Hell Victory

[jimi12]

i am a little confused as to the purpose of the AC. i know the effects it has but if you arent playing as hyborem then u really dont gain a terrible advantage with it. also, it doesnt make sense that there isnt some sort of victory condition if you raise it all the way to 100. i havent heard anything from the dev team but i really hope that this will be changed in the upcoming releases. i know other people have talked about their ideas about what those victory conditions could be in other threads but i thought it would be good to have them all in one place.

personally i like Calvente's idea of having a ritual required by an AV team when the AC is at 100. that would make sense because Agare's doesnt seem like the kind of guy that would only take the best of his followers and allow the rest to be killed. this ritual could be split into 3 stages that could be built only when the counter is so high. once a stage is built it would raise the AC and spread hell terrain and give you a small army of demon units or increase the rate of AV spread or increase the % of units that go on to serve hyborem in the afterlife.

 

[Micky Onimusha]

I like the idea.

 

[Pandemonis]

I like the idea of having alignment based unique victories, something like Altar for the goodies, Armageddon for the baddies and a third type for the neutral, who shouldnt not be considered just like "hanging out there in the middle".

And about the AC, I think Im going to start an AC-flavor game: playing with Elohim (or maybe Bannor, but not so fun to play that kind of game without Elegy of Elohim...), with Sheiam, Doviello, Clan, Svartalfar and Calabim on a large map, Epic, Prince, Permanent Alliances enabled, Conquest and Mastery victories enabled.

Mourn the goodies.

 

[Chandrasekhar]

I'm pretty sure that every other victory condition can only be attained by one player, so an AC one would have to be the same. Anyway, I like the idea of the demon worshippers grappling for supremecy among each other in the first place.

 

[merciary]

How about for all worshipers of the AV get a score bonus depending on the amount of hell terrain that was spread since their joining the AV. And once all land aside from good lands (or not it could go either way) is converted to hell terrain the game will then end and who ever has the highest score wins. bIt gives a benefit to long time AV'ers but makes them work for it not just by waiting around for the eventual spread that happens anyway.

 

[Sureshot]

could give the win to whoever contributed most to the AC that is AV as that sort of thing is tracked

 

[eerr]

defilement-
evil civs defile stuff, especiall holy cities and capitol cites tainting the world.
good civs consecrate stuff, especiall good and evil holy cities and capitols shining glory and inspiration to the world.

most important-
the civs defilement * evil civs power* ac score=...............greatest evil civ score
the civs consecration/control* good civs power* (100-ac)=greatest good civ score

when the greatest evil civ has 50% score than any other civ, they win the game
"all citizens cower in fear of the evil empire"

 

[Pocus]

Playing Devil's advocate here, I think that, even if the AC is not a victory condition by itself for Hyborem, growing it goes a great way in helping the Demons to win. It basically screw any living empire. Take also Hellfire, which spawn hyborem units, this is a great incentive to grow AC. And so, with all these advantages, you can win with the conquest victory condition, a condition which does make quite a sense for demons wanting to take over the material plane.

 

[Calavente]

that's true for hyborem but not for any of the other civ.

only the sheaim get some benefit from high AC.

evil civ are even more disadvantaged than good or even neutral when AC rise.

no hell spread in good lands and AV civ are as many potential victimes of Hyborem's minions than any good civ. even more so as theire civ becomes weaker. (and Hyborem doesn't always stay allied with it's summoner)

I'd like the idea of an evil civ going berserk and rising AC, independantly of the harm it does to it's empire, just because there is a victory nearby.

For vanilla victory condition : in cultural or spaceship, the growth of your empire becomes second best, all your civ is focused on the victroy condition, and not really on survival. --> oh oh, it reminds me of something said earlier...

that's why rising the AC sould IMO lead to a possible victroy condition to evil (or AV) civ, even if not hyborem or sheaim.

Cala.

 

[MrUnderhill]

I think the AC Victory should go like this: Once the Armageddon Counter reaches 100, Apocalypse happens like it does now, but it also starts a turn timer (set to 30 turns or so) at the bottom of the screen (like it does for Time victory, but with red letters). To stop the timer, the non-Veil civs would have to bring the AC back under 100 before time runs out.

If they fail, and the D-Day timer reaches 0, the game ends and the biggest AC contributor wins. Veil civs would be able to see each other's AC contributions next to their Score to see who's in the lead, and this could possibly lead to dogpiling on the leader to keep him down.

