Cyc
Looking for the door...
Man, am I irritated....
Programmed Irritation
- Thread starter Buttercup
- Start date
Man, am I irritated....
The designers' notes in the Civ IV manual say that in Civ III, obsolete units were intentionally left with a fighting chance. This is because they had also introduced the new (at the time) idea of resource requirements for units, and they thought that players stuck without resources would be frustrated if they had no way back.
Basically, the intention is that units from an earlier age can still be used to catch up - bronze age civs should be able to overpower neighbours for their iron, medieval armies need to be able to beat gunpowder ones to take their saltpeter, etc.
Obviously I don't like the end result of this idea, I'm just explaining the design rationale. It's the reason that the best combat balance of any Civ game is in Civ II, as it has no strategic resources underpinning it.
Lol@Cyc - that looks like it was a delightfully satisfying victory! Awesome terrain mods as well 
Yes, I've heard this one as well, it is the accepted reason for the shambles. Again, I'm not sure if anyone bothered to state the case for player psychology preferring to just quit and starting again in these scenarios. And gaming companies do have reems of data on gaming psychology.
The case that Spoonwood mentioned about someone coming from behind in Civ II might have been a case of number swarming. What you could do was out-produce an enemy by spamming the weakest Units possible and using guerilla tactics to swarm over the enemy territory pillaging all the Roads and Railroads and preventing any tiles from being worked. This would destroy their economy and their Units would vanish from the board as the AI failed to meet it's upkeep costs. It's a lot harder to do than it seems and would take a lot of planning and diplomacy with other Civs to occupy the bulk of the advanced Civ's forces.
I'm not sure why this method wasn't mentioned as a 'relief' tactic for the ultra-determined players rather than mashing the combat balance into a farcical state of improbability. I feel sure someone must have mentioned this at the time...
...Not to mention the fact that people are free to trade for these resources and it's going to be a very tough game indeed if a player can, quite literally, do nothing.
Yes, I've heard this one as well, it is the accepted reason for the shambles. Again, I'm not sure if anyone bothered to state the case for player psychology preferring to just quit and starting again in these scenarios. And gaming companies do have reems of data on gaming psychology.
The case that Spoonwood mentioned about someone coming from behind in Civ II might have been a case of number swarming. What you could do was out-produce an enemy by spamming the weakest Units possible and using guerilla tactics to swarm over the enemy territory pillaging all the Roads and Railroads and preventing any tiles from being worked. This would destroy their economy and their Units would vanish from the board as the AI failed to meet it's upkeep costs. It's a lot harder to do than it seems and would take a lot of planning and diplomacy with other Civs to occupy the bulk of the advanced Civ's forces.
I'm not sure why this method wasn't mentioned as a 'relief' tactic for the ultra-determined players rather than mashing the combat balance into a farcical state of improbability. I feel sure someone must have mentioned this at the time...
...Not to mention the fact that people are free to trade for these resources and it's going to be a very tough game indeed if a player can, quite literally, do nothing.
Lol@Cyc - that looks like it was a delightfully satisfying victory! Awesome terrain mods as well
Yes, I've heard this one as well, it is the accepted reason for the shambles. Again, I'm not sure if anyone bothered to state the case for player psychology preferring to just quit and starting again in these scenarios. And gaming companies do have reems of data on gaming psychology.
The case that Spoonwood mentioned about someone coming from behind in Civ II might have been a case of number swarming. What you could do was out-produce an enemy by spamming the weakest Units possible and using guerilla tactics to swarm over the enemy territory pillaging all the Roads and Railroads and preventing any tiles from being worked. This would destroy their economy and their Units would vanish from the board as the AI failed to meet it's upkeep costs. It's a lot harder to do than it seems and would take a lot of planning and diplomacy with other Civs to occupy the bulk of the advanced Civ's forces.
I'm not sure why this method wasn't mentioned as a 'relief' tactic for the ultra-determined players rather than mashing the combat balance into a farcical state of improbability. I feel sure someone must have mentioned this at the time...
...Not to mention the fact that people are free to trade for these resources and it's going to be a very tough game indeed if a player can, quite literally, do nothing.
