Gameplay Balancing through Small Wonders

I had a small idea that I wanted to outline. It's far from realistic, although the names and ideas can be motivated by real events. It's really motivated by balancing gameplay -- preventing one player from "running away with the game".

You know how Small Wonders can sometimes have triggers? For example, having a successful army? The idea I have is equal but opposite -- triggers coming from failure.

For example, say your civilization is getting slaughtered by another Civ. Suddenly, you'd be granted the ability to build a "Soldier Solidarity" small wonder. If you managed to build it before you got wiped out completely, it would boost all existing troops to "Elite" status. Or produce one new elite unit in each of your cities. What's more important is that it gives you a "second chance".

Another one could be "Language Barrier" small wonder. This would happen if one or two civilizations had run away with the tech race. It would forbid them from trading for 20 or 30 turns, while letting the lesser civilizations share a common language, allowing them to cooperate their way back into the race.

Or "Rennaisance", being triggered if you've already had a golden age and have seen your civilization fall drastically behind.

Or "Barbarian Hoardes" if an opponent's empire gets really huge around 500 AD, causing everyone around the world to be decimated... it would level the playing field.

I'm sure the criticism would be a lack of realism: people don't "build" language barriers, they just happen. Another criticism would be that wonders are supposed to help one civilization, not hurt another. I'd like to see more "help the little guy" wonders for sure, but there are sometimes when there really is only one or two big guys.

And if you're worried about the AI using or abusing these, just make them only available to human players.

I guess the idea came from "the lightning bolt" in Mario Kart -- which is a game that I've seen college students and 11 year olds love. So it can't be a bad thing to give the last place guy a jumpstart.

I like the idea very much. However, don't underestimate the cleverness of players. They could easily use these wonders to their advantage (act like "Help! I'm behind" and then using the wonder to boost further).

Your idea would be great if it would also have an expiration trigger.

Example:
"The last stand" minor wonder.
Required triggers:
-at war with at least 2 civilizations.
-have less units than 1/3 of the two civs combined. (example: America has 125 units, China has 170 units for a total of 395 units. If you have less than 395/3 =131 unts the wonder can be built.

Effect: It grants your existing units one additional HP on health bar.

However, the minor wonder expires if one of the following conditions are met:
-Your army size grows to half of that of the attacking civs combined.
-You sign peace with at least one of the attacking civs.

...

If you are really getting smacked that bad in war, how are you going to keep a city safe long enough to build a small wonder? Also, what happens if such a wonder is captured?

No, no no, no no no, no no, this is what to say this is a bad idea because no matter what a large Civ-and powerful-could always maniplulate it to good affect and make it easyer to win the game-------so no no no no no no this idea send it to :devil2:

I love the idea, but it would require some safegaurds against abuse. One would be better ways of measuring relative power. Another would be making sure that bonuses stopped once the player started to recover.

I'm not sure how to build a better, relative power scale, but I'll assume for this discussion someone does. Lets examine a few of the game-balancing wonders.
"Barbarian Hordes - love this idea. If an empire has the majority of the global relative power than this wonder can be built. If the number one empire has twice the relative power of the number two empire than this wonder can be built. If an empire has gained 20% relative global power in the last 20 turns and twice his current relative power would be greater than the first three runner-ups combined power than this wonder can be built. This wonder would activate a major barbarian uprising for every settlement the other player had. The barbarian activity would settle down whenever the player had lost significant relative power.
"Russian Winter" - This wonder could be built if the total military power of enemy troops in your territory was over 3 times that of friendly troops in your territory. The effect would be that all enemy troops in your territory would be immediately red-lined.
"Desperate Times" - If you are the last place in relative power and you are less than 10% of the guy above you than you can build this wonder. This wonder gives you a GL in every city you own. The GL generated by disappear once your relative power is 50% of the guy above you.
"Nationalist Resurgence" - If your relative power is 10% of what it was 20 turns ago you can star budilng this wonder. Each national of yours in a another civ's city increases flip chance by 5%. This increases defection rate lasts for 10 turns. Effects stop once you reach 50% of your high mark wihtin the starting construction date.

there was just a few ideas

I`d also like to not see one player run away with the game
but really don`t thinl this is the way to do it.
that underdog morale boost should be related to negative levels of war wearieness. wearieness should of course drop when you`re fighting to protect your children and homes.
and of course another balancing force should be the risk of civil war..

I agree with the people who've raised issues of abuse. I appreciate Sir Schwick's ideas to safeguard against that abuse, however. There needs to be checks and balances. You'd obviously need to be pretty low in the scores, so once you start to pull out of that funk you wouldn't be able to use the wonder again. Again, the chance to build it should expire once the opportunity is missed.

The wonder, after the effects it creates when you initially build it, it really only stands around to create culture. So upon capturing it, as the dominant civ, it is an obsolete artefact. In fact, in having taken the now-dormant small wonder from someone else, it only guarantees that the dominant civ will never be able to build it themselves.

The key is sort of this "race against time". You're getting slaughtered. The opportunity opens up to build one of these "comeback" wonders, but you have to hope that you can produce it fast enough to survive the onslaught of the enemy. If you're getting slaughtered, you need to have SOMETHING to look forward to so you don't quit. Seriously, how aggravating is it to play multiplayer and watch someone quit the first second things go bad?

