An Important Entrenchment Announcement From The Developers

?? Was ist das?

According to Blair, It's been pretty quiet on the problems front actually.

I've played 2 games; Hard & Unfair, didn't knowtice a bug and most everything seems balanced.    Human vs Human will tell more.

We need to do our jobs better then and get to whining.  We've been too lax!

Been running just dandy so far with zero minidumps and great performance but one nagging thing is that the game ends too quickly on certain larger maps. Was on a huge random map with 4 enemy ai in a single team and 1 allied ai then just as I was about to go on a planet bashing spree in the largely untouched enemy space the game ends and says I won. Culture had just started to creep in to the edges of enemy space with me and my ally beating off the best the unfair enemy ai could muster whilst steadily building up an invasion fleet to finally go on the offensive.

So Wtf?

If you want to play Sim City, you can just press the "Keep Playing" button, the effect would be the same as if nothing happened.

I tried that and all the ai fleets just sit there and do nothing. No more production or expansion activity with only the strike craft based out of a hanger defense and starbases reacting to my own fleet. I guess the question is why did I win when the ai had its complete infrastructure and full fleets waiting on my own fleet movements as we had been waging a war on chokes between the established territory? Other than that odd behaviour on largish maps the ai fights to the end and I litterally have to defeat him in detail to win. Kinda a huge letdown when you spend several hours working towards an advantage in skilled caps and fully teched out research trees to finally launch the invasion only to have the enemy ai roll over and give up without a fight.

Yeah, I've had a couple of games where the AI surrendered before I would have liked.

I kind of like the 'enemy fights to the bitter end' campaign - Berlin 1945 style   It would be nice if there was an option to disable AI surrender, forcing you to actually clear out the remaining filth

This happened to me as well...I noticed that they "suppossedly" made the AI "smarter" in the sense of surrendering at the right times, but it seems like the AI just surrender too early now.  The devs need to tone this down a little.

Ditto on noticing the early surrender...

On a 1v1, Tec vs Tec, normal ai (starting with baby steps before trying a higher ai), Random Small:

After killing the Pirate Base (which was the bottleneck), and crushed 2 of the AI's 7-8 planets, they surrendered.

Met only token resistance post surrender.

(After continuing to play, I noticed a few worlds seemed underdeveloped, while border worlds to the pirates had put up starbases.  I like that!   It seems as if the ai was making decisions, foregoing developement in exchange for putting up starbases for defense.  Other than the intial pirate raids, I successfully bribed them to attack the ai...Maybe the ai learned   I kind of liked that decision, rather than placing forts in every Grav well, and/or even at the sacrifice of upgrading, they concentrated on putting bottlenecks at the front lines

Back to topic-  I suppose it's hard to find a happy surrender medium to apply to everyone.  I certainly didn't like having to locate and crush every insignificant Asteroid.

Here's an idea:  have the AI continue to play to the bitter end, but a player can "demand" a surrender at any time.  If the AI has reached the current threshold at which it's surrendering (which is too early for some), then the AI will give in.  Otherwise, the AI can say "screw you" and continue to fight.

That way players could actually control when the AI surrenders, making everyone happy.

+1, 3 AI's gave up with 10+ planets  with me and my buds the other day, Was just a clean up after that.

Actually not a bad idea and me thinks this could work very nicely.

I for one, don't mind it. I hate spending hours upon hours finishing a game when I known I've won beyond a shadow of a doubt.

The only thing is, now the AI is surrendering a lot earlier and when they aren't clearly beat.  There should be an option to allow for that...some of us actually do like to mop up a little more.

Also love the idea of having a 'surrender' option to see if the ai has had enough or a dialog I can refuse when they sue for peace.

To this I would answer that the AI should "offer" its surrender, which I could refuse because I want to glory in its miserable demise   After that initial offer the AI shouldn't ask again, but I as the user can now demand its surrender at any time from that point onward.

Hmmm. This could scale very well into a compleatly new game mechanic in that if you refuse a surrender the result is either a reduction in enemy culture rate and other penalties to the ai so the game ends quicker or an increase in said areas due to 'battle of britain' effect on the enemy population. Then that game you thought you had wrapped up will blow up in your face and rage anew. I think I would like that as a bit of random chance to make a game more interesting and non-linear that the game currently seems to lack.

which is pretty much what we were saying earlier in post #11 and I completely agree with this possibility and think that it would add some really neat options to the game.

all good suggestions, but let's not forget that if the reports are accurate, then maybe some ai routines are faulty. it should not surrender with most of its fleet still intact and several planets under its control. only when the majority of the fleet has been destroyed or it's in total so hopelessly outnumbered and the hw is under siege or dead should surrender be offered.

You have the option to continue after the AI surrenders.

Yes but the AI stop the production of new hip, fleet remain in their last gravity wheel, etc ... no more fun

We'll look into it.

The pirates are a tough bunch to exterminate. Great AI this time. I find them a lot more irritating than any of the three races.

The ai are more intuitive and are more fun to play against...and yes you can continue on after they surrender, but as stated above, they lose most of that intuitiveness.

IMHO, there could be some small tweaks done to make it even better than it is.  And if the devs decide to leave it as is...then hey, who are we to complain...you guys have made this game unbelievably awesome...It is by far my fav game.

Keep up the good work.