How would you solve the snowballing & endgame problem?

[Leucarum]

I'm sceptical about revolutions or something similarly harsh working well in Civ...

If you have something deterministic then unless you make it totally unavoidable, good players will be able to evade it, turning it into yet another drawback the AI has to face that the player doesn't. Just look at how easily players learned to handle succession crises in crusader kings...

If you make it random, it'll feel horrible. Oh no I lost half my empire for no good reason. And if you try to mix the two, random but occurs under certain circumstances players will still be able to learn to avoid it.

The only thing I can think of is to have empire-wide unrest mostly increase from conquest, and decay slowly. That way players have to pace out conquering enemies? Though I'm sure mitigation strategies would be needed and people would rapidly learn to game this too...

 

[SCBrain]

Sorry my earlier unintended attempt to hijack the thread!

To the point raised by the OP: although I agree that the endgame is often a boring clickfest, I am not sure that snowballing is actually a problem to be solved. As players, we want to feel our empires getting stronger. That's the satisfying part.

Civ6's endgame problems might be fixable with: 1) competent, less passive AI; 2) senseless victory conditions fixed, such as the diplomatic victory which is available to most anyone who just survives until turn 300 and generates diplomatic credits.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I'm sceptical about revolutions or something similarly harsh working well in Civ...

If you have something deterministic then unless you make it totally unavoidable, good players will be able to evade it, turning it into yet another drawback the AI has to face that the player doesn't. Just look at how easily players learned to handle succession crises in crusader kings...

If you make it random, it'll feel horrible. Oh no I lost half my empire for no good reason. And if you try to mix the two, random but occurs under certain circumstances players will still be able to learn to avoid it.

The only thing I can think of is to have empire-wide unrest mostly increase from conquest, and decay slowly. That way players have to pace out conquering enemies? Though I'm sure mitigation strategies would be needed and people would rapidly learn to game this too...

Minimaxing munchkin gamers can make a mockery of ANY system, this is like saying there will always be at least one criminal, therefor there is no point to have laws and courts and police.

One of the biggest changes would be to get rid of the Borg like hive mind thing Civ6 does, where I capture a foreign city, am mildly inconvenienced by loyalty for a few turns, and suddenly eveyone’s culture and ethnicity auto updates to the occupier.

Bring back the vassal system that 4 had where if I am the big bad one on the block I can beat up my neighbours and force them to be my vassals, but if things go south enough for me, or even if simple demographics plays out well enough my vassals can try to rebel.

Try and replicate historical empires falling apart using the standard Civ Borg model. You can’t.

But say I am Rome and my Legions beat up everyone bordering on the Med and I vasselize them all. Fast forward a few hundred years of Rome spamming wonders and buildings and stuff instead of Legions, and you get hit with both barbarians and some succession crises stuff and your military strength drops and suddenly your vassals declare independance and now France, Spain, Greece etc are back in play.

Literally

And who knows, maybe Rome can maintain and reassert control. Maybe not.

But OH MY GOD that has to be more interesting than How Quickly Can I Click Next Turn

 

[Aristos]

There is a Civ4 mod called Revolutions, which now has been incorporated into the best mod of them all, Realism Invictus. Revolutions is a good starting point for how to make it work with various empire management elements feeding into a "stability" dynamic monitor. Off course the players learn how to handle the system, that is what strategy is all about; but the system still works as a check on runaways, which is what you really want with a system like this, and what the OP asked for. The hardest part is to teach the AI to use the system well, and the guys working on Rev/RI managed to do it even with limited resources (dll available but time without pay is another story) to some extent.

The Revolutions component in Realism Invictus is very fun, and although the AI can be relatively abused, it requires active player involvement to do so (espionage, culture, victorious wars, trade embargoes, etc) and make the AI empire crumble. But that is a lot better than clicking next turn for centuries to finish a game that was decided in the Medieval era.

That was the relative beauty of BNW (and what made me do the mistake of blindly trusting Firaxis for Civ 6), where the Ideologies system was meant to shake things up in the late eras of the game, and it made the end game a little more interesting and unpredictable... a little. As usual, they fell timidly short of something much greater.

 

[Leucarum]

Minimaxing munchkin gamers can make a mockery of ANY system, this is like saying there will always be at least one criminal, therefor there is no point to have laws and courts and police.

The key point was that the AI would likely adapt to a revolutions system worse than a human. So in this case you'd run the risk of creating the opposite effect to what was intended, wih humans gaming the system while the AI becomes even worse.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The key to any system or mechanic in any game is to make the consequences of the action both positive and negative.

