Alternative campaign-the Mongols

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I give up this one, it is completely won weeks now but very tiring.
First time I tried this scenario on regent, I struggled to win. This time, on Emperor, it was quite a smooth walk to victory despite huge self-restrictions, both mine and from the scenario.
I think setting up all ancient techs to be non-tradable favors the player for some reason, I cannot explain this otherwise. Extra game time for the player to show his superior human skills perhaps? Infrastructure like libraries playing a bigger role if having built early? Not sure.
 
Congratulations! I am impressed. I make only the first two columns of ancient era techs non-tradeable. 80 to 90% of the AI do fine with that and frankly come out ahead of me. But i think they would do the same even if it was all ancient era techs. Ah, maybe it is because you could still race to Republic and they would not?

If you tired of the game maybe reduce the domination victory conditions to say 35% land and population? Something still high enough ti give you a chance if there is a killer AI in a far off continent. I never understood the default of 66%. That is years of your life on a big map.
 
Congratulations! I am impressed. I make only the first two columns of ancient era techs non-tradeable. 80 to 90% of the AI do fine with that and frankly come out ahead of me. But i think they would do the same even if it was all ancient era techs. Ah, maybe it is because you could still race to Republic and they would not?

If you tired of the game maybe reduce the domination victory conditions to say 35% land and population? Something still high enough ti give you a chance if there is a killer AI in a far off continent. I never understood the default of 66%. That is years of your life on a big map.
No, I also had the slingshot disabled (no other changes from the editor, only those two). I didnt even use republic, it is war settings.
Yes, 66% is really ridiculus. Thinking a human may reach 40% and NOT be totally winning is utopic thinking....
 
I give up this one, it is completely won weeks now but very tiring.
First time I tried this scenario on regent, I struggled to win. This time, on Emperor, it was quite a smooth walk to victory despite huge self-restrictions, both mine and from the scenario.

From another perspective...

It's not a smooth walk, since you're not walking to victory. It would be a struggle for you to win, since you don't have motivation to try.

Extra game time for the player to show his superior human skills perhaps? Infrastructure like libraries playing a bigger role if having built early?

It definitely favors the human player to have ancient age techs non-tradeable.

The AIs will use entertainers, not use a scientist or raise the luxury slider for a bit. They also tend to overlap a fair bit in terms of research. They also put out settlers in the ancient age before building granaries. And they will use unroaded tiles a fair amount. Soren Johnson has said before that they were designed to play suboptimally in some respects.


I never understood the default of 66%. That is years of your life on a big map.


Yes, 66% is really ridiculus. Thinking a human may reach 40% and NOT be totally winning is utopic thinking..

The domination limit isn't just for human players. It's also for AI. If it were too low, then AIs could win easily and that would probably lead to frustration for the human player. I think it's also 2/3 of the council vote in the original Master of Orion.

After playing for high histographic score for the HoF several times, I can say that I do understand why and it's not ridiculous at all. If the domination limit were too small, then basically only one type of tiles would work out as best to settle. Pretty much, just grassland. If it were too high, then all tiles would end up worth the time to settle for high score... I mean have in use at 2050 AD here, not getting to the domination limit. But if it's just right, then more tile types become worthwhile to settle, while also making for variety.

Also, you aren't total winning by reaching 40%. You don't win, until/unless you get those final score scenes. No, one doesn't prove that you could have won by getting to 40%, as kaskavel's picture above shows (and I've had similar matches... having 40% of domination tiles, but not winning, even by 2050 AD). He didn't win and apparently won't ever. So, he wasn't total winning, since that requires having completed the game with a win.
 
I suppose by definition, given that the AI are more predisposed to share techs with each other than they are with the human, that any restriction on tech trading at the outset of the game will favour the human.

On victory conditions, I think its clear from the map that Kaskavel would have little difficulty, even with the campaign restrictions, in reaching 66% of both, particularly as the other main continent still has so many Civs in it. I would argue that the default settings in Civ3 (with starting units for the AI) reduces the difficulty of the game, on average, with each turn after mid-medieval. There is no real prospect of a 'come from behind' AI victory if the player is awake at the keyboard despite the setting that has the rival AIs more hostile to the Civ with the score lead (at least if the player is human). At least, its not something I've ever experienced or felt in danger of experiencing.

