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The Fellowship Halls (Fellowship of the Ring Empire Thread)
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Welcome to the Fellowship, Nhat Nguyen! 
Drop by and say hi. 
          
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Would like to tap the collective brainpower of this great community of gamers regarding a personal question.
Having worked for 5 years, I've saved up a decent sum of money and I'm really keen to start my own business. Main motivation behind this is that I do not want to regret when I'm old that I didn't have the guts to strike it out on my own.
Having said that, I've really cracking my head as to what I could do. Having read some books and articles, I agree with others that one of the key factors for success is passion for the product or service of the business.
There are a few things I'm passionate about but one of them has to be computer games.
So to cut a long story short, I'm wondering whether you people think it is possible for a startup to go into the business of computer games, online gaming or something equivalent and make money out of it.
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Ray, Brad & Co. have proved that it's possible, although they're apparently not making much from retail sales. Obviously, direct Internet sales are the way to go; but the gaming magazines - which are going to generate interest in the product - seem to still be driven towards the "nice packaging, big rollout" games. Interesting dilemma.
You might want to send Brad an email on this, or start it as its own thread. I doubt that Brad reads the Imperial threads regularly, but he obviously would have some significant insights. Without mentioning names, I know that a few people in this community have been moving toward similar ventures lately; they might be interested in what he has to say.
  
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Thanks for the comments, Ben.
I'll take up your suggestion to start a general forum OT thread.
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That is indeed sad news, vincible.
I'm now really wondering what kind of "common human strategies" was the AI enhanced to counter.
The AIs still seem to be defending their systems with just colony ships leaving themselves vulnerable to the "Rush".
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#656
by Veteran vincible - 11/19/2003 2:06:13 AM
I'm simply baffled as to why Stardock hasn't improved the cultural AI. Their usual excuse of serving "the 99% of gamers who are not hardcore" just doesn't hold up in this case. I think most people see that it's a weak spot after playing just a couple times. And there are a zillion things Stardock could have done to fix it. In this post I'm going to list things that I don't think would be that hard to code, that Stardock could have done. They could have
1) had the AI at least see culture starbases in neighboring sectors as a threat, and demand that you disband them
2) They could have had the AI start building cultural starbases in a sector when it saw that your influence was greater than its influence.
3) Even easier, they could have nerfed culture starbases so that they only work within a sector, so you actually have to risk war when you use them.
Any or all of those would have helped solve the problem of infinitely abusable culture starbases. 1 and 3 sound pretty trivial to code to me. Two is best, but might take a while. This party palace problem doesn't come up too much in my games, but it's so obviously abusable--lots of people do abuse it, I have a few times before I realized just how helpless the AI was.
Even worse, we have the problem of the AI letting you get a huge cultural lead, and being completely inert when your culture is overwhelming it. So to keep the AI from just handing you the cultural lead:
4) they could have made starbases on resources far more valuable than starbases elsewhere. This value should not be static, but should increase throughout the game.
5) if 5 is too hard, they could simply make starbases unbuyable, since the only reason a human would buy one is to get a resource which the AI has no business selling. Trivial to code.
6) The AI should pursue other techs besides the military techs! They should at least have a couple AIs prioritize the influence/trade/economy techs and wonders. (Probably rather hard to code, but it would add greatly to the game by differentiating the AIs.)
And currently, once you have the cultural lead, the AI just hands you the game. You colonize near them, their planets defect, and they remain friendly while their huge fleets sit by and do nothing. You can fix this by:
7) If an AI planet defects, the AI asks for it back from you. (Seems like reasonable behavior to me, and again easy to code.) If you don't give it back, you have a large automatic downgrade in relations and automatic breaking of any alliance. (How big this downgrade would depend on how many stars the AI has, and how many stars are on the map.)
8) Once you've taken some fraction of the planets owned by the AI (say a third), any additional defections, if you do not give the planet back, cause you to have to roll a saving throw. If you fail, the AI goes to war against you. The chance of this is determined by your relations and by your relative military strengths.
Comments/suggestions? If people think it makes sense, I'll clean this up, remove derogatory references to Stardock, and post it in the main forum.
And it's not related, but Stardock really really ought to make it so that you can only add one TS module per turn. For this one I can see their "99% of gamers" excuse making sense though.
And fix the unbreakable alliances too.
[Message Edited]
  
