[BERT] Control of End-Game Wonders

[vorlon_mi]

During my game last night, I noticed some weird behavior that may be a bug.

INTGR, my powerful neighbor to the east, was located on another land mass across a narrow (7 or 8 hexes) ocean. Lena was building the Emancipation Gate while I was finishing the techs for my Mind Flower. She was grumpy with me most of the game, so she declared war on me BEFORE her gate was finished.
Aware that she was probably plotting, I deployed my navy around my aquatic city in the ocean and protecting my coastal capital. Between air power and decent counter attacks, I sank most of her navy. I took one of her aquatic cities in the ocean, which set me up for an assault on her coastal city where she was building the gate a few hexes inland.

Here's the weird part. After capturing her city that was building the gate, I fired a few shots against the gate itself. Got it to yellow, but not destroyed. She suddenly agrees to peace, giving me 3 cities and energy in the process. I now control the territory where her not-quite-finished gate sits.
About 5 turns later, the gate lights up. She has finished constructing it??? While it is in my territory? OK, maybe it was being built by a different city, but located next to the city I captured, but how can she continue building something in enemy territory.

I had seen something like this in a previous game, where I captured an AI system building the Beacon, but didn't actually have my units attack the Beacon. Since then, I usually ensure that some ground troops (hover tanks, infantry) destroy the wonder itself rather than just taking the city.
In this case, I have troops next to the still-yellow-line Gate, ready to destroy it if war breaks out again.

 

[Protok St]

I had similar situations a few times. A faction captures a base and territory with Improvement-Wonder, but this I-Wonder reacts still as property of previous player.
I think there is a missing code part of game bahavior in this cases. Also there seems a conflict caused by ownership of I-Wonder. The belonging of improvements is determined by the ownership of the territory, but I-Wonders has own special param with belonging. From one side it should be owned by territory master, from another owned by constructor.
This is an unclear mechanic happened because of not enough time/finance/experience from the devs.

 

[legalizefreedom]

This is an unclear mechanic happened because of not enough time/finance/experience from the devs.

The devs were quite competent. I highly doubt this (or any other aspect of the game left unfinished) was due to a lack of experience on their part. These fall to lack of time and money due to the public dogpiling on the game. People heard it was a bad game and that tinted their glasses. People expected it to be something it wasn't. It all felt very unfair to the devs. Compared to the flaming pile Civ 5 was prior to Gods and Kings, BE was progressing nicely in its development until support was pulled.

 

[vorlon_mi]

Continued playing last night, reminding me why I enjoy this game so much.

Neighbor INTGR was pursuing Supremacy. Researched the techs, started the gate, lost control of the gate in a war. Once I destroyed the gate (war, part 2, she declared), she started building it again.

On the other side of the planet, two different AI built the Beacon. They took 10 or 20 turns to build up the energy and each ignited their Beacons about 15 turns apart. The fuses were lit, so to speak. I needed to prepare invasion forces, supported by air power on a carrier, to get to them and destroy their wonders while mine finished building.

To compound this, the two objectors to my end game wonder were two factions I had been "Cooperating" with nearly the whole game. One of the objectors had one of the Beacons, so we were going to clash sooner or later.

The end game is NOT a snooze-fest, just hitting "Next Turn", at least not this time.

 

[Sclb]

What difficulty is this game? I think last time I had to attempt to destroy AI beacon or else they would win was on Soyuz or Apollo doing some achievements, and I failed to get through their carpet of doom because they were tier 3 units. In the end war was pretty much a stalemate because AI spams unit faster than I can replace mine. Actually I had to pull back because another AI declared on me and I don’t want to lose capital which would fail my achievements, but by the time I dealt with that AI, the first AI already pretty much won.

I think another city might own the beacon since they don’t follow the 3 tile radius rule.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I've been playing at Soyuz lately. It gives me a level of challenge that I find fun, without feeling overwhelmed.

For this particular game (playing as Africa), I started out going for Purity since I had a bunch of land where I could leave space for Earthling settlements. But by voluntarily limiting my expansion / rate of settling, the AI all began trash-talking me and taking turns declaring war. INTEGR (neighbor to the east) put 3 cities in our mutual ocean. It stopped being fun around turn 225-250.
So i went back to my save from turn 16, before most of the key decisions were made, and worked towards another victory condition. Expanded more rapidly, stayed unhealthy longer, and the AI's began respecting me more. They picked another punching bag (Kozlov) instead of me.

At Soyuz difficulty, on a Fungal Terran world, enough AI get a good starting location where they can build up their infrastructure and try to win.

 

[Sclb]

Yes AI can win on higher difficulty especially when they go wide, either through conquest of weaker AI or just nonstop city spamming which happens rarely compared to civ 5 for reasons I don’t know. On civ 5 some AI will settle on even 1 tile islands