Challenge of games without Space Race?

[BigWilly1974]

Just curious of everyone's impression of the difficulty of games where the Space Race option is eliminated...

I'm starting to have my way with Monarch, but even when my game was less than refined on Monarch, the only games I'd actually lose were by Space Race (e.g. Mansa on the other side of the world, avoided wars, and I couldn't get to him through neighbours in between with closed borders).

I don't like losing by Space Race, finding it a bit cheesy, so I eliminated it in my last game, and actually found that Monarch is too easy for me without it as the AI doesn't do a good enough job with military strategy, nor do they ever seem to go strongly after culture or diplomacy victories.

Thoughts on the challenge level if Space Race is disabled?

[Hauptman]

An ai could still win by diplomatic victory. But basicly the game is set up to make space race the only way you can loose.

a really agresive civ that takes over a whole continent could possibly have enough UN votes to vote for himself to victory. Ive done it, was .5% away from "% of land area" and made up over 60% of world population, my votes alone where enough to get me the victory 1 turn BEFORE conquest would have happened...

[Diadem]

Space race the only way you can loose?

My default way of loosing is by getting wiped off the map by another AI. That's not a win for that AI, but it's certainly a loss for you.

[Crossfire]

I agree with Diadem there. Last night I was way ahead when Napolean showed up with about 20 elephants, another 20 cav archers and piles of swords. I held for a while but I went down in the end.

[Hauptman]

Well early game yeh sure you can "loose" by beeing wiped out. But defending against the AI is silly easy once you have construction and actually create some catapults.
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Last night I'm playing my cultural victory planned from the start game. I have this nice continent to my self (its connected to the main but is blocked by mountains) with lots of food land (Berlin has 3 wheat and 1 crab)

Well I'm nice and secure here so... 1 unit in each city and a couple cannons and cavalry sitting around waiting for somethin bad.

Tokagawa sends like 15 million galeons at me... "OMG thats alot of units!" Changed all production to cannons. 2 turns later I have 4 cannons and 2 cavalry against his monster stack of samurai, knights, grenadiers, and **giggle** catapults. Guess who won?

Well my promoted cavalry and artillery (thanks Cathy, hope you like those Cossaks btw) where soon sailing across the sea to Japan.

[Diadem]

You can only be wiped out early game? Hmm, what difficulty do you play on?

I've had games where in the middle of my spacerace the AI suddenly attacked with over 40 tanks and lots of other stuff. And he didn't properly put them in 1 stack either, he had units in half the squares in my territory. It's pretty ugly when a size 26 city suddenly only has 3 tiles to work Though that city managed to avoid starvation by getting razed on the next turn

Of course I usually neglect my military. But even so, it's very well possible to be killed by the AI even later in the game, if you're playing on a high enough difficulty level.

[Hauptman]

For those of you Interested because either they dont believe me or just don't know the power of cats/cannons I'll take the time to give the run down of combat in that last post...

Turn 1 his ships moved into my culture borders. about 8 frigates + 6 galeons all loaded (18 units). 2 large ship stacks with 1 frigate galeon combo in a 3rd tile (loaded with 3 knights) I have 3 frigates in the are wich attack and sink the 2 ship stack then move to block the city's water access (so no bombard or amphibious assault, wich the ai never does anyways ). I change all cities to build cannons each requiring 2 turns to complete (quick game). I use my cavalry to direct where he lands his troops.

Turn 2 he moves to where he can get closest to my city and makes landfall. then runs his ships away (to grab more units) I moved the 2 cannons i have into postition and move the cavalry into postition into the city, to avoid the knights 2 moves to attack that city with its 1 Machine gunner defender. Construction completes on cannons in the 2 cities in range.

Turn 3 he moves 1 square to be adjacent to the city and pillages that square (stone). Now its my turn, his stack of 15 against my city with 1 MG, 2 cavalry and 4 cannon.
Other units are en route from further cities but not in play this turn. Cannon 1 attacks and looses but causes damage to 8 of the strongest units (the grenadier it attacked +7 collateral.) Cannon 2 attacks a damaged grenadier and wins damging 7 again. cannon 3 attacks the final hurt grenadier and takes little damage again causing damage to the strongest 7. cannon 4 easily wins against the strongest unit, a hurt samurai, and again, damages 7 of the strongest units. 3 units dead and all units damaged just from the cannons. 2 cavalry kill 2 more samurai with little damage to themselves. total tally 5 kills vs 1 lost. Production begun on grenadiers (1 turn)

Turn 4 computer bombards city with 4 cats, does the math, decides attacking stack vs city defenders is in his favor attacks with hurt knight. machine gun obliterates hurt knight. Computer does math, decides no longer in favor and Heals all remaining units. My turn... Unit promotions! 3 cannons get heal up from city attack promo, cavalry heal to full from combat 2 promo. 1 cannon badly hurt 2 still usable, attack with 2 killing 2 more units and damaging the remaining. Full strength cavalry destroy 2 more. 2 grenadiers from other cities also join the fight, 2 more dead. 2 grenadiers completed in 2 close cities. 6 kills vs 0 lost. total 11 vs 1.

