Winning FreeOrion

For what's not in 'Top Priority Game Design'. Post your ideas, visions, suggestions for the game, rules, modifications, etc.

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Impaler
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#16 Post by Impaler »

Generaly I would expect a Espionage victory to take longer then a Conquest victory, a ranpaging warlord would probably finish off everyone in the game before the long involved Espionage victory can be brought together. Also I would expect that the expantions and conquests of the warlord themselves are detrimental the to Espionage victory

(the plans within plans, within plans are being disrupted by this "outside inferereance")

The secretness of the Espionage victory is the central point in its coolness, its all Shadow goverments and Imuminati type stuff.
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Ace
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#17 Post by Ace »

The Antaran X victory seemed sort of tacked on. Mixing uncovering ancient dig sites with the normal research model for the ascension ending I think would be the best bet.

khormin
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#18 Post by khormin »

Aye. Simple solution - allow players to choose, and add whatever you want in there.

Certainly, an "espionage victory" might sound cool - but what is it you're achieving? Victory by... what? Conquering their empire. Using spies.

So you've conquered your foes.

Is that different from using battleships? I'm confused.

As for the other victory types; despite my complaints in the "collecting" thread, you could have "amass 40,000 minerals", "colonise 100 planets", etc first. Then just let your players choose what they want as end conditions.

Personally, I'm not satisfied until I'm sole survivor, or I have a "total conquest/alliance" victory - to say, no-one but me and my allies are left standing.

DvdW
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#19 Post by DvdW »

Spy victory and economic victory seem to me only different paths to the conquest victory.(If you use your resources to buy ships you can conquer your neighbors).

Economic warfare, would also be possible, but somehow i don't think it's possible without creating a sort of separate economics game which has nothing to do with the rest of the game.

The only way they would work as a separate victory condition is if you make galactic organisations like a galaxy bank and galaxy council.

For the spy victory you could infiltrate the council and with enough support make a coup. To make it not just a win option, the council could make decisions about some galactic laws that you could influence. These laws would be random events. Like a bill would be passed declaring a war legal or illegal. Think starwars episode 1. With spying you could delay such a bill, or influence votes. Or even you could block a galactic election so another player can't win through diplomacy.

Or better yet, you could backstab another player that when he reaches a victory condition you kill him and take his place as galactic ruler. This would ofcourse be most fun in an allied victory where you betray your ally and instead of both winning only you win the game. :twisted:

Actually, economic victory doesn't make sense. If you have all the money and the other guy a huge battle fleet, you can't realisticly say that you've won. The other guy could justtake the money from you.
But it would be fun to make a merchant empire possible where you don't really produce much yourself, but just buy it of a galactic market. You would have producing empires on the other side who instead invest in spacedocs and sell their ships on the market. Both would need eachother for without the merchant the producing empire could not afford the upkeep and without the producer the merchant would not be able to protect his empire. To avoid micromanagement pricing would have to be automatic, like (production cost + profit margin) * (demand/supply). You could assign a part of your production to be automaticaly sold. Two empires could also agree to trade ships for money.

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Bigjoe5
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#20 Post by Bigjoe5 »

I'm not against allowing players to choose their own arbitrary victory conditions, but IMO, having more than one main victory condition is a sign that the aspect of the game related to that victory condition is poorly integrated with the rest of the game. You want an espionage victory? Use espionage to become the sole survivor. You want an economic victory? Use your economic influence to become the sole survivor. You want a technological victory? Etc...
DvdW wrote:Actually, economic victory doesn't make sense. If you have all the money and the other guy a huge battle fleet, you can't realisticly say that you've won. The other guy could justtake the money from you.
That's the problem with all alternate victory conditions: if you don't have the power to eliminate your opponents, you can't realistically say you've won.
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Krikkitone
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#21 Post by Krikkitone »

Bigjoe5 wrote:I'm not against allowing players to choose their own arbitrary victory conditions, but IMO, having more than one main victory condition is a sign that the aspect of the game related to that victory condition is poorly integrated with the rest of the game. You want an espionage victory? Use espionage to become the sole survivor. You want an economic victory? Use your economic influence to become the sole survivor. You want a technological victory? Etc...
DvdW wrote:Actually, economic victory doesn't make sense. If you have all the money and the other guy a huge battle fleet, you can't realisticly say that you've won. The other guy could justtake the money from you.
That's the problem with all alternate victory conditions: if you don't have the power to eliminate your opponents, you can't realistically say you've won.

Well this is why you need alternate means of dominating your opponents besides just winning ship battles. (ie economic/espionage means of dominating your opponents)

The one exception I would say is tech victory.

