Distant Worlds is Way Way Way Too Easy

[BoredGamer78]

Nothing at all stops you, Joram. I'd colonize enemy systems whenever I had the chance just to turn around and sell them - the AI doesn't colonize very quickly, after all.

Erik, I'm playing version 1.04. Victory conditions are default - 33% of worlds owned, economy, or tech maybe? The victory condition could be 100% domination and the only thing that would change is time required to win.

I want to like the game. Is there a plan to make the enemy actually attack you at some point? I've seen the "AI raids but never attacks" concern on quite a few forums, to include a dated (lengthy) 3rd party audio commentary. Tech brokering and AIs never attacking are game breaking, ya know? AIs absolutely have to fight back or you're playing Harvest Moon.

[Erik Rutins]

ORIGINAL: BoredGamer78
Erik, I'm playing version 1.04. Victory conditions are default - 33% of worlds owned, economy, or tech maybe? The victory condition could be 100% domination and the only thing that would change is time required to win.

Ok, give 1.0.4.9 a try and change the conditions to 50% kicking in after 20 years. That should help as 1.0.4.9 does make the AI a bit smarter, not just extend things. Make sure you set aggressiveness to Unstable or Chaos.

I want to like the game. Is there a plan to make the enemy actually attack you at some point? I've seen the "AI raids but never attacks" concern on quite a few forums, to include a dated (lengthy) 3rd party audio commentary. Tech brokering and AIs never attacking are game breaking, ya know? AIs absolutely have to fight back or you're playing Harvest Moon.

I'm not sure what to say here except that the AIs are attacking in my tests and not just raiding, but I'm sure that with the variety of playstyles and settings available, there are also situations where they are not attacking at all. The aggressiveness of the AI race/government combo also plays a big role here. In my last test game, the first AI that went to war with me took three of my systems almost immediately with a big fleet complete with fully loaded troop transports and proceeded to severely damage two other systems. It chewed up two of my three fleets trying to slow it down and took my third fleet to finally defeat its primary fleet and give me some breathing room.

With that said, yes we are going to be working further on the AI but I think that the current AI experience does vary quite a bit based on settings and playstyle.

Regards,

- Erik

[taltamir]

Personally, I don't use victory conditions. I can tell when I won/lost.

The biggest problem that the AI has right now, I think, is that it doesn't colonize enough.
The AI does do a brisk amount of trading to each other... If you discover some nice derelict ships or a really nice world and trade your maps to one other empire you would find colonizers and construction ships pouring in, from all races. in minutes... Likewise, technology spreads all around... you suddenly notice that half the AIs have death-rays from trading it to each other.

Colonization is a big weak point for the AI, which is a huge advantage because colony ships also create colonists out of thin air when constructed.

In regards to setting the agression status, I found little difference between peaceful and chaos. peaceful they are unlike to attack you, but they are also not embroiled in other wars, so they can dedicate more of their fleet to you, and they might even actually have allies. chaos they AI are all at war with everyone... they have less money (no trade agreement), no friends to come helping, and they are too busy fighting each other to send their fleets to attack you more often then not.
Oddly enough it balances out...

the places where difficulty REALLY comes in are:
1. your home planet quality (harsh means you start out losing money on private and state... your economy is in total collapse and you need to act fast or you are screwed... even if you do everything right AND get lucky (you need some luck) you would take a while to get up to speed, at which point the AI has expanded quite a lot.
2. galactic society expansion level (not the actual name... I don't really remember what its called), set the tech level of colony amount of other races... set it high enough and they start with massive empires.
3. your empire size, 1 planet, or a thriving empire?
4. your empire starting tech level.
5. tech research rate (if it is set to very low and the AI started with high tech level and you started with low... you are handicapped)

You can, however, abuse the heck out of trade...

oh, and the AI prefers lasers on its designs, which are much weaker. But v1.05 would rebalance weapons.

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: taltamir

Personally, I don't use victory conditions. I can tell when I won/lost.

