Love the game, but end game is tedious

from Stardock Forums
I (mis)remember reading Brad saying somewhere that the AI would surrender when the cause was hopeless. I'm just playing a game (medium, all AI intelligent) where the Dregs had about 1/3 of the galaxy, I had 1/3 and the other shared the rest equally. The Dregs had about 12-14 planets. I was forced to take each one as they didn't surrender, eventhough quite early on they were clearly beaten. This took quite some time and was boring as they didn't have a chance. They were also at war with everyone else but one, while I had very good relations.

Also, I'm concerned that I will have to repeat this with the other races, eventhough they are all clearly outnumbered.

Developers, please look at streamlining this end game, as I'd really like to get my score for the Metaverse, but as a casual gamer I can't see I've got the time or interest to mop up for several hours.
716 views 11 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
I partially agree, I quit more games then I finish, because they do start dragging. But still the end game is more streamlined then Civ games and MOO2.

I still think a big part of the problem is the economic sliders, those buggers take more of my time then anything else, constantly having to adjust to minimize the loss from planets with nothing in queue.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

SpaceHondo

You would probably win via cultural victory if you do mop up the dregs and own 2/3 of the world and are at peace with the rest. You would not need to conquer every single race if you are not looking specifically for military victory.

I've not seen much surrenders, just once or twice in my four games and never to me. They seem willing to fight to the death.

I too belong to the group afraid of a tedious end game, so I've refrained from playing huge and gigantic maps so far.
Ashes of the Singularity II
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
I think it partly depends on what kind of victory you're shooting for. I played a gigantic map (admittedly on lower level AI, but still) and achieved a cultural victory well before I got bored. In fact I wished the game had gone longer. But if you're trying for a military conquest and you feel obliged to mop up every piddly little planet, I can see where the endgame would drag. Isn't that kind of natural though?
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
Ah ... you do have to plan a bit to make the mopup quick and painless. Mainly, make sure you run around with a couple of BIG groups of Combat Transports ... running out of combat transports and having to wait for new to be built and transported to the frontline is a major reason for tedium.

You can also turn off the show AI combat option ... then you wont have to watch the AI throwing his hordes of Dreadnaughts on your massiv Overlords.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
I have had an AI surrender to me once (to spite another AI), but normally they tend to surrender to other AI (to spite me) so you still have to take all of their worlds anyways. It doesn't seem that they conceed defeat to the conquerer, but rather to just about anyone else. :)
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
I think that speeding up transports would significantly speed up the game pace. Currently, your wars before Combat Transports are quite slow. IMHO the transports should be able to move at least 2 or 3 parsecs per month; that would make early and mid-game wars much more interesting and fast. And, one should really care about defending himself in the beginning, too.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
To speed up early game combat, use colony ships to transport ppl to create a beachhead on the closest world, then build/buy transports from there.

~SDC~
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
My problem is when reaching the core worlds, some of which have that amazing Precursor event that changes 5 of them to size 40+ planets. They dont just resign to me, even though i have won, so i normally end up haveing to use a cultural victory to end the monontony of the end game :\

If the AI resigned when it was clear he was lost, it would save the last boring hour, i think that is the only point of the game i dont enjoy much, it was the same with all the other 4X games tho

~SDC~
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
All good points which I agree with as well. My two cents - If the design of the game were to include an AI that surrendered more frequently, a setting should be built to enable/disable this behavior. Without this, I am confident we would see many posts from people saying they are frustrated that the AI is resigning more frequently.

-Anxiety
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
I agree with the opinion of SpaceHondo end game is really too tedious.. my six sigma proposal for game improvement is a rally point for new constructed ships..
the game i am currently playing has 10 constructors popping up a turn-- its just a pain for me to go to each and every system and then put them to their proper stations.

-- rally point for new constructed ships, pls. ;)
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
apparently a more "french" :p AI is in the works for an upcoming version. so hopefully this will be resolved.

see the "no update today" thread for brad's comments.

cheers

h