I agree with the idea of a conquest victory style, over the current take capital domination VC. However, If a conquest victory condition was added, I feel players should be able to choose if they would rather conquer a percentage of the map to win, or instead, take all rival capitals. It would be nice to have a choice on which variation of domination game, they would like to play.
There is one more thing I wanted to say. In another thread I posted that you should be able to raze capitals. Thinking about it and listening to the discussion on PolyCast. I no longer feel that is realistic anymore without changing a lot about the game, which is linked to the capitals. In my mind destroying your enemy's army and conquering their cities, to grind down their economy and production, should be more important than just capturing capitals. Capitals are still important in the scheme of things, but capturing them should not necessarily be the only strategy to win a war. Although, if capitals are taken they should be a large politcal trump card for diplomacy. The civ who has lost it's capital should try to make a deal with the conquering civ to get it back. Perhaps an agreement to not build military units for so many turns. Or, agree to a short alliance with the conquering civ in order to regain it's capital. The other thing they could do is make an international call for help, or decided to fight to the death to regain their capital. To make a long story short, a civ's capital should be the lifeblood of its people. Losing that should be a national morale killer maybe there should be a happiness/economic/religious penalty empire wide for losing a capital, if the civ decides to give in to the conquerors and make a deal to regain it. Or, a civ who loses their capital gains more resolve to get it back, if they decide to fight on against the conquerors. Production increases, happiness increases, everything increases, because the people rise up to fight for the symbol representing who they are.
Diplomacy also needs some things added to it. One thing would be adding the ability to sign a short alliance between two or more civs. The alliance would last for so many turns, and after time runs out, talks would then be convened to decide if the alliance should continue or not. I also, feel that a secret pact should come back in some format, not sure what though. I know diplomacy was not discussed, but it does go hand in hand with conquering and war.
Also, wouldn't city trading be kind of interesting? Or, with espionage, a spy could go in and try to forment rebellion in a rival city. If this mission is successful, the city joins your civilization. This should not be able to be done in capitals, and should only have a chance to occur in a city adjacent to the civ trying this kind of spy mission.
IMO expanding diplomacy and espionage will make the game more interesting, as long as it is done right. I don't want to overcomplicate things. Just spice the game up a bit. Sorry if I got a bit OT there.
I do not agree with the idea of using offensive citadels, because the the AI does not use them, and even if it did, would not use them properly. This ability just gives the human player a huge advantage, which makes the lacking AI that much more vulnerable. Now, in multiplayer, offensive citadels must make games quite intense. However, citadels as they are now are way overpowered in single player. I've seen many video LPs where the human comes up against a tough AI city that is hard to take. Then a GG appears and the player's problems are then solved quite quickly. At least much more quickly than they would have been. It just makes things too easy. The devs should downgrade this GG ability and make the game more challenging in this department.
Famously, or infamously, depending upon one's perspective. The one-hundred-and-fifty-third episode of PolyCast, "Working As Intended", features regular co-hosts Daniel "DanQ" Quick, "Makahlua", Philip "TheMeInTeam" Bellew and "MadDjinn" with first-time guest co-host Travis "TravisATWA", it has a runtime of 59m59s; listeners are encouraged to follow the show on Twitter, and check out the YouTube channel for caption capability.
-- I take it that this was the first episode you've listened to then? Did you find the show here through CFC or..?
