When do you pack it in and declare Victory?

[Addled Platypus]

When do you pack it in and declare Victory?



Victory?

Victory?



Respectfully

Dan Quayle

[Willem]

Originally posted by wodan11

In both of those examples, I would say you weren't keeping tabs on your opponents.

In both of those games my options were limited since both civs were my vassals. Since I could no longer invade them I had to be more creative. But yes, with the one with Egypt I wasn't paying attention. I figured since I had pretty much decimated him that he was out of the running. Plus I was concerned with Washington since we were neck and neck with the space race. The other game I had originally conquered Darius just because it looked like he was heading for a cultural victory. I took his two of his best culture cities, but he managed to replace them with two others shortly after he became my vassal.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Willem
In both of those games my options were limited since both civs were my vassals. Since I could no longer invade them I had to be more creative. But yes, with the one with Egypt I wasn't paying attention. I figured since I had pretty much decimated him that he was out of the running. Plus I was concerned with Washington since we were neck and neck with the space race. The other game I had originally conquered Darius just because it looked like he was heading for a cultural victory. I took his two of his best culture cities, but he managed to replace them with two others shortly after he became my vassal.

All this really has nothing to do with the point at hand....

But anyway there are several good ways to unvassalize someone.
a) DOW a 3rd party on the other side
b) gift some cities to the vassal
c) culturally expand to reduce the vassal's size
d) espionage / disrupt vassal food, reducing vassal pop
e) espionage vassal culture buildings

I'm sure there are a lot more.

Anyway IMO the player can generally tell how quickly he will win, and it's fairly straightforward to determine if an AI has the potential to be close to winning by then. Not just cultural, but diplomatic, space, or whatever.

If so, then I'd say it's best to play it out. Those can be some of the coolest games, getting in a race vs the AI or going out of your way to disrupt their win conditions

However, if after putting due diligence into investigation, it's not even going to be close, and if you aren't experimenting with a strategy or something... then IMO there's no point in finishing out the game.

Wodan

[Blaupanzer]

Here, here to wodan. If you monitor the victory condition screen and keep up your espionage, then by the modern era you can tell if anyone else has a ghost of a chance. Single player is by definition a solo game. Therefore, what do you gain by hanging on for one hundred more turns to complete a victory condition, if you are the only one who can complete any of them? Of course the fact that I have that big a lead in all areas and am still that far from a defined victory condition may indicate how much I was winging it, i.e., poor planning. However, that's something to correct in the next game.

[Willem]

Well if you just want to quit the game and be done with it that's an option. But if, like many people, you'd like to see your victory registered in your Hall of Fame, you just don't pack it in and Retire. That will only register a defeat.

[The Priest]

I'm with Wodan (as i seem to be on many things ... worrying ...).

For me the point is that if you are militarily completely dominant, it just isn't worth carrying on. If you are heading for one of the peaceful victories (space, cultural etc.) then I can see that it is far more difficult to be sure you are going to win.

However, if you are militarily dominant, and say have just eliminated the two next most powerful civs, it is clear that you could get domination if you just went through the motions. But it can still be a long way off - 50% of land area on a large/huge map takes a lot of steady work.

Put another way, when i feel I am still fighting oponents, then i carry on. When all I am fighting is the speed at which I can get my units around the map, I stop

[wodan11]

Originally posted by Willem
Well if you just want to quit the game and be done with it that's an option. But if, like many people, you'd like to see your victory registered in your Hall of Fame, you just don't pack it in and Retire. That will only register a defeat.

Score in CIV is poorly done. It doesn't compare very well between victory types. And, it IMO improperly rewards speedy completion over other, more important, criteria. In addition, there are other decisions incorporated into the scoring algorithm which are dubious at best. This has the net effect of rewarding gameplay which, IMO, is not necessarily "better" than other gameplay.

For example, the score rewards early dominance (and early rushes). Why? Why is a fast game somehow "better" than a long game? If the player chose not to exploit the AI's weakness vs early rushes, and therefore the player had a much more demanding midgame, wouldn't that be a more true test of that player's skill?

Or is the player's time somehow valued, thus why a fast game is "better"? But doesn't that call into question the whole idea of spending time to finish games that are already won?

