Musing on Victory conditions

[Delta66]

I still have plenty to learn about the game, and there's no manual yet, so I maybe I still have false ideas. Here are a few comments on the VC.

First I would like to see the VC clarified as a tooltips when you hover over the 3 victory condition buttons when creating a new game.

I'm not sure that the three VC are balanced. This is not necessarily a problem, but maybe there could be some fine tuning here.


Military VC “control 75% of Pandora population”.
This one seems the easiest, or at least the more desirable to strive for. Because as you progress toward this goal, you also probably prevent enemy from reaching this military VC, and also the other ones by crippling their economy and resources.. Whereas the others VC are more self dependent.

BTW rushing seems a very efficient strategy, to reach this VC. Research any or all of the following: Flamethrower, Training Facility, Attack or Defense device, level 1 Armor.
Build as much as Trooper as you can, attack weak aliens to gain some experience, and maybe capture a hive to gain some credits, then heal.
Now attack another faction, preferably one that is already attacked by someone else or by the aliens. You”ll gain an allready developed city, and get rid of one of the opponent


Economic VC. “Accumulate enough credits to purchase 75% of other independent factions' economy”
I'm not sure of how “75% of other independent factions' economy” is computed.

If I read correctly, you must accumulate CREDITS, that is the currency of the game, hence you should be careful about your expenses here, or you might never be able to achieve this VC.
In contrast, for military or tech victories you have the full benefit of the “currency” which count toward their respective victory. I,e, pop is productive while also counting toward military victory, and the techs researched are also used to improve your civ. I.e. they accrue, whereas credits wax and wane.
Moreover the current state of opponents' economy is not as easy to assess as their population value.
And you have little way to directly affect the opponents Economies, except by attacking them, so you could as well go directly for a military victory. Because amassing a significantly larger share of the whole Pandora's economy than your rivals seems really difficult to achieve by peaceful means. Even if you have a flourishing economy, I think there are little chances that you'll be that better than the opponents.

However there are some tricks here, that are not immediately obvious. As the VC is a matter of comparing your CREDIT vs opponents' economy, and not your economy vs opponents' economy.
You can use the special features associated with credits.
Firstly you can build the buildings that provide extra credits. But most importantly you can set you production to 'Wealth', to give a boost to your bank account.
Finally there's a cheap trick, which I feel is a bit of a gameplay bug. You can sell all of your already constructed building plus all of your units. You'll only get 1/3 back from their purchase price, but most of the time you haven't purchased them but produced them instead.
This way, turning all my cities to 'Wealth ' production for two turns then selling all my units and buildings was able to reach a very easy economic victory, while the mid-game had barely started and 1/3 of the map was still unoccupied.




Technology “research 75% of all technologies”
This one is clear to understand, it is more independent than the others VC, once researched you will not loose any point, which might be the case with population. You can loose labs in a city, but it will take some times for the opponent to convert the labs into actual researches.

Monitoring my research VC score as I discovered every new tech, I noticed various increment, this was probably due to rounding. However it was not very clear ,if the various techs were weighted differently toward the tech VC. I think it would made sense to weight the techs the more they cost in research point, not to the point of making level 2 techs counting for twice as more as the level 1 techs, and level 3 techs for thrice. But more than they currently are as of version 0,21.
In my game the most expensive techs costed 1512 pts while the first one 16 pts. It doesn’t feel right if they score the same toward victory, especially as you cannot research more than one tech per turn.
Of course you'll have much more scientist and lab late in the game, then, it is not that hard to research even the harder tech in one or two turns.

In a game I had discovered most of the 3rd golden tier, but I had to get back and do the 1st tier techs that I had bypassed early in the game, to get those final percent to win with technology. This just felt wrong researching a level 1 tech when you already have the similar level 3 one. It's a bit like “discovering” WW I airplanes when you have already discovered stealth jet fighter.

