Suggestions for more Victory Condition Options

[eddieballgame]

The depth of this brilliant 4X game is well documented.
I submit that it lacks in one area...the Victory Conditions.
I would really like to see many more options besides the 'pop & territory %' totals.

I know the game is still in its' infancy, but for any great pc game...the future is now.
So, who is with me to petition 'Vic' to add more options in the future.
Suggestions & thoughts?

[mroyer]

I agree Ed. I actually have thought the game would lend it self perfectly to an entirely different concept of victory - not one of adversarial win/lose as we've become accustom to in games, but one of success level.

Consider:
Each player would be given, or perhaps even allowed to choose, one national objective from a list. How well a player is doing relative to that objective would then be judged by the game. Judgment could be numerical or categorical: highly successful, successful, marginal, unsuccessful, abject failure.

National objectives could be all sorts of things - the only limit is imagination:

Maximize global territory/population (basically the objective in the game currently)
Capture most resources of a particular type (metal, water, ...).
Capture most hex perks
Exterminate a certain culture (slavers, raiders, hunters, ...)
Maximize civilization level
Maximize technology level
Maximize international relationships with other nations
Maximize recovery of ancient artifacts
Maximize population/worker happiness
Minimize the military-to-population ratio
Maximize treasury cash
Dominate global trade
... just to toss out a few off-the-cuff ideas ...

Players would not know each other's objectives (at least not without some sort of espionage effort).
That would make for very interesting games being much more difficult to predict what other players will do.
Multiple players could be successful or highly successful, or every one could fail. Victory would the one who had most success or failed least badly [;)]

-Mark R.

[zgrssd]

ORIGINAL: mroyer

I agree Ed. I actually have thought the game would lend it self perfectly to an entirely different concept of victory - not one of adversarial win/lose as we've become accustom to in games, but one of success level.

Consider:
Each player would be given, or perhaps even allowed to choose, one national objective from a list. How well a player is doing relative to that objective would then be judged by the game. Judgment could be numerical or categorical: highly successful, successful, marginal, unsuccessful, abject failure.

National objectives could be all sorts of things - the only limit is imagination:

Maximize global territory/population (basically the objective in the game currently)
Capture most resources of a particular type (metal, water, ...).
Capture most hex perks
Exterminate a certain culture (slavers, raiders, hunters, ...)
Maximize civilization level
Maximize technology level
Maximize international relationships with other nations
Maximize recovery of ancient artifacts
Maximize population/worker happiness
Minimize the military-to-population ratio
Maximize treasury cash
Dominate global trade
... just to toss out a few off-the-cuff ideas ...

Players would not know each other's objectives (at least not without some sort of espionage effort).
That would make for very interesting games being much more difficult to predict what other players will do.
Multiple players could be successful or highly successful, or every one could fail. Victory would the one who had most success or failed least badly [;)]

-Mark R.

I do not see the AI being able to do any of those. So it would be a player-only thing.
Wich is fitting given how much difference there already is beween AI and Human players.

[KarisFraMauro]

Similar to changing victory conditions would be different scenarios. Of course making something like that would probably be pretty substantial so I'm not insistent. It would be fun though. Say you have a finite amount of turns to try and achieve a specific goal, or maybe just survive against a massive wave of aliens, lots of possibilities like mroyer lays out.

[beyondwudge]

It would probably fit well with a story themed expansion to the game's premise. Right now, it literally has "Planetary Conquest" appended to the name in the opening menu. The game could have more victory conditions if it was also about... launching a spaceship to colonize/escape to a new world or about researching and implementing a solution to the world's imminent death (like the atmosphere slowly bleeding off like what people speculate happened with Mars) or re-establishing the old galactic communications technology using old pieces strewn across the planet so as to see if anyone else had survived / overcome the dissolution too, thus joining the new Galactic Republic etc etc.

These sort of things could serve well to give a way to win by diplomacy, research or archaeology / items which don't feel arbitrary. In Civilization, a culture victory was a bit too abstract to really satisfy me.

[eddieballgame]

@mroyer...excellent suggestions.

[Daza99]

+1 for all these ideas which would fit with other suggestions on the forums like more diplomatic options etc being able to pass through allied territories etc. I hope such content comes before the Naval DLC that is coming in the future, but i guess that is up to Vic.

Having different victory conditions could open up community challenges as well, i have been playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup lately and although it is strictly single player they have a server for leader boards and weekly challenges. And i may have suggest this before, but it would be fun to have a monthly challenge where someone chooses a scenario type (if the ideas in this thread was implemented) and roll a good challenging planet and save the first turn and everyone who wants to give it a go downloads it and attempts to be the first to complete the scenario. Perhaps Vic could also introduce an option for smaller planets of the same choices we have now. I believe the moon ones are the smallest, but what if there was a Siwa planet the same size as the moon for those who want shorter games and would fit scenarios as well. There could be a button on the pick a planet screen to switch to the same variety but all moon size.