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Makes a lot of sense, vincible, and your suggestions are good.
As you said, it's amazing how the AIs are so completely nonchalant to the cultural offensive. Smiling happily at you whilst handing over planet after planet.
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#658
by Veteran Gerakken - 11/19/2003 3:11:02 AM
| I'm simply baffled as to why Stardock hasn't improved the cultural AI. |
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I agree with most of vincible's points. Culture is the dark secret of Galciv. Too many people using it as the primary weapon to decimate or even destroy the aliens and doctoring the victories to cover up the evidence. Worse yet, lack of obvious anti-culture AI improvements compound the problem. But I have seen subtle signs of cultural resistance, though they are hardly effective against a human player intent on bombarding the map with party palaces in adjacent sectors and PQ 13/14 long bombs into enemy territory to make a base for said starbases. The signs of an AI "fighting back" are as follows in my experience:
Ships not immediately needed for a war are diverted to systems experiencing cultural distress.
Destab spending leads to hasty morale and culture improvements on key systems.
"Scorched earth" sell-offs of key buildings on the first planet of a system that has been written off by the AI. Oddly enough, the first planet may have a morale of 1 after flipping due to the pressure and the sell off, but planet #2 might still have a 100 morale and a full load of buildings. The ship diversion also happens a lot in these cases, where I think the ships are "buying time" to sell off more buildings.
This is a far cry from "stop pressuring me or it is war!" It is more like "I am a helpless alien. I must meet my fate with quiet suffering." There needs to be patently obvious anti-culture devices with real teeth later on. Maybe not as far as vincible's "give me back my rebellious system, you treacherous human" unless it was for genius or incredible aliens only, but something like this three step system of cultural deterence based on alien intelligence. Step #1: "Culture, what is that?" A stupid aliens totally ignore culture. Step #2: "Not in my sector, and stop flipping my planets, you leach! No more alliance for you!" Moderately smart aliens start to get the hint. Step #3: "I don't want to see that crap anywhere near my space, human dog. No alliance, no cooperation, give ME those bases and my system back or there will be pain!" Truly smart alien. A more complex system taking alien racial attitude into account could also work well, but that is really a major overhaul.
   
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vincible: I've just completed my first 1.12 game and...I didn't notice anything different, either. I'd like to respond from the point of view of a gamer who REALLY enjoys influence and diplomacy in 4X games, and has searched hard for games that employ this well. There aren't many, and I'd have to think of little known older games like 'Empires of the Fading Suns' before you could find one that modelled aspects most players would seek. I feel it is EXCEEDINGLY hard to incorporate in a game in a believable way for the player. The game should have an 'influence economy', parallel to the cash and trade one, which allows the player to fight, prosper and eventually dominate, just like the warmonger can. It is a valid route to victory.
Regarding your points:
1. Yes, Id say that's fair - at least to the point of the presence of CultSBs leading to downgrading of the relationship - that's what would happen in real life (Chinese ships off the Taiwan coast).
2. Yes, a cultural 'counter attack' would be reasonable, but VERY difficult to incorporate in an AI (especially prioritising this in relation to military objectives).
3. No. I detest 'nerfing'. Nerfing is not developing 'enhanced AI' - it is simply squashing an excellent tactic because the programmers arent smart enough to think of other options. This would risk removing any value that diplomacy and influence had in the game, reducing it to a simple wargame. We already all fight for 'military' wins...dont make it worse. Item 1 is a better answer.
4. Absolutely agree with this one.
5. I have no problem with it, but it seems a crude tactic. Money talks, or it should do in this sort of game. If you're a good enough businessman, and can find the price, you should be able to purchase it. Poverty stricken civs SHOULD sell you things in order to stay afloat - that's a real world occurrence. Frankly, it makes more real world sense for starbases to be 'flippable' just like planets. Why would a starbase hold out deep in enemy territory when all the surrounding friendly planets flip to the enemy? I know it goes against what you're trying to do, I'm just pointing it out!
6. Yes, clearly - no AI prioritises these at all.
7. Yes, and it should be treated like any demand make in game (ie you can deny it, and restore your relations later with gifting if possible). That is, it should not be instant war if refused.
8. No - I dont like single dice rolls bringing my careful strategies undone in one swoop. I think it should be harder to flip an AIs planets as you go along. It gets easier to flip them now, because influence depends in part on population. As your pop rises and their pop falls, flipping is easier. I think the AI surviving planets would band together even tighter - so each successive 'flip' should require more influence to obtain.
It might just be too hard to get really meaty diplomacy into these sort of games. Stringing together complex deals: "You can buy my next UP vote if you'll..." "You know the Torians are plain evil. Give me planet X and we'll ally and go to glorious war together..." "I will supply a contract of ten Avatars for you IF you use them to annihilate Civ Y"
Just my 2 bc. Well, it's worth 5 bc but because you're a friend, vincible, I'm giving it to you for just 2 bc. You know, a friend would probably respond by taking a little break from gameplaying while he writes to Stardock. Yes, I'd support that..... 
  
