Rewarding players who play historically

HOW A GAME INTERFERES WITH HISTORY

There is a special class of problems that Civilization will never solve.

They are fundamentally part of Civ being a game, and we absolutely want them there. But in making Civ a game, it also makes Civ fundamentally unrealistic.

Since these factors can't be resolved with more realism, they need to be resolved with an equal but opposite gameplay effect.

Decisive Winner in Civ

What would happen if in reality, there was a decisive winner?

Everyone would suddenly pursue these well defined goals. NASA would be under constant attack, and people would be taxed to all hell to pay for science output. Or everyone would be at constant war, trying to accumulate 50% of the world's territory.

That's how Civ is, in fact. 50% science rate, constant war, and throwing a nuclear missile at their mission to Alpha Centauri if you need to. The Civ world falls apart because it is highly competitive, whereas reality is much more stable, relatively speaking.

Time Limit in Civ

If having a decisive winner breaks history, then having a time limit encourages you to break it.

Imagine if we knew the world would end -- I mean KNEW. God came down and said we'd all be dead in one year. And God also said that the only people who would get to heaven would be the citizens of the nation who could dominate the most of the world. To make matters worse, God tells the world in 4000 BC. This definitely changes history in crazy, unstable ways.

Suddenly, those nukes start flying -- we want to get to heaven. Those last 10 turns of Civ are pretty wild, because those are the turns when you know you need to make your move, and there are no consequences after your actions. Kind of like making a move on the annoying clingy girl with big boobs on prom night, because you know that you don't have to see her after graduation day. The nukes start flying, but you don't care because you don't have to live there passed 2050. This is way different from reality.

Pride in Reality

For me, I'll always pick on the weakest nation I can find first. Call me a coward, but I call it smart, and I always win because of it. Eventually I'll have to pick on a nation that is large, but by then it won't be as large as me, because I was smarter.

In history, people have utterly *ignored* weak parts of the earth and driven their forces directly into the toughest competitor. Why? Pride. Pride of the leader, or pride of the people. They take a risk because they believe it's the right thing to do. It's the reason a small nation will fight a bloody battle against a top dog -- because it will bring them glory, and nothing else.

But the best Civ players don't do this. Only other players who enjoy a serious advantage would do this, out of sheer enjoyment.

Altruism in Reality

If real life were Civ, Britain would never have liberated France, they'd have kept it for themselves. In reality, Britain not only liberated France because their existence helps them prosper, or because occupying them would have been difficult. They really did it because it was the right thing to do, and that keeping the moral high ground was important.

There is no moral high ground in Civ. There is only a power high ground, a culture high ground, and a score high ground. Ignoring the moral high ground is a competitive edge -- any Civ who ignores morality will be more likely to win.

Summary

There are a lot of things you'll see in Civ that you'll never see in real life. And there are a lot of things you'll see in real life that you'll never see in Civ. This is because Civ is guided by competition and well-defined goals, whereas reality is often guided by morality and idealism and a hope to sustain your Civilization.

THE PROPOSAL (Finally)

(This doesn't prohibit other gameplay mechanisms, in addition to it.)

Glory Victory

For all the above disparities that can't be resolved with good gameplay mechanisms alone, you give a special kind of bonus point to them, as as such a special kind of victory.

I've sometimes called this "Historical Victory". Another term would be "Challenge Victory", "Legend Victory", "Risk Victory", or anything that gives the idea that you're doing something kind of risky and contraversial, but that will be remembered by people around the world with awe if you pull it off. These actions make your empire more glorious, even if it doesn't actually improve things for your people.

Pride: Rome and Persia are the two biggest empires, with numerous lesser Civilizations in Europe. Rome looks at the Goths and figures "forget them. I know I'm better than them. But I will prove myself in battle with Persia". Rome gets historical points for challenging Persia, who is much more dangerous, instead of copping out and conquering the weakling first.

Altruism: Rome is going for the domination victory and conquers France. Britain liberates France and restores equilibrium to the world... and in doing so, they don't just stop Rome, but get themselves one step closer to victory. Britain has positioned itself as the world's liberator, and just might win the game because of it, all without conquering more than an Island. And right down to the last 10 turns, many Civs are hoping someone will make an aggressive move, so they can liberate a Nation and clinch Glory Victory.

FINAL WORD

This is different from just "Score" in Civ. which still reward the conventional quantifiable benefits. This actually rewards people for doing dangerous, risky, legendary, or moral things that often occur in history... even if they sometimes have less perceivable benefit than doing the easy or vicious thing.

Commonly, I see players conquering cities for the sole purpose of gifting them to the civ it originally belonged to.

Really? I never see it. Maybe it's because I'm just vicious.

Gpod point dh. but I just don't see how it could be implemented in Civ. A lot of times in a game, I have the desire to do good - like sometimes I give a civ which is really behind all my tech so it brings it up to speed- only to have it betray me and declare war. It's like if you're the good guy in Civ you get roasted, if your the Ar*hol* then you win. There's no real incentive in the game to be good or do right - and to be honest that diplomatic victory thing which they got now is a bit of a joke.

