Player elimination is flawed.

from Sins Forums
I love playing this as multiplayer, but the player elimination conditions aren't really clear, or bugged.

In some cases, I've seen a player been eliminated when the homeplanet is destoyed. This is what I expected to be the elimination condition, and it's also the one who is the best one.

In other cases, I've been forced to bomb every planet, and kill every ship to get the elimination done, in the last game the other guy refused to quit after his partner got destroyed, and set his captial ship to phase around the universe, just to troll us on a useless hunt when we already had every planet in the game. This is really unneccesary, and extremely boring. The game is already over when you've maniged to take his homeplanet. The homeplanet can even be shifted to another one as it's being attacked to prevent an elimination.

Fix this please, I doubt there's many that has the patience to sit 30 min+ after the win is sealed, just because the elimination conditions are flawed.
multiplayer
26,366 views 33 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I'm glad you posted this, it was one of the first major flaws i noticed in this game.
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
This is really unneccesary, and extremely boring. The game is already over when you've maniged to take his homeplanet. The homeplanet can even be shifted to another one as it's being attacked to prevent an elimination.


It's far from over just because the homeworld is destroyed.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
I would say the game should be over if you can't build anymore ships and are unable to colonize anymore planets. So it's possible for the game to end even if you have a handful of ships left (as long as they can't colonize).

The game should still be able to go on if the enemy can bombard a planet and/or colonize it. I've already had and experienced some great comebacks in the game.

Also Stardock/IronClad have said they are changing the way victory/surrender works in the game so it's less annoying. I believe it's listed in the 1.03 possible change list they have up.
Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top
What sucks even more is when you spend about 30 minutes building up your empire with another 3 human players in the game, and when it's about to get interesting - your game crashes, you're thrown out and there's NO WAY WHATSOEVER to re-join that same game.. This happened to me about twice already - everytime in a game with more than 2 people in it. There's gotta be some way built-in to find this game and re-join after the application crashes to desktop - I think that would be my #1 request for 1.03 ( besides a functional PJI to stop the phase lane tag)
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
The game needs to end when the planets (asteroids excluded) are toast. If the game continued just because the player can still colonize allows the player to spam a lot of colony ships and hide them away.

The concept of losing upon the loss of the homeworld is a flawed scenario as well. The "homeworld" is really just a capital since none of the races are actually from that star system. Basically everyone would neglect the outlining territories and run straight for the capital. This would only be viable if phase inhibitors completely prevented jumping.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
how about a timer? when last planet is lost you have say... 5, 10, or 15 minutes to colonize something or you loose.

This prevents someone from hiding a phased battleship somewhere just to annoy the winners into surrendering the game.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
Hell yeah, timer FTW!

Which is my way of saying: Hey! Good idea! Like it!
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
in the last game the other guy refused to quit after his partner got destroyed, and set his captial ship to phase around the universe, just to troll us on a useless hunt when we already had every planet in the game.

This reminds of me the infamous game sore losers would play in StarCraft called "Hide the depot."
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
how about a timer? when last planet is lost you have say... 5, 10, or 15 minutes to colonize something or you loose.

A timer is an excellent idea, but it needs to be something reasonably short. 5-minutes sounds about right. If the player is not able to colonize a new planet within that amount of time then there's a good chance he won't be able to even with more time.
Reply #11 from Sins Forums Top
I would disagree with the timer length. I think it needs to be at least 10 minutes. Think about it: In the beginning of the game it takes about 5 minutes to kill two guardians, and get a colonizer frigate out to a nearby asteroid. If you have to bombard a planet, which is very possible later in the game, you should have more time than at the very beginning.
Reply #12 from Sins Forums Top

in the last game the other guy refused to quit after his partner got destroyed, and set his captial ship to phase around the universe, just to troll us on a useless hunt when we already had every planet in the game.

This reminds of me the infamous game sore losers would play in StarCraft called "Hide the depot."


we called it "hide the farm" since i don't know anyone that actually called supply depots supply depots in starcraft. it was an effective strategy against sore winners, of which starcraft had many.
Reply #13 from Sins Forums Top
right now you need to destroy every planet.