Meanwhile, the Good civs (and maybe even a few Neutral ones) are now highly inclined to declare war on the Veil civs, even making peace with their other rivals in order to do so (petty bickering over territory can wait when the world's about to end). This way, Good and Neutral civs would have to work together to bring the AC back under 100, while Veil-worshippers are locked into racing each other to the top slot. Cooperation vs. Competition; sounds like a classic good against evil match-up to me.

 

[Calavente]

Th'at's interesting.. but instead of AC must stay at 100 for 30turns, say instead, AC mustn't go under 95 or 90...as loosing 1 prophecy unit would cancel your effort.

veil worshipper could not fight among themself as it would lower the counter

and the one with the prophecy would be advantaged as if you want the AC to not go under 95 (per ex) you cannot attack prophecy marked units..
a better strategy would be an all-out war with good-neutral civ and razing more good cities than your fellow AV civ...

 

[Pandemonis]

I think the AC Victory should go like this: Once the Armageddon Counter reaches 100, Apocalypse happens like it does now, but it also starts a turn timer (set to 30 turns or so) at the bottom of the screen (like it does for Time victory, but with red letters). To stop the timer, the non-Veil civs would have to bring the AC back under 100 before time runs out.

If they fail, and the D-Day timer reaches 0, the game ends and the biggest AC contributor wins. Veil civs would be able to see each other's AC contributions next to their Score to see who's in the lead, and this could possibly lead to dogpiling on the leader to keep him down.

Meanwhile, the Good civs (and maybe even a few Neutral ones) are now highly inclined to declare war on the Veil civs, even making peace with their other rivals in order to do so (petty bickering over territory can wait when the world's about to end). This way, Good and Neutral civs would have to work together to bring the AC back under 100, while Veil-worshippers are locked into racing each other to the top slot. Cooperation vs. Competition; sounds like a classic good against evil match-up to me.

I like the overall dynamics, but isnt "the biggest AC contribution" kind of vague ?

If a a city convert through a missionary the missionary should get the point I suppose, but with a "natural" religious spread, helped with the Stigmata on the Unborn, who should get the point ? Additionaly, when an Elegy of the Elohim is built, should any AC contributor lose points ? I think we can find some more examples that are going to be though to design and not necessarly keep the design simple.

Moreover, The Sheiam and their ritual are easily the biggest contributor to Hell, so its not so fair. To be constructive, and mayeb simpler for the AI and simple in essence, I suggest: when AC is above 100, whoever keep AV state religion AND got the more AV cities for 10 turns wins (Holy counts triple or something). Note: If the civ with the most AV cities doesnt have it as state religion, Armageddon victory is impossible.

Some side effects seems to be:
- Evil civilizations warmong against each other to capture cities and be on top, possibly razing others to be sure not to lose them again, and keeping the AC high.
- Good civilizations will need to balance between the three conditions of survival:
--keep AC under 100 (by supressing AV in cities they control, but thus making it "easier" to determine a victory between the evil guys),
--take control of AV cities (but dont destroy AV to fuel the wars between AIs, as they would judge better take an AV city to someone in the race for victory than to someone out of the race),

(Im not sure, but I think maybe it could lead to very exciting strategies, like the goods betray and join the dark side, possibly they can win by keeping the balance long enough to suddenly just have to change state religion to win the race - as long as they dont have AV state religion or not too many AV cities and AC is above 100)

 

[Gamestation]

I think the AC Victory should go like this: Once the Armageddon Counter reaches 100, Apocalypse happens like it does now, but it also starts a turn timer (set to 30 turns or so) at the bottom of the screen (like it does for Time victory, but with red letters). To stop the timer, the non-Veil civs would have to bring the AC back under 100 before time runs out.

If they fail, and the D-Day timer reaches 0, the game ends and the biggest AC contributor wins. Veil civs would be able to see each other's AC contributions next to their Score to see who's in the lead, and this could possibly lead to dogpiling on the leader to keep him down.

Meanwhile, the Good civs (and maybe even a few Neutral ones) are now highly inclined to declare war on the Veil civs, even making peace with their other rivals in order to do so (petty bickering over territory can wait when the world's about to end). This way, Good and Neutral civs would have to work together to bring the AC back under 100, while Veil-worshippers are locked into racing each other to the top slot. Cooperation vs. Competition; sounds like a classic good against evil match-up to me.

I was thinking of something like this, but it's not quite the same. I like the idea that when the AC reaches 100, a countdown begins. I do not however think it should be possible to stop it at all.

