Capital Planet victory condition

it is sort of broken or am I missing something?

By niftyc on July 4, 2012 12:33:35 PM from

niftyc

Join Date 02/2008

I am relatively new at Rebellion, although I played Sins long ago. I was excited about the capital planet victory condition and I decided to try it out. I made a 5-player random map with 4 hard AIs as opponents. To set myself a goal I figured I would try for a capital planet victory against all of them. I also like the idea of a capital planet victory because I find the planet-by-planet nutcracking to be tedious at times.

The First AI was in my star system and he massively outbuilt me because I don't know what I am doing yet. So I made a mad push for his capital with my largest fleet, fleeing straight through enemy worlds instead of fighting through them. Every time I passed through a star system his swarms of strike craft would whittle my fleet down until when I finally arrived at his capital I had only a nub. But it was enough. As his reinforcements came in I bombarded his home world and I just managed to do it. Hooray! What drama! This is just the kind of feeling that a game should have!

But then I had no fleet and to my surprise all of his planets are still there and his fleets are still hostile. So even though I "won" I had to clear out all of his planets anyway because I need the real estate for expansion. That sucks, I thought. I guess this is a legitimate gameplay decision but it doesn't make much sense to me. It doesn't feel like I won!

Next, I started losing my worlds to the "defeated" AI's culture, one by one. I guess the AI built a million broadcast stations and it took a while for their culture to catch up to me. So they had no capital, but I had no fleet and their culture started to take me out. Again, I suppose this could be a legitimate gameplay decision and not a bug but it "feels" buggy to me. I felt like shouting, "I just defeated you! WTF are you doing?"

So that was very aggravating. I decided that for my second AI take-down I would make nice with the AI first. I'd see if I could position my fleet at their homeworld, then plan on breaking our peace treaty and attacking it. First I used scouts and envoys to discover which world was the capital (it was on another star). I was surprised that the Rebellion AI doesn't seem to attach any particular significance to its homeworld. It didn't mind when I moved all my ships there, and it didn't send any reinforcements or complain. Not really a bug but certainly not an optimal AI-behavior!

Then I broke my treaty (AI still does not reinforce) and after the cooldown I start bombing (still does not reinforce -- it doesn't even move its flagship until I attack it directly). Again, this doesn't seem ideal. Finally, I manage to obliterate the capital. Surprise, surprise, this time the AI doesn't even lose. (No cracked glass on the negotiation screen.) The AI capital planet just becomes empty. Did it move somewhere else? I thought they couldn't move? WTF?

I bought Rebellion excited about the advertised victory conditions and so I sat down to play with them. Overall, this was a frustrating game!

Are the new victory conditions not supposed to be played with the AI? The AI doesn't seem particularly aware of the capital planet victory condition. And I don't know what the heck happened with the capital move.

Christian

I have actually experienced the opposite with my current playthrough. The setup is a 1 star map (100 or so planets) free for all with me and 6 other ai players, victory condition is set to capital planet.

The ai seems to surrender as soon as i have taken one or two of their planets, eventhough iam no way near their capital world. there are 3 players left after 4.5 hours of playing. most of the map is still populated with colonies from the surrendered ais,

It's seems just too easy with the way they surrendered.

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The 'Capital Planet' victory condition generally works fine against the AI. There are one of two possible things going on here:

1) It's a bug.

2) (Most likely) The opponent in question was playing as the Vasari Loyalists. They have a research option that allows their titan to function as a capital planet which applies to this victory condition. In this case, you have to destroy both the capital planet 'and' the titan to defeat them.

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Thanks Sakhari. I bet that's what is going on.

I stand by the earlier comments though. It seems to me that more should happen if you manage to "decapitate" an opponent. I really did not appreciate making the big push to knock the first AI out and then finding that they weren't really knocked out in any meaningful sense.

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(deleted accidental duplicate post)

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Quoting niftyc,

reply 3

The reason defeated players sort of stay on the map is for team games. Think of what would happen if you were playing a competitive team game if you immediately got all the planets of a defeated player. Lets say your ally had a pretty large fleet guarding a choke point with a starbase, but he gets taken out from his flagship getting sniped or a few Novalith attacks on his homeworld. If all of those assets disappeared, your team is now extremely vulnerable to attack through his old territory, which the other team could probably pick up easier. And it doesn't make much sense why his entire Empire would just disappear. So at least the enemy has to clear out his starbases and fleet, even though they'll no longer receive orders, just auto attack whatever is in the gravity well.

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I too have alwas found it weird that the AI still exists after you have defeated them, they won't jump out of their grav wells anymore, but will attack if you come into theirs. Basicly they are still alive but all their phase engines malfunctioned. Altho easier to get capital ship levels this way, sometimes I wish they were just gone, or that the ships became rebels which took out the structures/planets.

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Quoting GoaFan77,

reply 6

I get what you're saying. It still seems like there are other ways to handle this -- like the idea of a resistance used in other games. You wouldn't have to get all of the planets but they could be easier for anyone to conquer.

ezeltje299 put it better than I did. As it stands, the collapse of an opponent's civilization results in all of their jump drives breaking at the same time.

Also I think your point doesn't address my situation of getting pwned by my decapitated opponent's broadcast stations. When this was happening I was very confused. ("I already defeated that opponent so it CAN'T be that culture -- there must be some other culture around here somewhere... Where is it?!")

Consider a situation where you know that culture is going to be a problem (I didn't because I'm clueless). If an enemy's culture is powerful, launching a massive attack on their civilization and obliterating the capital planet seems like it should do the trick! But in this case, it doesn't do anything because their leaderless radio stations are still broadcasting.

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Well, the broadcasting centers will just keep doing what they were doing before, just like all the other things, It just won't get orders anymore.

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quoting post

The AI doesn't seem particularly aware of the capital planet victory condition.

The AI doesn't seem particularly aware

The AI doesn't seem

The AI

Theres ur problem.

Grow a pair.

That is all.

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