By order of the TEC, Advent, and Vasari ambassadors, we've been asked politely to open a dialog to the Pirates about their recent strength and incursions.
They, quite undiplomatically, told us what we could do with our demands.
Obviously, such disregard for the peace of the local cluster can't be allowed, so a task force has been formed to extend a more reasonable diplomatic effort to the Pirates. One which our Vasari colleague called, "Forceful" and "Prudent."
The task forc...err, peace envoys, are due to arrive next week to creatively express our feelings to the Pirates. Rest assured, a diplomatic solution is forthcoming.
Sorry, I meant an Anti-Pirate Tech tree for the three main factions; not for the Pirates.
*Chuckle* I know the post long.
I have played as all three factions; however, my favorite is the TEC (as you might have noticed). I am quite familiar with the ships, and am simply recommending more variety. I understand the memory ramifications and am merely throwing out some ideas. I believe that if some of the elements of the Galactic Civilizations series were incorporated, that it might provide a more diverse game play experience.
*Chuckle* the elimination ship would be problematic, but would offer a multiplayer game some spice. There would be added incentive to prevent a three person/three faction power bloc from arising…
The Dunov is mediocre; it never performs exactly the way that I plan. In a huge fight, I don’t typically have time to babysit it. I usually go with the other four ships; especially the Kol and the Sova. They’re pretty sweet and make a good combo. The Akkan and the Marza also make good combos; the Dunov is a fifth wheel. I would like to see it modified heavily, and at least a sixth capital ship thrown into the game; one that would complement the Dunov like the Akkan and Marza do each other……
Of course, I never tire of amassing a large fleet and watching it pummel my opposition; it’s cool. To me, more ships, bigger guns, flashier explosions, and more impressive game play is the way to go. I’ve got to say though; I doubt my computer could handle everything! However, if you think about it, in two years this game will be old news and the computers will greatly outperform the ones we have now. I don’t mind sacrificing some playability now, for some mind-boggling game play later.
As it stands, Sins is still hard to beat; even without the suggestions I (and others) have made.
You my good sir need a lesson in the power of the Dunov.
Considering the fact that the game is already three years old (well the expansions gave it new life) it already is old news. Its just good overall news.
I'd put Dunov in the same general class as the Antorak, Vulkoras, Revelation, Rapture, and Radiance. Very effective if used right, but its role is fairly narrow and it's not much in a straight fight. Certainly not a top-pick for capital ship, but situationally or later on it can work quite well.
@Darvin3
Thank you! You said it much more succinctly than I did. The Dunov is effective if used correctly, but has a narrow fighting role that is primarily limited to support. I prefer stand-up, knock-down, drag-out, no-holds-barred space battles when I make my invasions. I typically employ huge fleets with overwhelming firepower to sweep my opponents away. During matches that are hotly contested, I don't really want to manage too many ships. The Dunov is one of those that needs a bit of guidance occasionally, and I don't like taking the time to give it the needed attention. That's why I prefer the Kol, Marza, and Akkan for my main-line slugfests. I usually use the Dunov in more low-key roles against lightly defended positions...
Ryat made a good point too; I forgot that it's already been out for several years. The game play is so engaging that it still feels new to me. My campaigns are nearly always unique; replay value is definitely high for Sins!
Oooooooooh. Yeah, that makes much more sense.
Well, more ships/capital ships aren't going to appear in a patch. That stuff costs mucho bucks to make. Besides, pirates having capital ships or even shields is against Sins' canon.
I don't think there needs to be specific anti-pirate ships, just better implementation. Right now they are grossly overpowered (in one of my tests this weekend, 53 fleet points of Pirate ships took out 150 fleet points of upgraded Vasari ships ). The pirates' hidden tech tree will be getting overhauled from top to bottom to be more balanced and unique. Instead of just ramping up a ridiculous power curve, they'll get actual abilities as the game progresses. So in the early game, they'll be more like original Sins, whereas by the mid-game they're a threat and in the late-game they're a force to use effectively against others.
I very much doubt that any new stuff will appear in a patch, patches are for bugs and tweaks. A tweak might be something you could modify yourself. I spent a couple of days on a pirate mod to familiarise myself with what was possible in the game.