The biggest problem that the AI has right now, I think, is that it doesn't colonize enough.
The AI does do a brisk amount of trading to each other... If you discover some nice derelict ships or a really nice world and trade your maps to one other empire you would find colonizers and construction ships pouring in, from all races. in minutes... Likewise, technology spreads all around... you suddenly notice that half the AIs have death-rays from trading it to each other.

Colonization is a big weak point for the AI, which is a huge advantage because colony ships also create colonists out of thin air when constructed.

In regards to setting the agression status, I found little difference between peaceful and chaos. peaceful they are unlike to attack you, but they are also not embroiled in other wars, so they can dedicate more of their fleet to you, and they might even actually have allies. chaos they AI are all at war with everyone... they have less money (no trade agreement), no friends to come helping, and they are too busy fighting each other to send their fleets to attack you more often then not.
Oddly enough it balances out...

the places where difficulty REALLY comes in are:
1. your home planet quality (harsh means you start out losing money on private and state... your economy is in total collapse and you need to act fast or you are screwed... even if you do everything right AND get lucky (you need some luck) you would take a while to get up to speed, at which point the AI has expanded quite a lot.
2. galactic society expansion level (not the actual name... I don't really remember what its called), set the tech level of colony amount of other races... set it high enough and they start with massive empires.
3. your empire size, 1 planet, or a thriving empire?
4. your empire starting tech level.
5. tech research rate (if it is set to very low and the AI started with high tech level and you started with low... you are handicapped)

You can, however, abuse the heck out of trade...

oh, and the AI prefers lasers on its designs, which are much weaker. But v1.05 would rebalance weapons.

Agree, generally when the AI has completely over-run my empire and all my planets are gone, I can say with some certainty that I have lost. [;)]

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: taltamir

Personally, I don't use victory conditions. I can tell when I won/lost.

The biggest problem that the AI has right now, I think, is that it doesn't colonize enough.
The AI does do a brisk amount of trading to each other... If you discover some nice derelict ships or a really nice world and trade your maps to one other empire you would find colonizers and construction ships pouring in, from all races. in minutes... Likewise, technology spreads all around... you suddenly notice that half the AIs have death-rays from trading it to each other.

Colonization is a big weak point for the AI, which is a huge advantage because colony ships also create colonists out of thin air when constructed.

In regards to setting the agression status, I found little difference between peaceful and chaos. peaceful they are unlike to attack you, but they are also not embroiled in other wars, so they can dedicate more of their fleet to you, and they might even actually have allies. chaos they AI are all at war with everyone... they have less money (no trade agreement), no friends to come helping, and they are too busy fighting each other to send their fleets to attack you more often then not.
Oddly enough it balances out...

the places where difficulty REALLY comes in are:
1. your home planet quality (harsh means you start out losing money on private and state... your economy is in total collapse and you need to act fast or you are screwed... even if you do everything right AND get lucky (you need some luck) you would take a while to get up to speed, at which point the AI has expanded quite a lot.
2. galactic society expansion level (not the actual name... I don't really remember what its called), set the tech level of colony amount of other races... set it high enough and they start with massive empires.
3. your empire size, 1 planet, or a thriving empire?
4. your empire starting tech level.
5. tech research rate (if it is set to very low and the AI started with high tech level and you started with low... you are handicapped)

You can, however, abuse the heck out of trade...

oh, and the AI prefers lasers on its designs, which are much weaker. But v1.05 would rebalance weapons.

Agree, generally when the AI has completely over-run my empire and all my planets are gone, I can say with some certainty that I have lost. [;)]

And if the AI has 30% of the galaxy while I only have 1%... well that doesn't mean I lost, it means I have a challange!
In some of those games I "lose" as soon as the game starts, or as soon as the the prerequisite amount of time passes... I still end up winning (read, conquer EVERYTHING and EVERYONE).
It is certainly different to have to actually subjugate to another empire to avoid death...

Actually, that is a point where its too easy... its too easy to become subjugated to avoid destruction. You piss off the 800lbs gorilla, it brings armada to your home planet... invasion is imminent!.
welp, time to subjugate myself to him... they have no interest in accepting that, they should instead conquer me.

