My first playtest of the new beta was on Double Cross, a standard 4 player map included with the game. I was TEC, my three opponents were one from each faction. Unlocked normal game with diplomatic victory and pirates on.
I wasn't impressed by my start as the terran near the sun was maxed and apart from that I had an ice and empty neutrals. Advent on one side, Vasari the other, TEC over the sun.
I implemented a basic plan of researching two levels of relations and sent six envoys to TEC with the charitable tech to pay for the extra supply. The pirates I put onto the Vasari. Advent then attacked me. The attack was somewhat poor, I had two turrets and a repair to defend, Advent had a battleship a carrier cruiser a couple of frigates and a siege. However I cheekily built a starbase right next to them during their attack and a few cobalts helped to finish them off.
So this completes a Vasari mission, they offer a trade alliance, game over because of the new relations buff due to trade relations. I just laughed at the screen, this was exactly what I expected from the patch notes. Risible.
The AI cannot get to the stage of truces with each other. Its almost as if the entire supposedly complex half-baked relations scheme was centred on getting the player to make pacts with their AI allies and not on the general relations system at all. It just makes the game crap. I suppose I havent tried it on the cruel or vicious settings yet with the super-cheated research, but if you have to have it on those settings to get any kind of game its rubbish game design.
I've made post after post on this problem and how to improve the situation and the game. Single player FFA, supposedly the object of the second expansion, is just completely unplayable, you would achieve more by playing some MMORPG and mindlessly farming or mining or whatever is involved. There's no gameplay. I pity the players with their custom super-large maps who imagine that the game offers any kind of strategic depth because they're fooling themselves.
It took a year to produce this? Are the other Stardock strategy games this bad? I know, its awesome we've got them to break the game further, please master hit me again.
Normal AIs?
Hey, Kitkun, you do know how to test don't you, you're not just being an ass? If the normal AIs are worse then all the other AIs will be worse, no?
Is your point supposed to be that the harder AIs are somehow less prone to sign trade alliances with the player?
Have you done any tests on this very subject over a long period of time and posted the results?
Your normal standard of contribution- or below par even for you?
Or... I could have been asking a question. "Normal game" could mean a dozen different things from different people.
Perhaps you didn't mean to be brusque, then, though if you had any kind of opinion or contribution to offer you could have added one? It would only have taken a little consideration of the topic.
As I mentioned it is possible that with their super-fast research the highest levels of AI would get an early +3 relations bonus, this then might shade them into a region where a trade alliance was possible, bringing them then to a truce with the bonus. Having a truce is critical for relations because they then stop getting worse so quickly.
However this is just stupid, with a system that worked the normal AIs would be able to have truces with each other. It isn't a complicated problem, there are many possible solutions even within the existing situation, if the problem is acknowledged. Also, my original point remains the same, that for a game below the level of super-cheated AIs the patch has made the relations system worse.
Haven't yet tested it myself, thus there's little to contribute beyond clarification.
Rather than pitch a fit over how terrible you think the game is, it would be helpful to me if you could point me to all the feedback you've posted.
It's in your Pirate Dilemma thread. It's a sticky, if that helps. Replies #169-#171 discuss a test game on relations with normal, hard and unfair.
It would be helpful to us as testers if you could tell us what you expect to happen with the relations. In fact any guidance at all on the beta would be a vast improvement. All we have so far is that you want a log if the game crashes.
As one example, adjacency should be a major concept in any strategic relations game. Our adjacency modifier doesn't seem to work, or if it does the effect is minimal.
Rather than knock me as the poster, you could tell us that in your tests the AI have been able to obtain truces, and describe the test conditions so we could attempt them ourselves? I'm sure that we could agree that if the AI could never make alliances with other AI the game would indeed be terrible at the strategic level?
Go on, confirm for us that the normal AI can in fact achieve alliances with other AI in FFA, and outline the timescale, because that's not what I have found.
I'm not knocking you as a poster, but the posts I've seen from you have all been largely negative and refer to previous posts I haven't seen.
If you'd like, you can email me directly at bclair@stardock.com with feedback and ideas so that I see them faster than on these forums. We'd be happy to take your ideas into consideration for future improvements. I want to make clear that the current Beta 1 change log doesn't even include everything we want to do yet. It's just the initial batch of changes that we need tested (i.e., the game engine stuff).
