Perhaps some of your fellow Thalans doubted their leader's ability to win the war or even that this dimension's Terrans are the one's to blame.

It would be interesting though to have an option o disable influence flips to your racial enemy.

I haven't seen it happen, but yea, something like the Iconians flipping to the Yor seems like it shouldn't be possible.

Having that option would be nice, but I don't know if it would be worth the dev time to make it happen. I just haven't played enough games yet to see if it is a problem. I have been playing 1 on 1 tiny games, just to get the feel of the new races, and their techtrees. I just started my first multi-race game, as the Altarians. This simply because their super ability needs other good races in the game for it to come into play. The Drath are another that comes to mind.

Yes...odd, especially in a game not to long ago, the Iconians were myfriends. I \, the Yor conquered the entire galaxy, and the only ones left were the Iconians who were in this tiny corner of the galaxy with one star left. They were "close" and I sent a terror star there and they died with a trusting smile on their faces. You think they would of started freking out!

Man!, the first building available to the Thalans is for influence. There should be no problem holding off the Terrans or anyone else from culture bombing.

Also you should check your mini-map it should give you ample warning of a culture victory. When you see over 75% of the map turn blue you must declare war (they can't win a culture victory if anyone is at war with them) or start furiously building influence starbases near your borders and culture buildings on your planets.

It is not that hard to defend against, be it Terran or any other race. You have to defend yourself militarily and culturally.

Perhaps a good middle ground on the 'culture flip versus racial enemies' would be to not just lock it out, but make it so it is twice (or more) as hard to flip.

Of course, one would probably also need to figure out the direction of hatred.

Of course, the Thalians hate the Humans, but should the Humans really feel the same way back? I think the Humans would be more likely to hate the Dregin.

It would add some interesting dynamics to the game.

Too bad TA already has the features list locked down. Maybe this would be good for GCIII or a future expansion.

Jarod

I'm betting that this sort of thing will work very differently in GC3. What this thread seems to be about is really a result of GC1 having been playable only as Terrans and the first two revs of GC2 presenting the different civs as the same at core with a few different bells and whistles on top (abilities, then super abilities).

The new unique tech trees in TA look like they could be groundwork for a broader diversification when GC3 gets going. I can imagine two distinct classes of winning condition: universal and special, with some civs having unique win types, e.g. the Torians destroying the Drengin. If the devs could combine that with a scoring system that's neutral re win types, then choosing a "storyline" win like Torian Revenge could have a "natural" penalty by ending the game when plenty of computer players were still strong.

Perhaps last time around they conquered everything, and this led to their extinction. This time, they realised that in order to change the future they needed to appear to be subjugated in the short-term... in order to pave the way for a resurgence later on...

I thought you could set the victory conditions before playing the game. I only assume this because I play with all victory condidtions enabled

You can, but the issue the OP brought up was that certain races shouldn't flip at all to a certain other race due to their back stories.

You're playing the Yor.

Don't try to tell me Loyalty is still bugged-seems to work well enough in the latest DA, though I haven't tested it extensively in TA. Again, it's not the end-all, be-all, but it's still significant.

How about a check box for preserving backstory a la victory conditions?

Your points on the AI are valid, though I personally don't see much of a problem with it, relating to this issue (and I call myself a coder, though I may not be up to Stardock's standards). I can, however, say that I believe the AI can indeed handle it.

Again, the question of custom races rears its ugly head, but in general custom races A) do not have a backstory or have a backstory of one of the existing civs due to being based off of it, i.e. an evil-based Terran Alliance, etc. This being the case, the generic custom races shouldn't be relevant with regards to backstory-specific victory conditions (or the preventing thereof), while the ones based around an existing civ can just use a flag to specify which race they're based off of. Player-selectable is the only thing that makes sense in this regard, however, as the game cannot be expected to be intelligent enough to aptly choose one.

After all, if you're playing as a custom that has its backstory based on the Thalans, wouldn't you want the game to recognize it as such, rather than, say, the Yor? Is it more useful to not be flipped by the Terrans, or by the Iconians?

And really, if you care that much for backstory (which there is a time and place for, and I love it, but I love playing the game more), why be concerned with which is more useful to you, rather than that which is consistent with the backstory?

As far as the idea of the backstory consistent victories option goes, I could take it or leave it, but it does sound interesting.