So, if there be Revolutions, the consequences of a Revolution should be both positive and negative.
Positive: You get to change Government Type and possibly all (or most) of your Civics/Social Policies For Free
Negative: Your country/Civ destabiizes, with massive loss of Loyalty, Culture, conversion of military UNnts into 'Barbarians' etc for X turns

Consequences of a Revolution that Fails:
Positive: May only get to change Government a little bit, or 1 Civic/Social Policy, or the game might provide a Reform alternative to Revolution that you can adopt.
Negative: long-term Loyalty Loss due to people who are now only putting up with you and your government, but not really in favor of it.

 

[PiR]

Playing OW, I realized what mattered most are strategic decisions with tradeoffs so I agree with that.

There can be also decisions leading up to the likeliness of a Revolution (enforcing slavery, huge discontent, too many conquests...).

 

[Haig]

Ì think all victories should be able to do together with your allies and vassals, that way in the lategame there would be these strong coalitions of empires that would try to win together and fight against other coalitions.

Ideologies could form to their own coalitions in this model.

I dont know if that would solve snowballing, at least some minor civs could band together against a big power.

 

[Krajzen]

Ì think all victories should be able to do together with your allies and vassals, that way in the lategame there would be these strong coalitions of empires that would try to win together and fight against other coalitions.

Ideologies could form to their own coalitions in this model.

I dont know if that would solve snowballing, at least some minor civs could band together against a big power.

As I wrote in another thread, civ5 ideologies were going in a wonderful direction, and they added a lot of excitement and some dynamism to dreaded 4x lategame. They disturbed global diplomacy so much, made countries likely to forge entirely new and mighty power blocs, and ideology in combination with culture system made it occasionally possible for smaller cultural powerhouses to completely disturb huge military empires because of cultural pressure doubling as an ideological pressure 'their political systems seems better'. In some of my games I have damaged mighty empires across the globe using nothing but ideology, culture and diplomacy. A wonderful simple simulation of a cold war and 20th century world wars, so much could be done to expand it further and turn it into real alliances and world wars. A moderate step in the right direction to make late game exciting and less predictable.

And then civ6 removed that and added rock bands instead. And fifty other small things to late eras, all of which combined couldn't compare to the impact of ideology system.

 

[SCBrain]

And then civ6 removed that and added rock bands instead. And fifty other small things to late eras, all of which combined couldn't compare to the impact of ideology system.

The degree to which workable solutions to problems that were solved in Civ 4 and Civ 5 — even in Civ 2! - were then discarded in subsequent editions of the game in favor of "new features" is remarkable. Long-solved problems like closing borders to enemies have re-emerged.

Fixing things that weren't broken means that time isn't spent on things that require attention. It's like a watching a friend get stuck in cycles of self-destructive behavior, then working hard to get out, with mixed results.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

The key to any system or mechanic in any game is to make the consequences of the action both positive and negative.

Any idea which patch was for civ III that removed the Ai from forming out Armies?
Removing civ VI AI the ability for train units can account for that, both positive and negative removed.
Problem solved.

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Is it, though? I play on Epic, not Marathon, and a game of Civ6 takes me longer to play than any other 4X game in my library--and I play ES2/EL on Endless and HK on the second-to-longest time setting (I forget the name at the moment).

I didn't mean that, but the game favours fast pace. Oversimplifying everything how would you name it?
Obviously there must be an economic outlook over fast-consuming titles and general appeal towards younger get-there-fast generations...
Time is relative to the viewer... if the pace is boring and slow... all the plays seem the same...
of course is just a POV. Glad some like you enjoy the long plays, but it only underlines my point...
how long lasts medieval era at longest? a lot of people would like a colder start, instead we have like Koreans with gunpowder before even the Pyramids could be built!!
Many turns but fast... got the point?

cherzz.

ps. But I could be completely wrong bc I'm old and boring and should shut up more often than not, and I do not get to judge anyone, so sorry. just a pov. ty for let other know i was wrong

 

[Lazy sweeper]

What about good heroes that goes bad and start revolting against everyone, vampires that suddenly turns over and stuff like that?? Too creepy??
C'mon zombie mode... against the warriors of the Apocalypse??? Naaaaaaaaahhh

that would require to freeze the time... or some sort of Mummy magic...

Ok, I'm done...

 

[Krajzen]

I am currently attending college course "society as complex systems" and just had a class on nonlinear social dynamics, including disasters and collapses. Extremely interesting topic btw, generally there are fruitful attempts of combining social and mathematic sciences to model social
processes. Anyway, the theory within this discipline says that the buildup for certain kinda of crises is slow, linear and not that bad - up to a certain threshold, when everything explodes (and mathematics turn crazy, such as functions temporarily stop being functions). And then you need radical solutions and it is usually literally impossible to return to the exact same state as before.

