Unsatisfying Secret Mission gameplay

[john_9a]

I've played several times. Both losing (unexpectedly) and winning (unexpectedly).
Because there is no feeling of achievement on winning, and usually bewilderment on losing. I find the game-play much less satisfying than conventional.

[rookiebatman]

I only played it once, but I had the same feeling of bewilderment when I knocked out an enemy to get their cards, and discovered that doing so triggered another opponent's win condition. If I had won the same way (by someone else knocking out my Secret Mission target), that also would not have felt like much of an achievement.

[Autocoach]

I invite you to beat this. Secret mission game with neutral bots. Game starts , before first move a player quits and as another player had the player who quit as a win condition it was game over. Game over with no moves

[bobgoggles]

Originally posted by Autocoach:

I invite you to beat this. Secret mission game with neutral bots. Game starts , before first move a player quits and as another player had the player who quit as a win condition it was game over. Game over with no moves

Wow that is most damning example of how poorly they included this ruleset into the game. The reality is it should only apply to the player who had the kill condition and their actions, not quitting or another player killing them. I bet they made the same mistake with the territory acquisition missions, but since there is no transparency people cant figure out what is happening.

Who wants to guess at how long it takes SMG to fix this? Personally I dont think they ever will. I recommend just giving up on secret mission games because they dont care about something that does not give immediate income. Its why we have countless useless DLCs to be bought and this single free addition to gameplay over the entire lifetime of this game. Also everyone really needs to stop buying the extras.. Only when people stop wasting their money on the DLCs will they even consider improving gameplay.

[Cyber Nyran]

They just need to change the defeat enemy colour mission to include an alternative objective if the mission is completed by another player. Preferably take 24 territories if you yourself do not defeat the colour you are meant to defeat. That will fix this problem.

[Autocoach]

The main thing required is a rule that you cannot win except on your own turn . Currently already killed players can win and if someone makes an obvious attempt to kill a player and fails there is little to stop them winning in the end. Also if players quit and go neutral obviously you need to remove all these troops to make the win condition (this is a clear mistake in the coding)

[Taluw]

I just had the same experience in which I was definitely winning (securely controlled 3 continents, whereas of my 3 opponents only grey held 1 continent), but I just seized the opportunity to defeat the pink player because they only had 1 territory and lots of cards. Turns out that defeating pink was the secret mission of either grey or red, so I lost.

In the boardgame version, the secret mission to "Destroy all PINK ARMIES" would always come with an alternative objective as Cyber Nyran outlined above:

"If you are playing with the pink armies yourself, or the pink armies are already destroyed by another player, this will automatically change your mission to
occupy 24 TERRITORIES"

Autocoach also correctly pointed out that this mechanism ensures that a player can only win in their own turn, and not because someone else accidentally completes their objective to eliminate player pink.

Of course, the advantage that a digital game has is preventing any player from drawing a secret mission card to destroy their own colour, or a colour that is not participating in the present match (something that the boardgame paper version needs to account for). It should therefore also be easily possible to modify the mechanics such that when someone else eliminates the pink player, your win condition automatically changes to the alternative objective of controlling a set number of territories.

The default is 24 territories, but that should be weighted towards the total number of territories in a given map. The classic World Map has 42 territories, so any alternative objective should require control of 24 : 42 ≈ 0.57% of all territories in the given map.

The devs can definitely do this, and it is evident that they should.

[Taluw]

PS: Until this problem has been fixed, if you are playing the Secret Mission mode, you should be trying to prevent any other player's elimination until you complete your own secret mission. You might even need to come to the "defence" of a player who might soon be eliminated just in case that it might cause you to lose. This is a good Divide and Conquer rule in general, but especially with this Secret Mission mode problem.

Incidentally, I'm curious how the mechanics have been set up in the case of conflicting completions of objectives. Let's say I am Green, and my secret mission is either of the following (based on examples from the current Secret Mission mode):
Mission #1: control 28 territories
Mission #2: control continents A and B

I already control 27 territories, including all territories of continent A, and all but 1 territory of continent B. This territory is the only territory controlled by player Pink.

Player Red has the secret mission #3 to defeat player Pink.

It's my turn, and I defeat Pink, taking my 28th territory and completing my control of both continents A and B. But I also accidentally completed Red's mission. To which player will the digital game award the victory? For this scenario, it doesn't matter if I've got mission #1 or #2; both should have the same effect of me winning the game in my own turn.

In the boardgame, it's irrelevant what secret mission player Red has, because they can only win in their turn, and it is my turn. But the current digital game allows for the possibility of Red winning anyway. So either the game will experience some sort of error or (arbitrarily) award the victory to either me or Red. I haven't yet encounted this very specific scenario, but in either case, the devs would have done a bad job.

It's a matter of principle that player Red should not be able to win in another player's turn in order for the game to be fair, and the boardgame designers recognised this.

PPS: And I just won a game outside my own turn because another player defeated the player I was meant to eliminate. Meh.

[bobgoggles]

They dont care and will never fix this, just like every other issue with this game once the original code is written they are done and will never look back.. give up on secret missions.

Soon they will have another useless DLC to sell and as long as people keep buying that garbage they will never have any incentive to fix the games issues.