Review-in-Progress (Open Thread)

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Sirian

I'm not a fan of Soren's Civ3/Civ4 "AIs won't make peace for X turns" solution either, though. Sure, that stops same-turn exploits and ensures that players will have to expose themselves to some counterstrikes from the AI, some duration of war, but it precludes a truly limited kind of warfare where you (or an AI) attacks a single disputed planet/city and takes that, then offers peace. As in, "Hey, this was our territory anyway, and we've just staked our claim. If you agree, that's the end of our dispute."

It doesn't really preclude limited war, because you can just take the one city and then decline to prosecute the war further, until eventually they make peace. If declining to prosecute the war further means that it's hard for you to defend yourself, well, then it probably wasn't such a good idea for the opponent to make immediate peace.

Obviously (?) a more important rule is to prevent people from accepting concessions for peace and then immediately redeclaring war. There are various reasonable ways to do that.

[Sirian]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ

It doesn't really preclude limited war, because you can just take the one city and then decline to prosecute the war further, until eventually they make peace.

You're right. The human can behave that way. The AI doesn't have the concept infused, though, so you don't see that from their end. Nor do they have a practical streak that (in effect) simulates the notion of, "They took that away because I overreached. It would be in my interests not to hold a grudge over it." Nor can they simulate a blood hatred, where re-obtaining the lost territory becomes the top strategic priority. I think both options would be hard to design but make for worthy goals.

If declining to prosecute the war further means that it's hard for you to defend yourself, well, then it probably wasn't such a good idea for the opponent to make immediate peace.

I agree here, too. In the context of a game whose outcome is still being decided, it's important for the AI not to give too much away. On the other hand, a game that is strategically won should end as soon as possible.

Obviously (?) a more important rule is to prevent people from accepting concessions for peace and then immediately redeclaring war. There are various reasonable ways to do that.

Should there even be concessions for peace? There aren't many in Civ4. Civ3, and GC, have mechanisms where the more pain you inflict on an AI, the more concessions it offers to end the war. I found this to be too simplistic. The concept itself invites exploitation of multiple kinds, the less obvious ones being the more unbalanced. Wars should end when both sides find it no longer in their interests to continue fighting. AIs chained to the strict math of "more pain = more concessions" are actually adding to the other side's incentives to keep going, or to pause only briefly and then continue. AIs who won't give up concessions can't bribe peace, but really, they can't bribe peace under ANY circumstances from a player who is playing for military conquest. It's only a question of attempting appeasement of a foe who has no interest whatsoever in living in harmony with you.

You don't have to prevent exploitation of concessions if you take out the concessions. What are those concessions in there for, anyway? "Realism"? "Fun"? If it's really fun for AIs to dance at your command, then you've left the realm of also wanting a strategic challenge. Players cannot have all things in the same game. Designers have to make choices, preferably clear ones.


- Sirian

[drank]

But there's still a limited amount of territory and the one best strategy is to plop down a city anywhere you can as fast as you can, or in this case colonize a planet. GalCiv 2 has nothing, not a single thing to prevent this, making planet spam the one true strategy.

I agree. The only time I've really seen it play out differently is on crowded Tiny galaxies, where everybody pretty much gets just a single system. There, you can actually take quite a while to tech up and build your trade income before taking territory, because nobody is much bigger than you are.

But on larger galaxies, someone always wins the colony ship rush. And if it's not you, then you need to rapidly make plans to take some colonies from someone else.

[yin26]

Originally posted by DaviddesJ Choosing what you yourself would choose IRL is not role-playing, in my view. Role-playing is, "In this game, I'm the super-evil Human Menace, so I'm always going to make the evil decision." In a different game, you might role-play a good race. Role-playing absolutely does not mean that you have to play yourself.

I guess we differ on this one. For me, the fact that I'm ruling the human race and colonizing planets IS the role play.

[yin26]

I should add, too, that I will sometimes pick the "good" or "evil" choice if a) circumstances are really lax or really pressing --like I don't really need full production on yet one more planet or I could use a solidering bonus badly at that moment and b) the method isn't overly good or evil, like making my own people forego a decent life so an insect can call the shots or bashing baby seals on the head.

