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RE: unfair starting positions
- From: "Brandon J. Van Every" <vanevery at indiegamedesign dot com>
- To: "xconq" <xconq7 at sources dot redhat dot com>
- Date: Mon, 10 Nov 2003 01:24:11 -0800
- Subject: RE: unfair starting positions
> >- One time I was on a continent, very far away from 2 enemies on the
> >same continent, and very far by water from anything else.
> The 2 enemies
> >consolidated into 1 enemy before I could get there. I got a
> toehold on
> >an independent city he hadn't conquered yet, but he showed up with a
> >gazillion units.
> >
> You're losing to an AI!? One that's widely acknowledged to be
> completely inferior?? I wouldn't admit that to anybody...
I didn't see the entire extent of his empire before I quit, but it
looked like he had probably 3 times as many cities as I did, all very
compacted together. To bring my forces to him was a very long
logistical train. It's trivial for him to crush anything local to him.
Seems all I can do is scratch at him and he will inevitably repair
himself. I suppose I could have tried leading him around by his nose,
offering bait in one place and then attacking somewhere else. Even then
I am not sure, I think it might last about as long as the 1st few city
takes. I suppose I will try again when / if the situation occurs, but I
expect this kind of slog to be rather dull.
One limiting factor of standard Xconq is it appears to be a game of
attrition. There's no way to kill units that doesn't also cause your
own units to get killed in retalliation to some degree. I suppose I
could build bombers galore, and fighters aplenty to suppress his
fighters. But fighter-fighter is attrition, and only 1 fighter has to
get through to take out a bomber. If the AI builds any sane number of
fighters, I don't see that attrition will be escaped. Possibly it
doesn't; I suppose I'll see.
I think my ability to beat the AI is not nearly so much of an issue as
my ability to stay awake doing it.
Terrain advantages / disadvantages would allow for more tactics. I see
that there are hooks for that, but they aren't used in standard Xconq.
A very typical Civ strategy, for instance, is to leave your crappy
Warrior unit fortified on a mountain top. When people try to kill it,
they may die themselves, and if they don't they'll surely suffer
grievous harm. Thus even a worthless unit can deny enemy movement if in
the right terrain. I think of Civ as a rather "tactics lite" game;
Xconq is even lighter still.
> A string of bases can be used as a sort of "canal". Not an
> intentional feature
> of the original design, but very convenient.
Oh god. I would call moving ships from base to base over land a bug.
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Taking risk where others will not.