If "Dominating the whole map" is one basic victory condition, the other should be "Escaping the map"(by transcending it, developing a tech that lets you travel to/colonize other universes, etc.)

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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#22 Post by DvdW »

Actually escaping by transcending is kind of boring. You just hide untill you have the final tech and you're done. Tech victory would be cooler if you could make a doomsday weapon. Starting that research would ofcourse make all other races imediately at war with you. And after researching it, it would just give a major advantage in battle, but not impossible to defeat. That way it won't become a sort of race to the first win option.

One other thing, I HATE having to dominate the whole map. It is such an anti-climax when after defeating the main fleet, you have to go capture all the planets 1 by 1 with no real resistance. That's why I like the galactic council idea, that they can vote for a new galactic leader if one player already dominates the game. If all accept the player has won. If not the rebels have x years to amass a fleet and conquer orion before the galactic council crowns the new galactic emperor there. So there would be one win condition. Become the galactic leader, instead of kill all others.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#23 Post by Krikkitone »

DvdW wrote:Actually escaping by transcending is kind of boring. You just hide untill you have the final tech and you're done. Tech victory would be cooler if you could make a doomsday weapon. Starting that research would ofcourse make all other races imediately at war with you. And after researching it, it would just give a major advantage in battle, but not impossible to defeat. That way it won't become a sort of race to the first win option.

One other thing, I HATE having to dominate the whole map. It is such an anti-climax when after defeating the main fleet, you have to go capture all the planets 1 by 1 with no real resistance. That's why I like the galactic council idea, that they can vote for a new galactic leader if one player already dominates the game. If all accept the player has won. If not the rebels have x years to amass a fleet and conquer orion before the galactic council crowns the new galactic emperor there. So there would be one win condition. Become the galactic leader, instead of kill all others.

Well a "Tech win" should be more interesting (ala Civ with the Space Race) you should be able to interfere with it.

A "Dominate the map win" could be made more interesting by giving you ways to conquer entire empires at once (economic manipulation to make them a 'vassal')

The one problem with a Galactic Council is that there is no reason for a player to vote for someone else... unless voting for someone else is basically an "I give up" button.

DvdW
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#24 Post by DvdW »

Krikkitone wrote:

Well a "Tech win" should be more interesting (ala Civ with the Space Race) you should be able to interfere with it.

A "Dominate the map win" could be made more interesting by giving you ways to conquer entire empires at once (economic manipulation to make them a 'vassal')

The one problem with a Galactic Council is that there is no reason for a player to vote for someone else... unless voting for someone else is basically an "I give up" button.
Hmmm. True. My model for galactic council comes from the republic in starwars. Maybe if you have enough political dominance over another player you can control his voting. Here espionage could be used to help victory. Generally all your coulcilors will vote for what you tell them to vote. But if they are intimidated, bribed or infiltrated or something they may vote differently. Maybe like the president doesn't directly control the senate.

Do you know the game Twilight Imperium? It is a very nice space strategy boardgame inspired by Masters of Orion. There you have production and influence. The more influence you have the more votes you have. Every turn there is a political event which will change the game in some way. It can be a one off thing that will benefit or penalise only one player one time. Or a law which affects all players until it is repealed. This adds a very nice element of randomness to the game so that every game is different.

chad3006
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#25 Post by chad3006 »

DvdW wrote:
Krikkitone wrote:

Do you know the game Twilight Imperium? It is a very nice space strategy boardgame inspired by Masters of Orion. There you have production and influence. The more influence you have the more votes you have. Every turn there is a political event which will change the game in some way. It can be a one off thing that will benefit or penalise only one player one time. Or a law which affects all players until it is repealed. This adds a very nice element of randomness to the game so that every game is different.
I'm not familiar with that game, but I like the idea. A race that is weak in all areas but spying and negotiating could have greater influence then.

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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#26 Post by DvdW »

http://home.brotherus.net:8080/download ... 3rules.pdf
Page 23 explains the idea.

Although I don't think it is a victory condition, since you would still have to dominate the map.

The only option to escape from having only one condition is to make different kind of victories possible for different amounts of points. Like an allied victory would be possible, but score lower points. I don't know how much fun that will be though. It seems to me actualy the most fun to just as soon as 1 player starts to dominate the galaxy and doesn't control the council, a call to war can be sounded, so that all others are invited to unite against that player without any political reprocussions.

This way smaller empires still have a role instead of after losing one battle deciding they have no chance of winning and just give up. Also I love the idea of large federation/dominion type alliances fighting mega battles with huge fleets.

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IConrad
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#27 Post by IConrad »

It seems to me that there are a few basic strategies which are viable for victory conditions.

1) Escape the map. (Technological transcendence; develop a trans-galactic warp drive, etc. Mostly a technology end-run.)