[BoredGamer78]

Seriously? They've invaded you? Are they scared to death to attack me when my fleet's twice as big as theirs? Should that really matter when I'm attacking 7 of them? I played through again and didn't see troop transport 1. Do you have to try to lose?

At the very least, can you address tech brokering? That's a Civilization 1 lesson.

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: BoredGamer78

Seriously? They've invaded you? Are they scared to death to attack me when my fleet's twice as big as theirs? Should that really matter when I'm attacking 7 of them? I played through again and didn't see troop transport 1. Do you have to try to lose?

At the very least, can you address tech brokering? That's a Civilization 1 lesson.

I am talking about max difficulty here... where I start the game with 1 desert planet, losing thousands on private and state, and the bulk of the galaxy has already been settled, they have massive fleets, and high tech...
when you have 1 or 2 planets and you get into a war with a 50 planet empire and then send a 30 ship fleet to your home planet and blow up your space port your options are slim.

As for tech brokering. It is indeed an issue... ALL brokering is.
the best way to address it I have seen is charge each race a cost to transfer the tech...
so if you give a tech worth 100,000 to another race, it costs you 50k to "get them up to speed"; that money doesn't go to the other player, it is destroyed... they then have to somehow make it worth your while... if they offer their own tech, then they also pay a sizable chunk.

[Erik Rutins]

Regarding AI colonization, we are looking at that and improvements for how the AI colonizes should be on the menu for 1.0.5 with any luck. I think the improvements we made with 1.0.4.9 already help it but we are aiming to revisit each area, with further work on diplomacy being a big one in terms of AI effectiveness. The initial focus is on the areas that also impact player automation. We will also have another look at how the AI evaluates attack targets. Note that the AI is now less likely to go to war with a superior empire than it was previous to 1.0.4, but we do want to make it smarter about winning a war once it's in it.

[Bartje]

I really like that idea on "bringing them up too speed" Taltamir!


Its very plausible and would certainly make the brokering slower and more strategic.


One suggestion here is that the cost of "educating" another empire to use the traded tech should depend on the tech level they have themselves as well as the tech you are giving them.

That way; trading an outdated tech to a backwards empire is still rather cheap but giving them deathrays or uber-torpedoes becomes an expensive proposition!

[Keston]

ORIGINAL: taltamir

As for tech brokering. It is indeed an issue... ALL brokering is.
the best way to address it I have seen is charge each race a cost to transfer the tech...
so if you give a tech worth 100,000 to another race, it costs you 50k to "get them up to speed"; that money doesn't go to the other player, it is destroyed... they then have to somehow make it worth your while... if they offer their own tech, then they also pay a sizable chunk.

Yes, tech transfer cost is a good idea - it should be more or less depending on how backward they are in that tech line.

It costs both giver and receiver to tech up the receiver.

[thiosk]

I still hold that colonization is way too fast and mineral demand is way too low. Thats why unrelenting expansion is so effective; we build colony ships much longer than the AI. I do NOT think that the AI colony-spamming is the answer-- I think it would be a major negative if they did.

One should be unable to colony spam; you should need the research/trading/industrial/mining/agricultural base to support expansion, and 10 pop colonies should be a net drain on all of those resources.

Since everyone throws out civ4 examples, if you over-expand in civ4, you bankrupt yourself. Despite fantastic resources, build those three extra cities before discovering currency and you will crash your economy.

It is a purely artificial limitation, but in DW, you are generating X amount of many different strategic resources. You should actually NEED large amounts of these resources to fund expansion, lest your colonies resort to cannibalism or descend to a feudal tribe.

[Fishman]

That's what the luxury resources used to do: Previously, spamming colonies without the resources to support them just got you 0 dev colonies that produce nothing. It is debatable whether tying to pop has improved or worsened it. On one hand, colonies now gain development even in the absence of resources, but on the other hand, the growth of colonies is now restricted by pop, and more resources are not enough.

