.

[UWHabs]

As much as it pains me to say this, I have to agree. Part of me doesn't want to lose this mechanic, because it's so easy. My most recent two games were as Germany and England both on the Greatest Earth Map mod. Germany I expanded through warfare, and England I expanded through peaceful expansion (not a single conquered city). A huge difference in score obviously. But I also struggled in tech with England and I got beat to both Forbidden City and Big Ben wonders . I really hated losing Big Ben since I had London on an Earth map, but oh well. Of course my Germany game had more production, but I was far enough ahead in tech that it didn't matter. I got the wonders I wanted (just no early game ones since I was warring).

Think about it. Districts are so difficult to build in my England game, where as with Germany I got them all through building around 10 units. I never even had spare production or time to build Holy districts in my England game, and didn't get my Campus districts up until much later. In my German game they were all pre built. That's what I love most about conquering, having everything built for you.


Very good point, I can't help but think this is in store for the first expansion. I really wish airports would be more useful, as my German game mentioned above I never did build any aerodromes. Modern and Information age need many more fun things to do. This alone could make me finish more games. Not annoying things like punishing large empire players through scaling.

Maybe if they changed things so that every district in a captured city has to be "repaired" in order to get use of it again, where the repair cost is equal to the current cost to build? So sure, you can conquer new land, but you don't get everything pre-built for you. As it stands now, I never pillage districts, since if I get that close, I know I'm going to be capturing the city in a couple turns and would rather not have to repair them. Would at least not have as much snowball effect from capturing a new city.

 

[steveg700]

This is a fantastic concept. I am sure people would cry it's arbitrary (while ignoring how culture, science and score are equally so).
But it is a genuinely interesting game concept. The only potential issue is the capacity of the AI to deal with it.
I cant imagine a more intriguing multiplayer game, but i can just imagine the AI just generally bumbling along aimlessly while the player collects these achievements.

Another idea (but not mutually exclusive to SteveG's) is is to find ways to make the AI more competitive/interesting by giving them projects or concepts the player doesn't have the ability to do.

Eg (and this is purely a concept) have two pr three civs be able to form an aggressive alliance in the late game. Not just declare war but put mechanics behind it, so its interesting. One of the potential allies has to build an Alliance HQ style minor wonder. Then there will be X turns of "negotiations" then the three allies will become far more aggressive and go a conquering but working together as one force for Y period of time.

The player has the ability to try and stop it by stopping construction or effecting the negotiations etc.

Thanks for the kind words.

Alliances would be a great way for civ's to counter snowballs. At a certain point, all you can hope to do against a runaway leader is gang up. However, you then get into the divide between simulation and competition. That is, should the AI behave like a nation trying to find allies for mutual benefit or should it behave like a human player trying to win a victory that cannot be shared? Some people feel perturbed by competitive AI behavior that makes it turn uncooperative or outright hostile to the player when the latter is doing well. This leads to accusations that AI behavior is broken and random and out to get the player and diplomacy is a dead end yadda yadda. There's some validity there, because strategically speaking, there's a paradox: AI civ's should exploit weaker civ's to take their stuff for themselves, but they should also collude with other weaker civ's against stronger civ's. I think the solution is ultimately that early game should involve preying on the weak, while the latter game should involve collusion against the strong. It's one thing to give an AI a fixed pattern of behavior, but it's another to give them a spectrum of choices.

 

[Arms Longfellow]

I think the solution is ultimately that early game should involve preying on the weak, while the latter game should involve collusion against the strong.

But then what would be the incentive for the player who had been playing peacefully up to that point to not just declare war on his weak neighbours and take all their cities, if everybody is going to hate him anyway once he gets too advanced, wealthy, and cultured? Already I feel like there's little incentive to play peacefully since, for some strange reason, even if I never warmong, I can rarely get a fair deal in the late game trading my luxuries to my best friends who have declared friendship/alliance and +60 diplomacy with me.

 

[steveg700]

But then what would be the incentive for the player who had been playing peacefully up to that point to not just declare war on his weak neighbours and take all their cities, if everybody is going to hate him anyway once he gets too advanced, wealthy, and cultured?

So, your implicit social contract with the AI civ's is to not go on a rampage if they'll agree not aggressively contest you coasting to victory?

