MadDjinn Kavithan Protectorate Let's Play

[SupremacyKing]

That's actually the worrisome part.

I think I have said this before but "apollo" really does not feel like "deity" based on maddjinn's LP.

 

[jaldaen]

I think I have said this before but "apollo" really does not feel like "deity" based on maddjinn's LP.

I'll agree with that

 

[Acken]

I think I have said this before but "apollo" really does not feel like "deity" based on maddjinn's LP.

Game just look easy yes. Hell if it truly end up easier than civ5 deity that's saying a lot...

 

[Inhalaattori]

As a Deity player Im also very surprised how easy the game seems to be. Maddjin made some pretty clear mistakes IMO and overall played pretty sloppy and still he is winning. With earlier Civ games I have played couple of games with easier difficulties before going to hardest difficulty to learn the tricks, but this time I probably start with hardest (Apollo).

In general I like most of the changes compared to Civ V. The game seems to be lot of fun. Only thing I dont like is too many trade routes.

 

[cazaderon]

i'm not criticizing Maddjin, i understand the purpose is to show off the game without it being too long or filled with micromanagement. The point was how easy the game looks even without doing that at all.

Only thing i'm mad out, the internal trade route stubborness

 

[GhostSalsa]

Game just look easy yes. Hell if it truly end up easier than civ5 deity that's saying a lot...

Well we do have Elodie many harmony points ahead and building the mindflower, despite handing our human player all her money and resources for 30 turns for a worthless city deal.

It seemed to me Elodie was trending toward a sub-300 win but I'm not really clear how long the wins take, obviously. This is with aggressive aliens hemming in the AI but not the befriended humans. The alien befriending was useful, but came at the cost of a lot of tedious, delayed expansion - delays which should have been fatal but were too easy to make up for with internal TRs. Even after losing the mindflower, Elodie seemed likely to keep all her cities and crush every single one of the human player's units, so she might have won in the end.

So in the end two things seemed to make player performance irrelevant, even though one of the AIs was ahead: OP internal TRs, and those transport satellites not requiring enough setup and investment (don't even have to build something in the sending city? What?)

The AI contributed by not being aggressive on the water map (punishing the weak KP for being behind and killing all those crucial internal TRs), not claiming sat space above its wonder tile.

So easy-seeming Apollo is as much a game balance exploits problem as an AI performance one.

 

[Inhalaattori]

Well we do have Elodie many harmony points ahead and building the mindflower, despite handing our human player all her money and resources for 30 turns for a worthless city deal.

Maddjin in fact destroyed her mind flower. She would have had to build it again.

It seems Human player is only in serious trouble if multiple Civs are building their game winning wonders at the same time. If they are close or there is just one of them you can just easily destroy their wonder.

 

[SupremacyKing]

It seemed to me Elodie was trending toward a sub-300 win but I'm not really clear how long the wins take, obviously.

Maddjinn did click on the mindflower before he launched his attack and it said the mindflower was 24 turns away from transcendence. So if Maddjinn had left Elodie alone, she was at most 24 turns away from winning the game.

 

[nakori]

A question about the starting build order used here.
Why go Old Earth Relic -> Trade Depot -> Worker,
rather than Old Earth Relic -> Worker ->Trade Depot ?

 

[MadDjinn]

A question about the starting build order used here.
Why go Old Earth Relic -> Trade Depot -> Worker,
rather than Old Earth Relic -> Worker ->Trade Depot ?

trade depot allows for trade units, and a station will likely spawn early. Plus, as I went with the free settler, I can send a trade unit right to it - which is worth more than an early worker.

I just happened to get trolled by the Station being placed where I couldn't trade with it.

 

[gunnergoz]

It is getting to be a Looooong 5 days, I'm telling you.

 

[Velasti]

Err..

Is this standard game speed?

Because the AI has entered "the late game" on turn 237... And if this is a 500 turn game...

 

[Gamewizard]

Well it is Apollo difficulty, so ya I hope the AI puts up competitive victory times.

 

[Gort]

Err..

Is this standard game speed?

Because the AI has entered "the late game" on turn 237... And if this is a 500 turn game...

Where are you getting the "500 turn game" thing from? Civ 5 games were normally over a lot quicker than that, and I thought this game was supposed to be of similar length.

 

[DemonMaster]

Where are you getting the "500 turn game" thing from? Civ 5 games were normally over a lot quicker than that, and I thought this game was supposed to be of similar length.

MadDjinn said that the number of turns is about the same as in Civ 5 in one of his live streams.

Higher difficulty levels speeds up game play. It does so in Civ 5 as well. He usually finish his games around turn 300 or so. In his Dido playthrough he won on turn 302. I guess, if you play on normal difficulty level, the endgame would be around late 300 or early 400 and then a little bit sooner for each difficulty level above that, just as in Civ 5.

The main reason for this is of course that the AI is better so every AI (or most) will have a good tech pace. This mean that you as a human player have a lot of good "targets" for acquiring bonus science/techs.

In a game where most of the "solo" victories are not tech based, a good AI (or an AI with a lot of bonus ) can finish fast. This is something that we have to look out for, just as we have to look out for the culturally or diplomatically playing civs in Civ 5.

 

[Velasti]

Where are you getting the "500 turn game" thing from? Civ 5 games were normally over a lot quicker than that, and I thought this game was supposed to be of similar length.

CiV is timed so that 2050, which is the trigger for the score based difficulty, is reached on turn 500. This is independent of difficulty level.

I seriously think that we need some mechanic to allow real teams to form from diplomacy. Team-based games tend to last longer, in my experience.


