How do you win if king doesnt fight?

[dc_]

Hey there,

In my game on the third lowest difficulty I declared independence with I think about 40 turns to go. The king launched a wave of troops at me and took the vacated New Amsterdam and I immediately took it back. That was the last I saw of the kings troops. His boats just floated around on my coast until time ran out and won a Europe victory.

I shaved down my population and got to 100% support and just waited. What else am I supposed to do?

[LotC]

Wait for the patch is my best guess.

[Ijuin]

Yes, there should be coded minimum and maximum limits for the rate at which the King lands troops. In the original Colonization, one shipload arrived in the New World per turn, and unloaded as soon as the ship could reach the planned landing spot.

[Unimatrix11]

Actually, maybe there should be a time-limit for the king conquering all of Your cities - if he fails, You win (but only the parts you control are independent - your choice, if you´d like to continue the war, to liberate whatever the king holds after that). And that time-limit should replace the normal time-limit of the game, once you declared independance.

So:

- You´d declare independence 10 turns, before the game would end: A new timelimit is set, counting down from say 25 or some such.

- If the king succeeds in taking all your cities within those 25 turns, you loose.

- If the king does not hold any of your cities by turn 25 (after DoI), you win.

- If, 25 turns after DoI, the king holds one or more (but not all) of your cities, the king offers independence for all the cities still under your control. If you accept, you win, and the score will be calculated based on your remaining cities. If you refuse, in order to win, you will have to reconquer all the cities, the king holds and were once yours - no time-limit on that. Either you make it, or you give up on it at some point.

(This might not be a good idea for competetive MP tho, since it seems somewhat exploitable...)

EDIT: For MP, have a game-setting like: ´Minimum independent cities needed to win´, so you cant just claim you won, if you managed to save just one city from the king after the 25 turns, and are pathetic enough to go with it... (and no new cities can be found during the WoI)

EDIT2: What happens, right now, in MP, when a player ´wins´ ? Is it ´game over´ for all ? Cause that would suck anyways... (i guess it´s not, but there is a big, annoying ´xyz won´ in the screen all the time, and noone else can declare independent anymore ?). IMO the game should just go on, the new nation maybe getting some bonus(es) and its rebel sentiment being converted into some useful else (maybe being the bonus mentioned).

[MasterDave]

This is my single biggest problem with this game. I just finished a game as the Dutch where I had an awesome economy, a huge army and even 15 or so SOL's for a navy. I had a little trouble getting my Liberty bells up (I was spoiled by always playing John Adams before) and could not get to 50% until there were only 60 turns left. The REF had lots of ground troops (about 150 total), but only 16 warships.

They attacked with about 8 loaded ships at first and none of their units stayed alive for more than 2 turns on the ground. I held my fleet back, knowing that the King needed those ships to go back to Europe and get the rest of his army. However, some of them dawdled around, and the king was very slow to bring in more troops, bringing maybe four or eight more every six turns or so, and when time ran out he still had 60 land troops at home, but -0- units in new world (I killed all his ships near the end too) and held no cities.

Then I lost to a stupid Europe victory.

I know that the obvious solution is to play a custom game and turn off Europe victory, but "Play Now" games could easily be fixed by one of two simple rule changes

1) If the REF controlls no settlements when time runs out the player wins

2) If the REF loses all of its warships and its troops are stranded in Europe, the player wins immediately.

Otherwise, the king can just run out the clock and will always win either through bad scripting (ships not going back for refills), or if too many of his ships die that he can't bring his troops over, then it secures his VICTORY?? This makes zero sense, and makes winning the game impossible if the king does not add enough ships to the REF (a random algorithm that the player has no control over).

It sets a very artifical victory condition that depends on the AI scripting working and him happening to have a big enough fleet to bring in all of his troops (has failed to happen for me twice in a row now).

[snoopy369]

2) is supposed to be in-game already, actually. If you kill off his ships, you are supposed to win (Dale has actually done this, I think). Are you sure you killed ALL of the ships? (Also, do you have a save from a few turns prior to 'losing' when all ships were dead, or even better, when only one or two ships are alive)?

Finally ... in general, the question is a valid one, and one that definitely needs addressing (regardless of the ships question).

[snoopy369]

Indeed, this is the victory condition for Revolution:

bool CvPlayer::checkIndependence() const
{
	if (getParent() == NO_PLAYER)
	{
		return false;
	}

	for (int iPlayer = 0; iPlayer < MAX_PLAYERS; ++iPlayer)
	{
		CvPlayer& kParent = GET_PLAYER((PlayerTypes) iPlayer);

		if (kParent.isAlive() && GET_TEAM(kParent.getTeam()).isParentOf(getTeam()))
		{
			// land units on map
			int iNumUnits = kParent.countNumTravelUnits(NO_UNIT_TRAVEL_STATE, DOMAIN_LAND);
			if (iNumUnits > 0)
			{
				return false;
			}

			// need both ships and land units
			int iNumLandUnits = kParent.countNumDomainUnits(DOMAIN_LAND);
			int iShips = kParent.countNumDomainUnits(DOMAIN_SEA);

			for (int i = 0; i < getNumRevolutionEuropeUnits(); ++i)
			{
				switch (GC.getUnitInfo(getRevolutionEuropeUnit(i)).getDomainType())
				{
				case DOMAIN_SEA:
					++iShips;
					break;
				case DOMAIN_LAND:
					++iNumLandUnits;
					break;
				default:
					break;
				}
			}

			if (iShips > 0 && iNumLandUnits > 0)
			{
				return false;
			}
		}
	}

	return true;
}

If both of these conditions are false, then you win:

• The King has some land units on the map
• The King has both land units and sea units in his possession

So, if the King has no land units on the map, and you have killed all of his ships, you win. However, if he has one unit on land, on the map, you cannot win.

[rf_900]

So, if the King has no land units on the map, and you have killed all of his ships, you win. However, if he has one unit on land, on the map, you cannot win.

Does this make sense to everyone? Only one unit that can remain hidden and you loose the game !!!

I think that the turn limit has lead to more problems than good things. I prefer the original way. If we keep the turn limit as it is there should be a more flexible condition for winning, like killing 80% of kings troops. Maybe the percentage could depend on the difficulty level, and so you don't need to modify the REF increase problem.

[arthurdent2k]

Originally posted by snoopy369
2) is supposed to be in-game already, actually. If you kill off his ships, you are supposed to win (Dale has actually done this, I think).

I can confirm this, my first victory at all was killing all the REFs ships. Won the turn after the last seabattle.
Those bit with the kings' ships is really annoying, happened my last two games...the ships unloaded their troops and then just strolled around. Noticed there was one ship missing though, maybe thats the core of the problem? One ship gets lost one way or the other and whilst it has not unloaded the rest of the ships just hang around and wait?

[snoopy369]

Yeah, that's something Dale and I are working on in the patch.

[MasterDave]

It is possible in my example above that one of his warships was lingering around in Europe. I definitely killed every ship on the colony map.

I wish I had known about the ship killing victory condition before, there was one game that I gave up on becuase he only had 4 warships and about 60 ground troops when the BOI started and I thought it was hopeless because the manual says that all of his forces need to be killed. It would have been easy for me to sink those ships in time for the game end...