Re: unfair starting positions

[Stan Shebs <shebs at apple dot com>]

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> [...]
>
>
> 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.
Quake III it ain't, but it isn't trying to be. :-) You were probably well
on your way to being crushed by the AI, and only quitting saved you from 
total
humiliation! Every player, human and AI, starts out with the same stuff 
(unless
you ask for a handicap), so if you lose to an AI, it's due to lack of skill.
I'm not trying to be insulting; the right strategy is not always obvious. In
your situation, you would have to build up a substantial invasion force, get
it to the enemy without having it be detected, and blitzkrieg the country
before the AI can react and throw you out. Even though Xconq is not a
real-time game, I think other oldtimers here will attest to the nailbiting
involved in getting a half-dozen full troop transports safely into a heavily
patrolled landing site!

> 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 that's fundamental to the original "empire" game.  Armor speeds 
things up
considerably, and grouping cities into countries means less 
micromanagement of
production lines than in the original WB empire, but if you didn't like 
WB empire
and its descendents, the Xconq standard game isn't going to be much more 
likeable.
BTW, the "old-empire" module is as exact a copy of original empire rules 
as Xconq
can implement; try it to compare how the original design works.

> 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.
You must not have had a game where you're hosed because your armor can't
pass through a forest or mountain barrier, or where the one road through is
closely guarded. Team play on a LAN is amusing then, because everybody can
hear the string of profanities off in the distance, although that's nothing
compared with the blue streak inspired by the sinking of a full troop
transport!

> > 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.
My reaction too originally, and it's controlled by parameters now. But in
practice it's a slick and simple solution to a set of tough geometry
problems, and the string of bases frequently becomes a much-fought-over
strategic objective, which gives exactly the right "feel" to the game.

Stan