In the time taken to secure 66%, you could squeeze in two or three defeats or one or two diplomatic victories. It is up to each player to decide for themselves what is a better use of their time and if a dominant victory condition is a formality, no matter how long it might take.

I respect people's decisions on how to play a game, but I think its a reasonable argument to say it would have been better if Civ3 had a sliding scale of domination victory conditions, with the percentage required for victory declining as the number of competing Civs and the map size both increase. If Kaskavel's map showed it was likely an 8x Civ, small map game with a Killer AI occupying an entire continent then I think an argument against this being a victory could be made. But its clearly a decent sized map with, I suspect, at least 20x Civs starting out. Is 66% 1v1 versus a single AI a domination victory?

Playing devil's advocate, if 40% and 65% of both is not incontrovertible indicator of 'domination' then why is 66%? Can a game also not be lost almost as easily from 66% as 65%? I would argue these are fairly arbitrary numbers decided on by developers. It wouldn't even surprise me if the domination percentage figures changed in the three different versions of Civ3 (although I suspect they did not).
 
I never said about domination I think...I just said its completely won. Why all this fuss anyway? I must have missed some earlier-over the years -disagreement about what counts as a won game.
 
I never said about domination I think...I just said its completely won. Why all this fuss anyway? I must have missed some earlier-over the years -disagreement about what counts as a won game.
Fair point, there were no victory condition restrictions in this campaign. There is no underlying beef. Just I'm at the very casual end of the Civ3 playing spectrum and others are very motivated by maximising scores at the victory point (which I'm not knocking, there are whole sub-forums to it and its clearly a big part of the game).

I'm an advocate of reduced domination conditions and dislike the default difficulty curve in the game (essentially, catch up on tech after the mid-medieval era, get reasonable defensive units and prevent a killer AI from emerging and the game is won), so its a topic that is close to my heart! Apologies if considered off topic.
 
A diplo vic can be won with 50% + 1 civ, so requiring 66% of the valid tiles and 66% pop for a domination vic always seemed like an unreasonably high bar to me, too. "Either/or" seems like it would have been more reasonable.

So I reduced both domination requirements to 55% in my still-barely-playtested mod (but I also nerfed all the M=3 Horse-units down to M=2, so one might still have to work harder/wait longer to achieve it).
 
I respect people's decisions on how to play a game, but I think its a reasonable argument to say it would have been better if Civ3 had a sliding scale of domination victory conditions, with the percentage required for victory declining as the number of competing Civs and the map size both increase.

This is a setting that you can change as you please. I mean, I just went into Game Limits and it comes as possible to input an alternative number for it.

Playing devil's advocate, if 40% and 65% of both is not incontrovertible indicator of 'domination' then why is 66%?

Because an AI might have 40% or 66%. The difficulty for the AIs in achieving either ends up substantially different. From my latest HoF finish, which I played quickly...

"2421 for the Zulu who controlled 48% of the world area and 49% of the world population at the end of the game."

The Zulu was AI controlled.
 
On victory conditions, I think its clear from the map that Kaskavel would have little difficulty, even with the campaign restrictions, in reaching 66% of both, particularly as the other main continent still has so many Civs in it.

I passed this up before, but I still ending up thinking about it. But, no, it's not clear at all that he would have little difficulty. He's not willing to try, as he made clear before. Consequently, it comes as clear that it will be impossible for him to finish, since he can't finish without playing out those turns, which requires trying.

It does seem clear that a future world where he doesn't try to finish out a game can exist. So, it's possible that he never finishes such a game with a victory, and thus it would not be possible for him to win the game in the real future.
 
I should have noticed your tag Spoonwood as a 'philospher' - it seems accurate!

If anyone has any save games of Emperor or Deity level where they had 40% of both in the industrial era but somehow lost the game, I think they'd be good to see and understand how the game was lost. I just find Military Alliances (and diplomacy) so completely open to abuse and broken that anything like tech and territory parity with an AI isn't too tricky.

I accept I may be an outlier. The other main game I play is a racing sim from 1983 and if I get in the lead and hold that lead for a lap without a car in my wing mirrors I quit the game as a victory and squeeze in another race. I don't claim to be a purist! :D
 
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