As an example of a simple tweak, these are the original values that determine the strength of a pirate raid:
strengthPerOwnedPlanet .10 strengthPerCargoShip .0025 strengthPerBounty .00003
I wanted to up the sensitivity to trade and bounty at the expense of mere planet ownership, as otherwise I felt that there was a tendency to further punish poor starting positions:
strengthPerOwnedPlanet .05 strengthPerCargoShip .006 strengthPerBounty .0001
I was going to make another mod for the relations, but as with the pirates I got the feeling that something more than a tweak was required to make the system halfway serviceable. The problem with the second expansion is that instead of replacing the poor features of the original, it compounds them with extra, awful, elements that weren't there before. Instead of a revision of the pirate bid system it is added to with a pirate mission system.. instead of a revision of the relations system you simply have a tech tree and pacts placed on top of it. Also, key features like cargo ships and the game's evaluation of the proximity of empires don't appear to work properly. To have a proper implementation of pirates the game would have to make trade income dependent on cargo ships rather than on trade ports. And any diplomatic system needs to rely on the basic observation that empire x is between empires y and z, therefore y and z are likely to be more friendly to each other than to empire x.
The pirate bid system is laughable really. The buzzer sounds and its "Heigh-ho, heigh-ho its off to piracy we go, we'll honour our contracts and die in your cause, heigh-ho heigh-ho heigh-ho heigh-ho." Its also difficult to avoid the early raids being too strong, or more importantly, one empire having the tremendous advantage of being able to afford to lose the bidding whereas another, for whatever reason, is very exposed. There was a lot of talk about how it was necessary to make the pirates stronger because good players could beat them- like with any AI force- but they were kept out of multiplayer games because in games between evenly matched players they would have a random effect which tipped the balance. Making them stronger with the same mechanic just made them worse. Also, the notion of honourable pirates who attack starbases with super-tech is utter rubbish.
Yet if we could go a little further than just a simple tweak the pirates could be much improved. Lets get rid of the pirate work klaxon. That feels good already. Trade income depends on ships again not ports. The pirates hang out in space, attacking trade ships. They won't attack warships at all unless they have good odds and there is bounty involved, making them a useful help for cutting reinforcements off. They will retreat quickly if they start taking losses. Bounty earned from enemy ship destruction and trade ship destruction builds them new ships. When their home is above a maximum number of ships, ships are sent out to a new location. Instead of the current mechanic, the pirates prefer pirate-type locations so they go to asteroid belts or unoccupied planets. They're not just simple tweaks, however the game mechanics do exist to support this type of pirate behaviour- the 'juicy target' designation could be reworked for 'unoccupied target' for instance. Add in some sneaky special abilities like cloak, a simple change I made already in my mod, and you're there. Then the pirate terror missions can be taken out of the early game and left to their special screens.
I haven't considered improvements to the relations system as much, but it seems to me that the pacts system took over the relations system to the extent that the relations between the factions became a secondary consideration to whether the AI could be made to sign pacts. I would want to do away with the pacts screen entirely, it has very little information on it and you could simplify by making it so that if you have the appropriate level of relations the AI uill sign all the pacts the tech of both empires will support. The current system has 0-20 relations level, with 10-20 taken up by pacts. With 0-12 and 10+ taken up by pacts you can get rid of a crap screen and start making the AI relations system far more sensitive. Also, as it is you have one empire with many labs able to take advantage of a smaller empire with hardly any research just on relations, which seems poor. Instead, make the pacts available dependent on both empires having the right tech, if one empire has L5 pact tech and another L6 pact tech you are restricted to L5 pacts.
Another screen that needs work is the relations screen, which looks like a beta (and seems not to be part of replays, as I found when testing the relations system). What it presents is a lot of rubbish numbers which should be part of the hidden game mechanics. What it should present is far simpler information- which of your enemies have ceasefires, alliances, and so on, which is far more elegant game design. The mission system really needs the work that was required to justify the second expansion at all, to ensure that the AI gives the player missions to its advantage rather than the players. If you are already at war with a faction the mission offers from other factions that target that faction should cease. Also the demands for credits and resources should be extortionate.