It basically never ends us as true that a player can do nothing. Even if you face defending rifles without any resources, once you have Nationalism you can attack with rifles. Before that you can attack with longbows, which have the same attack as rifles. Artillery very, very much helps in those situations. And no... sometimes, like on say Tiny maps, there don't exist spare resources that the AI can trade away, or the AIs will trade away all there extra resources to each other, and you can only solve that last problem by military alliances to get the trading AIs to war with each other... a tactic which I many players probably don't know about.
The combat balance isn't in a state of improbability overall. You have no case for that.
One man's shambles is another man's fun. Its all perspective. I would rather have a game where a tank can lose to a spearman than a game where tanks are invincible to spears. It means at all levels of the game you must still give tactics some consideration. And while a tank may win against a spear consistently, I would say it is 'regular' for a tank to be damaged in the attack by at least a point. That means you can kill all those spears with one tank but it may take a very, very long time. And because of terrain modifiers a spear can actually stand a decent chance to win under specific circumstances (well, if 9.4% is a decent chance 
). By comparison a Musket in the same position (best defense) will win 34.7% of the time. That will give those tanks something to think about.
I suppose what I am getting at is where do you place the line of invincibility that will not feel arbitrary? At some point the game becomes a matter of mopping up with absolutely not surprises left and that is when I get bored. Should the Ewok have been able to take down chicken walkers? It seems to me that it gives the game a sense of dramatic flare and keeps the tension up. But being irritated is just as valid.
Granted I began playing CivIII first so I am 'accustomed' to its design more than any other version but I like the resources. I won my first deity game by cutting off the AI source to oil so that my modern armies could finally turn the tide and dominate the world. While it may complicate other aspects of the game, I like this feature.
). By comparison a Musket in the same position (best defense) will win 34.7% of the time. That will give those tanks something to think about.I suppose what I am getting at is where do you place the line of invincibility that will not feel arbitrary? At some point the game becomes a matter of mopping up with absolutely not surprises left and that is when I get bored. Should the Ewok have been able to take down chicken walkers? It seems to me that it gives the game a sense of dramatic flare and keeps the tension up. But being irritated is just as valid.
Granted I began playing CivIII first so I am 'accustomed' to its design more than any other version but I like the resources. I won my first deity game by cutting off the AI source to oil so that my modern armies could finally turn the tide and dominate the world. While it may complicate other aspects of the game, I like this feature.
scratchthepitch
King
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2010
- Messages
- 798
A pretty good representation of that battle in Civ3 would be to take a regular rifleman and a settler unit to use as the British forces. Place them unfortified on a plains tile (well, you can fortify the settler, if you want
). For the Zulu side, use 11 spearmen, mostly regulars and veterans with a couple elite, and have them attack the rifleman. That rifleman probably wont survive very long. No need for absurd spear vs tank match ups there. Tanks weren't even invented yet.
Using such an example to justify the silliness of spear vs tank in Civ3 represents poor judgement on your part.And because of terrain modifiers a spear can actually stand a decent chance to win under specific circumstances (well, if 9.4% is a decent chance
That is way to high a chance for a win against a tank for both spear or musket units.
The musket should be around 10% and the spear 1%.
@ scratchthepitch, that's precisely the problem. And it also works (or doesn't) at the other end as well.I remember my first ever game of Civilisation III, where I followed various norms dictated from my experiences with Civilisation II. I held firm and created about 10 amazingly advanced core Metropolises. I got to the point where I had each defended by three Infantry with the Civil Defence building in place (a feature/variable sadly lacking from the Calculator Spoonwood posted). I basically calculated my defence per Unit of being around the 25 mark.
The Aztecs declared war on me and I suffered a deluge of Aztec Cavalry, nice big stacks but not anything I thought I couldn't handle. I sat back and waited for them to commit suicide on my brick-like defenders. OMG, how stunned was I when these horse Units just ploughed through my Infantry like they were Spearmen. Some were even dropping without fighting back. As soon as the first Metro fell and the Cavalry continued to stream in I thought "Oh crap, this is going to be a totally different gaming experience, I don't understand either the numbers or the point of these defence enhancements/stats." How on earth could an attack of just 6 create such utterly convincing results versus a defence of 25+. It immediately destroyed any sense of anything right there.
The top three Irritants:
I'm currently playing a Standard Regent Archipelago, my favourite level and map design. All nice and easy but engaging enough to keep me interested. There's just something really nice about collecting islands. In order to add an element of challenge I've put the settings to their hardest possible level - Playing as Carthage (Seafaring/Industrial, average to weak traits), maximum opponents, Raging Barbarians, AI Most Aggressive, Warm/Arid 3 Billion Year planet, 80% water etc.