Well that is something of a relief then, if you mean that we're going to test this beta for 1-2 weeks then move on to another beta version, because the announcement seemed to indicate that the next stage would be a final?
It is just difficult to help without any indication of what you expect or want. It can't help you if I don't stress what seems to me to be something very wrong with the game. The structure you have for the diplomatic relations can be made to work, its just that the numbers seem inappropriate in the current version. To test, we need some indication as to what should be happening. Can you specify a test map and conditions?
A simple change to make the game start working might be to adjust the figures to make similar factions start at truce level. That would help with the beginning, but for longer term relations we need a steadily increasing relations penalty for adjacency, and another for fleet strength. The current modifier penalises weaker fleet strength, which seems wrong. A normal relations system always penalises the stronger players.
On relations, the only major idea I would ask you to consider is that the existing Diplomatic Victory be changed for an artifact/wonder-style victory, as I can't see how to make the existing system work at all, while wonder systems are easy to set up and Sins already has the architecture for one. Even if the relations system worked properly the existing Diplomatic Victory system gives a huge advantage to early diplomatic research and seems to end the game entirely arbitrarily. If you fight any other faction you start losing ground.
Some very good points Des
EDIT: This post pretty well sums up what I felt about Diplomacy
I'd just like to say that I, like Diplomacy as whole.
I do agree with Des that there is some thing not quite right. I agree that similar factions starting at truce is a good thing to the point of, in the context of the game, their having not even met each other yet. So there should be no conclusion that an unmet player is going to be friendly or visa verse. When two fleets from different factions first meet they default open fire as it is, putting relations straight into negative. But this is really where diplomacy should begin.
It does seam odd to me that a cease fire when a relationship to any other faction is zero, or even a few points + is never excepted by the AI. When even if they/you have alter-ya motive's, a negative relationship penalty is not going to worry you/them for breaking a peace treaty later, since that's what they/you want ultimately. But if they/you do want to forge a relationship this is the logical path to begin with. I guess what I'm saying is cease fires, with the AI, should be able to be formed at lower + relations and 0 when they first encounter each other.
Another thing along this line, and since before this patch, is that the AI, as often as I can remember will offer a trade alliance and a the AI will agree to trade alliance before a cease fire is established. This just seems backwards IDK, maybe that's just me.
To me an adjacency penalty is neither here nor there. If you attack me your my enemy, If you don't then your not (unless I attack you, which is to be expected). Where you are is irrelevant. If there is any penalty need for adjacency it should be to trade, simply the farther away the 2 parties are the bigger the trade penalty. This just seems logical to me.
For fleet size penalties, IDK. This to me is more complex. Bigger is not always better, or more dangerous if you like. What about CapitalShips levels and the military research levels. Also super weapons. I think if you have a smaller fleet strength than your ally, you should cop a penalty of some sort. But its hard to say how much. Does that faction use it for your benefit? If so you should cop a certain amount of penalty. Does that faction just use it to expand in areas that you wanted? if you start coping a penalty for that, your being unfairly penalized IMO. I guess I would have to agree with Des simply because if the stronger players are penalized then it gives the under dog a chance and will make games last longer and be more challenging to win. A benefit for both the stronger and the weaker player.
desconner if this game is so terrible why play it ?
i mean wtf dude lol
how dumb are you if you hate something yet still do it but complain about doing it
quit trolling the forums
you are a disease
go get help
Derek06 as much as I agree that DesConner can go overboard with his rants and complaints he does at times bring up good points. Sometimes to get something good requires going through a lot of garbage. DesConner is a perfect example of that. A lot of garbage is spewed but he has some good points.
Ha ha 06. I remember when you went 3-Skirantra on me when I was TEC then later you made a forum thread about how awful 3-Skirantra was, you hated it and we should all stop doing it... you were playing as your 'dark side' alter ego, that might have been it? And was anyone overboard with their comments on the Skirantra, or on the Illuminator bug?
I would agree that beta testing any game for free when it isn't yet up to the mark isn't fun, it might be considered dumb. I played it in the hope of being able to improve it. You don't play the single player FFA game 06, so why comment on it? AI-AI relations issues are nothing to do with all-player multiplayer, but are critical to a successful single player strategy game.
The logic behind an adjacency penalty comes from how an empire expands. When you play the game, you attempt to keep your empire compact. A normal sins game has the empires spread out in a circular fashion, so typically you will attack one side and and the other friendly. If you move into the centre you risk antagonising everyone. What is good for the player is good for the AI, they should always be seeking to have peace with all but one adjacent empire.