[Astax]

Sorry to nitpick thiosk but that civ4 reference is no longer true Many an hour have I spent playing civ4, and I got to a level where I learned to use various tricks to overexpand and not bankrupt myself. The limiting factor to civ4 is and remains land. The more land you have, the more power you have. And as such there is nothing more important than getting more land than your opponents. 

But do forgive me for going off-topic guys. Please continue, we need to find a cure for this disease

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: Keston

ORIGINAL: taltamir

As for tech brokering. It is indeed an issue... ALL brokering is.
the best way to address it I have seen is charge each race a cost to transfer the tech...
so if you give a tech worth 100,000 to another race, it costs you 50k to "get them up to speed"; that money doesn't go to the other player, it is destroyed... they then have to somehow make it worth your while... if they offer their own tech, then they also pay a sizable chunk.

Yes, tech transfer cost is a good idea - it should be more or less depending on how backward they are in that tech line.

It costs both giver and receiver to tech up the receiver.

Fair enough idea... both the giver and receiver must pay a certain amount of money into the private sector to "tech up".

ORIGINAL: Bartje
That way; trading an outdated tech to a backwards empire is still rather cheap but giving them deathrays or uber-torpedoes becomes an expensive proposition!

Actually, that is another issue. you CAN'T trade an outdated tech, only the latest model that you have of a tech can be sold. I think that is a problem, especially for the AI. Lets say you or AI have tech 1 shields, and you are talking to someone with tech 10... they can sell you tech 10 (which includes tech 2 through 9).. they cannot sell you tech 3, 4, 5, etc.
the solution is to first go to someone with tech 5, but it from him... now its cheaper to buy tech 10 from first race. (because the COST to buy tech 10 is the sum of the cost of tech 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10)

[taltamir]

ORIGINAL: thiosk

I still hold that colonization is way too fast and mineral demand is way too low. Thats why unrelenting expansion is so effective; we build colony ships much longer than the AI. I do NOT think that the AI colony-spamming is the answer-- I think it would be a major negative if they did.

One should be unable to colony spam; you should need the research/trading/industrial/mining/agricultural base to support expansion, and 10 pop colonies should be a net drain on all of those resources.

Since everyone throws out civ4 examples, if you over-expand in civ4, you bankrupt yourself. Despite fantastic resources, build those three extra cities before discovering currency and you will crash your economy.

It is a purely artificial limitation, but in DW, you are generating X amount of many different strategic resources. You should actually NEED large amounts of these resources to fund expansion, lest your colonies resort to cannibalism or descend to a feudal tribe.

none of these changed are needed.
the reason colony spam is so effective is because colony ships create their colonists out of thin air. if they took them from the home planet you would end up decreasing population from your well developed worlds to bring it over to the under developed worlds... this is a problem because tax income is population TIMES development... this means moving population from a developed planet to an undeveloped planets decreases your income.
On the other hand, creating new population out of thin air to send to the new planet is nothing but a net gain...

there should be SOME aspect of colony rushing... its fun to have a good colony rush... just have it at a much smaller scope then it is right now... which taking population off of a planet before colonization would take care of.

[Fishman]

ORIGINAL: taltamir

the solution is to first go to someone with tech 5, but it from him... now its cheaper to buy tech 10 from first race. (because the COST to buy tech 10 is the sum of the cost of tech 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10)

But if this strict sum system is true, then ultimately you pay the same, except now you've paid race X the sum of costs 2-5, and race Y the sum of 6-10. It seems more to me that your goal has now become the avoidance of enriching one particular race too much, rather than how much you pay. That, and making sure race X has some money to pay you back with when you then immediately turn around and sell him tech 10.

In any case, as for the colony thing, the real issue is not that colonies can be spammed, but that colonies are essentially permanent: When a planet is colonized, it STAYS colonized for the rest of the game, because there is no practical way to UNCOLONIZE something. MOO2, for instance, I don't recall charging you for colony ship population either, so it was entirely possible to spam colonies there, too. But colonies weren't permanent fixtures: A spammed colony easily quickly became a noncolony. In DW, a planet that is colonized stays colonized forever.

