Scrap UHVs?

Aeon221

Lord of the Cheese Helmet
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Seems like Rhye spends too much time bug fixing this stuff, and if you look at our dev forum, almost all the top threads are about UHVs.

I'd rather Rhye just said eff that **** and worked on the stability thing (btw, EU3 is coming out soon!).

I'm sure there are plenty of rabid defenders, but I'm personally fairly tired of hearing the tired argument that such and such civ needs a better power to fulfill the UHV, and I feel that the game would be better if these were, if not removed, at least ignored for a while until more important stuff was implemented and fixed.
 
I have to totally disagree with you. Unique Historical Victories are essential for civilizations that don't have any other course of success. It adds flavor to the gameplay. And above all, it's just plain fun to try and achieve the historical feats of the real empires.

There will always be bugs until the final version is released. The more threads you see means the more people are playtesting, which is important to the mods development.

So rock on with the UHVs :goodjob:
 
Scrap 'em. If you try to follow them, they make the game linear and less a strategy game than luck.

If you're playing historically to win as an alternate civ, then you know what your goals are. If you're the Aztecs, you're playing for survival. This was the biggest change in my three months away from R&F, and it seems to have subtracted from the fun far more than added to it.
 
Actually, I think they should be scrapped. But not because I don't like them...

I think they should be scrapped until the very end. At the very end, all civ balancing should be complete, and it would be more realistic to create goals once everything is balanced out.

I mean, really, look. Last version, Babylon was a group of wimps. Easily taken over. Now, they are powerful enough to repel the Persions with ease, and I have seen them repel the Arabs too.

The strengths of the civs change too much, and when you change another civ, it affects everyone.

So instead of wasting time on these UHVs, it would be smart to save them for the end.
 
UHV is a great addition to the game. So please keep evolving the UHV for greater balancing and ignore the nay-sayers.

Gives a whole new gameplay different from the usual vic conditions.

And for those like me who get slowdown issues in the lategames most UHV gives a chance to finish games before the game unplayable (Early modern era).

If you dont like them just ignore the UHV and play a regular type game.
 
I agree that we should try to balance the game first and after that go on to UHVs. At the moment there are other serious balance problems which should be fixed first.
 
If the UHV are actually stalling development in other areas, I'd say postpone 'em. Incas and Aztecs can win the time victory, and with them, that's actually exciting.
 
I never play with them, but I agree, it's a very distictive and exciting feature of the mod that should be maintained.

But like most of the members above have said, if they are stalling or affecting other undeveloped parts of the mod, they should be delayed 'till a later time.
 
UHV's are fantastic. I have tried many of them with much enjoyment.

But, my two cents is: Yes, they should be considered secondary to balancing issues and bugfixes. They aren't bad right now. Most are just right. It's just that some are way too unrealistic. For these, why not just make up your own UHV's in the interim and see if you can acheive them.

NOTE: To expand a little on Aeon's post, EU3 will be released January 23rd, 2007. It should be right up Civ players' alleys. These two series are my all-time favorite games (wait, SimCity should be in there too).
 
Though it's clearly far too late to scrap or make major changes to the UHV system, I think it would've been interesting to discuss a 'glorious achievements' scoring system similar to the original Medieval: Total War. I loved that system but I don't know how familiar everyone is with it, so bear with me here:

It was a little complex (probably too complex to be adapted to another game) but it basically revolved around a point system that was continuously updated throughout the course of the game. You gained points for fulfilling historical objectives such as posessing your home provinces, controlling other provinces that your faction historically controlled, and more specific goals such as launching crusades, establishing the Hanseatic League or a wool monopoly, owning more of France than the French, constructing the Alhambra etc. You also received additional points for your conquests (since culture was difficult to represent in any other way). Every goal would be reviewed at a particular date and then points you earned in that 'round' would be added to your total score before you were given a fresh set of objectives. One bonus of this would be that the AI could in most cases compete with you simply for holding their homeland areas (every faction had a unique difficulty adjustment for the point system, by the way), and so you would be encouraged to take a more active role than your goals may suggest. Of course this means it would be fairly easy to - having met your historical goals - focus on disrupting everyone else's.

I know this isn't going to happen, but I wanted to share it with you.

NOTE: To expand a little on Aeon's post, EU3 will be released January 23rd, 2007. It should be right up Civ players' alleys.

Are we really that predictable?

(Yes)

(and thanks Aeon for introducing me to Europa Universalis)
 
Worst idea ever. If you don't want to play with UHVs, just ignore them. The AI will probably never achieve a UHV on it's own, so you dont need to worry about losing to a UHV.
 
I don't think that's why Aeon suggested scrapping them.

Aeon said:
Seems like Rhye spends too much time bug fixing this stuff, and if you look at our dev forum, almost all the top threads are about UHVs.

I'd rather Rhye just said eff that **** and worked on the stability thing
 
Yeah, the issue is the TIME it takes to work out the UHV's. It appears to be inordinate compared to the time it takes to work out the playability of the mod.
 
I really like the idea of a Unique path to Historical Victory, but I agree that this is taking up way too much of our time right now... I'd be in favor of disabling the system for now and working on a new set of goals for each civ, to be implemented after certain more important to-do items are implemented and polished. This way we'd have goals that are better-thought out and Rhye wouldn't have to spend so much time on the UHVs until more important things are done.
To sum things up, UHVs are a very good idea and very nice, but not important enough or easy enough for us to get them done right now.
 
I have never attempted the Historical Victories, not because they seem impossible but because they seem to run perpendicular to the game itself, a tangent from where the rest of the game is headed. The problem I see with the UHV is not that they are 'too hard', 'too easy', or 'non-historical'; but, because the AI is not conscious of them.

If goals were implemented that the AI could easily understand, strive for, or even protect against (be it an opponent's goals) then the game would play much better. These simple goals (if done efficiently) could remove the need for "War-maps" or "Settler-maps" and even (all fingers crossed) increase game speed.

EDIT: There have been suggestions to just ignore them if they are too bothersome. The problem is, that if you are able to ignore a feature then it probably isn't a feature worth keeping, eh. Until the UHV system can be integrated further into the game (influencing AI, etc.) I too believe it should be disabled.
 
I really like the idea of a Unique path to Historical Victory,

Sounds interesting Blasphemous. What do you mean?

The problem I see with the UHV is not that they are 'too hard', 'too easy', or 'non-historical'; but, because the AI is not conscious of them.

But how would you suggest a way to make the AI conscious of their goals? Even if we could find a way to do this, how long would it take to implement each goal and adjust it whenever a better one is proposed? It would be fantastic if we could find a way, but I don't think we can.
 
I like the UHV but not for a victory. I would like to see, when you complete a UHV, you'll get something for it. If you complete 2 of them, you get a Trimpharc, that's nice, but I like to see more. If you complete 1, you get a great person, and if you complete all 3, you get something too. I have no idea what this could be.
 
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