Without properly functioning adjacency you get empires attacking far across the map, often when it does not profit them at all, or if they do capture a planet it means that their fleet AI is messed up because of long travel distances. This used to happen in the original game, when empires would gang up on the player even when they had no reason to do so, simply because they had achieved truces with everyone else.
Adjacency can be made to function in one of two ways in current sins, you could simply establish the relative positions from the start and gradually increase the penalty, or constantly check for adjacency as the game goes on, again with either increased penalties, or by counting multiple points of contact. The first method is rather easier, though less subtle. The current problem is that a modifier exists but far too often it is not being used.
The only point I consider valid against a diplomatic penalty on the larger fleets is that the stronger economies would then profit. However this is easily countered by also having a penalty on the leading economies. Weaker factions are no a threat to stop you winning the game. The AI needs to be able to play stop-the-leader.
At the risk of posting more garbage I have to agree with dedjal when he says that the second expansion felt like a scam, where is the Diplomacy? There's someone that I know has tried to play the singleplayer FFA game.
However what we need is less open-ended complaining and more solid playtesting. When players like 06 complain about trolling and lack of content you have to laugh. Post some useful stuff dude, perhaps some 1v1 multiplayer beta replays?
Another beta test then. What I hadn't mentioned above is that testing the relations system is made even less fun because the relations screen doesn't function in replays, that might be a bug that could be fixed.
I'm going to test a longer game on the beta, hard AI settings, singleplayer FFA on Entanglement. To be clear on what I am testing, it is whether or not any of the AI at any stage of the game can get a truce with another AI. Not whether I can win, not whether I can defeat the AI fleet composition on hard. Only whether the AI can organise its relations so as not to have to fight each other the entire game. My experience of the game suggests that though the trade alliance bonus makes it very easy for the player to get a truce with the AI, the AI will not get to a relations level where they can profit.
[TL;DR Dont worry there are absolutely no balance changes demanded in this post though without any replays to make points- its all about technical issues with the AI relations modifiers.]
I had a 5-way FFA last night, which serves as a model of how "rational" players will utterly devastate "irrational" players (sucha s the AI). I immediately looked at my two neighbours, and found I had a hard choke with one and a porous neutral-laden field with the other. I assigned all my military units to the choke side, and offered full treaties to the more porous border and started sending envoys. By the time anyone else even offered him a ceasefire, I had envoys on all his planets and was well on my way to the first pact.
With both of us controlling a little under half the map and with two hard chokes on either side (you'd need to pirate-base bypass to hit anywhere else) we just sat back and built up then crushed the remaining players easily, which hadn't made any alliances amongst each other. Let's go over the advantages of our rapid alliance, shall we:
1) We didn't need to defend our more porous border, enabling us to focus our attention on one flank alone, attacking and defending much more easily and safely.
2) We had fewer enemies to deal with, allowing us to invest heavily in economics
3) We got envoy bonuses and pacts running much earlier, further boosting our economy
4) Both of us were available to feed the other in the event of a serious challenge to our defensive lines, and being #1 and #2 for economy respectively, there was no faction that could have possibly breached us.
5) By sharing intel and freely scouting both sides, we could easily monitor all three other players.
This should emphasize one very important fact: the best strategy is to find an ally quickly and hold on tight! The AI needs to put priority to raising its relations with another faction early on.
des why make stories?
ive never seen you online and i rarely play under the name derek06
my skirantra comment only referred to how everyone does it, noob or skilled, and it is getting old
the fact that if you didnt go 3 skirantra, then you were at a disadvantage if your opponent did was my complaint
basically strategies were limited due to imbalance
come online though i will 1v1 you
When I say "immediately", I don't mean when the game started. I meant as soon as I got some scouting done. In that time frame, I'd colonized two asteroids and had some frigates working on a volcanic.
You just want to Grief me some more 06?
I have to say that I am disappointed in you 06. We've played what- for over two years on and off? I used to imagine, a little wistfully perhaps, that I had a role in your growth as a player. Of course, that was before you developed your... Grievance. It reflects no credit on me now, I'm afraid. Though of course your powers have grown immeasurably since those days. Naturally. That is the way.
But no more reminiscences, on to work. Garbage to be spewed.