I have a concern that this may indicate that the AI is incapable of preventing snowball AI's from winning it. I.e. they won't unite against the faction who will win the game in order to snipe them in a last ditch effort.

And if they don't do that for snowball AI's, they won't do it for snowball players. Meaning the mid-late game will still be easy for experienced human players on Emperor difficulty

I don't particularly see the point of the game if the challenge for humans is in the early-mid game, and it's all downhill from there.

 

[Haggbart]

CiV is timed so that 2050, which is the trigger for the score based difficulty, is reached on turn 500. This is independent of difficulty level.

I seriously think that we need some mechanic to allow real teams to form from diplomacy. Team-based games tend to last longer, in my experience.


I have a concern that this may indicate that the AI is incapable of preventing snowball AI's from winning it. I.e. they won't unite against the faction who will win the game in order to snipe them in a last ditch effort.

And if they don't do that for snowball AI's, they won't do it for snowball players. Meaning the game will still be easy for experienced human players.

It was said in a stream that BE is a bit shorter than CiV, can't remember where I heard it. It's true that CiV had a 500 turn limit on standard speed, but usually it was over WAY quicker. So it's not a surprise 237 turns is "late game" on Apollo difficulty (although it's seems easier than deity in many ways).

 

[Gort]

CiV is timed so that 2050, which is the trigger for the score based difficulty, is reached on turn 500. This is independent of difficulty level.

Yeah, but I can't remember ANY game of Civ 5 I've played that actually ran until 2050. Normally a spaceship gets launched or someone wins a UN victory way earlier than that.

 

[Velasti]

It was said in a stream that BE is a bit shorter than CiV, can't remember where I heard it. It's true that CiV had a 500 turn limit on standard speed, but usually it was over WAY quicker. So it's not a surprise 237 turns is "late game" on Apollo difficulty (although it's seems easier than deity in many ways).

I guess I should really be judging against Emperor, seeing as that's what I play. I frequently have games where I'm comfortably scientifically ahead of the AI, and it is somewhere in the industrial or modern eras when I've finished every tech.

Yeah, but I can't remember ANY game of Civ 5 I've played that actually ran until 2050. Normally a spaceship gets launched or someone wins a UN victory way earlier than that.

I've hit the 500 turn limit a couple of times when I was learning the game.

IT's actually an indication how poor a game Civ V is, that experienced players don't get into that scenario. Dont' get me wrong, I like Civ,

Essentially, I had a Brazil jungle start. I started with Sweden and the Ottomans to the north, and Britain to the south.

Sweden cut off my expansion. Britain was attacking me from the south, so the last thing I wanted to do was fight a two-front war.

Britain and I back and forthed for a few hundred years.

In the meantime, I meet Japan, who is being beat up by Rome. He asks me to ally, but I can't give him the assistance. I send him what economic aid I can, but most of my military is dealing with Elizabeth's 3 range crossbowmen in the southern hills.

Eventually, I break Elizabeth, capture her city, sue for peace, she refuses to play nicely, a little later she attacks again so I capture everything she has.

Meanwhile Rome has conquered Japan, Ottomans has conquered Sweden, (I stole the expansion city that cut me off in the first place)

Dido and Theodora were the last two civs. They were on the same continent as Japan. Rome actually had his own continent. D&T were at war then made an uneasy peace.

That is more or less the endstate of the game actually. I went and beat up on Rome to liberate Japan. Ottomans were friendly to me at home.

Diplomatic victory clearly didn't happen. People were competing heavily for city states, there was a lot of back and forth and no one started steamrolling.
Culture and science victories were more or less out of the question - because of the amount of warring that had been going on, I'd never been able to focus on either of those paths.

Rome started making spaceship parts, so I went to go and liberate him. Then we hit turn limit.

It should be pointed out I thought I was playing epic, with 150 turns to go. That was a significant factor. If I'd thought I had less time than I did, I would have been much more aggressive all around.


The issue with this story is that it is very easy to get momentum towards a victory in Civ, and it is very hard for the AI to deal with a player who has momentum.

And that's what I'm concerned about. If Elodie is in the position to win the game that early, it means the game is all but finished. So long as the player takes the initiative, they can waltz into any victory condition they like without the AI doing much to take away their momentum. I know Maddjinn is saying "These AI have the capability to win", but it is highly unlikely that any of them land an army on Maddjinn's home turf and eat him.

Part of winning is not losing, and the AI in CiV doesn't do that very well at all. And inserting tools into the game to give all players amazing mobility around the map means that the AI has to be even better at defending what they have than they currently are.

The competition seems to be between Maddjinn and Elodie. But from where it is now, Elodie can't do substantial damage to Maddjinn's core economy. I can see with some sensible forward planning it would be very easy to throw a phasic transporter in orbit over an enemy city and totally stuff them. It's also very easy to throw transporters anywhere on the map, and make a feint attack while moving in with the real attack on some other front.


In my experience, good strategy games have a substantial amount of back and forth between players, and I just don't see that happening in Civ.

 

[Pnothy]

Part of winning is not losing, and the AI in CiV doesn't do that very well at all. And inserting tools into the game to give all players amazing mobility around the map means that the AI has to be even better at defending what they have than they currently are.

That's basically my only real problem with the CiV AI: it doesn't care about losing. They don't do everything they can to defend their last city, they don't do everything they can to prevent others from winning. They are just 'concerned' (without taking action) or sitting ducks until the end.

I understand that this game is designed to let the player win (since that is ultimately most satisfactory), but it doesn't feel satisfactory to win without a decent final struggle. It would be nice to see some extra fierce competition elements added to the AI, to make the win, however inevitable, just that bit more challenging. Or realistic, for that matter.