does the UP meet often enough?

if you leave the UP you can't have trade routes

No, the UP does not meet often enough.

M

I disagree on the problems listed in the UP. The UP does come every 4 years, but that is often enough - some of the issues can drastically affect the balance between the superpowers, especially if there gets to be a prison colony given to one of the players to increase their production. Having those major issues appearing every 12 turns is basically too much for comfort.

Even the minor resolutions (i.e. colony tax) provides enough change to make them useful - especially if you begin to build Cultural Palaces.

~SDC~

Maybe the frequency of the UP appearances should be customizable at the game start?

I don't think the issues are useless. Yesterday the Trade Federation issue came up, which really saved my butt because it meant I could go to war with the Drengin without worrying about the trade freighters that passed through their space. The issue that limits the amount of trade routes evil races can have is also very good.

On another note, I also agree that the frequency of UP meetings should be chosen at the start.

What would be really nice is if you were told what was going to be voted on about 3 months beforehand.

So then going to the other races and buying up Influence if you just have to get your way in the coming vote could be possible, or you could sell your Influence if you didn't really care which way the vote went.

The AI would have to be taught to "work the system" too, but I think this would be a neat addition to the Diplomacy system.

Four years is a LONG time in this game...It can take eons for 36 turns to pass towards the end. I'd like to see it every year, to be honest. Hey, maybe we can vote on it in game...

If they up the frequency of UP meetings, they're going to have to (a) introduce more UP proposals (the current ones will get repetitive fast, I suspect, if we start going through them like a hot knife through butter), and (b) tone DOWN a lot of the UP proposals, as having more than 1 or 2 proposals active at any time (most of which currently are quite game-altering) would take control of the game too far out of the player's hands.

- Ash

~SDC~

LOL That's true Ash, people are funny- complain the random events are too much, complain there's not enough UFP meetings (for more random events in the game), complain the game smells funny. And some of us even bring up CHEESE tactics a ot. :notsure: LOL LOL

~SDC~

Speaking of Cheese tactics, here's something I'm curious about. If you save the game a few turns before the UP session happens, will you get the same resolution if you reload from there later? If not this would be a good way to milk the UP until they have a resolution you'd like to vote on. I already know you can milk planet landings until you get a choice worth making. Not that I would ever do that , of course...

To clarify what I mean when I say half of the UP resolutions are irrelevant... I like most of the UP resolutions, and often times they can have great effect. But things like banning Terror Stars at the beginning of the game in a small galaxy, or giving Transports an attack value at the end of the game (when everyone uses Combat Transports anyway), are essentially irrelevant. Actually, most resolutions are pointless once it's obvious enough that you're going to win. Even if the resolution doesn't go in your favor (which isn't likely), it will rarely be enough to stop you from winning.

Basically, since the resolutions are random, they often come up at a time when they don't make any difference. I don't have a problem with that, but when the entire game lasts only about 20 years, and only 2 or 3 resolutions get passed, it's kind of annoying if 1 or 2 of them don't even mean anything.

And I disagree that many of the resolutions are that game altering. The tech-sharing one is pretty big, but most of them are something like a 50% influence increase for a single star, or a 5 bc tax on star bases, or piddly things like that which could possibly make a small difference in the mid game, but won't do much in the beginning or end of the game.

Well after my latest game (yet again it all ends too quickly with just dreadnought technology) I think the UFP should meet more often too. :notsure: I'd like more of that stuff. Also more random events... Draginol ain't never gonna show in my games- too quick to end 'em.

~SDC~

I vote for every 2 years. Or heck, maybe it should be based on map size?

Then again, another idea sprung up. Meet every year. Years 1-3 deal with 'minor' issues, while every 4th year is a 'major' issue. I'm sure anyone who has played enough times could easily classify all of the events into these two categories.

I also like the idea of being able to speak to the other members to possibly sway their vote (ala SMAC), and/or be given advance notice of the proposal to see if I wanna try and up my influence.

Frankly I look forward to the UP meetings and more than half the time I am disappointed because the issue is either irrelevent or so minor as to be practically irrelevent.

Habadacus: yes you can simply reload the turn before and get a different resolution. I did this one game about ten times cause I was tired of seeing the same crap.

