You should have to beat all the cities, not just your opponent's capital.

[Noobnoob2015]

This was brought up to me in another thread, as something a little off about this game. At first I was critical, but then as I thought more and more about it, I realized they were absolutely right, a faction should not be destroyed, simply because you kill their capital city. I can't remember if this was ever in Civilization or not, but what I do know now is that 4x strategy games do not generally have this rule, not even Stellaris where it might make, a very tiny bit, of sense. If nothing else, it would be nice if you could turn this on or off, in order to make the games more difficult and last longer. The fact is, now that I know all I have to do is build up doom-stacks and march on my neighbor's capital to win, it is diminishing my enjoyment of the game, because it suddenly got that much easier to win.

I'm not sure how other people feel about this, but I wish this was an optional win condition and not something hardwired into the game.

 

[DragonZee]

What do you mean? You need to both destroy a Throne City and kill the leader (send him/her to Astral Plane) to defeat a faction. I had one game where I conquered all opponent cities yet she wasn't defeated cus she still roamed around the map... I also believe you can relocate a Throne City as long as you have other cities?

 

[Leyrann]

I also believe you can relocate a Throne City as long as you have other cities?

You can indeed. It's free, just occupies (literally, for some reason) the city for 4 turns.

 

[Illustrious-Crap7379]

What do you mean? You need to both destroy a Throne City and kill the leader (send him/her to Astral Plane) to defeat a faction. I had one game where I conquered all opponent cities yet she wasn't defeated cus she still roamed around the map... I also believe you can relocate a Throne City as long as you have other cities?

By the time you reach their throne city their leader will either attack and die to you on the way or sit inside the capital. I've played dozens of games on all difficulties and never needed to hunt down their leader even once, so I really don't know how you managed to get an AI who just roamed the map with their leader. When you enter their domain - the AI will move all their stacks in your direction. They will sit in nearby cities if their stacks are weak, but if you go past them to the throne city, then those stacks will follow, and once the AI thinks it can attack you - it'll attack... and of course die, because AI is an idiot, which is fun, because I use autocombat 99% of the time, and if AI attacks my stacks and I lose 0 units in autocombat, then there's something wrong with AI's ability to analyze the threat, but that's another problem. And their leader was always in that army or armies, or sitting in a capital, in literally every game.

So he's partly right - just go to the throne city and the AI player is dead.

 

[Leyrann]

By the time you reach their throne city their leader will either attack and die to you on the way or sit inside the capital. I've played dozens of games on all difficulties and never needed to hunt down their leader even once, so I really don't know how you managed to get an AI who just roamed the map with their leader. When you enter their domain - the AI will move all their stacks in your direction. They will sit in nearby cities if their stacks are weak, but if you go past them to the throne city, then those stacks will follow, and once the AI thinks it can attack you - it'll attack... and of course die, because AI is an idiot, which is fun, because I use autocombat 99% of the time, and if AI attacks my stacks and I lose 0 units in autocombat, then there's something wrong with AI's ability to analyze the threat, but that's another problem. And their leader was always in that army or armies, or sitting in a capital, in literally every game.

So he's partly right - just go to the throne city and the AI player is dead.

So if I understand this correctly.

You vastly overpower the AI. You march onto the AI's strongest city. Once you take that, you will no doubt take all the AI's other cities without much more effort. The AI, about to be obliterated, throws it's armies at you in a desperate last stand and loses.

And that's somehow not how things should be working? (maybe outside the part where you're vastly overpowering the AI but that's a starting state)

 

[DragonZee]

By the time you reach their throne city their leader will either attack and die to you on the way or sit inside the capital. I've played dozens of games on all difficulties and never needed to hunt down their leader even once, so I really don't know how you managed to get an AI who just roamed the map with their leader.

Pretty easily - she left to some faraway land while I cleared her cities. Actually I couldn't even find her for a couple of turns, she just popped out in some random place. Maybe at this point the AI decided it doesn't stand a chance so it just roamed around instead of getting back to its land. Funny thing is that I wanted to prolong the game a bit more, but my AI ally decided to hunt her down and ended the game (yeah I know you can still play post-win, but oh well I ended the game there).

PS: I believe there's also a "desertion" mechanic in place (probably with minus upkeep), becasue she had an army with her, but in the end she was the only unit left in the stack while she didn't do much fighting to loose them.

 

[BlaneckW]

It would be a different government under an independent leader

4x end game slog is already considered a problem

 

[Illustrious-Crap7379]

So if I understand this correctly.

You vastly overpower the AI. You march onto the AI's strongest city. Once you take that, you will no doubt take all the AI's other cities without much more effort. The AI, about to be obliterated, throws it's armies at you in a desperate last stand and loses.