Scalability
I also wonder how the three VC scale with the various map sizes. Obviously on smaller maps it would be harder to research many techs, and in contrast on large maps conquering most of the map would be longer. Same for an economic victory, on larger map once you make contact with other factions they might already be fairly developed and with a decent economy running, so getting a clear lead over them would be a formidable task, and you might rather settle for a tech victory on larger map. I think there is room for some tuning of the VC depending of the maps size.

It could be good to have a turn limit depending on the size of the map, or other game ending conditions, to prevent the game from lasting for hours while the victor is already known for a long time. And then evaluating the winner on the final accumulated score. Or alternatively the single best score in one of the scoring categories.

[richmcd]

My concern is that the victory conditions aren't at all interesting. They also don't really make sense in any context other than as a game mechanic. For me, victory ought to be a single event which caps off the story of the game. Even if it's not clear-cut, it should be an obvious transition. This story has ended, a new one is beginning. So in Civ the colonists head for Alpha Centauri, clearly marking a new era of mankind. Likewise, in SMAC, the faction who wins a research victory transcends to a new form of existence. It's a single, concrete event that clearly marks the end.

As far as I can tell, in Pandora I can win the game by researching an arbitrary tech that I skipped earlier in the tree, just because that means I've reached 75%. Same with the economic victory. Why was the 75th percentage point so much more important than the 74th, to the extent that I'm now the winner? It feels like ending the game with a massive shrug.

Admittedly I come at this from a narrative/story-telling standpoint, but I think there are strong gameplay ramifications as well. The end of the game is the weak point in most 4X games. What's needed is tension. Having concrete events heightens this, and gives the other players a chance to stop the leader. Simple stories are a good way to think about this. "We must stop X from transcending" is a lot more compelling than "we must stop X from researching about fungus to hit an arbitrary research threshold"

Assuming I'm not misremembering, even SMAC's rather weak economic victory had a bit of tension to it. Once you achieved it, didn't the other players have 30 turns to come and kill you? That sort of countdown can really shake up the latter stages of a game.

(Admittedly, I'm assuming that nothing of the kind happens in Pandora. In my first game I was just unceremoniously dispatched by the AI. If there is a mechanism like this, then obviously ignore me.)

[dalves]

Actually there is a warning when someone is getting close to their scientific victory, and the victory text does claim that a transcendence has happened. It still feels a bit disconnected from any story. I've achieved it without even knowing, because I wasn't looking at the victory progression.

[richmcd]

Ah okay. Well that does sound better. Although as you say it's still not much of a story event. It sounds like you could research "fungus tech No 9" and somehow trigger becoming a being of pure energy!

Even with a warning, how would you stop someone? Presumably they'd have to be completely wiped off the map? The advantage of a building that's linked to a victory condition is that it gives everyone a target to aim for.

[SephiRok]

We agree that victory conditions in general could be better. For the research victory we have been discussing making a final tech you have to research to win (transcendental ascesion or so). When we get a chance we'll likely change that.

[Delta66]

The game scores high in many areas, Game Engine, UI
The Gfx are quite good too, the decisions made each turn and the overall pace is also fine.

But what drives the games from turn one to the end is the weakest part of the game. It's ok for the first games when you discover the aliens and others features of the games. But after 10 games or so it feels a bit reppeitive, compared to other civ games. Afterward it feels like a combat sandbox without scenarios. The plot is always the same and the overall strategy lack diversity.

The game screams for extra contents, scenarios, campaigns, in game events, more living terrains and aliens with varied purposes. It doesn't make the most out of the SF theme which is open to so much variations.

[vv221]

We agree that victory conditions in general could be better. For the research victory we have been discussing making a final tech you have to research to win (transcendental ascesion or so). When we get a chance we'll likely change that.

I think a building unlocked by the last tech would be better, giving you victory if you build it and keep it an arbitrary number of turns.
The reason is simple: you can't stop a rival research, but you can attack the city where he is building the "victory building".

In my opinion, this is the major weakness of victory conditions as they are now: you can't do anything to stop a rival to win if he has a good tech advance, other than wiping him out of the surface of Pandora, which is nearly impossible on late game if he has widely expanded.