Early vs Late difficulty balancing

One of the issues I've always had with the Civilization series is early game is much harder and more important than late game. The effects of early decisions amplify exponentially to late game. Our choices matter less over time. We usually reach a point where the outcome of the game is certain, and we may as well just start a new game.

This is why VEM does several things to make the early game easier and late game harder:

• AI bonuses start out low, and increase over time.
• Barbarians avoid our territory for a few dozen turns, but upgrade and heal.
• Border expansion costs start low, and rise more quickly over time.

Another goal is to even out some of the randomness of the early game:

• Changed strategic resource placement to a territorial system.
• Balanced the value of different Ancient Ruins rewards.
• Increased palace bonuses so everyone has approximately the same early yields.

To support these goals, in v137 our capital's radius is visible at the start of the game (3 tile range). This makes the early game slightly easier (first goal) and balances out early exploration (second goal). Everyone can see approximately the same stuff at the start. In the past, start locations on hills had an advantage over players starting in forests or jungle.

This sounds reasonable. Never even thought of this in the past.

I agree with the balance issue and while its better now, i find myself always playing up until a certain point and never have much desire to finish it out due to it getting a lot easier at the end and it just becomes a matter of time until you either win or lose.

I know this is way beyond a balance mod but most of the ancient civs up until the late middle ages had their most problems from roaming barbarian tribes, (the kasites in ancient babylonia, the Scythians, the Hittites and Mittani, even the Medians and Persians were 'barbarian' tribes. The huns and mongolians were considered barbarians and were roaming tribes. The germanic tribes in the early middle ages.) Anyway there are a ton more but my point is that in the game barbarians are trouble for a little while but after that, meh, just a nuisance. In history for a large majority of it barbarian tribes, pirates, etc were a huge huge problem. Even now the 'terrorists' might fill such a role.

Perhaps its an issue with no barbarian states or maybe events could be triggered where large barbarian armies spawned on an island or off the coast of the continent and were somehow scripted to run rampant throughout the continent (i know random events aren't ppls favorite).

I know in the last few games especially when going tall it gets boring after a point due to lack of conflict one the initial conflict is over. If there were a constant threat of barbarian invasion it might help that suspense of the early game carry out later into the mid/late game.

Yes i know these would all be major changes and probably not something you would want to take on pre-gods&kings but just figured i would throw the idea out there.

That's a huge task to accomplish and I guess it's an impossible one: Civ as a game is quite static - it takes time to build up a military intervention force and deploy them halfway around the globe to stop that spaceship launch. Most often, that's just not feasible to do. Especially not for the AI hence why you can quit when filling out the last culture tree...

So that's a fundamental problem which imho can only be solved by a) anti-snowballing measures, b) fast response systems (like espionage) and most importantly c) a new victory system where you collect victory points each era and whoever wins the most eras wins the game or something like that.

Getting back from Utopia.

rhammer's solution is to delay expansion in the form of "filling out the home continent" which could be interesting since that also means slowing down the game generally. And we all know that the year dates are out of whack with the actual game eras most of the time. The question is wether this is really fun. Also, there's the Raging Barbarian Option... The slower cultural expansion also has a similar effect.

A simple solution would just be to make the late game more interesting, for example there seems to be a lot less wonders in the industrial and modern age where they could have strong effects of helping some AIs to catch up (if there are more wonders, the tech leader cannot build them all...).

Thalassicus said:

To support these goals, in v137...

Click to expand...

Is there an ETA for v137? Or did you mean v136?

I'll upload it when I finish checking the forums today. Many people like having a few days to respond to suggestions before they're added to the project, so once the gamestopping bugs were solved in v136, I decided to give everyone some time to try things out.

I thinx it just snowballs the runaway effect especially for peacefull games where A AI has a lot of cities and just go to space at a ridicoulous time same with culture


Each time I play culturely A civ just gets powerfull overtime and I lose

I will happily test the change, but I don't really see the need for it (and have never seen anyone request it). I do worry that such changes may make the early game too easy.

This particular change is more about making the game fun. The choice of first tech to research depends on resources near our capital, and I find it frustrating when I have to take a guess with something so important. Seeing what's nearby makes player skill more important than luck. A visible capital radius also makes Stonehenge more appealing, since we can see what it will give us.

If the early game is too easy I can add a 1% AI buff somewhere later.

Just to clarify, is the 3 tile range visible from the settler start location or only once building the city?

It's at the start of the game, before issuing orders to our units.

fwiw, i think this is a great goal Thal. What has put me off CiV in the past is a constant cycle of never quite finishing any random maps because I either move too quickly through my civ's peak eras or reach the point of winning-w/o-actually-winning-yet and get bored. then i move to TSL maps and scenarios, which are fun, but have limited scope without extensive, specific modding. while there are other mods out there that restrict tech progress, they just don't compare to the scope and benefit of VEM's balance---for that, kudos to you!

So, in short, i support the goal of increasing interest in the mid/late game. To that end:

rhammer640 said:

I know in the last few games especially when going tall it gets boring after a point due to lack of conflict one the initial conflict is over. If there were a constant threat of barbarian invasion it might help that suspense of the early game carry out later into the mid/late game.

Click to expand...

I also agree that barbarians have a great parallel in mid/late game to non-state actors (who clearly have a role in the modern era defense/combat). does "raging barbarians" just increases spawn rates of units/camps? the idea that "barbs" would produce more robust and worthwhile units in the late/modern era to throw against your civ's then well developed defenses sounds very interesting. VEM already places early emphasis on player v barb combat (i.e. Honor tree), but this tends to die out in the mid/late game when there are fewer barbs to contend with (except for random islands).

