Jorgas
Posts: 39
Joined: 1/30/2013
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Arralen
quote:
ORIGINAL: mahaniok
Can you clarify what's bad in your screenshot?
On turn 9 I conquered the nearest major AI 8 hexes to my right. Now I have doubled my production capacity.
During the last 7 turns I did not care at all about resupply, production, decisions. Just speedkilled the troops to my right.
In the coming turns, I will proceed to roll over the next major AI 10 hexes to the upper right.
(or rather, won't, as I lost interest)
=> in less then 20 turns I effectivly would have conquered "half of the map" (i.e. 3 of 6 starting positions).
=> if I hadn't, chances are some AI would have done the same.
=> if I (or some AI) did not go hyper-aggressive (or failed), 3 majors would have been stuck in a stalemate struggle for area and ressources, while (presumably) on some other part of the map some major AI can expand completely unmolested.
"But this is brilliant design - keeps the player on his toes all the time, because there's always a hard, uphill fight against a superior foe at hand! First with his neighbours, than with those grown empires!"
No.
It's bad, lazy game design that I have seen in so many (bad, lazily produced) games during my 25 years of computer gaming. (Yes. It's been that long. *sigh*). Let me tell you why:
It promotes early rushes. Early rushes rely on the basic starting troops and the production capacity the player starts with, so all the fancy research, troop types, prodction thingies etc. do not come in effect and are useless. (This is exceptionally favourable for game devs who eff-ed up their design even for the early stages of those. E.g. games that give you starting troops that you can't build yourself for the next 50 turns ...)
If the first rush works, the player has doubled his capacity. If he has another victim nearby (like it is the case here), he will triple his capacity in a very short time. No amount of steady growth of a far away player can match that, unless it's an AI that uses a ****-ton of cheats and bonuses. So the "always interesting uphill battles at hand" is rather unlikely to come true, because that would require a very fine tuning of that growth to match the players conquests. (Works fine with even more AI cheats, though ;-) )
If the first rush doesn't work, the human player can basically give up (even if he's not killed off), b/c he's even further behind in production etc. vs. the evercheating AI.
... now, add in the GR units human and AI players can find on the map in SE ...
=> How often do you (want to) restart/replay a game that makes you use always the same troops and same strategy for the first 20-40 turns, always struggling to avoid a sudden death and trying to inflict it on your neighbours?
I wouldn't want to more than ... 2 times, maybe?
.
I pointed your points out, in my own thread a few months old people seemed to like to have a early AI to steamroll even on extreme difficulty and made up various reasons for not "fixing" it or inventing reasons why I could do it. Just as the guy that posted above you, "Can you clarify what's bad in your screenshot?" - People like having that easy cap in the start, and don't understand what your screenshot was about with your attached turn 9 comment.
In my last game I steamrolled 2 raider AI's and 2 Majors on extreme by turn 53 the game was won, the nemesis did not even stand a chance.
In the game before it I had 3 majors next to me and it was pretty much same thing.
And game before same thing, and the one before that.
It's one of the main reason why I press the X and play something else now, cause I can't raise the difficulty anymore then extreme, and I can't play intentionally bad, game is pretty much no challenge anymore when you have a start AI next too you cause it's got no chance on any small/normal/huge map to develop before their all dead, or player that have bothered to learn the full combat system.
unless there is a content update, I don't see myself playing the game anytime soon again, I just don't see any point cause I'd only rush close again and play to my full potential and have 2-3 extra cities by turn ~40-50, and then the rest of the game is a cakewalk, even on extreme.
(The only exception I've had is having a super huge map, with ~60+ minutes turn timers, which I can't be bothered with anymore, after hitting over an hour/per turn)
TLDR;
+1 for minimum starting distance toggle between -any- type of players
< Message edited by Jorgas -- 1/14/2021 9:58:49 AM >
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Printable Version
We NEED equidistant spawns as a History Class - 
RE: We NEED equidistant spawns as a History Class - 
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