In my opinion, honesty does not pay in Civ. If I want to sneak attack a neighbor on a RoP, I'll do it. If there where some sort of score that awarded you for honor, it would add some incentive to play the 'good guy' and, in turn, play historically. However, I do not believe that altruism should be taken into consideration. Think of how the AI will handle it. Whenever I reveal the whole world, I usually take a 'global survey' and size up my opponents, and in doing so I always see several cities that are the trophies from a war of antiquity. The altruist AI would stop at nothing to get these liberated, no matter how much war he starts in doing so. The altruist, not wanting to miss an opportunity for liberating cities, would hinder any effort in expanding unless you eliminate them. Of course, fighting a nation that is doing good probably would not look good on your reputation. America could be labeled altruistic in Civ. We try to bring good to other people, no matter how bad things get here and in our foreign relations. So, think of America's situation, and you have what the AI would be doing, except the AI would do it more uncoordinated, and would have a less powerful infrastructure unable to support a massive global police force.

Pride, however, I do believe should be taken into consideration. I love the idea of winning because I led my small army of swordsmen to victory against a Early Medieval enemy.

I was just thinking today, that if real life were Civ, Alaska would have flopped to Canada (or Russia) by now, and we the US would have 'had to' at least taken central america to keep that chokehold on south america (and of course the panama canal)...
also... am I the only one who thinks civ 'cities' are more like 'states', in the US? (size, cultural values, etc)

I definitely agree that cities are more like states... particularly because of their size and frequency, and how much they spread out. The city itself is the urban center, and the neighbouring squares are the rural towns.

I just think turning history into a game is fundamentally unrealistic for a lot of reasons. (For example, we always know exploration is important, we see a huge black rectange on the map. In real life, China discovered America in 1412 and didn't care, Europe stood still out of fear of falling off the edge of the earth, and the Incas figured they had no reason to move around or occupy lots of land.)

And so you need to counteract things like that with other forces.

I guess a lot of people aren't interested in playing through history, but playing for fun, with history being sort of a side bonus that you can do without.

For me, the fun COMES FROM the idea that I could rewrite history as I play, that I'll be faced with dilemmas that will direct my nation in equal but different directions. But it's been a long time since I've believed Civ had the depth to accomplish that.

Playing historically will take a lot of freedom from the player, which will cause a loss of motivation to play. The reward system is called reputation. Maybe a little adjustment of the reputation system would shift the game into the direction you want to see, but the worst thing would be if this system becomes too rigid and forces you to play the game in a certain way. I think it is fun to be able to play as honestly as the pope or as backstabbing as jack the ripper as long as the decision is up to you. No style of play should be rewarded or punished in a way that it makes it the only possibility or no possibility to win. Just my two (euro)cents

Hey Mr. Blonde,

I think you may have misread the solution. I was trying to introduce an alternate but equal path that is independent of other victory types. In other words, it rewards players who play altruistically and such and gives them incentives to do so.

As much as making the impact or value of reputation might be important, it will never make Britain liberate France, since it is more valuable to keep it for themselves. The idea is to give a seperate but equal reward for people who WOULDN'T keep it, while still keeping the reward for those who would.

What kind of victory condition do you want to have? I dont see a good scoring system for the actions you suggest. Where would you set the victory conditions. I mean there is the UN for nice players anyhow. Imo you suggest making reputation points a victory condition but this is already there with the UN victory. Your suggestions are clear, but for me this would just be an enhanced reputation system. Make the UN victory impossible if you raze cities or keep conquered cities and we have something similar like you suggest. Another possibility would be a world scenario with a finetuned VP system (negative VP for settling outside yor "reallife" terretory or getting techs too early/late)

I don't want to push people THAT far, like forcing Italy to be a certain size, or forcing India to be peaceful for a certain amount of time... just reward people for things that happen all the time in history but never seem to happen in Civ.

It's different from reputation. Take WW2. If France is conquered by Germany, and then Britain comes back and conquers both France AND Germany, there is no reputation hit, and no incentive to give the land back. And a reputation hit like "I can't believe Britain would be that evil!" doesn't make sense, because it seems like a fair sequence of events, and no nation would regard Britain as evil for keeping France and Germany.

But a reward for going above and beyond the call of duty -- giving the countries back to their people -- would give the player a real dilemma. Do they keep it for themselves and go for the Domination victory, or do they rack up a few extra points towards a Glory victory?

As you can see I'm not trying to limit the player's choices, but give them a new choice. As of now, giving a nation back actually *interferes* with almost all victory types.

Diplomatic Victory is close enough...

Mr. Blonde said:

No style of play should be rewarded or punished in a way that it makes it the only possibility or no possibility to win. Just my two (euro)cents

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Obviously, someone isn't paying attention. Isn't the current Civ system a system that rewards only the militaristic? I don't think the implimentation works (you'd just conquer a whole bunch of territory then give it to some Feeble Guy to get extra Glory), but the analysis was dead-on. Maybe a system in which your citizens' moods reflect your administration would work better.