The relationship victory condition is so poor that I would be inclined to scrap it entirely, sort out the artifact side of the game and replace it with a victory condition which required that you occupy all artifact planets, which would allow you to shorten the game, and is also simple to understand and interesting in game terms. All you need then is a minimum number of artifacts to be spawned in every game. As it is, even if the existing relations made the remotest sense, the relationship victory condition just leads to situations in a multiplayer game where one player will win and there is nothing another player could do to stop it. It would be frustrating to see a player retain points from the goodwill of dead factions- if anyone used the victory condition, that is.
Lastly, the relations variables need a thorough rework. The Advent hate the TEC- unless the TEC build two civic labs? The structure of the modifiers is there, but the effect of the numbers needs to be better conceptualised. Another example is the fleet stength modifier, you really need it so that the AI gang up on the leader rather than the weakest. If its to prevent empires with huge economy and hardly any defence, what you should do is to penalise the leading economy rather than the weakest fleet. Ideally there would be penalties for both the strongest fleet and the strongest economy.
A lot of words, but I hope that they are related to improvements that are possible and achievable, rather than having very little to do with the existing game.
Hey Yarlen,
Have you all consisted linking the pirates raid strenght with something other than credits placed on bounty and trade ships?
One of the probems Ive seen with pirates is b/c of the spam the bounty button till the raid starts you can get some hefty bounties right of the bat. Which mean you bee seeing raids with more ships than any current player may have fleet research wise. And given credits also tie into their upgrades you end with a crazy fleet to begin with.
Not sure if it possible but maybe if you keep the current system of bidding, linking the actual raid fleet strength with the targets max fleets supply? So, there is a limit through out the game on just how powerful they are. Also this will also them to vary according to each player. Larger Empire( aka more fleet supply) get a larger raid, smaller empires get less.
It would help mitigate the overwhelming pirates while still having them on par with each player.
Also might I suggest you maybe give them a tech in their tree towards late game that allows them to spawn at a planet much like Insurgency works. Or maybe attacking several planets at once? Also might wanna give them scouts with Timed Explosives for that pillaging they be doing.
On that note tell the fine gentlemen and women at Ironclad to give Insurgency some love. It should like the mini-me pirates. But thats just wishful thinking on my part.
Whatever is done with the diplomatic aspect, I suggest that the patched game should have to pass a couple of tests- that the AI factions be able to create ceasefires and make alliances between them, and that the AI factions be able to combine against the leader or leaders. It might then be possible to get the AI nearer to achieving a diplomatic victory, but this still seems somewhat of a task and it would be far simpler to have the diplomatic victory replaced by an artifact victory- you have 3 artifacts on tiny maps, 6 on medium maps, 9 on large and 12 and huge. Possession of all the artifacts means victory, a simple readily comprehensible system already used by many succesful games, whereas the existing diplomatic victory is.. of an unusual nature. It also means that we can separate out the diplomatic relations from any considerations of an overall victory, making them considerably easier to reorganise. The number of artifacts possessed by a faction could appear on the diplomatic summary screen, along with the state of the alliances between factions- rather than the bizarre numbers that are there in the present version.
What I further suggest is that any factions of the same nature should start with the level of friendliness appropriate to a cease fire, as long as they are not adjacent to one another. Since 3.5 is the current level for a cease fire, you would have similar factions getting +4. Then have Vasari relations with other factions at -3, and Advent-TEC relations -6. That might help the AI start to develop relations at first.. at least with factions of its own sort. The tech for relations boosts needs to be toned down so that the game becomes less easy for the player- perhaps +0.5 per level, rather than +1. However the top level should wipe out the full penalty of -3/-3 or -3/-6, to reflect how expensive it is.
Then you have the AI bonus rate and proximity factors, which I'd suggest should work in a similar manner. You could have two levels of proximity, one for adjacent and one for only one gravwell separation. If the AI bonus rate was 0.01, for instance, then the adjacent penalty rate could be -0.02 and the one gravwell separation rate -0.01. The principle would be to stop the game ending in all-round ceasefires and alliances. Unless the proximity penalty is progressive it isn't going have enough effect, and also making it progressive allows for a somewhat faster AI bonus rate. This assumes that the proximity penalty can be made to work at all, however. It seems a fairly simple piece of coding, and even seems better suited to a rate-type penalty than a one-off penalty?