This game, like most games I play, generates a huge amount of irritation/frustration in three very big areas. Forgetting, for the moment, all the billions of little Irritants, my 'enjoyment' of this particular game has been diminished greatly by the big three Irritants which, in my opinion, are the three big killers of Civilisation III and why I find myself permanently on the verge of uninstalling the game.
1. Although Resources do add a 'challenge' element to the game, I find that the problem is that the game is then dictating how I play rather than letting me dictate how I play.
I start on an island. I have access to 1 Luxury tile immediately. My island has an AI Civilisation on it. They have access to 1 Luxury tile and there is another Luxury tile in the middle of us. Ok, so first job is to take out this Civ. Job done, I now have 3 different Luxury tiles and some to trade. In the meantime I learn/trade Iron Working and the Wheel. Oh, what a surprise, my island has neither Iron nor Horses.
The island to the north has Iron but the island to the south has both. Ergo, I guess I'm taking out the southern island first as soon as I've got to Longbowmen. Once that is done (quite frustratingly with Longbowmen) I know have the full accompaniment of Ancient Resources - but I'm now getting close to learning Industrial techs. I then take out the northern island with my leftover Units and prepare to upgrade them all to Industrial Units. But... oh, what a surprise, none of these 3 islands have either Saltpeter or Coal. Those are both on the next island over with a slightly stronger AI Civilisation on it.
So, again, my next choice is a bit of a no-brainer and off I go to conquer that one. Once that one is taken out the game is pretty much over, it's just then a matter of collecting bits of land to get to 66% rather than specifically invading someone in a proper war sense. So, although my own game might have been 'similar', I find it deeply Irritating that Resources are, more often than not, used to dictate my game rather than let me choose 'what I do next'.
2. I really don't like the All-Seeing-Eye of the AI. I find this to be the absolute biggest tragedy of Civilisation III. And this effects many aspects of the game but, for this discussion, provides the perfect link between my points 1 and 3.
Firstly, the All-Seeing-Eye hunts down all the Resources and grabs them before the human player (even with a 1.5 page tech lead) has had any chance of keeping up with discovering where they all are. Once Navigation is learned and the Map is very soon all completely visible the advantage of this is lost because all the islands with Resources are full and all the islands with none are left empty and pointless. Not only has the AI found them all but it will often land their town right on top it so the human player has to constantly check all the town squares via the terrain information screen every time a new Resource is 'discovered'.
This makes Resources 'discovery' a chore instead of a genuine opportunity to shake the game up and change a Civ's destiny. If this allocation had been a truly random upon the first Civ to discover the associated tech, and if even the AI didn't know where they would be and would have no 'visibility' of them once appeared then a huge amount of this 'crap' element of the game would be 'improved' instantaneously.
Secondly, the All-Seeing-Eye will always place troops in the most Irritating positions and will have full knowledge of what Units you have and where they're going and what they're likely to be doing. This makes a mockery of any kind of 'risk-taking'. It's not at all uncommon in almost any war game for a player to 'leave one area weak but bluff strength while maximising another area'. This basic war technique is what is called a 'classic' way of getting the most possible from a limited army. This whole concept is utterly destroyed by the AI's Irritation methods of taking every little weak spot and driving a bulldozer through it.
Particularly with Archipelagos, an enemy Civ might be spread, quite literally, all over the world. It might take 20 turns just to clear up 2 or 3 cities spread over 2 or 3 different islands spread over the world. Having to create the troops necessary to do this in a timely fashion is complex enough, but having to do it before towns go onto Cultural Conversion cycles and before your outlying cities succumb to War Weariness is one problem but, when then combined with the AI Civ dropping Units at every single weakspot, makes the whole process so formulaic that it becomes boring. Again, the AI is dictating the game instead of letting me play. I MUST leave at least 3 Units next to each town I take in case of Conversions or, more importantly, landings.
Without this All-Seeing-Eye the AI landings would be more haphazard, the islands could be cleared out quicker and the general feeling of an invasion by superior forces would actually feel like an invasion by superior forces rather than just a simple Unit-spam. It would be 'nice' if the player was permitted to 'try their luck' in exchange for a quick victory rather than be constantly and relentlessly 'punished' every time they try to push anything.
