Preventing Domino Surrender?

WhiteHojo · #1 February 17th, 2001, 10:17 PM

I've played quite a few games of SE4 and I just realized something. I have never noticed a computer empire surrendering to another computer empire...

Has anyone ever seen this happen?

just a passing question.

------------------
Character is best defined as that which you do when you believe nobody is watching.

raynor · #2 February 18th, 2001, 12:53 AM

Hmm... Baron Munchausen's comment about the Sergetti reminded me of something in my Last game start. It *seemed* like the Sergetti didn't immediately surrender upon encountering their first glimpse of one of my ships. I *thought* my score was easily 20x theirs at the time. But whereas the Last 5 or so races all capitulated upon learning of my empire's existence, I actually had to send a ship to the Sergetti homeworld before they realized the error of their ways. If I'd had weapons on that ship, I just might have destroyed their planet rather than accepting their unconditional surrender.

(Okay, so I had one tiny little CSM I on the ship. But if I'd attacked, their planetary defences would have laughed at my escort)

Any ideas why the Sergetti would require a greater than 10x score?

Baron Munchausen · #3 February 18th, 2001, 03:08 AM

I had a similar experience with a neutral in a recent game. I had planted a couple of colonies in his system, on worlds he could not colonize, and he was constantly attacking them. I didn't want to hassle with having to invade so I just demanded his surrender -- figuring I'd get it automatically because of the score difference. Nope. Only when I finally sent in a fleet and attacked/blockaded a planet (not even the homeworld, though) did he surrender. I can only guess that MM has added some "minimal amount of damage requirement" to allow a surrender so you can't establish diplomatic contact and then demand surrender immediately.

raynor · #4 February 18th, 2001, 05:49 AM

I think a minimal damage requirement would be great. But I'm not sure anything like that is in place. There were several races to whom I sent surrender demands as soon as I encountered their ships. Most of them surrendered before I even entered a system in which they had a colony.

The idea of a minimum turns until they will surrender sounds interesting. How many turns do you think it should be? 20 turns? 50 turns?

Drake · #5 February 18th, 2001, 08:16 AM

quote:
Raynor said:
Any ideas why the Sergetti would require a greater than 10x score?

The Sergetti and the Amon'krie have their politics file set so that they will only surrender if you have 50x their score instead of 10x.

geoschmo · #6 February 19th, 2001, 07:53 PM

quote:
A large component of the domino surrender is the ease with which you can 'blockade' the AI homeworld.

My question about blockading is, if they only have one planet, and you blockade it, why do they immediately lose all of their resource production?

I can understand that if you blockade other colonies not being able to get the resources to the homeworld, but so what if you blockade their homeworld. All of the resources and space yards are right there together. Shouldn't they be able to use them.

After a few turns of being blockaded their population happiness should drop to the point they are rioting and then production should stop, but not immediately.

Can they not build any ships because the accountant can't get to the galactic bank and back?

IMHO, blockading the Homeworld should have no effect on resource production, only on happiness.

As it is now you can conquer the ai about as fast as you can get from one end of the quadrant to the other.

Nyx · #7 February 19th, 2001, 08:54 PM

Well, I think that blockading ought to be a bit more detailed than it currently is. Blockade running would be a joke if there was only one ship in orbit of the whole planet. Especially if it was a slow ship with no weapons. A blockade should be a percentage penalty based on the size, speed, and firepower of the orbiting fleet. And I agree, if a race has only one planet a blockade should do nothing at all.

As for shipyards, if the planet with a shipyard is blockaded, why can the shipyard draw on empire-wide resource storage and harvesting to construct ships? Shouldn't a blockaded world be limited to using only its own resources for construction?

But the biggest problem is that the score is calculated in a rather poor manner, so the AI thinks it's way weaker than it really is, and rolls over and plays dead too fast.

It also doesn't defend itself very well. I don't think you should be able to sail up to a homeworld and blockade it without the AI putting up a decent fight. Maybe giving out fighters as a starting tech.

------------------
Compete in the Space Empires IV World Championship at www.twingalaxies.com.