Mewthario, your post has inspired me! I've found a way to make Civ more accuratley depict democratic government! It could be set so that if your aproval rating (which I belive is directlry linked to Citizens' moods) drops below 50% for a full 4 turns in a democracy, you would be "voted out" of office, placing your empire on auto-pilot for 4 turns (while some other party runs your government for a full term) Afterwards it would be assumed that you were re-elected and full controll would be returned again. It would certainly give another reason to keep your Eye on moods...

I think that the change to the reputation system I mentioned elsewhere could help with this problem!
For those who haven't read that thread, it works something along these lines:
As you pursue certain 'social science' techs and their related improvements, governments and wonders, you accrue certain domestic and international benefits. At the same time, though, you create what can be best described as an 'atrocity bar', the threshold actions that your own people will accept BEFORE they consider such actions atrocities-though this would also be influenced by your current government and religion type! The more atrocities you commit (and the worse the atrocity), the higher your 'atrocity marker' climbs, which seriously harms your domestic affairs (economy, culture, happiness war weariness etc). Your atrocity marker will also effect the way other civs relate to you, depending on their 'atrocity bar' (i.e. their level of 'social development'!) Your 'atrocity' marker will drop naturally, over time, at a slow rate, but you can hasten that rate by performing altruistic acts, like protecting foreign civilians, liberating other nations' cities, accepting refugees and aiding poor and/or less powerful neighbours! This system would also work well if there was a 'moral' victory in the game! This way a moderate power civ (like Switzerland in RL) could pretty much win the game simply by aiding other nations with financial/humanitarian assistance and basically acting in a non-violent/neutral fashion!
Also, generally, other victory conditions could and should be added to the game, especially ones which have no dependancy on raw power or # of cities held! Economic victory, religious victory, modified cultural victory AND moral victory could all help to achieve a much more historically accurate game!
Anyway just a thought !

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I agree that the current system rewards the militaristic player, but cultural 20k victory and space race victory are possible without leading an offensive war (at least in my experience at emperor level). Things only get unbalanced at high levels because the AI lets you no room for early settlement and together with the AI bonus the tech race is lost from the beginning for the human player and 20k (wonders) or space race are extremely difficult without militaristic expansion. Civ4 has hopefully a more capable AI, so AI production boni are not needed for a challenge. This would lead to a playstyle less focused on military win. Anyhow, the idea of giving back conquered countries to the initial inhabitants came up with nationalism. In nearly all real life cases politicians only claim to free people from opressors, supporting corrupt regimes after liberation and making vasall states. Face it, reality always rewarded the strong. It´s just that today there are more subtle ways of dependance than direct occupation. Imo if you want a more historical kind of play improve diplomacy with temporal control over foreign cities (vasall countries/ temp occupied regions) and disable UN victory (It will never happen...)

dh_epic said:

Pride:Rome and Persia are the two biggest empires, with numerous lesser Civilizations in Europe. Rome looks at the Goths and figures "forget them. I know I'm better than them. But I will prove myself in battle with Persia". Rome gets historical points for challenging Persia, who is much more dangerous, instead of copping out and conquering the weakling first.

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I like this idea, but on random maps, it could lead to some civs having an advantage, because their rivals are stuck on some dismal tundra outcrop. Easy pickings. On balanced, designed maps, it could work.

^ Well, killing any rival civ is good, too. You just get bonuses for killing the stronger guy.

Some great ideas coming out here from Mewtarthio, Aussie, and Yuri2356... and I don't want to impede their direction.

But I will defend my analysis. Diplomatic victory is almost universally regarded as the most lousy, poorly thoughtout, unrealistic, unrewarding, and cheap victory in the game. I practically resent comparing this victory type (or other suggested victory types) to a simple UN Vote.

Also, the problem with a culture and space race victory... they are victories that also reward a militaristic play-style. If you have a larger nation, you have a larger economy. If you have a larger economy, you can generate everything faster -- culture and technology included. Thus, given the choice between expanding or staying still, even a "culture monger" will choose to be warlike, vicious, even trecherous.

There is still no reward for being "the good guy".

Glory victory, with tweaks to ensure that people don't "cheat" and do something cheap to earn it, would be the only victory incompatible with pure expansion. You can both conquest and have the highest culture. But you can't both conquest AND liberate/give up large amounts of territory (at least you shouldn't be able to).

There is still no reward for being "the good guy".

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Good guys don't win when it comes to conquering the world, just look at the ones that are in lead in reallife, or has taken a shot at it in the past...

I'm not to fond about having to be too concerned over moral things in civ, they can have the people riot and stuff if you do bad things but I don't want it as a victory condition. They could make it an option, but I'd rather not see them bother. I'm already playing too nice..

Edit: Diplomatic victory should be revised somehow though, just not through too much moral.