Given I'm not a very experienced late game player, but I would think that increasing the presence of non-state actor guerrilla (terrorist?) "barbs" in later eras to combat all over the board would be good:

* Peaceful/tall games - your developed army a non-civ target to be concerned about while you pump out culture/science in your 3-4 prime cities. (e.g. you get bonuses for supporting CSs vs. barbs, including pirates, and that type of peacekeeping role is definitely relevant even today.)

* Wide/conquest games - the threat of such units across your empire would keep you from leaving half of your continent with basically just city defenses while you're focused on the front lines.

so there's my 2 cents. Thanks!

Side note: I really like your opportunity framework. Not sure if or how this idea could be incorporated into it, but it has potential.

I hadn't thought about how late game barbs would effect conquest games but as mentioned above it would def slow down the steam rolling player, more land more chance of barbs attacking part of it. This would be less tedious then dealing with revolts but accomplish a similar result in my opinion, although im not against revolting cities either...cities having inherent national identity as a percentage that slowly changes over time reducing riots etc.

It would be very easy to write a script to spawn guerrilla "war parties" later in the game. Sadly I don't think I can make barb ships pillage our sea resources or attack our cities, so we can't have a naval threat. I can create land threats.

How about this... when barb camps spawn near civilized borders, it starts with units equal to our era number. So in the ancient era camps have just the 1 barb in the camp. By the industrial era it would be 5 units per camp.

This could be part of an Opportunity with economic and military options. The economic approach would probably be a gold payment to prevent the barbs from spawning.

Thalassicus said:

This particular change is more about making the game fun. The choice of first tech to research depends on resources near our capital, and I find it frustrating when I have to take a guess with something so important. Seeing what's nearby makes player skill more important than luck. A visible capital radius also makes Stonehenge more appealing, since we can see what it will give us.

If the early game is too easy I can add a 1% AI buff somewhere later.

Click to expand...

After moving my combat unit in the first turn, I've never been in a position where I don't know what to research - there is always at least one option, and usually two, meaning I already have a strategic choice. Discovering more options later is a very rare occurrence. Showing me more just makes that choice easier, and in my opinion consequently makes the game dumber.

Thalassicus said:

It would be very easy to write a script to spawn guerrilla "war parties" later in the game. Sadly I don't think I can make barb ships pillage our sea resources or attack our cities, so we can't have a naval threat. I can create land threats.

How about this... when barb camps spawn near civilized borders, it starts with units equal to our era number. So in the ancient era camps have just the 1 barb in the camp. By the industrial era it would be 5 units per camp.

Click to expand...

I think this feels realistic, and makes the game harder; I wonder if it's more fun. It will require any empire with any goal to have enough units to quickly stop the marauding forces before they do too much pillaging.

I love this idea.

Unless I am out in the middle of a continent somewhere, by mid to late game I have very few reasons to keep troops back in my home territory. This combined with slower border expansions will force us to keep a homeland security option available.

I would also love to be able to create a unit (terrorist), that is a civilian unit/ not capable of fighting that I can use to join the barbs. Basically you find a camp nearby an enemy and send one of your civilians to it. Once it gets within a space of it poof it becomse a Terrorists and starts to reek havoc in the area. It's kind of like the old Pirate ships only the humans wouldn't control them.

A land Pirate ship unit would be cool too.

The Barbarian Rebellions might just feel like Whack-a-mole, so I agree that it's not necessarily more fun or interesting. If there was a way of these rebellions occuring naturally and for you having a way to avoid them, then this would work as you then have the strategic choice of going for the risk and sending troops if they happen or investing in avoiding them (*cough* stability *cough*).

As for the early sight, I do agree that it is part of the fun to not know everything exactly and adapt to it. Giving you sight in the beginning defeats that purpose. Maybe to the civs without military units at the start.

That sounds like a good place to start. Are they going to be highest level unit player can build? Also what would happen when there is no fog of war or free land on a continent/land mass?

I was thinking we could have a notification saying either:

A-Barbarian war parties (perhaps use real 'barbarian' cultures here for flavor; Saxons, Vandals, etc.) have been seen approaching from the (insert general direction here).

This would be where there is still fog of war area, up to certain era. Barbarians could appear turn or two after.

B. Barbarian pirate raid seen approaching from (direction).

The barbs could then appear in the territory 2 turns later. This would give the player time to move workers/settlers etc and start to bring units down.

Not sure if any of this scripting would be possible but just trying to think of a way to still have spawns on land when there isn't a lot of fog of war left without being too random.

mitsho said:

The Barbarian Rebellions might just feel like Whack-a-mole, so I agree that it's not necessarily more fun or interesting. If there was a way of these rebellions occuring naturally and for you having a way to avoid them, then this would work as you then have the strategic choice of going for the risk and sending troops if they happen or investing in avoiding them (*cough* stability *cough*).

As for the early sight, I do agree that it is part of the fun to not know everything exactly and adapt to it. Giving you sight in the beginning defeats that purpose. Maybe to the civs without military units at the start.

Click to expand...

Agree on both points, and really like the general rationale for creating choice regarding rebellions. For example, high happiness and/or culture limits them. This all may be too difficult, though.

Naw, all this stuff is easy to do. In general anything between turns (like barbarians spawning) is much easier to mod than stuff during a turn (like combat). It's because timing is less important. I just queue up a bunch of stuff to happen at the end of the turn, based on the current state of the game.