Contact victory extremely boring

[Tomice]

The main problem about contact victory: After you activated the beacon, there is literally nothing left to do, except to wait. It doesn't matter if your whole empire crumbles to dust, as long as the beacon stands, you've won after 30 turns.

This would be less of an issue if anyone would react and try to keep you from completing it, but they don't. At least in my game, noone cared, not even my direct neighbour who hated me the whole game (and had a border 3 tiles from my beacon).

Also, even if you had to fight, you can use your whole empire as buffer. Given the predictability (and inability) of the AI, there is nothing to fear.

It might be similar for other victory conditions, but at least you need to actively settle the earthlings in the purity victory. The other victories are also a bit more active than "build 3 wonders, then wait for ages doing nothing at all".

After the beacon was active, I automated my workers and explorers, klicked anywhere for the trade routes to go, built whatever I clicked on first, ignored my spies, ignored the quests and didn't renew diplomatic contracts if it involved more than a click.

The "consumes all surplus energy" part is also laughable. You can adjust things so you aren't dependent on surplus gold for 30 turns (because the only relevant use for energy is rush-buying defensive units after this point).




To not only complain, my suggestion would be this:
You actually need to fill a huge pool of energy for the beacon to transmit its message. Not only the initial 1000, but maybe additional 10000 energy or more. This is done by taking your surplus gold, but also takes the cash energy you have ready into account. So if you amassed 6000 from your "lost" energy per turn and have 4000 cash left, you win.




TLDR: Contact is extremely boring after beacon activation if you don't have to defend (and you rarely fight for your life at this point).

 

[SupremacyKing2]

Personally, I think Firaxis needs to reduce the waiting times in the victories. Maybe change the Contact Victory to 20 turns instead of 30 and change the Promised Land victory to settle 10 earthlings instead of 20. This would at least reduce the tediousness a bit. The player would not have to wait quite as long. After all, the victory are multi-step. I feel like you've done enough to deserve the win that you don't need to also wait another 30 turns.

 

[InspCallahan]

Turning the contact victory into a form of economic victory is a brilliant idea. What if it required an extreme amount of energy to activate AND cost you a great deal to maintain, and if you at any point ran out of energy it would shut down. If you had spare energy, you could devote it to the beacon and win faster.

 

[Tomice]

Turning the contact victory into a form of economic victory is a brilliant idea. What if it required an extreme amount of energy to activate AND cost you a great deal to maintain, and if you at any point ran out of energy it would shut down. If you had spare energy, you could devote it to the beacon and win faster.

Maintaining a set amount of surplus energy might not be ideal (you mean something like having 100 or more surplus energy for 20 turns, right?).

Either the threshold is trivially low, then it's pointless.
If it's hard to achieve, you may have bad luck and a trade route or diplo deal expires at a bad moment and cancels your victory progress. No good game design IMHO.

Having to amass a certain amount of energy might be better. Maybe in combination with a minimum beacon duration, to not make you win instantly after activating it if you have tons of cash.

 

[Tomice]

After thinking about it, I'm partially wrong. Having to fill a pool is essentially the same as a higher activation cost.

So I simplify my suggestion:
(Way) more activation cost, but much shorter transmission duration.

10000 energy instead of 1000 would be a start, and only 10 instead of 30 turns to send the message.

 

[Monado]

I agree, contact was an absolute bore. Though, I don't think having to actively manage the earth settlers on a promised land victory is any more exciting than just waiting for the beacon to activate.

If you're not in a situation where you actually have to defend the earth settlers from danger, its just dealing with 20 1 movement units bottlenecking each other every turn (thats on top of reassigning an annoying amount of trade routes).

What it comes down to, I think, is the AI just doesn't put up any resistance to stopping the victory. Any of these four victory types would be more interesting if the AI tried to prevent by sending in their armies.

EDIT: Worst of all is forgetting to call through a settler during promised land. It was the first time ever I got that "one more turn" feeling, but really had to force myself through it instead of want to play it.

 

[Potenzo]

Turning the contact victory into a form of economic victory is a brilliant idea. What if it required an extreme amount of energy to activate AND cost you a great deal to maintain, and if you at any point ran out of energy it would shut down. If you had spare energy, you could devote it to the beacon and win faster.

I think this is a good idea. How about if contact needed to be powered by a set minimum energy-per-turn (scaled with map size?), direct from tiles? i.e. Disregarding trade routes, diplomacy and other sources. Fall below that and it resets. Then you could be disrupted by enemies razing a sufficient number of tiles.

 

[Strategist83]

Invalid criticism, I'd say. The problem is the inept AI, not the victory condition. In multiplayer, you'd be trying to hold off every other player for 30 turns (and all they have to do is destroy one single building that isn't even in a city) while all of your energy is being drained.