Something like that would be nice in civ games, where you get some warnings if you behave too frivolously and risky and stuff can explode in your face entirely because of your own actions, and then you cannot return to the status quo.

 

[Yudhisthira]

Anyway, the theory within this discipline says that the buildup for certain kinda of crises is slow, linear and not that bad - up to a certain threshold, when everything explodes (and mathematics turn crazy, such as functions temporarily stop being functions). And then you need radical solutions and it is usually literally impossible to return to the exact same state as before.

That's very interesting.

Thou looks very difficult to implement in game like civ 6, may be paradox kinda stuff.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I'm sceptical about revolutions or something similarly harsh working well in Civ...

If you have something deterministic then unless you make it totally unavoidable, good players will be able to evade it, turning it into yet another drawback the AI has to face that the player doesn't. Just look at how easily players learned to handle succession crises in crusader kings...

If you make it random, it'll feel horrible. Oh no I lost half my empire for no good reason. And if you try to mix the two, random but occurs under certain circumstances players will still be able to learn to avoid it.

The only thing I can think of is to have empire-wide unrest mostly increase from conquest, and decay slowly. That way players have to pace out conquering enemies? Though I'm sure mitigation strategies would be needed and people would rapidly learn to game this too...

In my system (see my signature), you need to generate Coercion points in order to have a chance to not collapse. There would be a threshold where you only have 1% chance to collapse to a "negative" event. Well, without "negative" events you don't need Coercion points. So it's a combination of random and happens in certain circumtances, but the player will idealy have few control over it in the first steps of a game. I mean, he could still be lucky and that would be good for him, or not.

Here how we could envision it : if you decide to go City-State, you suddenly need 16 Coercion points out of 8 to only get a 1% chance to collapse to a "negative" event. At start, one of the only way to generate Coercion points is to dedicate specialists in government buildings/districts. Those would not produce food, so it would be a major hit to your growth. Each bureaucratic specialist generates 2 Coercion points. You would need 8 of them to only have 1% chance to have a collapse after a "negative" event. If you get more, you still have 1% chance to collapse.

Now, imagine that after a collapse, you earn Coercion points. Like, 4 by collapse. This represents the ability of your leaders to learn to prevent collapses. Not counting that you can totally choose to not get a state, so you cannot collapse.

Now the negative events like positive ones would work according to calendar, not turns. It is to say that you might have a "negative" event (several ?) in one turn at start, and only 1 (odds based) every 100 turns at the end. When 1 turn = 1 year, you might have 1% chance to have a "negative" event, and 1% chance to collapse *if* you have the required Coercion points. Note that if you have 8 CP out of 8, you still have 50% chance to collapse.

But collapsing is not bad. It can allow you to change your government (the only way ? It might be good indeed), to infiltrate other civs before your pop get assimilated (strangely better late game) as refugees and work force, unless it is the "invaded" country that get assimilated (depending on the strenght of your culture), explore the land early (your pop will get sparsed with a collapse), heck, you might even BEG for a collapse ! Or not want a state at all.

There was a synergy between civilizations and barbarians in the past at each attempt to have an organized society. There should be advantages to be one or the other in a game like Civ, at least at start.

[EDIT] I see that the above has little to see with "snowballing and endgame problems", it's rather what your post inspired to me as to "revolutions/collapses". It is only for the sake of it, because I do like revolutions without impacting too much on distracted players and without not at all on "good" players. The purpose of my revolution system is not at all for the feeling of some players that the endgame needs a little less boredom or that the player can snowball. There are high difficulty levels for that, and for my part I'm still struggling on Immortal in Civ6 : while I win most of my games, they are tough and not a piece of cake, surely the gap between Immortal and Deity would kill me.

 

[HorseshoeHermit]

One might define this as Setting In-Game Goals (or having them thrust at you) that contribute to you or your people's definition of 'Victory'.
"My Theocracy converted 100% of my own population to Our Religion by 1032 CE - Victory is Ours!"
- only it really isn't, you have just achieved a self-defined Victory Condition that contributes to a Game Victory overall.

That's related to the 'Fame' mechanic in That Other Game in that 'Little Victories" are going to be defined or become available based on the emphasis of the Civ: religious for Theocracies as per the example, military for militants, Money/Gold for traders and commercial states, etc. But some are going to be strictly Conditional: a completely non-militant Civ attacked by some would-be World Conqueror that fights him off decisively - that's a Victory, and one unlooked-for by that society/Civ/Player. That kind of mechanic would keep the entire system Dynamic and somewhat Unpredictable: actions by other Civs or players (Barbarians, City States, NGOs, etc) could affect what precise 'Victories" become available or desirable, regardless of what little game you thought you were going to play . . .

