Mercy Rules

from Sins Forums

Hello,

I just played a fun little game of sins with the computer.  One thing I was wondering about is the mercy rule, or, to put it another way, the win condition.

Normally after I am beating the computer pretty badly, the game will end with a victory for me.  My lead has to be pretty epic to trigger the win.

But the game I played tonight got me thinking that I don't understand the exact rules of the endgame.  Gaia Crescent, me and a normal computer.  As I have been for the last couple of times I've played, I was whooping the computer badly.  (It's almost time for me to move up to hard.)  But this time the win condition did not trigger.

Instead, I had to kill every last object owned by the computer.  I'm not certain that this is the case; maybe I only had to kill every planet.  Whatever the case, it took a long time because I had two capital ships and no siege frigates -- I had been concentrating on building my Missle Armada of Doom.  I figured that I would kill the computer so quickly that I would trigger the victory condition without needing to siege every planet down.

By the time I had killed most or all of the enemy ships, I had about three planets left to go.  So I started killing their homeworld with my caps and began building siege frigates since I was basically rolling in money.  (This was about 1:35 into the game.)  There was barely any resistance.  How could there be?  Occasionally they'd send a cap in, but I had so much power by this point that even a capital ship would melt away in less than 20 seconds.  Still, no mercy rule.

Eventually I had to kill all their planets to finally win.  It took another twenty or thirty minutes since my siege frigates had to travel from across the map (and maybe I only started building them after I finished off the enemy terran planet.  6000 health with only 2 caps assaulting . . . ugh).

When I looked at the graphs toward the end I was amazed.  By 1:35 into the game I had 15x the income in credits, and 8x the income in both resources.  I had 10x as many resources in the bank, had done a ton more research, and had an army more than twice the size of the enemy's.  I'm all for the benefit of the doubt, but there are some defecits you simply cannot come back from.  At this point, the game should have handed me the win.

So what _is_ the victory condition in this game?  Sometimes it seems like I don't have to kill all their planets, but this time I did.  What's going on?

strategy
5,480 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top

basicly when all the enemies planets are gone. When he cannot build anything anymore and he no longer has any ships especially colonizers and capital ships lying around the map. As of 1.14 I think the AI surrendering so not to drag the game on is a liitle glitched. however, the surrender options are when the AI loses it capital ship(sometimes not all the time) when the homeworld is bombed and/or colonized and the AI can't fork over 2000 creds for a new one. When the AI fleet is completely wiped out in one battle.

Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top

Interested to know myself. I've seen the same thing, sometimes they give up with a few planets and a small fleet left, sometimes you have to chase down the last colonizer frigate hiding behnd the last 'roid. You would think that with no fleet and bombing thier home planet they'd always give it up. Or when it gets to the point where you own 90 percent of the map and your ship count is ten times thiers..

Maybe it depends on the enemy type ( aggressive, researcher, etc ) ? Race maybe ?

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top

Defeat occurs when all your planets have been destroyed.  The AI will occasionally surrender before this time, but not always.  I've seen very little rhyme or reason to the AI's surrendering.  On the one hand, I once trounced the AI's homeworld (and its main - presumably only - fleet) and it surrendered even though it still controlled an entire solar system (on a three solar system map, no less!).  On the other hand, I've seen the AI's fight down to their last asteroid even though I've destroyed their entire fleet, have massive income, and an unstoppable advantage in every aspect of my army.

 

Usually when it comes down to to "cleanup", I just use the +/= key to speed up the game.  Not like they can actually do anything at this point, so it's just a matter of waiting for my units to do their job and annihilate the remaining worlds.

Reply #4 from Sins Forums Top

It should be much smarter about surrender in v1.0 of Entrenchment.

Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top

I had a funny thing in Entrenchment - an Unfair AI surrendered after i Novalithed his Capital to 0 pop. Yet because I hadn't actually killed the planet to 0/0 the pop came back - but the AI had dropped out of the game - I had properly killed 2 planets with the Novalith but he still had 2 more I hadnt been to so couldn't clobber and a decent fleet I was fighting elsewhere

Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top

Quintus: People should know when they are conquered.
Maximus: Would you, Quintus? Would I?

(from Gladiator)

I once played a map of 4 teams. I had the first faction beaten into a small phase lane circle of 3 planets. I ended up chasing the faction around the circle as it re-colonized what I blew up until I finally chased down that little colonizer ship.

I would like to be able to negotiate a peace or surrender if possible in the next expansion. (hey take a break I'm enjoying the first expansion.)

Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top

Well, I had an odd experience right now.


Played "Balance of Power" to test the TEC starbase. I started in the right upper corner and finally managed to get hold of the left side and controlled about 1/2 or 2/3 of the map. Then it happened: both AI surrendered!

I thought - wth? Sure, I had a few starbases up and several CAPs, but it was not like the game was over...
...one of them still had a complete fleet, the other 3 planets.

Maybe my awesome micro ("autocast" *cough*) drove them mad? :D