Spaceport whack-a-mole

[Stringer1313]

I have found that most of my games end in playing Spaceport Whack-a-Mole, to prevent other civilizations from winning the Space Race. You disable a spaceport, find another one that hasn't been disabled, send spy there, and keep rinsing and repeating. This process also involves a LOT of clicking (including checking to see whether a spaceport is functioning).

I wish they could set a spy automated function with the following features you can adjust:
- Always perform X spy action in any available city in Y civ
- Set a % risk threshold at which you want the spy action performed
- If % risk threshold not met, toggle whether you want the spy to automatically raise the spy level by 2 or not, if raising it will cross the threshold

And then, of course, as many people have suggested, spying successes are too easy in this game right now. They should make disabling spaceports harder and have AI station more spies at home if they are being constantly attacked.

 

[Kataklysm]

I agree with the fact that many games end in Spaceport disruption race, rather than spaceparts building race. Not sure however if having the features you suggest is a relevant addition to the core game ; rather a mod IMO. Keep in mind that most players don't play at high difficulty, so the mechanics should remain relatively simple to use. Also, I think it's fair that the game requires a bit of vigilance and "clicking" in order to conduct spaceport disruption mission on a large scale, automating everything just feels lazy to me: if you want to win, you have to work for it.

 

[Stringer1313]

I agree with the fact that many games end in Spaceport disruption race, rather than spaceparts building race. Not sure however if having the features you suggest is a relevant addition to the core game ; rather a mod IMO. Keep in mind that most players don't play at high difficulty, so the mechanics should remain relatively simple to use. Also, I think it's fair that the game requires a bit of vigilance and "clicking" in order to conduct spaceport disruption mission on a large scale, automating everything just feels lazy to me: if you want to win, you have to work for it.

Under this proposed system, participation is purely optional. That way if folks still want to manually send spies on missions they can still do that and totally ignore the automated feature. In any event, Spaceport Whack-a-Mole is simply not fun and there should be some kind of better way to implement that piece. Maybe you can only shut down every spaceport one time and that's it, and that way you are forced to think of more creative / difficult ways of winning the space race?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I agree with the fact that many games end in Spaceport disruption race, rather than spaceparts building race. Not sure however if having the features you suggest is a relevant addition to the core game ; rather a mod IMO. Keep in mind that most players don't play at high difficulty, so the mechanics should remain relatively simple to use. Also, I think it's fair that the game requires a bit of vigilance and "clicking" in order to conduct spaceport disruption mission on a large scale, automating everything just feels lazy to me: if you want to win, you have to work for it.

Busywork isn't gameplay. If you want to press your finger down on something repeatedly without thinking about it you can actually accomplish something requiring a similar level of thought after turning the chair 180 degrees and mashing fingerprints onto a wall.

If I try to play Civ 6, I want to play a strategy game, not do the functional equivalent of walking away from my computer and press the wall for 50% of my time in front of the screen.

This isn't anywhere near the most consistently present aspect of tedium in Civ 6 though. If they every try to take the UI out of early beta a better place to start would probably be interactions with cities/units that go on throughout whole games and some of the diplomatic interactions.

 

[Ferocitus]

I have found that most of my games end in playing Spaceport Whack-a-Mole, to prevent other civilizations from winning the Space Race.

Sounds like the Forrest Gump of AI's has your measure.
Try playing against fewer civs and/or at a lower level until you
can win without resorting to whack-a-mole or other methods
that don't give you joy.

 

[AlannaT]

I am usually completely on board with all critique against Civ6's UI. If there is any area with a lot of room for improvement and relatively little cost associated with those improvement it's the UI.

But this special case is completely unjustified IMO. I can remember only 1 or 2 games where I had to ressort to multiple spaceport disruption to (assure my) win. And even in those games I only disrupted 4-6 spaceports from 2 civs. So investing resources to solve a problem, that is only a problem in a minority of games and even then not a significant one, does not seem sensible. Especially if the supposed solution is so specialised that it only applies to exactly one situation, is not completely trivial implementationwise and is most likely a feature that many players wouldn't use even if they were in the situation it was designed for. I certainly wouldn't use it because if I might lose the game to a science victory I would certainly want control over which spaceport is disrupted first and would not let the computer decide that for me.

 

[BarbarianHunter]

I have found that most of my games end in playing Spaceport Whack-a-Mole, to prevent other civilizations from winning the Space Race. You disable a spaceport, find another one that hasn't been disabled, send spy there, and keep rinsing and repeating. This process also involves a LOT of clicking (including checking to see whether a spaceport is functioning).

I wish they could set a spy automated function with the following features you can adjust:
- Always perform X spy action in any available city in Y civ
- Set a % risk threshold at which you want the spy action performed
- If % risk threshold not met, toggle whether you want the spy to automatically raise the spy level by 2 or not, if raising it will cross the threshold

And then, of course, as many people have suggested, spying successes are too easy in this game right now. They should make disabling spaceports harder and have AI station more spies at home if they are being constantly attacked.

I think the old fashioned way is more fun.

Spoiler :

 

[Archon_Wing]

This is more of a UI problem than anything. A disabled spaceport should be marked in the UI.\

Though nothing is bad as counterspy having to be constantly reassigned.

 

[Aristos]

This is more of a UI problem than anything. A disabled spaceport should be marked in the UI.\

Though nothing is bad as counterspy having to be constantly reassigned.

I coded precisely that for astog's BES integration into CQUI. As far as I know, astog included that important change into his latest versions, so if you use BES, you will have that effect in your UI. Same for IZs. If something is disabled, it will not appear in the Espionage chooser screen (nor the main espionage mission screen).