Victory Conditions Not Good

[thamlett]

I totally disagree here. Being tenacious is useful. I remember a game where I held out in a pond with two warships and prevented my enemy from building any docks. It's not poor sportsmanship, it's teaching the other player to be more agressive (and actually win).

[FeXoR]

IMO victory/defeat conditions should be simple to explain (in the match type description).

And they should be clear for all players in all stages of the game.

(In general mainly a loose condition is needed and a player wins if no opponent is left.

There are some exceptions though e.g. wonders.

Changeable/fixed teams may need some different behavior.)

The actual (loose when number of units/buildings is zero, win if all opponents lost - for changeable teams it may be if all other players lost, not sure) is the clearest but has its flaws in lategame (the hide and seek annoyance),

Mythos_Ruler's tech would fix this mainly (in some cases the dominant player might need to build e.g. a dock to reach a leftover ship though).

(Adding a "scout" order that tells every selected units individually(!) to randomly (or better "go to the location with the highest lastTimeVisualBeforeXSecs / distanceToThisUnit ratio that can be reached by this unit and then continue") walk across the map - and if set to "aggressive" stance attack and chase any unit coming into visual range would help as well)

This would be my favorite default victory/defeat condition (and default match type conquest).

Another match type could be battle:

- Players get a fixed starting force (without any buildings or builders - or units simply can't build). This can be chosen by the map designer or (if not) dependent on his civ defined in an XML file (and then placed at the first turn).

- A player gets visual on all players that has less then 1/10th units compared to him left (this is only obvious during the game if a player table is in displaying the number of units for all players - and e.g. turn red if visual to any other player).

There may be other game types but what I mainly wanted to say is:

- Every game type might have different needs in victory/defeat conditions.

- Game types should be independent of the map, so all functionality of all (default) match types (that work with "any" map) should be defined outside the map (though they may be tweaked inside the map (to some degree) like the starting forces).

That means it would be most pleasant for the map designer to have a "start location" placeholder entity that gets replaced appropriate with the starting entities dependent on the match type at the start of the game (this may include Gaia entities like the "starting resources" for conquest).

(This entity could also be the default camera position if not defined otherwise)

For more variety victory/defeat conditions could be set inside the map by scripting (AFAIK already possible) but only work if no "default" match type is chosen (for simplicity it might be best to just set the match type fixed to special for such maps - and a descriptive text to (try to) explain the match type).

Such maps could get an own map category e.g. "special" to make clear that thy have there own match type and/or victory/defeat condition definition as well as maybe non-default starting entities.

I'm not thrilled by the thought of unclear victory/defeat conditions like "is dominant" or something similar (which matches my suggestion for the match type battle though a "leaderboard" might make that a bit more obvious).

(Another - not that well thought through - game feature connected to this would be an "intelligence gathering" tech so e.g. the visual range of all buildings (and maybe units) are increased each time the upgrade is researched and it can be researched an infinite amount of times... for a price. Maybe this tech could be added to the market or the civic centre. If "line of sight" checks are/get implemented though this may be a really bad idea due to performance)

Edited May 8, 2014 by FeXoR

[hhyloc]

I totally disagree here. Being tenacious is useful. I remember a game where I held out in a pond with two warships and prevented my enemy from building any docks. It's not poor sportsmanship, it's teaching the other player to be more agressive (and actually win).

But is it fun? Sure you may get some enjoyment out of it but what about the other player?

I agree that "teaching" someone to be more aggreasive is good and all but there are more better ways to do that than draw out a match much longer than it's needed. As you described you prevented the opponent from building any dock, I assume that because you destroyed any foundation he has laid out before he got a chance to complete it, but it's then just a game of quick clicking, you try to find all his dock foundation and destroy it and him try to build up a dock and make ships. And it's a losing game for you anyway cause he has the all the resource and army. This comes back to what I said before, a frustrating and time-consuming experience for anyone on the receiving end.

[Radagast.]

In this case you can still build multiple foundations.

Also chaining of build commands is possible if I'm not wrong.

At least you could distract the enemy on the ships by giving chained walk-commands to your builder-units.

And if you are so much stronger, then building 10 docks around the lake at the same time should be no problem.

No offense, but in reality you also have to fight to the end or hope for the other to surrender. We could make it more attractive to surrender by introducing a limited doom then, e.g. an almost remis.

(not really of course, but something like a less bad loss if you surrender in comparison to fully been wiped out.)

Thus surrender negotiations should be shown to the currently more powerful faction to allow for a decision if the limited victory is worth the time saving or if a full victory should be achieved. In the latter simply reject the surrender-negotiation and hunt the enemy down.

Edited May 10, 2014 by Hephaestion

[hhyloc]

I think you are going for realism too closely here. Sure in reality the victor has to choose between wipe out the opponent completely (more hassle) or negotie a truce that the defeated can follow. But from the player's perspective it's just a game, and it's indeed a game; The time saved here are the time that both the player saved from a prolonged match not the time saved for a real life army, nation, conqueror or whatever, unless this is applied to some kind of competitive multiplayer ladder, I don't see the point of full annilihation vs admit defeat in a normal, casual match. And even then in competitive matchs of most games I've seen one player will automatically resign if he deem the situation hopeless, prolonged the match unnessesarily by hiding your units around WILL be looked down on.

From my personal exeperience, the Resign button in RTS is there to serve the purpose that the losing player can end the match quicker when he think there are no hope left, thus saving the hassle for both players, so they can leave and play a new match/do other things. And then we have this "Spy" tech that reveal enemy units for a scaleable price; these mechanics have existed long before and has proven to work effectively, I don't think we should change it and introduce unnessesary mechanisms.

Edited May 11, 2014 by hhyloc

[LordGood]

Both sides can quit, you know. Technical victory or not. Leaderboards don't matter, especially not in early alpha. I personally like a late game chase, and would approve of mechanisms that allow a crippled player to return to strength.

[hhyloc]

True, but then it's unsatisfying for the winning player, and then the summary table's result won't be accurate with the actual situation. This will hurt the multiplayer aspect badly, because there are people just playing for fun, but there are people playing for competitive thrill too, and to them leaderboard DO matter. Granted it's still early alpha, but that doesn't mean we should just neglect it, for an open source game under development a community is even more important.

[thamlett]

yeah, I wish I was on the leaderboard. It was fun, though.

However, there needs to be some sort of "tie" or something allowed, at least in the lobby.

Speaking of the lobby, we need a sort of "community index" in there