Thalan Influence Defeat by...Who?!

Perhaps some of your fellow Thalans doubted their leader's ability to win the war or even that this dimension's Terrans are the one's to blame.

It would be interesting though to have an option o disable influence flips to your racial enemy.

Or perhaps they realized that Elvis really was the King after all! :LOL:

I agree with you on your point, though. I just don't see any of the 'polar opposite' races flipping to one another.

I haven't seen it happen, but yea, something like the Iconians flipping to the Yor seems like it shouldn't be possible.

Yes, but if influence flipping is locked off on a per-race basis, then it eliminates the ability of the AI to change its goals in the middle of a game. For example, if it's clear that the AI can't get a conquest or tech victory, it might (ideally at least) switch gears and go for an influence victory.

I'm not sure how much this actually happens, and I think there's a question about how aggressively the AI pursues influence wins anyway, vs. just getting it by default (i.e. the result of conquest expansion, or strong economy and population relative to neighbors). But I like at least the potential for the AI to do this. Otherwise it gimps certain races, while leaving others that don't have a strong racial enemy (like maybe the Korx?) with a big potential advantage in how they can win the game.

It's not that hard to think up rationalizations for turncoats, like "Goodlife" in the Berserker series. And there's always the option to turn influence victory off, if you want a special scenario like Terrans vs. Thalans facing just each other on the map.

That said, it would be interesting to have at least an option in the setup screen for disabling influence flipping between traditional enemies. Just to see how it plays out. Options are good, and it might work better than I think it would.

Having that option would be nice, but I don't know if it would be worth the dev time to make it happen. I just haven't played enough games yet to see if it is a problem. I have been playing 1 on 1 tiny games, just to get the feel of the new races, and their techtrees. I just started my first multi-race game, as the Altarians. This simply because their super ability needs other good races in the game for it to come into play. The Drath are another that comes to mind.

Another thing is how it might make the game too deterministic. I just started a new game on a Huge/tight cluster map as the Iconians, with 4 other races set to random.

I started off in one corner, and as I began colonizing outward along a chain of stars, I soon realized that my nearest neighbor was my ancient enemy, the Yor. As I colonize outwards toward their zone of influence, I'm leaving pockets of lower PQ planets behind that I can probably flip, if the Yor decide to colonize deep inside my influence zone. I'm rushing for planets that I think are strategically important on what will probably end up as our mutual frontier, based on anticipated influence zones.

If this was all pre-determined beforehand with no flipping planets between us, then it would change the way I'm colonizing planets. I like having more unknown quantities in the game, that require flexible strategy. Even if it does somewhat violate the back-story.

Yes...odd, especially in a game not to long ago, the Iconians were myfriends. I \, the Yor conquered the entire galaxy, and the only ones left were the Iconians who were in this tiny corner of the galaxy with one star left. They were "close" and I sent a terror star there and they died with a trusting smile on their faces. You think they would of started freking out!

Never underestimate the power of instant gratification! Doesn't the influence victory say you have to control 75% of a map to win? If you had a much smaller area than the Terrans, they probably only had to flip one or two planets to beat you. Is it 75% of a map (area) or 75% of the inhabited planets on a map?

Man!, the first building available to the Thalans is for influence. There should be no problem holding off the Terrans or anyone else from culture bombing.

Also you should check your mini-map it should give you ample warning of a culture victory. When you see over 75% of the map turn blue you must declare war (they can't win a culture victory if anyone is at war with them) or start furiously building influence starbases near your borders and culture buildings on your planets.

It is not that hard to defend against, be it Terran or any other race. You have to defend yourself militarily and culturally.

It has to be the map area, otherwise I couldn't explain how in one game I suddenly got the extra percentage of influence I needed to win the game without conquering any extra planets.


Instead of having influence work differently for racial enemies, just give racial enemies an extra negative in diplomacy when dealing with one another. You therefore make it much more likely that say the Thalan and the Terrans, or the Torians and the Drengin, or the Drath and Altarians, or the Yor and the Iconians will go to war. Of course I'm not too sure how this would work with custom races though.

It might just be better to leave it alone for simplicity even though it doesn't make sense from a roleplaying perspective.

Perhaps a good middle ground on the 'culture flip versus racial enemies' would be to not just lock it out, but make it so it is twice (or more) as hard to flip.

Of course, one would probably also need to figure out the direction of hatred.

Of course, the Thalians hate the Humans, but should the Humans really feel the same way back? I think the Humans would be more likely to hate the Dregin.