I have 50/450 Victory points on Hard Entanglement, a cease fire and trade alliance with the other TEC which I played for and have sent 6 envoys to achieve, and a cease fire with an adjacent Vasari which just landed on me without me doing much of anything. Missions weren't a factor as I just cancelled them all, with no apparent penalty.
So here are the relations between the AI:
Advent A: Vas A: -1.34 Advent B: 0.22 TEC A: -1.38 Vas B: -1.75
Vas A: Advent A: -2.33 Advent B: -3.5 TEC A: -1 Vas B: 1.31
Advent B: Advent A: -1.22 Vas A: -2.83 TEC A: -1.14 Vas B: 0.54
TEC A: Advent A: -4.08 Vas A: -1.32 Advent B: -2.83 Vas B: 0.55
Vas B: Advent A: -2.65 Vas A: 1.79 Advent B: -1.71 TEC A: 0.23
The threshold level for trade is 2.5, and the threshold level for a cease fire is 3.5. Also remember that the threshold has to be reached by both factions. None of these factions are near the threshold level for trade so they will not get the bonus. Meanwhile I as the player will profit from easy ceasefires that I haven't even had to do anything for.
There is no particular reason why unfair would be any different. Super-rapid researches by the heavily cheating Cruel and Vicious AIs might get them improved diplomatic bonuses in the +2/+3 range, and then some relations between AI factions might start to work, especially between same-type factions. But should it really require the super-cheat AIs to have any Diplomacy at all?
I'm going with: It's more the AI being stupid than the Diplomacy system failing.
It'd be quite hard to get it balanced for all types of play right now.
The problem with the AI is simple. It's militaristic.
There is no diplomatic effort made until well into the fight. You can't make friends with an AI you're currently attacking, and the only places you can send an envoy are to sides you're close to. Good luck threading one through the enemy empire and onto the next to set them somewhere you aren't countering as a brain dead AI.
To use the diplomacy system, it needs to grasp that concept of being buddy buddy with someone it's not attacking. Typically, the envoys come after the fighting is already in progress. When it factors relations into it's maneuvers, it will be ready to form them outside of sheer dumb luck.
The AI hasn't seriously been updated... ever. Sure wasn't for Entrenchment.
Yes, and this is really the biggest problem with Diplomacy. Psychoak hit it exactly.. the AI doesn't do anything special for diplomacy with other AIs. Any AI doesn't prioritize missions - you can give it a mission and it'll only complete it if it happens as a side effect of whatever it was doing normally. Same with everything else. The Diplomacy system works fine for Human <> AI interaction, but not so well for AI <> AI.
Though the AI isn't clever, this is not the main factor in the relations problems.
The root of the issue is that the diplomatic system is set up to favour the player. If the unfair level AIs had unfair level diplomats they would quickly gang up on the player.
The AI get no compensation for the mission system, and the negative modifiers for cancelling unwanted missions are either negligible or don't work. As the player I can just destroy ships and structures knowing that eventually I will complete a mission and get a bonus I can turn into a truce, the AI doesn't have this advantage.
Another advantage the player has is that the player is not constrained by the level of relations the opposition have achieved- the player does not have to break a trade agreement at a certain level of relations etc.
The only real factor with the AI being stupid is that it doesn't research the flat +1/+2/+3 bonuses quickly enough. These bonuses are also low tier, making it easy for the player to get them, and don't combine well with the faction preferences. I'd like heavier different faction penalties and a bigger reward for the top-tier flat bonus diplomatic research.
Fantastically, the player also gets a 'cheat' player bonus, which is presumably supposed to assist the pact system. The pact system as implemented just deforms the more normal trade/truce/peace relations out of all recognition. I would scrap the element of needing vast levels of relations for higher pacts and just have one highest rate needed for all pacts, this would also remove an unnecessary and uninformative screen which belongs in the dark ages of eighties console gaming.
The Diplomatic Victory needs to go as well. Apart from that, the rest of the structure is sound as long as you have someone willing to play around with the values and run a few tests. Its quite easy to implement a stop-the-leader system and a workable adjacency system, it has nothing to do with the core AI, the rules are in the gameplay section. The only coding you might need would be to change some of the fixed modifiers into variable or over time modifiers.
However the first step is to both recognise the problem and recognise that it can be solved with a little effort. No one else seems to post anything else but a generalised opinion. I can excuse 06, he fell to the dark side of smurfing and stacked PUGS. But what about you others?
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