I very much want to keep this thread going (snowballing, even) and, fortunately, have finally had brain activity congeal into a thought in reply to this post.

It's sort of like the Events and Decisions system, right? Things pop up, which describe a thing to do, and costs and benefits to the choice, but it's not just a choice, it's an achievement you have to reach from there, and with a deadline (or other restriction, like "Accomplish Z but don't do X , where X is something that mechanics make you inevitably need to do but we aren't going to define that time limit except in reference to the X mechanic.") And, like the Events and Decisions, they are triggered by tags of the current state of your civ. What era it is. What government it is. Having a story-rich tech. Being a specific civ, even. Being a theocracy in a certain context presents you with a "mission" of religious dominance, and that lets you develop if you do it, for example. Or, working with a technology gives you a mission to employ it to a certain breadth, and that gives you more research, for example. Or it could give you the victory points alone.

But, I don't like randomness. So here's what I imagine. The event pops up because you met the requirement, plus also something else deterministic that you can work on. I really despise both "Influence" meters and "Stability" meters for reasons I won't go into, but if any meter for generic top-down edicts of empire decisions I would tolerate, it would be such a meter. A meter you must fill, or spend from exorbitantly, to actually -do- an event. Doing so will mean the cost of not taking on another event.
But here's a variant of that idea. Instead of having a meter, make it a drafting system. The event comes along as a card in a shuffle with other cards that apply. You draft and other player's draft.
OR , you have meter and the cards, and you "bid" for the card to get it.
OR, setting an event up applies to all players, so you want one that you will actually win and you might actually help a rival. <- this one is an issue with team-play problems, so actually I don't like it.

Mainly, the variables for this system are: Does an event happening for you mean it doesn't happen for others, or do you both get an event which you each run the gauntlet for independently (and can each win or lose)? And do you choose the event whenever you want, or do you give up attempting other events at the same time?
Of the second variable, if you use a meter, then you afford the potential for growing that bar so huge that you can spend like Mansa Musa in Egypt and not give a $%#!, ... which could be a snowballing thing, unless the meter didn't grow with empire growth. And at that point why even make it a meter. So instead of a meter, it's just you have events and you pick one and that means you're not allowed to take on another right now (or the maximum is 2 or 3).

.... Or, maybe you get the event and you do face them all and this is a bad thing because working to more than 2 of them will stretch you so much you couldnt possibly succeed. And at that point you might pay something to -not- have an event apply to you. Then meter would be interesting. Would it snowball? It would kinda be like... what money yield is in Civ right now; a yield that gives you flexibility saved up but is very much weaker than hammers or science or even food (early). You use it to get out of a problem that would rough up a plan of yours.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I very much want to keep this thread going (snowballing, even) and, fortunately, have finally had brain activity congeal into a thought in reply to this post.

It's sort of like the Events and Decisions system, right? Things pop up, which describe a thing to do, and costs and benefits to the choice, but it's not just a choice, it's an achievement you have to reach from there, and with a deadline (or other restriction, like "Accomplish Z but don't do X , where X is something that mechanics make you inevitably need to do but we aren't going to define that time limit except in reference to the X mechanic.") And, like the Events and Decisions, they are triggered by tags of the current state of your civ. What era it is. What government it is. Having a story-rich tech. Being a specific civ, even. Being a theocracy in a certain context presents you with a "mission" of religious dominance, and that lets you develop if you do it, for example. Or, working with a technology gives you a mission to employ it to a certain breadth, and that gives you more research, for example. Or it could give you the victory points alone.

But, I don't like randomness. So here's what I imagine. The event pops up because you met the requirement, plus also something else deterministic that you can work on. I really despise both "Influence" meters and "Stability" meters for reasons I won't go into, but if any meter for generic top-down edicts of empire decisions I would tolerate, it would be such a meter. A meter you must fill, or spend from exorbitantly, to actually -do- an event. Doing so will mean the cost of not taking on another event.
But here's a variant of that idea. Instead of having a meter, make it a drafting system. The event comes along as a card in a shuffle with other cards that apply. You draft and other player's draft.
OR , you have meter and the cards, and you "bid" for the card to get it.
OR, setting an event up applies to all players, so you want one that you will actually win and you might actually help a rival. <- this one is an issue with team-play problems, so actually I don't like it.