[Bleek]

Excellent suggestions.

This reminds me of 'achievements' in Europa Universalis 4.

Instead of playing, until the end, you can play towards a goal - the specific achievement. https://eu4.paradoxwikis.com/Achievements

I think this would work really well. Especially as you can track these achievements (goals) on Steam too. Optional, of course, but a nice touch.

[KarisFraMauro]

I didn't get the game through steam but achievement stuff would be cool too. Ages ago I played a browser game called Glitch that had community achievements which made things a lot more enjoyable. Prior to this Stone Soup Dungeon Crawl was probably the most complicated game I played, loads of fun there.

[mroyer]

KarisFraMauro, what is a "community achievement"?
-Mark R.

[DasTactic]

I think having different victory targets or options would be ideal. At the moment the blanket 50% with 25% more works well for small moons but takes a loooong time (well after you can't lose) on larger planets. It would also be cool to tie in some victory aspects to the profiles to give it more of a theme (not that the AI can manage that). Distant Worlds introduced a race-specific aspect that works incredibly well so maybe that could implemented so that the faction type (and initial profiles) gives some specific other criteria.

[KarisFraMauro]

By community acheivement I mean something like adding up how much of a thing all players do / collect, and if it passes a certain threshold then all players who contributed get the achievement. Now I think of it, it pops up in certain mobile games like Puzzle and Dragons from time to time. I believe Endless Space on steam had a community achievement at some point, although despite liking that game it ultimately proved too demanding for my clunky old laptop.

[eddieballgame]

ORIGINAL: DasTactic

I think having different victory targets or options would be ideal. At the moment the blanket 50% with 25% more works well for small moons but takes a loooong time (well after you can't lose) on larger planets. It would also be cool to tie in some victory aspects to the profiles to give it more of a theme (not that the AI can manage that). Distant Worlds introduced a race-specific aspect that works incredibly well so maybe that could implemented so that the faction type (and initial profiles) gives some specific other criteria.

I really like this idea.

[eddieballgame]

ORIGINAL: Daza99

+1 for all these ideas which would fit with other suggestions on the forums like more diplomatic options etc being able to pass through allied territories etc. I hope such content comes before the Naval DLC that is coming in the future, but i guess that is up to Vic.

Having different victory conditions could open up community challenges as well, i have been playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup lately and although it is strictly single player they have a server for leader boards and weekly challenges. And i may have suggest this before, but it would be fun to have a monthly challenge where someone chooses a scenario type (if the ideas in this thread was implemented) and roll a good challenging planet and save the first turn and everyone who wants to give it a go downloads it and attempts to be the first to complete the scenario. Perhaps Vic could also introduce an option for smaller planets of the same choices we have now. I believe the moon ones are the smallest, but what if there was a Siwa planet the same size as the moon for those who want shorter games and would fit scenarios as well. There could be a button on the pick a planet screen to switch to the same variety but all moon size.

Per 'community challenges'...this game lends itself nicely to a 'Game of the Month' type challenge.
The 'Civilization' community has been doing this for years.
I would recommend a small planet type for this one, though.[:)]

[KarisFraMauro]

Yeah I'll second challenges being limited to small planets. If it takes forever even with a fast computer to do turns on a big planet I can only imagine how bad it would be on mine!

I tried playing Civilization multiplayer on steam once. Once. Not gonna do that again, got one of those notorious Xbox 12-year olds as my opponent. I constantly play multiplayer with Order of Battle though, find it vastly superior to the single player stuff and I've never had a problem with trolls. Even did okay in a tournament, placed 7th out of 40.

[compactset]

My suggestion would be to add as alternative victory condition the elimination of all other major regimes. In the last game I played, on a Cerberus planet on regular size, me and the other 2 majors spawned next to each other. We basically focused each other without caring at all about the other minor states. At the end I completely eliminated my two rivals but my total populace was about 25% of the total and I controlled less than 1/3 of the planet, so I was not assigned the victory even if I was left alone with minor regimes which I could trivially wipe-out.

I mean, if minor regimes were intended as a possible threat after the mid-game it would still make sense not to concede the victory even if they are the only one left. But by design they cannot pose such a danger since they cannot develop tech and field advanced armies.

If you wanted to avoid the scenario were extremely aggressive minors wiped out the majors in your stead you could add some victory conditions and display the numbers in the Victory Overview tab as for the major regimes.