The missions need to be more tailored to suit the AI, as I've written previously. The AI should not target factions the player is already at war with. The penalties should be for fleetStrengthMax and econStrengthMax rather than the existing fleetStrengthMin, to punish the leading factions. The Pacts screen could be replaced with a single research pacts button on the main screen, either you have all the pacts you can possibly have, or none. Better definition of which factions ally with which others is far more significant than having the difference between two styles of research pact as the equivalent in diplomatic points of the difference between war and a full peace treaty, which is both fiddly and silly.
It seems a pity that there wasn't a new 'Diplomatic' style of AI created for the second expansion. However, there was a suggestion a while ago that instead of having AI faction names randomly assigned, they should be linked to specific types, to add character to the game. So that if you have two Advent faction names, the Prophecy and the Oracle, the Prophecy would always be militaristic and the Oracle more concerned with development, rather than having the names randomly assigned and sometimes being military and sometimes development. It has the disadvantage of the player realising how a random AI is likely to play, but I still consider the advantage of greater characterisation more important.
Without the pirate bidding system, the pirates could be made to work differently. One problem with them is that the early raids can provide experience- though not nearly as much so that it is an issue- because they are prepared to be wiped out. If normal pirate activity did not centre on planet attacks, you could implement a pirate retreat, like the ordinary AI retreat system except at a much lower level, so that if the cowardly bullying pirates started to lose ships they would run away. Also, unless there was any bounty on warships they would consider them as neutral, both preserving the bounty system and making it more usable. The existing system has the huge drawback that any money spent on the losing bid makes the pirate attack more effective, so that the early game can begin to depend on the bids alone. With the new system, bounty would turn the pirates hostile, but they could still be avoided.
So this would be the pirate sequence:
i. Initial deployment to home and the neutrals.
ii. Pirate ships encounter warships with bounty, turn hostile and attack. Retreat to home once losses taken. OR Pirate ships encounter warships with no bounty. If attacked they turn hostile, retreat to home once losses taken. There would have to be a mechanic to gradually turn the pirates neutral again to any faction with no bounty on them. Pirates are interested in money not grudges.
iii. Instead of the bid buzzer, there is a periodic measure of the pirate income from trade ship and warship destruction and their share of the black market. As many reinforcements as earned are dispatched. The home pirate gravwell is then matched against the maximum ships that should be present, and any surplus are sent to a random unoccupied gravwell to loot trade ships and ambush small numbers of warships. They stay there permanently until a retreat is triggered. This way the neutral areas and neutral planets are gradually restocked in a dynamic fashion dependent on economic activity in the game, and the pirate home gravwell does not become packed with ships.
iv. Also, the pirate home gravwell should include phase inhibitors, I'm not sure why these were ever left out.
v. The new form of pirate missions is unchanged. The pirate planet and starbase attack ships could be reserved for the new missions. If there are survivors after a pirate missiion they retreat to the home gravwell as normal, and are then counted to the maximum limits of ships that can be present at the pirate home.
While I couldn't make this system work with a simple mod, it contains no assets or mechanics that are not already in the game or straightforward to implement. The pirate income would have to be measured, ships bought and the number of ships at the pirate home counted. But this isn't rocket science...
I suppose that last comment could be why BlackDes was forced into piracy in the first place.
I quite like the sound of this. That would indeed be a more enjoyable system.
Thats a great idea but one thing I would like to ask is that late game a pirate raid fleet should still not be able to take down a fully upgraded weapons starbase and an entire fleet.
For me the ideal situation is where pirates can be used to weaken / distract the enemy rather tham outright destroy them.
I've requested a bonus for similar factions of +4, with Advent-TEC relations at -6 and other relations at -3. This is intended to promote better relations between AI factions by at least allowing similar factions to start at a ceasefire level. However it occurred to me that while Advent-TEC relations are described as being the worst, the existing backstory makes little mention of splinter groups at all, there's simply no hint that any of the factions other than the TEC are divided in any manner at all, and the TEC are described as having resolved their differences before the beginning of the game.