There is no reliance on actual ships... which is good. I think its fine the way it is now except that when a play drops the AI should take over, and when they apply the AI 'surrender' behavoir, it won't be too hard to wrap up a game as long as the human has quit.
Reply #14 from Sins Forums Top
the only change that needs to be made is fixing it so you don't have to kill every enemy planet after only one person uses the quit option instead of surrender
Reply #16 from Sins Forums Top
I just realized today after testing out a 10ffa map that players who lose their planets are eliminated and there is no reliance on ships. Seems fine to me actually ( I originally thought I had to hunt down every last ship, glad I was wrong). There always needs to be allowed a chance to make a comeback if possible.

Don't want to find the last planet the enemy has? Well as far as the AI is concerned IronClad is changing the AI to surrender when its getting close to being beaten. Other than that I really don't see a need for this to change.

Some new victory conditions would be nice perhaps something along the lines of Age of Empires 2 or Rise of Nations.
Reply #17 from Sins Forums Top
Like peace and trade vics?

I can see the winning percentages of a million players just skyrocketing.
Reply #18 from Sins Forums Top

I just realized today after testing out a 10ffa map that players who lose their planets are eliminated and there is no reliance on ships.

That's how it works in single player. I'd have been very surprised if it was different in multiplayer.

Reply #19 from Sins Forums Top
Billyjoeray

A peace victory would actually be impossible in the game right now due to the way diplomacy works.

(rant on//They really need to overhaul the diplomacy model as while it's a nice idea and all it just isn't executed very well. It really breaks down and fails on large games with a full load of players. It's pretty stupid to be told to go attack a target that isn't a threat to your ally that is on the other side of the galaxy. That you personally have no knowledge of and phase travel from one star to the targets takes 15min and your ally wants you to get it all done in 15-20 min. Not happening. It's like the missions are chosen randomly and the timers don't take into account travel times,build times, how long it takes to destroy stuff or your potential ability. \\rant off)

I'm not sure what kind of alternative game types or win conditions there could be for SoaSE but I'm sure there are plenty of ideas out there. Just about every RTS in existence has at least one other victory condition or game type. Nothing wrong with this game having another or three to mix things up. Of course this would also mean that new ai would have to made for the win conditions and gametypes so I wouldn't expect to see this kind of thing till much later down the road or an expansion pack.
Reply #20 from Sins Forums Top

The game needs to end when the planets (asteroids excluded) are toast. If the game continued just because the player can still colonize allows the player to spam a lot of colony ships and hide them away.

The concept of losing upon the loss of the homeworld is a flawed scenario as well. The "homeworld" is really just a capital since none of the races are actually from that star system. Basically everyone would neglect the outlining territories and run straight for the capital. This would only be viable if phase inhibitors completely prevented jumping.


It would still be flawed because everyone would be the TEC, scout to find the homeplanet then bombard it with a couple novaliths. No fleet strategy would be required.
Reply #21 from Sins Forums Top
Good point. Of course, defending against a Novalith is very easy. Besides, I prefer the method that would require the destruction of all planets (asteroids just don't count in my book).
Reply #22 from Sins Forums Top
(asteroids just don't count in my book).


Why not?
Reply #23 from Sins Forums Top
It would be really nice if, once all the opponents have dropped/left/whatever and only AI is left, you won. I really can't be bothered to kill the AI, and I would like my wins :p. It is definately a lesser concern for me than any gameplay stuff you guys are working on, but it would be nice.

We <3 our Devs!
Reply #24 from Sins Forums Top

(asteroids just don't count in my book).


Why not?

I see asteroids as being like a mining colony or something similiar. I don't see them as being fully terraformed planets where people are truly living. So, it'd be like an outpost more than a full fledged colony. If it could hold a larger population it would be a bit more suitable.

Of course, that's just how I see things. Odds are, if they implemented such a feature, asteroids would be counted as planets, for determining elimination.
Reply #25 from Sins Forums Top
it's hard to say weather the present way to win is good or bad. But that said, there should be a game play mode where you win when you destroy the other homeworlds.