I'm certainly not going to try and tell someone where to place their enthusiasm. However, I think if they sat and thought about Score and how it's calculcated, they would decide their enthusiasm for trying to get a top score and hall of fame records is somewhat misplaced.

If, however, they did go through that exercise, and decided that yes indeed, they did care about the score, then fair enough. Difference of opinion, that's all.

As for me, I'll put due diligence into seeing if the AI has a realistic chance at beating me to a cultural, diplomatic, or whatever victory. But, that done, I simply choose not to waste 2-3 more hours of my time going through the motions and finishing the game off. I'm not going to feel bad about it in the slightest, and yes, I count it as a victory.

YMMV

Wodan

[wodan11]

Originally posted by The Priest
I'm with Wodan (as i seem to be on many things ... worrying ...).

Ha. Sometimes I think I'm bipolar. Most days you get the calm logical me. Some days something just sets me off, I suppose. Guess I'm getting old and crochety.

If you are heading for one of the peaceful victories (space, cultural etc.) then I can see that it is far more difficult to be sure you are going to win.

Really? If going for cultural/dip/space, seems to me it's a lot easier to tell if the AIs are going to give me a run for it. It's pretty easy, after all, to see which AIs are top on the power graph, and which are vassalizing people or expanding etc.

Wodan

[The Priest]

Really? If going for cultural/dip/space, seems to me it's a lot easier to tell if the AIs are going to give me a run for it. It's pretty easy, after all, to see which AIs are top on the power graph, and which are vassalizing people or expanding etc.

You are right, I didn't mean quite what i said.

Yes, you will be able to see who might be a threat to you, but it wouldn't necessarily be obvious that you could do something about it. Or at least, trying to do something about it may well be fun. Its when you are well down the road to domination that it becomes so obvious that even if anyone does have the possibility of challenging you, you can just crush them. That is when its boring for me.

[wodan11]

Originally posted by The Priest


You are right, I didn't mean quite what i said.

Yes, you will be able to see who might be a threat to you, but it wouldn't necessarily be obvious that you could do something about it. Or at least, trying to do something about it may well be fun. Its when you are well down the road to domination that it becomes so obvious that even if anyone does have the possibility of challenging you, you can just crush them. That is when its boring for me.

Gotcha. You've got an excellent point. I definitely agree... it's a lot easier to go ahead and finish off a cultural victory than a domination victory. The former is probably just another half hour, while the latter can easily be 4-5 hours, depending on map size of course.

Wodan

[Willem]

Originally posted by wodan11

Score in CIV is poorly done. It doesn't compare very well between victory types.

I agree, but I'd still like to have a Victory registered in my Hall of Fame rather than a defeat. If it looks like I'll have a good chance of winning the game, I'll stick it out and play it through. If it looks like I don't stand a chance though, I'll either exit to the Main Menu and start a new one or just simply exit to Desktop and be done with it.

[wodan11]

I bet you have conniptions if you have to reinstall and lose all your HoF entries.

Wodan

[Willem]

Originally posted by wodan11
I bet you have conniptions if you have to reinstall and lose all your HoF entries.

Wodan

No, not really. I could easily save my HoF if I wanted to but I don't bother with that.

[couerdelion]

These days I am more likely to play a game through to the end but if it is too boring I will tend to start another. Continually churning out units is not very interesting and neither is just waiting looking after an empire while you are waiting 100+ turns for cities to acquire legendary status.

But I can still “claim” a win if I know, absolutely, that nothing will happen to change that. All my remaining turns will be spent turning some 99% probability into a 99.9999% which can hardly.

Another thing I might check is to check the relative values of gold, production, power etc. If I have of these than the combined total of my rivals, I’ll consider the game as being mine.

[Blaupanzer]

Originally posted by Willem
No, not really. I could easily save my HoF if I wanted to but I don't bother with that.

If the HOF is not that important to you, then why does the entry "loss" bother you all that much when you'd spend four or five hours more to make it a "win?" Personally, I don't show my HOF to anyone else and I know which "losses" were really quits.

I'd rather spend those hours playing another game than racing across the map crushing city after city (on a large, low-sea-level map) or hitting the button over and over while my space ship fills out or my culture fills in. In all cases, this is true only if no AI has a chance remaining. I often play competitively into the modern era as I don't exploit the AI on the early turns.