating the foes at that level

judging from the most recent game example, i don't think they can get an alliance victory.

way to read the post, freya.

The AI can win with the same victory conditions as the player including alliances.

~SDC~

In an alliance victory everyone still standing wins, no? So while the human player would see a Victory Screen, that doesn't mean the A.I. hasn't also 'won'.

~SDC~

I guess that technically you'd either share an alliance victory with the AI (everyone left wins) or you'd never know it happens because if you're not part of the alliance and the game ends with an alliance victory, then you're likely not in the game at that point...

~SDC~

near the end of the latest game example, the drengin have alliances with the 2 sole remaining civs ( terrans and Yor ). this should constitue an alliance victory, if i understand the concept correctly. or can a computer opponent only win an alliance victory if the player is not part of the alliance?

here's the screenshot:
http://www.galciv.com/examples/5/new-52.jpg

cheers

h

Hmmm. I was under the impression that an alliance victory required that ALL surviving players be allied with each other -- in other words, that includes the player. If the player holds out, there's no alliance victory. If the player joins the rest, everybody that survived wins.

Maybe everyone has to be allied, so maybe the Drengin couldn't win because Froggy and Yor weren't allied.

I don't think it is true that all races have to be allied with each other for an allied victory. In the latest example, let's say instead that Drengin and Yor were both allied with Human but they were not allied with each other. I would think the humans would win the game with an allied victory.

But actually in the last example, you had the Drengin allied with Human and Yor but Yor and Human were not allied. They did not get an allied victory so the rules must be different with an A.I. player. In fact I would say that an A.I. player cannot win an allied victory at all. If the human isn't part of the alliance then obviously the game goes on. If the human is part of the alliance then he wins (an so does every other A.I. player)

I am just trying to rationalize here, but it looks to me like the whole viewpoint on win/loose should be from the human player's perspective. If the human player looses, what does it matter which, if any, of the AI's "wins"? If the human player wins, the status of the AIs is immaterial except to how it contributes to the human players mode of victory.



~SDC~

I think for an alliance victory, the major races only have to be connected to each other via a chain of alliances... they don't have to be directly allied.

I would also suspect that an alliance victory is a victory for the player. Whether they managed to pull everyone else together, or they wheedled their way into an existing coalition (as opposed to getting squashed by it), they've done well

Well, think about it. You can only have an alliance victory if you and your allies are the only people left, right? So if the AI has managed to totally ally with each other, but not with you, then that's the same as you being allied against everyone except the Drengin or someone.

So, as Lucky Jack said, from the human perspective an AI alliance victory (or any other sort) is kinda irrelevant since it'd involve a loss on the player's part.

What is nice though is that at least the AI is aiming to win via one of those methods themselves, so even though an AI alliance victory is the same as just killing you outright by an individual power, it's nice that they're at least trying to pursue their own best chances at victory whether that be on your team or against you.

~SDC~

Mr Choke - Technically the AI could win an alliance victory against you. If at the time that they take you out of the game, all of the remaining AI players are allied with each other, then while the game has ended for you, you could also consider that the all of the AI "won" versus them hypothetically continuing to slug it out amongst themselves.

Of course that's all just a drawn-out way of saying that the human player died/lost...

~SDC~

So, what you guys are saying is - the human player loses, if and only if the player loses all his/her planets.

The point is, in the game example, it should probably have come up saying brad lost the game, once the other 3 major races were eliminated, as only the drengin satisfied a victory condition at that point(alliance victory).

Please dont get me wrong, i am not being argumentative here. It is just that, knowing the A.I. would not be merely reactive, but actively pursue a strategy to win the game adds a new edge to it, keeps one on their toes.

~SDC~

What everyone is essentially trying to say is that for a Political Victory (aka, Alliance Victory) ALL remaining empires must be allied with every other remaining empire. It's not just a matter of one empire being allied with every other empire. All those other empires must also be allied with each other. The idea is that this is bringing a sort of harmony to the galaxy where conflict is set aside and all races are united peacefully and working together. Think of the United Federation of Planets from Star Trek.

So, what this also means is that if the player is still in the game, an alliance victory for any one alien race is *also* an alliance victory for the human player. It's basically that everybody wins at that point and the only losers are the races that have previously been eliminated or assimilated or whatnot.

And the only way there could be an allied victory of which the human player wasn't a part would be if the game continued on after the player had been eliminated and all the remaining alien races then allied with each other.

Hopefully that makes sense...this was confusing me for quite a while as well until I finally came to this realization of what a Political Victory must actually mean.

@Ardrikk - thanks. that does make sense. I have been on the forum pretty much the whole day, counting hours, and my brains are a bit more befuddled then usual.

~SDC~

Well, we have two opinions here. One is that an allied victory is where everybody remaining in the game is allied with everyday else (hence everybody wins). The other, which only applies to the human player is that he can achieve an allied victory if he is allied with every remaining major race.

Since both sides seem confident that they are right, we may need Stardock to verifiy I suppose.
:notsure:

I think the only way an AI can get a political victory is for all of the remaining AIs to be allied and the human player looses his/her last planet. I.e., the only way a human player to suffer a political loss is for all of the AIs to ally and eliminate the human player. (Essentially, those are the same conditions required for the human player to have a political win.)

~SDC~

MrChoke - It's not so much a matter of two different views as much as a matter of imagining what happens after the human player loses. In real life, when the human player loses, the game's over, regardless of the state of the rest of the empires.

But you can imagine what your loss would mean to the rest of the empires: A) If they're all allied with each other, they defeated their last obstacle (you) and went on to an alliance victory. If there's still more than one AI civ left and they're not all allied, then presumably they go on to battle it out amongst themselves.

It's been fun/silly discussing this!

~SDC~

If I recall correctly, the Alliance victory in BOTF required the allies to control 90% of the galaxy (human player or no human player).

Translating this to GalCiv, it means that if the Tolarians and the Dregin allied together and controlled 90% of the galaxy, then they would win. The human player loses. This is a bit more difficult than focusing the alliance victory on the human player only. Now, the above stated example is only an example. I don't have a clue how alliance/political victories actually work in GalCiv.

Then again, it appears that nobody else does either.