Dynamic victory conditions

[joseasoler]

Domination victory and religious victory are quite hard to achieve. They should get their percentages reduced a bit.

EDIT: This issue was originally about a simple revamp of victory conditions. The original discussion that sparked the idea is kept here.

[joseasoler]

Gone to Hell: Ashen veil as state religion, 60% of the world or more has become hell terrain, the AC has reached 100, the player is currently the highest contributor to the AC, create a special project that triggers victory.

Return of Winter: Illian player, the player has created Auric Ascended, the player's team owns the God Slayer or the God Slayer is not present in the game.

[joseasoler]

City of Wonders: City with 50 population, city without unhappiness, city with legendary culture, city contains at least 4 wonders of the world.

[lfgr]

What about Epic Destiny?

[joseasoler]

FFH2 should be about replayability and different strategies to achieve victory. In my opinion giving each civilization an specific way to win forces that civilization's path in a specific way. I checked the epic destiny victories available in Master of Mana some time ago anyways, to see if any of them inspired me to create a new generic victory condition (the City of Wonders victory condition is inspired in the Kuriotate epic destiny). Some of the epic destiny victories seemed too complicated, and some of them too easy.

Because of the FFH replayability I mentioned earlier, I considered creating religion-specific (Gone to Hell would be the Ashen Veil victory, of course) and, maybe, council-specific victory conditions. Those victory conditions would add to the FFH2 concept of religions; when you choose one it should change the way in which you play a civilization. I wasn't able to think about an unique victory condition for all religions and I abandoned the idea.

[joseasoler]

I made a list of the epic destiny victories available to vanilla FFH2 civs in MoM, I'm going to attach them here for reference:

Bannor: Recruit 100 demagogs, destroy 3 civilizations, spend 150 turns in crusade, 20 cities follow Order.

Malakim: Chalid reachs level 15, empyrean spread 20 times, rule the overcouncil for 200 turns

Elohim: Create 20 monks, spend 300 turns in pacifism, purity counter 100, spread order 20 times, spread empyrean 20 times, spread runes 20 times

Luchuirp: Barnaxus reaches level 20, create 15 great engineers, create 30 wood golems, create 30 iron golems

Kuriotates: Get 15 bards, reach population 50 in capital.

Ljosalfar: Create 200 ancient forests, spread leaves 20 times, gilden reaches level 20, yvain reaches level 15

Khazad: Spread runes 20 times, get 100 000 gold, access to Iron, access to Bronze, access to Mithril, access to Silver, access to Gold.

Sidar: Create 100 shades, kill 3 heroes with the nether blade, hide 10 cities in mist.

Lanun: Spread overlords 20 times, capture 30 ships, plunder 1000 gold, get 100 000 gold.

Grigori: Hire 15 adventurers, explore 30 dungeons, kill 3 legendary units, create 4 luonnotars, enlight 20 cities (special luonnotar inquisition spell), never adopt theocracy.

Hippus: Hire 50 horseman, hire 50 horse archers, pillage 200 improvements, reach level 15 with magnadine, hire 20 units with magnadine, destroy 2 civilizations

Amurites: Cast Greater Rift 30 times, cast Meteor Swarm 30 times, cast Empowered Lightning 30 times, cast 300 damaging spells, create 4 archmaes, create 10 wizards, own catacomb libralus, create govannon

Doviello: Create 30 slaves, destroy 3 civilizations, pillage 70 improvements, kill 150 non barbarian units, lucian coldiron reached level 20, get 4 circle of urd to level 10, gather 15 trophies from animals.

Balseraphs: Create 30 freaks, mutate 100 units, create 30 slaves, taunt 50 units, stole 3 cities with loki, stole 50 promotions with mimics, own the menagerie

Clan of embers: Reach level 15 with rantine, stay at peace with the barbarians, create a warchief, amass 100 units.

Svartalfar: Kidnap 3 great persons, rule the undercouncil for 200 turns, declare war at friendly civs 4 times

Calabim: Use Burning Blood 30 times, feed 30 bloodpets to vampires, get 3 vampires to level 20, get a vampire lord to level 30, get losha to level 30

Sheaim: Os-Gabella reaches level 15, summon 100 demons to Erebus, armageddon counter at 100, veil spread 20 times.

Illians: Create Auric ascended, Drifa reaches level 15

[lfgr]

I don't agree that this would hurt replayability. You are not forced to try that victory condition; it would be just an additional flavorful option. IF you choose to try it, you are of course forced into a specific direction; but that's the same with most VCs (f.e. Altar).