I don't like it, if players are rewarded for playing bad.
I do agree, that there should be something done to weaken the snowball-effect, but not by rewarding bad playing!

The other suggestion I have is punishing really far ahead players with major disasters. The disaster could even be voted on by the other players not in a war with them, since they know what will hurt the most. Also, it would force players to just be dominant, rather than unstoppable. They would have to be controlling and manipulative, not just a horde of units.

Yeah, truthfully I'd like to see natural limits / hurdles to exponential growth. That's why they're called growing pains -- if you grow too fast, you usually deal with a tremendous downside in social problems.

I guess I was throwing this out as an alternative, for those people who feel like you should be able to cover the continent by 0 AD, and be rewarded for it.

Not particularly attached to this idea, but the snowball effect NEEDS to be stopped. I like how sir schwick said it: "dominant, rather than unstoppable".

ps: you're the worst character ever, towlie

dh_epic said:

ps: you're the worst character ever, towlie

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Yep, I must admit its scary...

-kirby

I have no idea what's going on.

dh_epic said:

ps: you're the worst character ever, towlie

Click to expand...

I know.

I disagree in basic principle with this, why should players who do very well be penalised for doing so? And why should a player whose doing terribly be granted bonuses? We are playing to win you know.

I don't want to seem close-minded or anything, but I just think you can take a small tweak too far. Ok, one civ running away from the game is annoying, but I don't think the way to correct it is to heap natural disasters on them, or forbid them from trading techs.

What I would welcome is some more subtle change, like, as mentioned before, small civilisations suffering much less war weariness than larger ones, to represent them fighting for their survival, and the decadence of large civs and their citizens; unwillingness to fight or suffer heavy casualties etc etc. I think that's better that giving weak players wonders or acts of god to help them out of their predicament.

I agree with this idea of Small Wonders.
A kind of "Last Stand" or "National Insurrection" is good, if it has only a limited time to affect the game, e.g. 20 turns. and then disappears, leaving only a reminder ruin or monument behind.

Perhaps a small wonder that has nothing to do directly with power (or lack there of): a small wonder (pick a name) that can be built in any one city that has defeated, say 20, attacking units. This would effectively help the underdog, as they are most likely the one under attack, but would still require some skill on behalf of the underdog and still also be somewhat possible for the strong guy to build, thus the wonder would not be rewarding purely bad playing. The wonder should provide some sort of indirect military benefit--perhaps something that reflects increasing moral and/or pride within the city of it's accomplishement... perhaps dramatically reduced corruption/waste, extra happy citizens (or less unhappy citizens), no war weariness in the city, and/or free support for any units built in the city...

fitchn, these are good thoughts!!!
I agree. perhaps all of your suggestions (reducing war weariness, reducing corruption, boosting moral, etc) could be the basement of one small "help" wonder - and there would new chances as time passes (20 or more turns) and the old small wonder becaming obsolate.

TheDarkPhantom said:

I disagree in basic principle with this, why should players who do very well be penalised for doing so? And why should a player whose doing terribly be granted bonuses? We are playing to win you know.

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Too rapid of growth in any system creates problems, especially those of not having good foundations. If you rise too quickly to the top you should have to suffer the consequences of not setting up your base needs well enough. Civ models this a little, but really doesn't punish too overly aggressive civs. It is assumed you gain erverything through tribute then.

Well, if you so choose, the "small wonder" card could just improve your chances, rather than decrease someone else's chances. The effect is the same, is what's important: narrowing the gap. But it doesn't hold top people back so much as bring the bottom chunk forward.

"Last Stand", or "Pride and Resistance", or "Foreign Sympathy" for example, they mobilize more troops or make your troops more effective. The effect would be temporary, long enough to give a losing player hope -- instead of the "I'm losing so I'll just quit or unplug my network card" syndrome that plagues multiplayer games.

Still, you could have more aggressive wonders. "Black Plague" or "Barbarian Hoardes" could provide the weakest nations with several out-of-control type units. The key would be choosing small wonders that empower small players, instead of taking power away from big players.

And I don't think that purposely holding back for a while is necessarily a bad thing, so long as it's not super powerful to do so. I could see someone saying "hey, that guy is getting too far ahead, so maybe i'll slow down, get a small wonder, and try to mount a comeback". But even if you didn't like this, I think it would be an easy thing to prevent.

Wouldn't it feel kinda weird to build the "Black Plague" or "Barbarian Hordes"? I am not a fan of realism for realism's sake but isn't this pushing things a bit too far?

The same effect could be attained with triggers and semi-random events so why have the players build awkward-sounding wonders?

The point is to punish players for becoming unstoppable instead of dominant. In history, when nations reached the first they had usually neglected someting important in developement. That almost always came back and bit them on the ass. Civ countries can grow huge without to many serious problems(sans corruption). It becomes a unit horde that smaller players suaully can't even hope to take out with better units. The problem with granting failing states super-units is . I think you should punish players for not trying to manipulate instead of directly control.