What I'm thinking is when the counter hits 100 and Apocalypse strikes, there will be other effects along with the 60% of the population dies and living units being killed off:

1. Hell spreads into the lands of good civs and those with the consecrated (?) altar. The good have failed to prevent the destruction of Erebus and now their punishment is to fall along with everyone else to Hell.

2. The spread of Hell removes improvements on the tile. This is an advantage that neutrals and non-AV evil civs have over good because Hell had already spread into their lands before so no improvements will be removed.

3. Unhappiness is removed. Those who complain about life either left to serve Wrath or are dead from the Apocalypse.

4. Non-AV civs are in a permanent war with AV civs.

5. The Armageddon counter will glow (cosmetic effect) and will count down with every turn at a steady rate scaled to the game speed. Nothing done in the game can effect this and when it reaches 0, a score victory is announced.

Having the Armageddon counter reach 100 should be a big deal. Erebus should be torn apart by Hell at that point. All that should be left is a final, bitter, struggle between those who failed to protect Erebus, and those who succeeded in destroying Erebus. In the end, the winner will be the civ that The One remembers the most.

 

[Rex rgis of Ter]

Perhaps a space like victory could be possible, only when the AC reaches 100, but stays above 90. Perhaps the final components for the destruction ritual.
The first could allow hell into good lands. The second would revive any dead riders, and creates a second blight. The third and last would result in victory.

 

[Blakmane]

Possibly some kind of ritual/something that starts gifting powerful demon units to AV civs when the counter is > 95 and the 'armageddon' event has already been triggered.

This would mean there wouldn't be some kind of 'insta-win' AV condition, but instead AV civs would start to become overwhelmingly powerful in comparison to their good/neutral counterparts. Unless something was done quickly to lower the AC, AV civs could then easily win a conquest victory condition (which suits them better anyway).

 

[DarthCycle]

There's a lot of great ideas in this thread for a Hell victory.

I'm currently playing the Infernal, for the first time, and it seems the only realistic winning condition is a conquest victory, which is time consumming, tedious and repetitive: move a couple of uber stacks, destroys cities and unit, repeat.

Personnaly, I like the idea of a ritual (world wonder) that you can start building when the AC reaches 100. When the ritual is completed, it's a Hell victory. This design is simple and effective and can be easily implemented without a lot of work from the dev team.

 

[daladinn]

as someone who plays the bad guys extensivly i am a little bit confused by some of this.

first when hyborem comes into the world , if your an evil civ you had damn well better convert and worship your evil overlords (the AV).doing this keeps hyborem very happy with you since your of the same religion. as long as you maintain open borders with him he will never backstab you due to being gridlocked (a trapped civ will start a war to not be trapped).

now , since your the AV , you only need half the food of any other civ for the same size city. i would suggest conquest as i doubt your going to have the happies to grow your cities to match your food. a good tactic is to swarm rush a nuetral civ. this way for every unit you lose hyborem gets a manes and you can help clear the nuetrals (killing good guys results in more angels).

the next thing to consider is the 4 horsemen and the avatar. they will ALWAYS all spawn in the same place (dont knwo why , never seen it any different). hopefully this is a LONG way from you.

either way , most of the problems that happen are not really issues for the evil civs , but hurt the good ones severly. jsut plan on it happening and enjoy the carnage.

 

[onedreamer]

Good tips Daladinn must I must concur that at least one victory type other than conquest/domination should be open to Infernals or evil civs in general, since other civs have the Altar of Luonnotar. (note: evil civs can try a culture victory but Infernals hardly can).
I like Gamestation's ideas, especially that when Apocalypse strikes Hell terrain spreads everywhere. And I think it should cover everything instantly. Permanent Wars should arise but I don't agree with a score victory, I think that if the counter reaches 100, then in no way should Good civs have a chance to win. It should be too late for them. Perhaps a counter + score victory only among AV civs, or the ritual idea, or the AC contribution, etc.

 

[daladinn]

believe it or not , you will most likely get a religious victory long before conquest. every city that teh infernals take is converted to AV. every city that mardero takes is converted to AV. also , you can increase teh religion spread by making your allies help you in the war.

as far as the other victory conditions...
--the more the bad guys group together and kill , the higher your chance to capture / trade for the mana needed for the tower.
-- if you want a cultural vic , teh infernal cities are wonderfully setup to make great artists ... convert to guilds , republic , and the one with 100% culture bonus and it will climb fast.

 

[kenken244]

just a thought...

maybe some of the high ac rituals are build a % faster equal to the aamount the player contributed to the armageddon counter?