Turn 5 the remaining units (catapults) bombard, then i kill them. 15 dead in the land war vs 1 loss with many promotions on my side. from what would have appeared to be a hopeless situation. Had he landed those 3 knights he might have had some units to pillage with but he still would not have taken the city.


Now if the AI ever tried amphibiose assaults he could have won easily, by killing my 3 boats, then frigate bombarding and attacking right out of the ships relying on catapult collateral damage to weaken the few units i had.

[Hauptman]

Originally posted by Diadem
You can only be wiped out early game? Hmm, what difficulty do you play on?

I've had games where in the middle of my spacerace the AI suddenly attacked with over 40 tanks and lots of other stuff. And he didn't properly put them in 1 stack either, he had units in half the squares in my territory. It's pretty ugly when a size 26 city suddenly only has 3 tiles to work Though that city managed to avoid starvation by getting razed on the next turn

Of course I usually neglect my military. But even so, it's very well possible to be killed by the AI even later in the game, if you're playing on a high enough difficulty level.

Normally I play on prince, but this was monarch. (thats why he actually had grenadiers too!~) Even in your senerio, thats only 1 lost city (course that is a loss in OCC but thats a dif subject) And neglecting your military when you have adjacent borders is suicide, I was neglecting because i thought i was safe, little did i know the ai is capable of a scary sea invasion as well, at most i expected 3 - 6 units max like in civ3.

[gdgrimm]

I've only played a few full games, and only on Noble, but here's my thoughts....

I lost a space race to the AI because I was dumb enough to build the UN, and Hatsepshat was liked well enough to win a diplomatic victory before I was able to finish the SS. I couldn't have won by score in that game either, because 3 mid size civs (Saladin, Isabella, and the Inca leader) created a permanent alliance whose combined score I couldn't top, and nobody like me well enough to ally with me.

And I was never far enough ahead to win a military based victory (either domination or last standing).

So the SS was the only way I could have won the only game I lost. The other 2 games I won with SS and with Domination.

At this point, I don't see disabling Space Race as making the game any easier or harder. But perhaps that will change as I get to higher difficulties.

[Artuero]

I don't think enabling the space race makes things more difficult either, at least at Noble, because it seems to me that space race is the easiest way for the player to win. If you enable space race and mentally prohibit yourself from winning that way, space race functions more or less as an additional timer (albeit a timer that you can stop through military intervention). I think space race is still far too easy a means to victory for all concerned.

Because it does not appear to have much of an effect on game balance, I think the ideal version would have getting to alpha centauri be much much harder so that people would have a real sense of achievement in getting there.

Also add back in the requirement that the ship actually arrive rather than just launch, and the ability to boost your ship so that you have to decide between building a faster ship and launching sooner, and the space race would be a more fun victory condition. As it stands, I disable it.

[bonscott]

Originally posted by Diadem
You can only be wiped out early game? Hmm, what difficulty do you play on?

I've had games where in the middle of my spacerace the AI suddenly attacked with over 40 tanks and lots of other stuff. And he didn't properly put them in 1 stack either, he had units in half the squares in my territory. It's pretty ugly when a size 26 city suddenly only has 3 tiles to work Though that city managed to avoid starvation by getting razed on the next turn

Of course I usually neglect my military. But even so, it's very well possible to be killed by the AI even later in the game, if you're playing on a high enough difficulty level.

Well, that's your problem right there, *don't* neglect your military no matter what type of victory you are going for. If he had only 40 tanks you should have been able to easily wipe that out with about 15 arties and a few bombers, could even clean up the mess with old calvary at that point.

I was in the same boat as you one game, going for space victory and getting attacked while building the last piece. But I had enough arties, bomber and tanks of my own to hold off the attack long enough to finish it up and launch.

Always be prepared with military and you shouldn't get wiped off the map in the late game unless you get ganged up on.

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by Artuero
Also add back in the requirement that the ship actually arrive rather than just launch, and the ability to boost your ship so that you have to decide between building a faster ship and launching sooner, and the space race would be a more fun victory condition.

I agree, FWIW

[Kirghiz]

I go one further than you sometimes. Not only do I turn off the spacerace, but I also turn off the timer too. I don't do this every game, just when I plan on playing ALL DAY LONG.