This could be something of an opportunity. If the patch linked specific splinter group names to specific AI identities- researcher, fortifier etc., then perhaps those groups might then be given more character, such as an individual origin and diplomatic modifier? All it would seem to involve is possibly a few lines of text and more importantly linking the initial diplomatic variable to the AI type, rather than just to the faction. This could make up for the absence of a specific 'diplomatic' style of AI, as each AI type would come in three flavours- hostile, neutral and peaceful.
The human splinter groups seem easy enough to explain, not all of the existing groups joined into one single alliance. The Advent are possibly more difficult, if there is a Unity of all Advent how can two different groups the Oracle and the Prophecy exist? Each group must then have their own Unity? I suppose you could say that it would be unlikely for all combinations of genetic enhancement, drugs and brainwashing to have the same effects, so each Advent faction has their own recipe. But then should they like each other more or less than humans like each other? Groups like that that have existed in human history have often been at each others throats. The Vasari seem easier to deal with, any migratory group would move in a series of sub-units and they are supposed to be from widely different sectors of the Empire. The individual hives would still be very mutually supportive.
If that logic is reasonable then perhaps base Vasari-Vasari relations might be +5, TEC-TEC +3 and Advent-Advent +1, before any modifications based on which groups come up. After all, researcher Advent and researcher Advent groups might not be of any kind of static social or individual makeup at all, so if they turn up in a game they might start at a higher level of mutual relations than even Vasari hives.
One last possibility that semed to have potential for amusement... instead of the current returning fleets system, how much modification would it take to spawn another Vasari faction into the game if there was room, or to revive an old one...? That would truly be a different sort of superpower. Of course they would have to start off friendly to their summoners, but once they had colonised their own planets...
Is there any further indication whether a patch and/or a beta phase is likely to happen, and what sort of scope it will have?
I've already posted much without any real indication which areas it might be useful to pursue, if any. If there is to be no real work done, with merely an adjustment to the existing numbers, it might be more profitable just to play the game with adjusted figures and report what happened. It doesn't require a beta to make text edits.
What map has been proposed as the beta test map? I'm sure that many of the game's problems stem from not having one or at most a few maps where the developers can state that the game has been balanced for those maps in particular, with other wilder maps thrown in for extra fun. Its also regrettable in many ways that all Sins maps have to have a random element. Even on the custom maps whether a planet has two or four extractors, and how large the militia are, can make a big difference.
I like the sound of that very much.
Would it still be feasible to add in this patch the addition of a relatively simply selection in Game Setup for Pirate Strength -- much like we have for Research Speed or Building Speed? That is, instead of merely a toggle Pirates On / Off, it would toggle between Pirates Puny / Very Weak / Weak / Normal / Strong / Very Strong / Dominating / Off (or something like that), so that in addition to your excellent suggestions the player would have an easy way of tweaking the strength of all attacks throughout the game?
No word yet on when to expect the next update. I'm still waiting to get dev team resources for it; so I wouldn't expect anything right now before January. Odds are that if we do have something before then, we'll put out a beta version first to test things out beforehand.
Though that is somewhat discouraging, at least there is still hope.
Many of the remaining players have modding skills that range from adequate to considerable. If you were able to tell us the parameters within which changes can be made, then perhaps we could test changes and report back on this thread?
I appreciate that it is not always easy for a small company to playtest in an effective manner, but it is very difficult to help without any kind of feedback other than a generalised thanks for trying. How about if we were to post reports of how unmodified games are playing out, would that help? Is there a single map you recommend for testing? Apart from the pirates, my concern about the single player game after the second expansion is that the AI are just not engaging in any kind of effective negotiations with each other, allowing the player an easy win, unless they are locked into teams.
Ho hum, even without any guidance I've gone ahead with some tests of the existing unmodified game. The second expansion has just never got beyond the beta stage at all, has it?
The map I've used for my first tests is a mediumlarge random map, with the player occupying a single isolated terran planet without any phase lanes. I then had six AI factions set to normal level, two of each type. I set the game up without pirates, as they are rubbish. The factions were unlocked for FFA and a diplomatic victory made possible for a single player.