 

[Duskblood]

I've gotten the Emancipation and Exodus victories so far, and they seem to have that same boring level towards the end. Felt like playing more of a waiting game and didn't care about trade routes and new techs so much anymore.

IMO, the fix should be that all other Civs DOW when you are close to the victory, even if you are more powerful. This would have made it more exciting in that not only would you need to send units through the gate, but would also have to defend them as they are making their way to/from it.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

How about a 500 gpt maintenance on the active beacon, if you run out of money it shuts down. Would it be too cruel to reset the timer if this happens?

 

[Dux1]

I saw a dev interview pre-release where it was stated that the AI would declare war on you to stop you from winning. But that doesn't happen, so it's really boring.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

If only the 'excess' it collected counted for reaching the threshold (stored energy could Not be used. Then it would be interesting ... And different from initial activation)

If you are ever paying more in maintenance then you are collecting, it should deactivate.

 

[Tomice]

IMO, the fix should be that all other Civs DOW when you are close to the victory, even if you are more powerful.

I agree this is the general direction for a fix. But I wouldn't make it an automatic DoW. Diplomacy should matter! But getting close to a victory should deteriorate relations with all leaders.

Examples:
"They don't want YOU to be the one contacting the aliens" if they don't like you.
"They'll stop you from making contact at all cost" if they hate you.
"Your plan to contact the aliens makes them nervous" if they were your ally before.

 

[Gar]

I'd love some mroe interaction here, like special trade convoys you have to build, you can send as many as you like to the city with the beacon, each convoy only able to transfer up to a set amount of energy per turn. Energy convoys would still take up trade route slots. Essentially you would have to decide how much of your trade economy you wanted to devote/cripple to speed up the victory.

On second thought that makes it very biased toward wider economies.

 

[Janskey]

In my opinion, the boredom starts, when you begin the decode signal project. After that it's just clicking next turn. We need some action.

 

[InspCallahan]

After thinking about it, I'm partially wrong. Having to fill a pool is essentially the same as a higher activation cost.

So I simplify my suggestion:
(Way) more activation cost, but much shorter transmission duration.

10000 energy instead of 1000 would be a start, and only 10 instead of 30 turns to send the message.

Filling a pool is a cool idea too. The main idea I was trying to get at is that there should be a faster way of winning the victory that also feels less arbitrary and more "I need to focus on something". In your idea, if you focus entirely on energy production (reactors in every city, generators everywhere, all internal trade routes redirected to other sponsors) then you will win the game faster.

 

[Gamewizard]

If you think the AI should DOW you when you are close to victory but are upset they don't, you could just DOW them yourself. It may be a little immersion breaking, but it produces the same outcome.

This game has potential to be challenging as long as you are ok with handicapping yourself now and then. House rules.

 

[Cyon]

I agree this is the general direction for a fix. But I wouldn't make it an automatic DoW. Diplomacy should matter! But getting close to a victory should deteriorate relations with all leaders.

Examples:
"They don't want YOU to be the one contacting the aliens" if they don't like you.
"They'll stop you from making contact at all cost" if they hate you.
"Your plan to contact the aliens makes them nervous" if they were your ally before.

This seems very reasonable, you should be able to quail allied leaders worry with favors: "Insist on why this is a wise decision [spend 5 favors]

This already exists for asking other leaders to stop spying on you.

 

[Mithrantir]

Well my experience differs a lot from yours.
The waiting part after building the final World project, is a bit too much (45 turns on epic setting), but it's a crucial one if you are not the one who built the project.

In my last game while I was going for a contact victory, I had to destroy one emancipation gate and one mindflower, until I manage to get my beacon completed (the damned quest for the Sgnal didn't complete as fast as I hoped).

If those turns didn't exist I would have a real issue to get my army numbers up and start invading other factions territories.

Maybe reducing the waiting time a bit is not a bad idea, but eliminating the time is not a good one.

I also disagree with the notion of increasing the cost.
The contact victory requires that you get no energy profits while the beacon is active. Unless you have really saved funds (and that well above the initial amount that is required), you can easily find yourself in the wrong place at the wrong time should anything bad comes your way.

I do agree with a little more aggressive AI (especially being able to declare a war if they feel so hostile).

 

[Bezurn]

The negative effect of losing all surplus gold doesn't really phase me. I can just send all of my spies out to siphon gold and still make enough to keep rush buying whenever I feel like it. Usually by this point in the game I have also built up a 10k bank, so it would take turns to rush buy me broke.

I do think there should be a mechanic where you need to send trade routes to the becon to bring supplies or somesuch. This could make it easier for the enemy to disrupt the progress by intercepting the trade routes instead of actually having to get the place the beacon is hidden.