Combine this with a complete inability to prevent the ships of landing Units from landing due to a complete lack of attacking Naval Units (even a Frigate can't take down a Caravel) and one is left feeling as if one is just observing someone else's game. A simple game of reactive rather than pro-active actions. And Frigates require Saltpetre! Why are they not the Naval equivalent of Cavalry instead of the Naval equivalent of Catapults! And why on earth are Infantry having to be carried around by Galleons? Just how bizarre is THAT!
3. 'Trying our luck' brings me neatly onto the 'Battle (lack of) Mechanics' and the supposed Random Number Generator. Finally adding this concept to the already claustrophobic elements of the previous two points is enough to turn the entire game, at one point a simple matter of logistics, into a complete and utter FARCE. I have a fully healed Veteran Guerilla DIE attacking an unfortified red-lined Knight. Irrespective of any terrain conditions this is STUPID. Such encounters should NOT be decided purely on the basis of 'luck'. An Infantry Unit should NOT die attacking a Pikeman Unit, regardless of defences. It makes no SENSE.
And, even regardless of 'extreme' results, even if we forget all the little 'pains' and just 'get on with it', it is still virtually IMPOSSIBLE to attack ANYTHING without taking some form of damage which, most often, leaves your Units either red-lined or Yellow and, once they have got down to this stage, they then become utterly useless and die if the attack anything else. Trying to attack anything with either one or two Hit Points left is the equivalent of committing suicide because no matter what one does, one loses Hit Points.
So where does one recuperate Hit Points? Not in enemy territory! A Unit with either one or two Hit Points is effectively a useless Unit. You could have an enemy city surrounded by red-lined Infantry and they can't take out one simple red-lined Pikeman, no matter how many you throw at it. Then, once you have taken the town you have 1 turn to calm the Resistors or you have to then evacuate the Town in order to ensure you don't lose your entire army to an inevitable Conversion. If it then converts you can be left with 5 or 6 damaged Units with no hope of winning it back without taking troops from the front line or dedicating at least 2 Artillery to each conquered town.
And then, because your troops HAVE to lose Hit Points you then find the AI sends out Longbowmen and Knights to 'finish off' weak Units. Not to win the battle, but to take every little opportunity to ram another spike into the every-increasing War Weariness accumulation. And the fact that Infantry/Guerillas, even halved in health, have very little 'chance' of defending against Knights and Longbowmen is the other side of the 'extremity' coin which can turn a simple walk-over into a frustrating facepalm-fest.
The sound-bite:
What these 3 things do, when combined, completely destroy any hope the player has of playing the game via their own objectives and styles and pretty much forces the player to conform to exactly what the game is 'teaching' (forcing) the player to do.
The great irony is that many of the things the game is 'teaching' the player to do have absolutely no basis in 'correct' or even 'risky' military strategies and conformities and bare absolutely no correlation to real-life intelligence. It's just a game and to beat the game one has to play by the game's rules, but when the game's rules are so restrictive and confounding then one really has to question it's quality and playing Civilisation III is more akin to a comedy than a 'serious' empire building game.
Sometimes it is a little hard to follow your arguments. There is nothing new here accept that it seems we have moved from an Irritation Program to the fact that you are irritated with the programming.
Irritation #1. Sometimes I start right next to iron and horses. This is obviously a mistake rather than a product of random distribution of resources. I did hear somewhere that the higher the difficulty the further from your start luxuries appear (don't recall if it was luxuries and resources). I didn't pay much attention to it because if I am starting at a higher difficultly I can't really complain when the game is more difficult.
In some cases I do feel like the game is scripted. But I wonder how much that has to do with Civ Traits and UU. Early UU box you into a certain point of view, in my opinion, which is why I favor civs like the Ottomans. A certain starting position will encourage a certain 'game plan', etc. But I would like to think there are sufficient variations and just enough mysteries (irritations?) to keep the game interesting.
Irritation #2. I don't know if everyone believes this. While I am not 100% sure myself, I play as if this is true. This is a limitation of the computing power of the AI (and if you prefer a 'shortcut' used by the programmers). Is it perfect? No. But show me a perfect game? Does this require a particular method of playing (regardless of game) to combat the All Seeing Eye? Yes, at least in a sense. But it is also an opportunity.