And that's somehow not how things should be working? (maybe outside the part where you're vastly overpowering the AI but that's a starting state)

I wouldn't say that I overpower AI, actually, according to "army score" AI often overpowers me, it's just the game isn't very balanced it seems, or the army rating is calculated wrong. Sometimes it says high risk battle, I press autocombat and then... 0 deaths on my side and everyone is dead on their side =/ It's all about heroes 3 stacks leading by 3 heroes with almost all support skills and lots of unit enchantments related to damage. It doesn't matter who you play, Industrious tier1-only (hero shield +x2 shield +3 arbalest *3 stacks, but you need to take one tome related to horde, as it unlocks very strong support hero skill that gives +20% damage to all tier1 in the army), or Barbarian warrior/fury (hero shield, +2 warrior +3 fury *3 stacks), or just go hero+5 warbreeds * 3 stacks, or Mystic 100% summon army, everything works. Just autocombat and zero deaths. On any difficulty. The game is weird ^_^

 

[Dreepa]

A little correction here.

Civ's conquest victory is: "Conquer all capital cities of other civilizations".
Endless Space's conquest victory is: "Conquer all home star systems of other factions".

They still live on, and can act, and try to come back by reclaiming their capital. Yes.
But so does the Wizard King in AOW when they lose the throne city.
It's the same concept.

I don't know of any 4x where it's not like that.


I assume the reasons for this are twofold:
-It is extremely time consuming to "clean up the mess" while other players pursue other victory conditions. It's probably hard to do, to conquer the whole world before someone else does a science (or whatever victory). So to win it was designed in the way that you only need the capitals.
-The game is decided, for the most part. It is very laborious, straining and repeitive to wipe everything, as in the vast majority of cases you are already snowballing into an undeafatable force, and there is nothing challenging/interesting about stomping the remains.

And that is probably also why you can keep playing after victory, in most of these kind of games. Because some people enjoy stomping the remains, so they gave those player types that option.



The real problem here seems to be, that IF the AI has superior numbers and cities, it should withdraw to one of their other cities and try to rescue their Wizard King to consolidate and get a new throne city. Though that's a big IF. If they send everything at the attacker and fail, they probably aren't in that situation anyway.

 

[aadf97799c]

that sound like late game nightmare

ai already spam insane number of stack and build magic victory building super early

no need to make player suffer more

 

[Leylos]

This was brought up to me in another thread, as something a little off about this game. At first I was critical, but then as I thought more and more about it, I realized they were absolutely right, a faction should not be destroyed, simply because you kill their capital city. I can't remember if this was ever in Civilization or not, but what I do know now is that 4x strategy games do not generally have this rule, not even Stellaris where it might make, a very tiny bit, of sense. If nothing else, it would be nice if you could turn this on or off, in order to make the games more difficult and last longer. The fact is, now that I know all I have to do is build up doom-stacks and march on my neighbor's capital to win, it is diminishing my enjoyment of the game, because it suddenly got that much easier to win.

I'm not sure how other people feel about this, but I wish this was an optional win condition and not something hardwired into the game.

Theres plenty of strategy games with this level of tedium already, so lets not add another.

It would also make conquest victory impossible with large numbers of opponents.

 

[Huskeonkel]

I agree with how they've designed this facet of the game. If you are strong enough to take the capital and overwhelm all their forces, then having to take every single other city is just tedious busywork.

 

[Mohreb]

You can indeed. It's free, just occupies (literally, for some reason) the city for 4 turns.

AI does not seem to do that.
I had a game where they were reduced to one city for 60+ turns (I wanted to do a magic victory). Then when I was close to that they declared war, soucided their leader and lost. So for that much turn they did not bother to relocate the throne to their unique city :/

 

[Pro]

Hard disagree. 4x games tend to struggle with the late game being too long. Making wars less decisive would merely drag games out.

 

[Breebelbox]

I can understand both sides. Having to conquer 6+ cities per AI enemy can be tiresome. But in my current game one AI ruler actually managed to start the expansion victory before me because he was lucky and was pretty much alone on his continent while I had to deal with other rulers. So they have at least 6 cities, have build all the 3 beacons and I can just run my 3 best armies into his capital and all his efforts mean nothing. That feels a bit anticlimactic to me but I don't have a great solution for this dilemma.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

Don't make the end game drag on longer than it should have to. Taking the most developed city and hunting down the leader is often more than enough proof that you are superior in strength and dragging the game on doesn't do it any any favours.

Stelllaris doesn't really have a victory condition so I am not sure why it's a good example here. Sure you can blow up the galaxy, but that's about it.

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

I can understand both sides. Having to conquer 6+ cities per AI enemy can be tiresome. But in my current game one AI ruler actually managed to start the expansion victory before me because he was lucky and was pretty much alone on his continent while I had to deal with other rulers. So they have at least 6 cities, have build all the 3 beacons and I can just run my 3 best armies into his capital and all his efforts mean nothing. That feels a bit anticlimactic to me but I don't have a great solution for this dilemma.

Do they need the capital for the expansion victory ? I thought they just have to hold the beacons.

 

[Pro]

I think he meant that he killed the enemy leader and took their throne city, thus eliminating them despite all the progress they had made

 

[Breebelbox]

To be honest, I haven't completed the siege yet but I should win it before the timer runs out. I would imagine that either the AI just stops to exist and therefore cannot complete the victory condition or that it won't hold enough territory anymore for the expansion victory. But I'm not sure yet, maybe I'm wrong.

 

[Pro]

If you kill an enemy leader and take their throne city they are eliminated from the game and all their remaining cities become free cities. Just taking their throne by itself doesn't do anything.