It would add some interesting dynamics to the game.

Too bad TA already has the features list locked down. Maybe this would be good for GCIII or a future expansion.

Jarod

This is the most logical approach to this issue. Even the Nazis, who were monstrous, were sexy, in a way. I could see the attraction. But, for example, the Torians, who were slaves to the Drengin for thousands of years, going back to that life after throwing off their chains is simply ludicrous. The Iconians wouldn't subjugate themselves to animated toasters, and neither the Drath, nor the Altarians, would do likewise.

There are certain circumstances that should not, in any way, shape, or form, be possible.

I'm betting that this sort of thing will work very differently in GC3. What this thread seems to be about is really a result of GC1 having been playable only as Terrans and the first two revs of GC2 presenting the different civs as the same at core with a few different bells and whistles on top (abilities, then super abilities).

The new unique tech trees in TA look like they could be groundwork for a broader diversification when GC3 gets going. I can imagine two distinct classes of winning condition: universal and special, with some civs having unique win types, e.g. the Torians destroying the Drengin. If the devs could combine that with a scoring system that's neutral re win types, then choosing a "storyline" win like Torian Revenge could have a "natural" penalty by ending the game when plenty of computer players were still strong.

I like your idea, Swicord, but it seems to me defeating only the Drengin (and not all the other races) with the Torians would be a fairly simple task-though, of course, this only applies to GCII...it could very well change in GCIII.

Some people don't play for score; to them a win is a win.

Though, I have to admit a victory condition for the Korath where they have to spore EVERY single enemy planet, for example, would be...interesting. Assuming the AI treated the spore ships with higher priority, anyway.

Perhaps last time around they conquered everything, and this led to their extinction. This time, they realised that in order to change the future they needed to appear to be subjugated in the short-term... in order to pave the way for a resurgence later on...

Well, they DID supposedly show up five years too early.

Maybe they think they've got five years to get their act in order.

I thought you could set the victory conditions before playing the game. I only assume this because I play with all victory condidtions enabled

To me the game is more important than any back story. So this does not bother me so much. Besides every game we play is it's own story.

You can, but the issue the OP brought up was that certain races shouldn't flip at all to a certain other race due to their back stories.

The more I think about this, the more it seems like it could just be a player exploit if races were hard-coded like that. If I'm playing the Yor and I know that I have nothing to fear from Iconian influence, then that's going to affect my strategy. I'll try to colonize planets deep inside the Iconian's influence zone if I can get there first... planets I'd normally leave alone, because they'd flip too easily.

So it isn't as simple as just asking to have influence flips turned off, to follow the back-story. It's also a requirement for AI smart enough to know when to take advantage of it, or defend against those strategies, since it's different from the way the normal game works. The AI has to know that it should build defensive influence starbases when it feels influence pressure from race A, but not race B (traditional racial enemies), and so on. It might be an interesting option if the AI can handle it, but I'm a little skeptical of that.

You're playing the Yor.

Don't try to tell me Loyalty is still bugged-seems to work well enough in the latest DA, though I haven't tested it extensively in TA. Again, it's not the end-all, be-all, but it's still significant.

How about a check box for preserving backstory a la victory conditions?

Your points on the AI are valid, though I personally don't see much of a problem with it, relating to this issue (and I call myself a coder, though I may not be up to Stardock's standards). I can, however, say that I believe the AI can indeed handle it.

Again, the question of custom races rears its ugly head, but in general custom races A) do not have a backstory or have a backstory of one of the existing civs due to being based off of it, i.e. an evil-based Terran Alliance, etc. This being the case, the generic custom races shouldn't be relevant with regards to backstory-specific victory conditions (or the preventing thereof), while the ones based around an existing civ can just use a flag to specify which race they're based off of. Player-selectable is the only thing that makes sense in this regard, however, as the game cannot be expected to be intelligent enough to aptly choose one.

After all, if you're playing as a custom that has its backstory based on the Thalans, wouldn't you want the game to recognize it as such, rather than, say, the Yor? Is it more useful to not be flipped by the Terrans, or by the Iconians?

And really, if you care that much for backstory (which there is a time and place for, and I love it, but I love playing the game more), why be concerned with which is more useful to you, rather than that which is consistent with the backstory?

As far as the idea of the backstory consistent victories option goes, I could take it or leave it, but it does sound interesting.

They already have a -. It's called "lingering racial grudge". Incidentally, anybody know how to mod a race to have it? Like, say, I want the Luminoth to hate the Ing, what do I change?