Rather than seeing this as a strength it can be a weakness. By moving units of your own (aka Funnel of Doom) you can use the AI's All Seeing Eye to your advantage. I wonder if the All Seeing Eye actually makes the AI weaker rather than stronger. One thing that would need to be examined is how the AI prioritizes the settlement of visible resources, luxuries and bonus tiles over unseen resources. How often have we seen an AI settler wander for 1000 years to find a tundra settling spot to grab oil when the game won't last long enough for the AI to use oil? Was that settler actually used better than if the AI took the time to settle it close to home? Probably not.
I do agree with you, however. Those small island invasions are irritating. I just avoid populating small islands until much later in the game (either control of the seas or significant tech lead) unless it has something I absolutely need.
Irriation #3. Modding might be a solution for you. You can make the events occur less frequently by making the unit stats significantly different but you cannot remove them entirely. Any defending unit that has a stat greater than 0 will eventually win regardless of the stats you give the attacker. It is a mathematical certainty. All you can do is change the frequency.
The rest of this comes off as a rant. Planning and tactics could solve some of these issues. In addition, the fact that attackers must retreat (until Battlefield Medicine) can also be used to the AI's disadvantage. Taking a single hit point off an invader could cause them to retreat from an attack. In this way, even catapults can serve an important function in the AA, causing half of an AI stack to retreat while leaving the other half to die or sit idle while you gather more forces to respond to the invasion.
The AI going after stragglers can also be used against them. By leaving workers or cities undefended just out of their reach you can encourage them to 'waste' strength going after completely safe targets and allowing your vulnerable (and costly) military units to retreat to safety. You can use the 'helpless slave' gambit as well. Losing a slave is often less painful than losing a redlined elite cav.
Sound-Bite:
To steal a quote - Civ III is the worst game . . . except for all the others. I don't think Firaxis is going to get around to any more patches for Civ III so the game is what it is. Some of it can be modded, some can be dealt with 'in game' depending on your threshold for exploits, and the rest we have to live with . . . or uninstall the game and move on.
Irritation #1. Sometimes I start right next to iron and horses. This is obviously a mistake rather than a product of random distribution of resources. I did hear somewhere that the higher the difficulty the further from your start luxuries appear (don't recall if it was luxuries and resources). I didn't pay much attention to it because if I am starting at a higher difficultly I can't really complain when the game is more difficult.
In some cases I do feel like the game is scripted. But I wonder how much that has to do with Civ Traits and UU. Early UU box you into a certain point of view, in my opinion, which is why I favor civs like the Ottomans. A certain starting position will encourage a certain 'game plan', etc. But I would like to think there are sufficient variations and just enough mysteries (irritations?) to keep the game interesting.
Irritation #2. I don't know if everyone believes this. While I am not 100% sure myself, I play as if this is true. This is a limitation of the computing power of the AI (and if you prefer a 'shortcut' used by the programmers). Is it perfect? No. But show me a perfect game? Does this require a particular method of playing (regardless of game) to combat the All Seeing Eye? Yes, at least in a sense. But it is also an opportunity.
Rather than seeing this as a strength it can be a weakness. By moving units of your own (aka Funnel of Doom) you can use the AI's All Seeing Eye to your advantage. I wonder if the All Seeing Eye actually makes the AI weaker rather than stronger. One thing that would need to be examined is how the AI prioritizes the settlement of visible resources, luxuries and bonus tiles over unseen resources. How often have we seen an AI settler wander for 1000 years to find a tundra settling spot to grab oil when the game won't last long enough for the AI to use oil? Was that settler actually used better than if the AI took the time to settle it close to home? Probably not.
I do agree with you, however. Those small island invasions are irritating. I just avoid populating small islands until much later in the game (either control of the seas or significant tech lead) unless it has something I absolutely need.
Irriation #3. Modding might be a solution for you. You can make the events occur less frequently by making the unit stats significantly different but you cannot remove them entirely. Any defending unit that has a stat greater than 0 will eventually win regardless of the stats you give the attacker. It is a mathematical certainty. All you can do is change the frequency.
The rest of this comes off as a rant. Planning and tactics could solve some of these issues. In addition, the fact that attackers must retreat (until Battlefield Medicine) can also be used to the AI's disadvantage. Taking a single hit point off an invader could cause them to retreat from an attack. In this way, even catapults can serve an important function in the AA, causing half of an AI stack to retreat while leaving the other half to die or sit idle while you gather more forces to respond to the invasion.
