Unique player structures bug

If you build a unique player structure like Hyperion Logistic/Hyperion Shrinker/Tech Capital/Manufacturing Capital/Gaea Vortex etc., on a world, and then lose that world, you can build the same structure on another world.  When you retake the lost world you then have 2 copies of a unique structure.  Cool, huh?  No, it completely breaks the game.  You can have ships with tens of thousands capacity, you can have dozens of structures that provide flat bonuses to your entire empire.  The best way to abuse this is to trade a world to an AI that you've build all your unique structures on, wait until you've rebuilt them all on another planet, and then retake the old world.  Then, trade both those two world to another AI, build all the unique structures on a third world, and retake the first two.  Rinse and repeat.


This is far and away the strongest way to play and is extremely unfun to do.  Stardock, you need to make the program check to see if a unique structure built by a race still exists in the galaxy and not let the player build another if it does.  Just checking to see whether I currently control one such structure won't work.


Another related point is that the only way to get many ideologies is to take the Zealot perk and abuse it in similar fashion.  You trade all your worlds to an AI and retake them, then trade them all to another AI and retake them, and repeat.  This is profoundly unfun.


You might say that the player just shouldn't do this if it isn't fun, but understand that for min/max players just having the option available ruins the game.  We must pursue the best strategy, playing the best strategy is what we find fun.  When you make the best strategy unfun you ruin the game.


What you need to change to save the game:


1) Make the program check for unique structures as I've described.

2) Introduce another way to get and farm ideology points; let the player actually build or buy them.  The current structures that give them per turn don't give nearly enough, by the time the game is ending you're lucky if you've unlocked one line of one branch.  Maybe you could let the player spend credits to create public works projects that give Benevolent or Pragmatic points, maybe sponser pirates to get Manevolent points.  Maybe just let the player build the points directly the same way you can build culture/population/credits.


3)  Games are waaaaay too short.  Even on huge maps it only takes about 150 turns to get every tech and build a fleet of doom.  Make technologies dramatically more expensive, like 3x more expensive.  Then there would be more focus on securing resources and fighting for planets.


4)  MOST IMPORTANT: there is a game breaking exploit, even worse than cheesing unique structures and ideology: the game let's you trade weekly payments for literally everything an AI has at any point in the game.  You can, for example, rush Universal Translator, contact an AI, and offer them 600BC/week for all their tech/ships/worlds.  Then you declare war on them, this cancels your obligation.  They don't even hold this against you, provided you didn't offer any enduring treaties or other resources.  I can't resist doing this, it breaks the game.  Please make it so the AI doesn't accept weekly payments from the player.  You could try just limiting the amount of weekly credits the AI will trade for to some scalar of the player's economy, but nuking this feature is the only way to be sure.  This has been broken since forever, please fix!

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Reply #1 Top

Some good points.

1) The unique structure is per race, not per universe. I don't want them to be "wonders" that whoever get's first is the only one who can have them. However, they shouldn't stack. Just make it that simple. No stacking Hyperion bonuses, even if you capture them.

2) I partially agree. Ideology points is too reliant on colonization events. There's no/too few mid or late-game events that gives bonuses, and the buildings are a bit 'meh'. At least compared to the flavorfull colonization events. However I really don't want ideology points to be a money/production sink. That is boring. I'm sure they have something up their sleeves for the future, but I'll throw in the suggestion of invasion options! If I invade a planet I can a) peacefully annex the population for a -50% prod efficiency for 5 turns, +20% approval rate and 10 benevolence points, or b) forcefully annex the population for -50% approval for 5 turns, +10% production and 10 pragmatist points, or c) horrible enslavery for everyone for -50% population, +25% production and 10 malevolence points. (Or whatever the balance gods may favor. Also random invasion events like colonization events would be cool).

3) Not that I agree, but they said on their dev. twitch that they plan to make science cost scale to amount of planets (not sure if that was "that you own" or "that is in the galaxy"). That would probably do at least some to alleviate this concern. I always like having science costs as game options.

4) This has been mentioned before, and I think a good solution was to limit how much money per turn you could actually offer anyone. Like 2x your current income or something like that. However the AI probably just need to not be willing to trade ships and worlds for per-turn currency deals. (Am I the only one thinking it's extremely weird that you would SELL A PLANET full of your OWN SPECIES to an alien, just because you got a good deal!? Like Italy selling everything south of Rome to China if it would get them out of debt. Yeah - not bloody likely!)

 

P.S. That zealot perk abuse sounds like it's sooo much inspired by 1984... Now I really want to play a malevolent zealot state and frenzy up my uninformed population by manipulating into existence a war-zone of endlessly losing and retaking planets. This is genious. Please don't take this away. I need this in my life.

Reply #2 Top

I completely agree with your points and also think that diplomacy exploits should be fixed as soon as possible. Diplomacy for me is the most interesting part of this game and seeing abuses and exploits like this makes me want to just sit and wait for a patch. Also, as I said in my thread about issue #4, I would like to see A.I. not trading anything immediate for something-per-turn. Not just colonies and ships, credits as well. As I discovered recently, you can trade any amount of credits per turn for instant payment from A.I. with no losses except for 1 bc! Literally, you can trade X bc weekly for 50X-1 bc. That makes no sense. Not only you robbing A.I. like that, but you also get the benefit of all that money instantly.  

 

On issue #3, isn't there a setting for research speed?