If I understood your second paragraph correctly, you want to encourage choices in-game rather than choices before the game; I'd totally agree on that (and I'd really appreciate allowing strange civ/religion/tech combos to open maybe not that strong, but interesting strategies), but in FfH there are actually the choice of really different civs, that is made before the game.

Also, VCs designed for a specific civ open new possibilities (f.e. for balancing: generic VCs can be very unbalanced and need a counterbalance, Kuriotates could reach "City of Wonders" much more easily than other civs, but Domination is probably harder due to little city culture ranges).

But looking at the Epic Destinies of MoM, I guess you are right, most of them would only allow for a specific strategy ("create 20 monks"... that also doesn't sound very fun); you are told to accuratly what to do. I think the standard VCs (including a possible "City of Wonders", maybe excluding Altar, speaking as a noob player) allow much more different ways win.

So civ-specific victories could give some possibilities, but designing a good victory for every civ would be very hard and is maybe impossible.

(Actually you already plan a civ-specific victory, return of winter; btw. very nice IMO)

And finally the victory elements from epic destiny and (some from my imagination) that could be fun IMO:

• spend X turns in crusade against any player (not only the civic)

• destroy X civs (doviello/clan-style; X would be probably hard to balance, especially with revolution turned on (many very small civs; when would a civ be strong enough to count?))

• pillage X improvements (X is hard to balance)

• rule the Xcouncil for Y turns (could easily balance with gamespeed; would add a diplomatic dimension)

• X of Y (Unit/Unitclass/Unitcombat/Race...) reach Level Z (f.e. "10 Monks reach Level 8" is much more fun than "create 20 monks" IMO)

• Create/Have X Y (Unit/Unitclass/Unitcombat/Race...) (only for certain units, f.e. upgrades like immortals, shades, archmages etc.)

• enslave X units (X is hard to balance)

• kill X heroes [with the nether blade] (sounds fun)

• raze X cities (X is hard to balance)

• don't ever destroy a civ (for Elohim; would fit tolerant trait; but maybe not fun, I don't know)

• don't ever race a city (see above; while fitting lore-wise, probably just annoying rather than forcing an interesting playstyle)

• X% of landmass, X% religion influence (from standard VCs)

• ensure there are no good/neutral/evil civs

• Build special wonder X (e.g. Great Menagerie)

I think even civ-specific victories should usually not force a specific religion, but at the most a good/evil religion (like the elohim epic destiny).

Another idea would be to make a victory condition of, say, 5 conditions, but only require 3 of them to win. That would allow situationally impossible conditions like "Capture X boats"

btw, Tholal is planning a diplomatic victory (http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=3608246&group_id=316234&atid=1330241)

[joseasoler]

Your comment makes some nice points and gave me an idea that may be a good solution, but that is probably complicated enough to prevent me from ever having time to implement it :)

Epic destinies as they are implemented in MoM may or may not hurt replayability, but we can agree that they feel somewhat fixed. Religion specific or council specific victory conditions would have the same problem. Since FFH2 encourages civ/religion combos, what if we tried to make victory conditions do the same?

The idea would be creating epic destinies dynamically, depending on the civilization, religion and council selection. Each civilization would contribute with a fixed number of possible conditions (let's say three). The religion (or lack of it) would contribute with another few conditions. The council selection, lack of it or the selection of any other civilization specific membership civics (see issue #71) would contribute with yet another small number of conditions.

Each group's available conditions could be modified depending on factors such as alignment or other game events. To win, the player would need to fulfill at least X conditions, and at least one of each group.

I like this idea, but it feels like the typical "sounds nice, impossible to design" pitfall, though. Bear in mind that I decided stuff such as groups and number of conditions in each group somewhat randomly, so the idea would need a lot of refinement and a proper design. Making the AI understand this would also be hellish :)

The Return of Winter victory condition is proposed as a way of reducing the tedious cleanup after creating the Ascension ritual. But it is also true that since the Illians cannot access religions, councils and already have a specific path to achieve victory, they probably should not have access to the dynamic victory condition.

I also agree that the city of wonders victory condition is somewhat unfair for other civilizations and therefore it probably should not be implemented.

[joseasoler]

I have moved the revamp of some victory conditions and the addition of others to a new task, because they are far simpler than the dynamic victory conditions.