This is NOT to say that I see role-playing as _needing_ to be yourself in games. But, for me anyway, it's simply more interesting for me to try to make decisions in games the way I would in real life and see the results. As Solver has said, of course, in games like GalCiv this will often mean I'll miss opportunities to gain numerous bonuses. That's fine with me. I actually enjoy those moments in GalCiv when I say: "Wow, that evil bonus is HUGE! Man, I want to take it...but that's not the decision I would make if I were really the leader of the human race...then again, if we were on the ropes and about to lose in a close war..."

[yin26]

You don't have to prevent exploitation of concessions if you take out the concessions. What are those concessions in there for, anyway? "Realism"? "Fun"? If it's really fun for AIs to dance at your command, then you've left the realm of also wanting a strategic challenge. Players cannot have all things in the same game. Designers have to make choices, preferably clear ones.

Of course, concessions can play a helpful role in a quicker end game once the game is decided, as you say. If a lack of concessions just means more tedious mop up, that's not really progress. Of course, not giving concessions when you are losing a war badly doesn't by itself make a more challenging game for the human player unless that civ on the ropes is forming alliances and can, at the very least, make the human player chew up turns while fresh civs join the attack against you.

For me, the interplay between civs is so crucial yet seemingly so hard to program well. This is why, even though it makes only moderate sense, the fact that defeated civs often give their techs to a civ other than the one attacking them has appeal. Of course, if the civ chosen to receive the spoils is picked randomly rather than on the basis of "What civ is most likely to prosecute a successful war against this bastard human?" well, then, it's just the lottery.

By the way, Sirian, what do you think of using the very successful Civ approach to limiting expansion too quickly?

[Solver]

Drank: thanks a ton!

That's it, I guess I'm getting GalCiv2 ASAP. I am sure that I will at least somewhat enjoy it - I always enjoy a Civ-style game - and I am very eager to continue this debate with some actual insight on the game, not just abstract or Civ4 related comments.

Regarding concessions at peace... Yin, you have no idea how much I hated it first in Civ4. I would beat the crap out of an AI civ (happened a fair bit in the versions where the AI took the wrong defense approach) and wouldn't be able to get much for peace. I'd get some gold, but that's it. Then I whined about for it a while, but then it really started to make sense, thanks to comments from other people.

If you've beaten the tar out of an AI, huge concessions make no sense. You've already beaten that Civ, it's already weak as hell, and has no chance. It has "lost" the game - or, since there are no losers in Civ technically, you could say that it lost the chance of winning a game. Whatever, view it as you want. The point is that the damage is huge... why should they now pay you so much?

On the other hand, concessions make sense in a different scenario. If you're fighting an equal in power, manage to gain the upper hand and take a city, then concessions make sense. Because that civ is losing the war and is going to lose more cities if the war continues, however, you haven't still damaged it enough to kill its victory chances. Therefore, giving you a tech or a good sum of gold to stop the war is a good strategic decision.

Mop-up is sort of an inherent problem in Civ games. One attempt to reduce it is having a Domination victory as in Civ3/4, but I would say that it doesn't reduce the mop-up too significantly. It saves you the need to conquer the last city of the last civ, but you will still want to wipe your first, second, third and fourth enemy out completely. Because if you don't, you're just signing peace, that civ remains there with 1-3 cities, being useless to you. Yet, finishing that off is somewhat tedious and possibly damaging to your economy.

The solution (or a partial solution) to mop-up, I believe, lies in a surrender mechanism / vassal mode. SMAC did it pretty nicely. Once you've kicked the ass of some civ completely, they offer you a surrender. They give up all their gold and any techs you don't have, and they become allied to you for the rest of the game. I like it because, in SMAC, I would often happily let them surrender - it didn't put me farther away from victory, it put me closer. That civ would give me any subsequent techs it might discover, more importantly, I gained the ability to stack my troops with theirs and move into their cities. And allies counted for a Conquest victory - that is, if you wiped out everyone but your allies, you won Conquest. It worked like a charm.