Mainly, the variables for this system are: Does an event happening for you mean it doesn't happen for others, or do you both get an event which you each run the gauntlet for independently (and can each win or lose)? And do you choose the event whenever you want, or do you give up attempting other events at the same time?
Of the second variable, if you use a meter, then you afford the potential for growing that bar so huge that you can spend like Mansa Musa in Egypt and not give a $%#!, ... which could be a snowballing thing, unless the meter didn't grow with empire growth. And at that point why even make it a meter. So instead of a meter, it's just you have events and you pick one and that means you're not allowed to take on another right now (or the maximum is 2 or 3).

.... Or, maybe you get the event and you do face them all and this is a bad thing because working to more than 2 of them will stretch you so much you couldnt possibly succeed. And at that point you might pay something to -not- have an event apply to you. Then meter would be interesting. Would it snowball? It would kinda be like... what money yield is in Civ right now; a yield that gives you flexibility saved up but is very much weaker than hammers or science or even food (early). You use it to get out of a problem that would rough up a plan of yours.

"Events and Decisions" both the orginal from EU and the Civ V Mod which frustrated the H**l out of me because it wouldn't work on the Msc version I was playing at the time, are definitely the nspiration for a lot of this. Another more recent input is from the Anno 1800 game, which keeps throwing 'Quests' and 'Expeditions' at you which you can decline or accept, with penalties for failing an accepted 'mission' but sme really good bonuses for succeeding - and the 'Quests' are most often from AI opponents, so the bonuses almost lways include a Diplomatic bonus with the Quest requester.

Rather than a continuous 'Meter' mechanic, I'd rather that Events normally be inependant of each other. The fact that you've had 6 different Events in the past 20 turns does not change the chance of getting a 7th Event on Turn 22, BUT your chance of getting the same Event or Event related to the same Causation may change.
So, if you are doing a lot of things, or having a lot of things happen to you in-game that normally trigger Events, they will not fail to trigger unless you can stop the actions that trigger them. There is no Relief because you are on the Road to Perdition, unless you get off the road.

In Civ (7, 8, 77, etc) I could see several kinds of Mini-Objective-producing Events:
1. Universal Events - Events that can happen to any Civ, under certain conditions. I can see Events related to the type of government, for instance, or having certain Believes/Pantheons in your Religion - or not having a Religion at all.
2. Self-Imposed Events - Events that crop up because of something specific that you/your Civ did: win or lose a war, conquer a City State, destroy a Barbarian Camp, establish your first open-ocean Trade Route, etc. None of these should be negative enough to stop you from doing 'normal' things in the game, but there are consequences to your actions that may not be readily apparent beforehand - hence Events.
3. Aggravating Events - Events that are In Addition To something else. LIke certain Events may be triggered only if you are in a Dark Age, or just ended a Golden Age, or just used up' a Great Person of a certain type.
4. Very Specific Events. These can be both trivial and very, very consequential, because they only trigger from very specific actions: they could be related to specifically-named Great People, for instance, or Governors, or even a specific Leader. This could be a way to really individualize named personages in the game by including 'minor' things from their historical careers that are otherwise left out of the game. Some of them, of course, could be really nasty:

You have Thomas Becket as a Great Theologian giving Major Bonuses to your Religion. But there is a percentage chance each turn that he will really bug your Leader, and so Thomas gets assassinated by over-zealous followers of your Leader. Your Leader will then have to either perform certain actions as Penance, or ignore the whole thing and hope it blows over (If it doesn't, he may take a Diplomatic Hit with other Civs for being a Murderous Thug or a major Loyalty Hit in his own Civ). Becket may spawn a Tourist Site (Religious) at one of your Holy Sites which imposes Negative Loyalty on all Cities within a certain Radius, in addition to the advantages of early Tourism (Pilgrimage)

 

[aieeegrunt]

I am currently attending college course "society as complex systems" and just had a class on nonlinear social dynamics, including disasters and collapses. Extremely interesting topic btw, generally there are fruitful attempts of combining social and mathematic sciences to model social
processes. Anyway, the theory within this discipline says that the buildup for certain kinda of crises is slow, linear and not that bad - up to a certain threshold, when everything explodes (and mathematics turn crazy, such as functions temporarily stop being functions). And then you need radical solutions and it is usually literally impossible to return to the exact same state as before.

Something like that would be nice in civ games, where you get some warnings if you behave too frivolously and risky and stuff can explode in your face entirely because of your own actions, and then you cannot return to the status quo.

Did they reference any of Joseph Tainter’s work? I think game mechanics based around the principles explored in his boom The Collapse of Complex Societies would make an excellent Anti Snowball Mechanic