This is where it begins to become apparent just how poor the second expansion is, in fact it is awful. Much as I like the game, and I appreciate that the second expansion was limited as to the content in terms of assets it could have, the basic goal of improving the relations side of the game was not achieved and in fact may have been made far worse. With the diplomatic victory activated it is unquestionably far worse.
Here are some of the problems:
-Even though I cannot make contact with any of the AI factions from my isolated position, I have managed to get a cease-fire with one of the Advent factions purely on the basis of research and some seemingly arbitrary 'diplomatic inclination' variable. At least they can't give me missions. I can give them missions.
-It gets worse. Though I have the grand total of one cease-fire agreement and my relations with all other factions range from hateful to abysmal, I will still win the game on victory points. This is because I get positive points from all the factions due to my research levels, so that even when they hate me they still send me victory points. This has to be wrong, its just so... crap.
-The fleet points used element doesn't seem very important. I scrapped my capital ship factory and am easily able to create enough light frigates to ensure that I have no relations penalty for fleet points. Among the AI factions the penalty seems not to be any greater than -1 anyway.
-The AI all hate each other, and during the course of the game only half of the relationship between two of the Advent AIs approached cease-fire level- and remember for the AI to be able to negotiate a ceasefire requires that one AI be friendly enough to propose a cease-fire and the other friendly enough to accept.
-This is while I as the player can send no envoys out, while the AI have the opportunity to boost their relations scores with envoys, an opportunity none have taken, nor have they done any research to boost relations. Just how far is the relations research tree integrated with the AI? I know the AI can build envoys, but from what I remember the AI can give the player missions, apparently without having done the required research. Will it research relations bonuses at all?
I will test further with cheating AIs but my tests so far just confirm what I've always suspected, which is that the second expansion simply does not enhance the aspect of the game it was supposed to enhance at all. Entrenchment is a far better game for AI FFA action, and the original game is better than Entrenchment. There is just no subtle diplomatic aspect to the game at all, all the AI factions hate each other and the diplomacy is entirely player-centred.
But is there a response to these criticisms from Stardock? Because there should be. Only if the state of the game is admitted can it be fixed, and it can be fixed, the existing assets are sufficient if combined with a better game design. It just seems pointless recommending changes to the existing variables when the situation could be altered by as large a factor as an entire tree of research being made to exist for the AI.
Last question- as it is, can the Sins AI tell the difference between a 1v1 game and an unlocked 6p FFA with a diplomatic victory condition? To what extent?
I've tried this again with the Hard AI rather than the normal AI. The only significant difference seems to be that I lost three points with all of the AI on the basis of 'fleet strength' at the beginning, but after a while this became 0 or some insignificant figure like -0.02 or -0.08, which I was able to maintain with my free capital ship and by building cobalts up to the maximum of the second level of supply.
Again the AI hate each other from the start, and are not able to get anywhere near a ceasefire. They don't seem to use research or envoys at all. I could let the game run further, but I am already about a third of the way to a diplomatic victory. On to unfair level, however if the singleplayer FFA game has to be played at unfair level to get a game going then there are serious issues with it.
Also, the only modifiers that the AI seemed to be affected by in the relations with each other were diplomatic and species inclination, fleet strength and military actions. It's a long list of potential modifiers for most of them to be 0.00. My opinion is still that the background numbers should be kept off-screen and the player should only be presented with what level of relationship (truce, treaty, pact) the AI have with each other. At the moment the answer will be none whatsoever, but it will be simpler to read and understand.
I've always had an issue with the use of numbers in computer games as a substitute for characterisation. A better-designed game will tell you that the relationship between two factions is hateful or abysmal or whatever without also notifying you of the exact number of abstract 'points' involved. Also, a particular Sins annoyance is when factions can be described as 'warming' to each other when they are still destroying each others envoys ships, or would be, had they any.
Am I right about the current relations AI though, that it is nonsense and that the second expansion was very much progredi est regredi? Has anyone got a counter-example for me to look at?
And with the unfair AI nothing changes. I can get 170 points towards the 525 required without the AI having scored any points at all. None of the AI have been able to establish a relationship with any other; none have any diplomatic research points or envoys. It is very easy for a player to win an FFA game where they are the only active diplomatic element- that is, not only in terms of 'victory points' but in terms of gaining a truce with another faction, in order to concentrate their forces.