Diplomacy, as Sirian puts it, is the overarching issue of single-player. And it's a very, very fragile mechanism. A diplomacy system, on a very basic level, should not be inherently unfair to everyone, should provide a means to change the flow of the game, and so on. Implementing those things is hard. Civ4 had a lot of success in the area, yet there's clearly a lot that could be improved further still.

[MikeH]

Originally posted by Kinjiru
Cancel your order Mike. DL directly from Stardock. You'll be playing in a couple hours!

I know this post was a long time ago but I haven't been back...

Stardock download is $44.99 which is £25.73

But I got the special edition tin box one from Amazon.co.uk for £17.99 inc. delivery ($31) and that gets me the cds, manual and tech tree poster.

Still haven't played it yet though. Going to give it a real go at the weekend when I have some time.

[yin26]

Solver:

Do you feel that GalCiv should adopt that model, even if it prolongs the end game "needlessly"? In Civ, do those lack of concessions make for a more meaningful strategy experience, or does it just stretch out the slog? As you noted, diplomacy here seems key. What do you think of GalCiv's approach of having the beaten civ giving concessions to the OTHER guy? That, to me, is a huge difference that can play well.

[yin26]

MikeH: Excellent! Looking forward to your feedback on the game.

[MikeH]

Well, finally finished reading the rest of the thread. Great stuff even though I have absolutely no idea what most of it means.

My comments are likely to be along the lines of - like/don't like/too hard but I'll try.

[Solver]

Originally posted by yin26
Solver:

Do you feel that GalCiv should adopt that model, even if it prolongs the end game "needlessly"? In Civ, do those lack of concessions make for a more meaningful strategy experience, or does it just stretch out the slog? As you noted, diplomacy here seems key. What do you think of GalCiv's approach of having the beaten civ giving concessions to the OTHER guy? That, to me, is a huge difference that can play well.

I can't intelligently comment on GalCiv without having played it. Out of context, giving concessions to another guy doesn't make too much sense, but I need to see it ingame.

In Civ4, I think lack of concessions does make for a more meaningful game, yes, but in a way of actually prohibiting a strategy - the strategy of beating someone up a bit to get techs. One of the core elements of Civ4 (and that sets it apart from previous games) is that war has quite severe economic drawbacks. In previous games, it was easy to gain tech through war - take 2 cities, get tech for peace, repeat. But ideally, there should be a surrender mechanism.

Generally, at which point in GalCiv2 do you feel the civs are willing to pay? Is it when they are already beaten beyond possible recovery, or is it when they are just starting to lose?

[yin26]

Some interesting comparisons: I don't really think much about the economic repurcussions of war in GalCiv2 *unless* I'm losing my trade routes or losing population (tax base). If you are doing well in GalCiv, you're doing REALLY well. That's my experience so far. Maybe there needs to be a higher cost to waging war in GalCiv? There is the logistics limits for individual fleets but not for the entire fleet, for example. Hmm, I need more experience with the game to say.

I'd say civs give concessions only when they are clearly about to lose. In fact, I've gotten concessions from a civ that would have lost to me...were I not being triple teamed! That is a weakness I pointed out earlier.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by Sirian

Should there even be concessions for peace? There aren't many in Civ4. Civ3, and GC, have mechanisms where the more pain you inflict on an AI, the more concessions it offers to end the war.

It seems reasonable to me for the AI to be willing to give up some things, like technologies, in exchange for an (enforceable, not just fake) end to fighting. I could see them agreeing to pay you tribute of x gpt; this is less abusable because if you redeclare on them, you lose the tribute. Etc. I agree that giving up worlds for peace seems wrong (both from a simulation and a game point of view).

Of course, if everything can be traded for everything, as you say Brad prefers, then such distinctions probably won't appeal to him.

[DaviddesJ]

Originally posted by yin26

I guess we differ on this one. For me, the fact that I'm ruling the human race and colonizing planets IS the role play.

You're using the wrong words, then. "Role playing" means something else. E.g., from Wikipedia:

"In role-playing, participants adopt characters, or parts, that have personalities, motivations, and backgrounds different from their own. Role-playing is like being in an improvisational drama or free-form theatre, in which the participants are the actors who are playing parts."