[Yarasala]

I like the idea that not only the highest tech can be traded but all lower techs as well. Would it be so difficult to just list them together with all current techs the empires trading which each other don't have yet?

I have another idea which I fear is much harder to implement but which models "real life" behaviour much better in my opinion: make it possible to trade *components* instead of the tech itself! How would it be to approach another empire and ask them: "Please give me 10 death ray cannons in exchange for x"? Those cannons would then have to be produced by the giving empire and actually shipped to the receiver's next starbase (and are prone to pirate attacks and whatever on the way ...).
The receiver could then use those components to build ships or bases, or he/she could decide to disassemble one or more of them to boost his/her own knowledge of that tech a bit (but not too much; I think, the more advanced the tech is the smaller the gain should be. Imagine you give a tank to a tribe of barbarians running around with bow and arrows, what could they do with it?).

What do you think?

[Shark7]

ORIGINAL: Yarasala

I like the idea that not only the highest tech can be traded but all lower techs as well. Would it be so difficult to just list them together with all current techs the empires trading which each other don't have yet?

I have another idea which I fear is much harder to implement but which models "real life" behaviour much better in my opinion: make it possible to trade *components* instead of the tech itself! How would it be to approach another empire and ask them: "Please give me 10 death ray cannons in exchange for x"? Those cannons would then have to be produced by the giving empire and actually shipped to the receiver's next starbase (and are prone to pirate attacks and whatever on the way ...).
The receiver could then use those components to build ships or bases, or he/she could decide to disassemble one or more of them to boost his/her own knowledge of that tech a bit (but not too much; I think, the more advanced the tech is the smaller the gain should be. Imagine you give a tank to a tribe of barbarians running around with bow and arrows, what could they do with it?).

What do you think?

Then we can do like China and reverse engineer it.

The problem with that is that currently DW does not track individual componant production. What you are suggesting adds and entire new layer to the game...logistics.

[Bartje]

It wuold be very neat if planets could have an inventory that affects their production levels, population support as well as development level and perhaps defense.
 
 
This could even be extrapolated into the abilty to use planetary shipyards instead of space based ?
 
Infrastructure for population cap raising
 
Labs for research
 
Ground based missiles
 
Ground based fighters
 
Factories
 
etc..
 
 
private sector freighters could then ferry buildings as well as components & resources to other locations and act as a supply & demand system.
 
 
 
neaaaaaaat.
 
[:D]

[Yarasala]

ORIGINAL: Shark7

ORIGINAL: Yarasala

I like the idea that not only the highest tech can be traded but all lower techs as well. Would it be so difficult to just list them together with all current techs the empires trading which each other don't have yet?

I have another idea which I fear is much harder to implement but which models "real life" behaviour much better in my opinion: make it possible to trade *components* instead of the tech itself! How would it be to approach another empire and ask them: "Please give me 10 death ray cannons in exchange for x"? Those cannons would then have to be produced by the giving empire and actually shipped to the receiver's next starbase (and are prone to pirate attacks and whatever on the way ...).
The receiver could then use those components to build ships or bases, or he/she could decide to disassemble one or more of them to boost his/her own knowledge of that tech a bit (but not too much; I think, the more advanced the tech is the smaller the gain should be. Imagine you give a tank to a tribe of barbarians running around with bow and arrows, what could they do with it?).

What do you think?

Then we can do like China and reverse engineer it.

The problem with that is that currently DW does not track individual componant production. What you are suggesting adds and entire new layer to the game...logistics.

What would not be the worst of things ... [;)]

I agree that it might be too complicated to implement, but I never know if I don't ask [;)]

But what brought me to that idea in the first place: The game already keeps track of resources *and* components (cargo of constructors and other building sites, probably resources in mining ships as well, although we cannot see that directly). So there might be a possiblilty that my idea is not so hard to implement as it first looks. We need the developer to answer this one.