2) Unify the map.

This one gets a bit more ... interesting. There are three basic means of conquering the competition.

A) Conquer them with guns and bombs. Straight-forward; build a bigger hammer, swing harder.

B) Conquer them with ideas. Less straight-forward. Shift "enemy" empire's opinions of you with spies in order to more quickly gain alliances, for example. Disseminate your culture far and wide. This is the Diplomatic/Cultural victory.

C) Conquer them with dollars. Buy out their home-world(s), etc.

One idea I haven't seen would be to enable economic-focused players to have the option to take a hit to their total empire's taxation rates (variable but percentage-based amount equal to the race's/government's economic "efficiency" versus the opponent's "efficiency" and how big the world is compared to others of that race's, and the relations between the two empires) in order to "buy out" a given world. This would essentially be like Civilization III's "cultural defection" model, except you are using dollars. This is automatic; once you invest the required number of points (which the player never knows up-front) -- the world shifts over to your control. To be interesting an empire should be able to shift resources defensively, as well. We could represent the proximity to "conquest" with a special meter under the system/world's icon, with the meter showing in sitrep reports.

This is never a single-turn action which means it's defensible. We should try to make this comparable in cost of resources to actually building a fleet hard enough to take over said world. This ends in the same "type" of victory as military -- but it's a different way of getting there.

I like this idea a great deal, actually, because it follows a sort of "Rock-Paper-Scissors" approach to conquest. Militaristic empires are vulnerable to economic empires which are vulnerable to cultural empires which are vulnerable to militaristic empires (all other things being equal).

It creates a *simple* form of complexity which should always keep the gameplay "fresh" and "original". No one strategy will ever be universally effective -- a player will have to tailor his approach to each individual game.

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Geoff the Medio
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#28 Post by Geoff the Medio »

IConrad wrote:It creates a *simple* form of complexity...
A bit oxymoronic...?

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IConrad
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#29 Post by IConrad »

Geoff the Medio wrote:
IConrad wrote:It creates a *simple* form of complexity...
A bit oxymoronic...?
Heheh. People have written entire research papers on the strategy for Rock Paper Scissors... which has exactly three options to execute. It's like checkers; the rules themselves are quite simple -- but the number of possible games played is vast.

Expanding on the ideological/diplomatic/cultural approach -- I know we can't do cultural maps like were done w/ Civilization as a result of how the starlane map is working. But we can have varying culture levels, which could result in spontaneously seceding worlds and advantages in diplomatic agendas. (I.e.; higher-culture worlds have an "edge" when making with the Diplomatic exchanges of technologies, alliances, etc., etc..) This could open up the field for conquering the game-map through a more sneaky approach.

You build up a spy network, have the spy network cause rebellion at the empire-level, and pave the ground for declaring the surrender of a nation to your own. It's still victory-by-conquest, but in this case you're splintering up your "enemies" and getting them to become "vassal states" (i.e.; part of your empire). This is a two-pronged approach: first you get your competition-player's territories divided up, while you remain unified, and then you force the rebellious territory into surrendering to you. You could also "pay extra spy points" (or whatever) to have it pulled off without getting caught. Etc..

(And of course you could always play a more balanced role where you use all three strategies without specializing in any one; and of course there's the varying technological edges.)

This would be pretty difficult to balance overall -- but I like where this train of thought is leading me.

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Krikkitone
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Re: Winning FreeOrion

#30 Post by Krikkitone »

IConrad wrote:It seems to me that there are a few basic strategies which are viable for victory conditions.

1) Escape the map. (Technological transcendence; develop a trans-galactic warp drive, etc. Mostly a technology end-run.)

2) Unify the map.

This one gets a bit more ... interesting. There are three basic means of conquering the competition.

A) Conquer them with guns and bombs. Straight-forward; build a bigger hammer, swing harder.

B) Conquer them with ideas. Less straight-forward. Shift "enemy" empire's opinions of you with spies in order to more quickly gain alliances, for example. Disseminate your culture far and wide. This is the Diplomatic/Cultural victory.

C) Conquer them with dollars. Buy out their home-world(s), etc.
.
So the three methods of controlling the world would be

1. Fear (Troops)
2. Love (you make them like you)
3. Dependence (economics, you make their economy dependent on you)

I would develop those as
1. would take over one world at a time (although an empire might surrender if there as some 'allied victory')

2. would take over a world through mechanism 1... (rebel troops in support of the empire they love, beating troops of the empire they fear)... (of course it could also have an empire 'surrender' to you and this would work a lot better with an 'allied victory')

3. wouldn't take over worlds, it could be used to 'attack' worlds OR to take over entire empires. (ie surrender or in poverty)

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