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Samurai Ben,
I've accomplished that little matter that you've asked of me sometime ago in an email.
[Message Edited]
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Submitted my Maso Huge game.
Wasn't too much of a game really. After the Alts bought it, I proceeded to mop up the 4 minors and when that was done, the game was effectively over. Then came the Fundies (I see them in most every game now) who proceeded to completely decimate three of the remaining four AIs save the Tors.
So spent the rest of the time teching up, then dealing the Tors a TS KO punch.
The Tors spent much of the remaining time fighting the massive Fundies. The Tors were much superior in military despite having significantly lesser systems. Part of it is due to the fact that I sucked empty the Fundie treasury by selling them all my TGs.
What I noticed is that they the Tors defended better at this late stage, keeping a few capital ships in each system (i hope that was intentional). They also exhibited a better than expected invasion capability and managed to take 5 Fundie system after a couple of years.
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Good morning, everyone!
I've read through the latest posts and have to give my opinion.
As you know, I decided to play a Huge/Crippling game to test out some ideas. I had colonized a system that was shared by the Yor. In most instances, I would build a Cultural SB and watch the Yor crumble quickly in that sector. Not in this case. As soon as I added the first cultural module, the Yor (who were at Friendly at the time) decided to demand the SB from me. This has never happened to me when I owned a system in a sector before, so I refused. They immediately went to war and launched a corvette a turn at me (it was fairly early in the game, and both of us had corvettes). Suddenly my entire empire was swarming with corvettes, and the Yor wouldn't sue for peace for anything.
This was a game started in 1.11 and continued in 1.12. Personally, I think they have learned a little bit in regards to cultural attacks, but they just haven't done enough. I decided to quit and start a Huge/Maso game, which so far has been going quite well, now that I understand the new rules of cultural starbases.
I wouldn't say Stardock isn't doing anything to rectify the cultural issue. They just aren't doing extreme changes. And I think that's what they have to do.
I like vincible's ideas but they need to be implemented at AI Genius and Incredible levels, so as not to discourage players who haven't learned to recognize a cultural counterattack by the AI.
Oh, and besides what I described above, the only recognizable difference I've seen with 1.12 is Incredible AIs are a tad less aggressive in building resource SBs, seemingly concentrating more efforts to colonization. I managed to snag three Influence resources very early on in a Huge/Maso game (by the way, are there more resources now?).
All-in-all, I like 1.12.
  
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And welcome to Nhat Nguyen, our newest member! Please feel free to drop in and say hi! Remember, we are here to help you if you need any advice!
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Come to think of it, that's the only two votes I have had in my current game. Weird.
Yikes! vincible had post #666!! 
As far as turning the Cultural Victory condition off, I do it because the ending is so crappy. I hate the movie and it seems like an anti-climactic end to the game. Of course, the points are nice, too, but I'd just as soon win on Alliance than anything. It's just a little too easy in my book to ally with everyone. I'd rather send Combat Transports against my enemies and earn a Military Victory.
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kasual has a good idea. Only get a military victory if you invade more systems than flip to you! Of course, this would make it very hard to win on Military if the Fundamentalist event happens and you only have to defeat two or three systems of each AI. Then, any cultural flipping at all, whether desired or not, will result in a cultural victory. On the other hand, the Fundamentalist event destroys much of the fun of invasion anyway, so you really aren't earning a military victory anyway.
Talkin' bout ramblin'... 
vincible, I agree the AI is pretty helpless against cultural assault. I just don't see Stardock changing the game anytime soon to resolve that issue.
[Message Edited]
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1. Forget having a 'cultural' victory, in the sense that cultural and military are the same result. Really, we're talking about a victory by 'domination' - by conquering every planet. Simply call it that, no matter how it happens, so we are left with three really different routes to victory: domination, technological and political (alliance). Stop drastic point nerfing: final frontier shouldnt be worth only half of a domination win.
2. Make influence and diplomacy meaningful. The UP vote is fluff at the moment - I've never seen it affect the course of the game. All governments gather - for what? A zoo? An Olympiad? The vote topics seem randomly generated and I often have several votes on the same topic per game (What? We already decided that!).
How about this: The Torian government has called an emergency meeting because planet Wardell in sector 2,3 is in dispute (eg under cultural pressure). How do the members vote to resolve this? a) planet remains with Torians b) planet goes to Yor. If Yor dont abide by this, they are expelled from UP with all the consequences. Winning the voting support of other civs becomes IMPORTANT. Give the minors voting rights too, in proportion to population. Each AI has the ability to call an emergency meeting only twice during the game and can thus use it to call for a vote on disputed territory. String together an independent voting bloc (you plus I-league, Car, Fundis etc) and challenge the Drengin hegemony. I dunno, just rambling...
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How you manage to do the cultural bomb, every time I build a starbase close to the AI he tells me give up your starbase or this means war. How do you manage to built them without going to war with the AI's?
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Mayito: build them in sectors ADJACENT to those containing enemy planets. Search for the thread "Palace Magic" by Maxtipherous and check the relevant threads in the Strategies section.
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