The AI going after stragglers can also be used against them. By leaving workers or cities undefended just out of their reach you can encourage them to 'waste' strength going after completely safe targets and allowing your vulnerable (and costly) military units to retreat to safety. You can use the 'helpless slave' gambit as well. Losing a slave is often less painful than losing a redlined elite cav.
Sound-Bite:
To steal a quote - Civ III is the worst game . . . except for all the others. I don't think Firaxis is going to get around to any more patches for Civ III so the game is what it is. Some of it can be modded, some can be dealt with 'in game' depending on your threshold for exploits, and the rest we have to live with . . . or uninstall the game and move on.
Cyc
Looking for the door...
Exactly. Had the Knight and his cohorts set up an educational system that was free to all, or at least affordable, your Guerilla would probably have a decent job in a good economy, and never would have thought about attacking the Knight, who by the way, was only red-lined because he was drunk while abusing his medications.
Cyc
Looking for the door...
And let's talk about Luxuries. I started a game (Monarch, large, continents, 60% water, and roaming Barbs) with the intent of go for the 20K Victory Condition. I went through a couple of maps and was suprisingly given one that had a decent starting position. I took it, even though I knew I woud have to get lucky in regards to the second city location, as the river seemed to run the wrong way. After starting, I was ok with the lack of fresh water, as the 2 Cow situation proved too good to pass up. But as I explored the continent, I was saddened to discover that there were no luxuries anywhere on it, although this was not a suprise. Luxury rape by the game is all too common. I even had to cross my neighboring nations borders to find the nearest luxuries. Of course they had plenty. It was a shame, as I was doing really well, but to get my cities above size 3 0r 4, my research really suffered, as did the entire game as it developed. When the Iroquios declared war, it was all over. Typical.
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scratchthepitch
King
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2010
- Messages
- 798
Buttercup
Those things are pretty irritating. But there are "fixes" that can help make some of those things less irritating. Modding can fix #1 so that it is no longer the absurd hurdle it is in the stock game. Changing the appearance ration of the strategic resources and luxuries to 0 gets a much better distribution of these. If you also make each resource able to appear on more different types of terrain, this will increase the numbers of resources. Doing this, I've pretty much got a distribution that works well, with empires, player and AI, having most of the resources they need, but missing maybe a couple. This gives empires incentive to expand against each other, but doesn't hamstring them by cutting their legs off. Every region, except maybe some small islands, also have at least several units of one of the luxuries, so that once trades are possible, you can trade these.
Modding can also reduce the wild results of the rng of #3. Changing unit stats can make their abilities in relation to each other more realistic. Up to a point. Wild results still occur, but less frequently. This is more work than fixing #1.
#2 is a more difficult problem. The AI programing cant be changed, and trying to change things to accomodate it is a lot of work. Some things, like AI seabourne invasions cant be improved in the standard epic game because you need to use victory points to get the AI to want to go there. The AI being predictable is another that cant be changed and makes the game just a game where you exploit game mechanics, instead of a real strategy game.
Those things are pretty irritating. But there are "fixes" that can help make some of those things less irritating. Modding can fix #1 so that it is no longer the absurd hurdle it is in the stock game. Changing the appearance ration of the strategic resources and luxuries to 0 gets a much better distribution of these. If you also make each resource able to appear on more different types of terrain, this will increase the numbers of resources. Doing this, I've pretty much got a distribution that works well, with empires, player and AI, having most of the resources they need, but missing maybe a couple. This gives empires incentive to expand against each other, but doesn't hamstring them by cutting their legs off. Every region, except maybe some small islands, also have at least several units of one of the luxuries, so that once trades are possible, you can trade these.
Modding can also reduce the wild results of the rng of #3. Changing unit stats can make their abilities in relation to each other more realistic. Up to a point. Wild results still occur, but less frequently. This is more work than fixing #1.
#2 is a more difficult problem. The AI programing cant be changed, and trying to change things to accomodate it is a lot of work. Some things, like AI seabourne invasions cant be improved in the standard epic game because you need to use victory points to get the AI to want to go there. The AI being predictable is another that cant be changed and makes the game just a game where you exploit game mechanics, instead of a real strategy game.