4 years is a long time. I think 3 might work. 2 would be too often w/o a major rework of how the UP worked. It would be awesome if there was a way to influence the agenda of the UP.

olaf

I think a little more often wouldn't be bad. Something in the lines of what travathian (#14) was suggesting. But maybe not everyyear. One UP meeting every three years, and 1 or 2 (randomized) minor issues in between.
And I agree it should depenf on the galaxy size as well.

And why, when one of the players is attacked (me ) why can't he call a UP meeting? To vote if somekind of help should be given (kind of humanitarian help?), or if no help should be allowed, or if the others should stop trading with the agressor or with both. This is just a wish. I like making things very complicated...

~SDC~

I'd vote for once a year in a huge to gigantic galaxy. I like the idea of categorizing the resolutions into two groups and the one group (minor issues) be done once a year; except for the fourth (which is slated for major issue). It would also be nice if I can get a sense on how a potential ally will vote so as to either vote in tandem or suade them to vote your way.

Another item that I'd love to see added to the UFP event is the ability to propose your own resolution. I believe that this would make for a very dynamic game. What do you think, Brad??

I believe that proposing your own issues was discussed at one point, and it was decided that it was too abusable. If you get a big influence lead, you can basically use the UP as your puppet to really make life miserable for the other civs.

Now, if the UP met more often, it would be possible for each race to get a chance to propose an issue every once in a while, which would seem to be more fair. Of course, the ones without much influence won't see much chance of their issue getting passed, but they can try anyway. The main problem here is getting the AI to understand which issues will help it at which point. More AI programming.

Really, if I could ask for just one change with a minimum of effort involved, it would be to change the UP to meet every 2 years. As far as I'm concerned, that's still not often enough to require reworking of the issues. Although meeting every year for minor issues and every 4 years for major issues (actually, the 4th year should probably just pick randomly from all possible issues, so there's a chance of having minor issues every year) is a good idea too.

Most importantly I'd like to "see" the UP issue a year (or at least several months) in advance so I can rally the troops (and trade influence) for the major issues.

I'd also like to see UP frequency as a startup option. I too would probably go for every 2 years, or more frequently with more "minor" issues.

Of course, I'd also like an option to to set random event frequency at startup. I don't seem to get nearly enough. By the end of most games I'm still neutral - even after consistent good (or evil) choices at every option. I'd probably set random events to about 4x or so.

Great game... just my opinion on making it even better.

~SDC~

To go along with my idea of meeting every year with the major/minor thing, at the end of each meeting display next years proposal, or even narrow it down to three potential proposals.

It is sounding like we're asking the AI to have the complexity of a human mind. This not very likely to happen. The best would be for the devs to pull off some kind of illusion of human intelligence.

As for proposing own initiatives, I was thinking of pulling from a list. Still I do agree that this thing would be RIPE for abuse. In fact, I would be very surprise if the AI didn't give the player a taste of his/her own medicine. This logic comes from the fact that I'd look for a way to allow the AI create some serious mischiefs.

by Citizen EstyleS - 4/12/2003 12:55:23 PM

I always thought the United Planets was a great idea for this game, but it doesn't seem to play much part, in my experience. It seems like forever between UP meetings (what is it, like once every 4 years?), and half of the time the issues are essentially meaningless.

It would be kinda cool if you could select the referendums, but I can see how that would be easily exploited. But why doesn't the UP meet more often? I would be able to deal with it as often as once a year. Even once every 2 years would be better than it is now. As it is, I don't see any reason to leave the UP, because there are only ever like 3 resolutions passed before the game is essentially over, even on a huge galaxy (of course, there would have been more resolutions voted on, but not every resolution gets passed), and half of those resolutions are irrelevant.


I agree 100 %

Maybe it would be better if some of the stupid and useless resolutions (Anomaly exploration and government change come to mind) were replaced with more juicy ones, so that each UP meeting is very important.

I would vote for every 3 years, tops, with a random event popping up a little more often, but not TO often.

fleabitfox

I'd go for every 3 years with the resolutions as they are now, or every 4 years (the current frequency) with the resolutions all being quite powerful ones.

- Ash

~SDC~