How to see when an opponent is close to winning

iosstarships

I've played Sid Meier's Starships several times and each time the same thing happens: one of my computer opponents suddenly wins (even though, based on the percentage visible in the user interface, I'm way out in front). How can I see when one of my opponents is close to winning (in each of the victory categories)?

And strongly related: this also seems to happen whatever victory outcome I select for the game (eg I've selected "Domination" but my opponent still wins by having the most wonders). Is this a bug?

Best Answer

I think the best information we've got is the diplomacy screen:

United Federation vs The Supreme Empire; epic, moderate, science victory

(Screenshot from the Mac version, but I expect iOS is the same.) Here you can see:

  • Population victory (>=51%): there's the population percentage for each civilization in the middle (also on the left of the galactic map)
  • Wonders victory (7 wonders): the bottom-right number is each civilization's wonder count
  • Science victory (3x level 6 techs): there's only partial information here, but
    • each opponent will announce to you as an 'incoming transmission' every time they achieve a level 6 technology; this isn't visible on any screen I can find but you can keep track of this
    • the bottom-middle number here is the number of technologies but I can see no way to get the exact breakdown through the diplomacy screen. (Sometimes they'll volunteer it for one technology if you click on and off the 'tell me more about' option, but in this game he keeps commenting on my wonders.) I don't know how the AI plan their technology, either focussed or balanced, but I've seen opponents start to pick up level 6s around 30 total technologies, and I've seen this number rise to 40 without an opponent technology victory. (He then won via population, bah :-( )
    • from the galactic map and the diplomacy screen (for up ten planets at least) you can try and estimate how much science they're generating by looking at population and the number of cryptolabs; in this case since I have way more planets and population and he only has levels 1-2 cryptolabs on a handful of planets I can be confident I have more science than him and will beat him.
  • domination (conquer all): again the planet count is on the diplomacy screen, bottom left. However, as you note, this doesn't seem to apply to opponents; I've seen one get a population victory in a science game (I just started shore-leaving until they won, ceding planets they attacked) and they'd possibly win by population threshold before they managed to dominate the galaxy.

So possibly the victory conditions only apply to us and not the AIs? That feels like a bug they'll hopefully fix. A crashing save game I had last week was fixed over the weekend so they are still tackling bugs!

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