I have noticed the AI bonus factor this time. The player is credited with a -2.00 'diplomatic inclination' to all factions, some of which have a +2.00 modifier or -0.50 inclination modifier in return, not sure why. The AI bonus was up to about 2 by the time I had 170 victory points, but it is far from enough for the AI to start scoring any points toward victory, since the AI has no research points while the player gets 18 research points every cycle at the third level of research. I suspect that it is just a fix, so that the AI can get enough points to suggest pacts to the player.
The AI diplomatic system established in the second expansion 'Diplomacy' really is terrible as far I understand it, just drivel. Again, can someone please explain why my tests are not relevant, or what I am doing wrong? If I am right, can the patch please be made the responsibility of someone who has the intention of turning out some sort of proper product?
DesConnor, I think you are judging the Diplomacy expansion too harshly when considering the AI's implementation of the new Diplomacy system. The Diplomacy expansion is clearly a "multiplayer" focused expansion. In that regard it is perfect in my opinion AND experience.
As for the Pirates, I am really hating them in Diplomacy and just turn them off. To me that = FAIL. SOMETHING needs to be done about them for anyone to consider playing with them on. Just from my estimates and the content of the posts that I see in the Strategy section NOONE is playing with them on. Unless they are testing them or their focus is on beating the Pirates.
Right now with them on the BEST strategy that me and my friends have found to win a game is to have one player focus on military to hold off the initial raids of the opponents and then have the other player focus on building an economy to flood into the Pirates. The Pirates win the game.
If you examine the last Stardock posts in this thread https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/381255 then it becomes clear that the second expansion was aimed primarily at the singleplayer game. However I'd still like your reasons for considering it perfect for multiplayer? If you've played much multiplayer the diplomatic victory is almost always off, as it is extremely arbitrary in the multiplayer game, and the pirates are off as well. Perhaps the faster game speed and the lack of feed from the start of team games were improvements, but the multiplayer balance is fairly poor in terms of both units and factions.
It's not as if its the coding that's at fault, either, there seem to be few straightforward bugs in the current version. The undeveloped element may be in the theory itself, rather than the implementation. Of course we can't be sure, without some sort of guide as to what was intended.
Here are three basic recommendations:
I. The diplomatic victory condition is weird in conception, there are many many better methods of shortening games due to 'diplomatic victory' than this. It should be replaced by a possession of all the artifacts condition, so that only key planets have to be occupied to win. This is a far superior method in terms of gameplay and only needs concepts already in the game.
II. The relations points system needs recalibration, so that the AI have a chance to get on speaking terms with each other, and perhaps to add some relations AI, or to unbug the existing AI, depending on what happens once the AI get a start. Far too much of the available points range is taken up by the pacts system, this just seems unecessarily elaborate. If there was a single level at which the AI could sign any pact researched this would help the relations system and make the game less fiddly in terms of having to visit non-game screens. Compared to the game screen with its wealth of information, the pact screen is just dreadful, like something from the eighties, awful. I refuse to believe that they belong in the same game.
III. I made a pirate mod myself, it took two nights including all the time I spent learning how to mod. After that I began to become less impressed with the content of the patches we've had. Impulse was supposed to be an excellent delivery system for quick content updates rather than just a new method of flogging games, it hasn't worked out like that. So if we are in fact still cost-restricted to there being a long time between updates, can we have a proper beta phase for both multiplayer and singleplayer? That would mean an announcement of provisional content, a discussion phase, the beta and then another discussion phase followed by the final. When that system was followed for a Demigod patch it was claimed that the initial Stardock suggestions would result in an inferior game, and they were pulled. I was so impressed that I bought the game. Unfortunately what was wrong with the initial Stardock suggestions for the Demigod patch is very much the same sort of damage that was inflicted on Sins in the second expansion.
Though you might not agree with my opinion of the current state of the game, it would help if you could state whether you believe that I am in error about how AI relations are working, or whether you simply don't believe that the second expansion should have expanded AI relations at all.
Anyone, please, a replay of a game where the AI has managed to achieve peace with another AI, or even better has managed a Diplomatic Victory? One single replay?
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