To answer your question, you should have no such incentive. Your weaker neighbors should have been forming alliances and doing research agreements and anything else they can do to improve their station and prevent you from pulling so far ahead in the first place.

Already I feel like there's little incentive to play peacefully since, for some strange reason, even if I never warmong, I can rarely get a fair deal in the late game trading my luxuries to my best friends who have declared friendship/alliance and +60 diplomacy with me.

By a fair deal I gather you mean an even-steven deal, one lux for one lux, open borders for open borders? If so, then next time you feel like you're getting a raw deal, look at how you're doing and how they're doing. Sure, if you're making 500 GPT to their 30, and/or have three times as many luxuries, they figure their chum can give up a bit more. Because, y'know....you can.

If you want to go warmonger, then do it. If you don't, then don't. It hardly matters at a point where winning is a fait-accompli.

 

[steveg700]

The problem with this is that it means victory may not go to the Civ which is doing the best. I've played board games with a system like this and it can be very frustrating when victory is handed because of how the game computes it, when one player has clearly had a better game in the eyes of everyone who played. Having as a victory condition "First to do X" avoids that because everyone is constantly assessing each others strength based on how close to X they are. This isn't a deal breaking aspect, but it is one that requires careful thought. It would be very irritating to lose a game when you're about to wipe out another player because they happened to have built some castles 300 turns ago.

If the score is an aggregate of a multitude of achievements, then on what basis would building castles 300 turns ago be deemed the chief reason someone won? And a better question still, what esd that frustrated loser doing 300 turns ago while the winner was building those castles?

If a player won even though in the eyes of some another player had a better game, I think they should re-examine what having a "better game" amounts to. Working harder isn't necessarily working smarter. Of course, some games just aren't balanced or fair. In a game of Diplomacy, the Austria player is a marked man, Just so, in Civ, you can certainly wind up forced to fend off aggression for the sake of survival rather than prosperity. Then again, with the point-salad system I'm suggesting, fending off aggression could be the basis for racking up some achievement points.

 

[Arms Longfellow]

So, your implicit social contract with the AI civ's is to not go on a rampage if they'll agree not aggressively contest you coasting to victory?

To answer your question, you should have no such incentive. Your weaker neighbors should have been forming alliances and doing research agreements and anything else they can do to improve their station and prevent you from pulling so far ahead in the first place.

If it's inevitable that all civilizations in the game will start forming mass alliances against you once you start threatening to win the game, this effectively renders diplomacy meaningless in the late game, and further rewards warmongers who just conquer whatever they want and don't care what the world thinks of them. The concept that all the civs are trying to win the game and will prevent others from winning the game at all costs is extremely "gamey" and is a valid preference to have, but to me it breaks the immersion that you're the leader of a country who must not only build up his country, but skillfully negotiate with other countries as well.

By a fair deal I gather you mean an even-steven deal, one lux for one lux, open borders for open borders? If so, then next time you feel like you're getting a raw deal, look at how you're doing and how they're doing. Sure, if you're making 500 GPT to their 30, and/or have three times as many luxuries, they figure their chum can give up a bit more. Because, y'know....you can.

If you want to go warmonger, then do it. If you don't, then don't. It hardly matters at a point where winning is a fait-accompli.

By fair deal I mean that they won't even give me 100 gold for one of my luxuries, exactly the same as those civs who have denounced me. One of the biggest incentives for nurturing friendships should be to gain valuable trading partners. If I restrain myself from conquering vulnerable lands so the world doesn't hate me, then I want some kind of advantage for doing so. Becoming an international pariah is hardly punished at all as it stands right now.

 

[Leyrann]

I remember how older civs had checkboxes like "ruthless AI", so apparently it isn't all that hard to change AI behaviour based on a checkbox, so you could always make "AI will do everything to stop someone else from winning" a toggle.

 

[Arms Longfellow]

I'd be down for that. I don't like it as the default AI behaviour, but it would make for a great game mode.

Also I just checked one of my old save games, and maybe you can get fair deals for luxuries after all. Overall, it's just inconsistent, unclear, and needs adjusting. One of my allies offered me 700 gold, another only offered 97 gold. Is it because they're already receiving the luxury from another civilization? Right now we can only see which luxuries they domestically possess, not ones they're getting from someone else. And if this is the case, then why do civilizations still pay for multiple copies of the exact same resource? Is the guy who offered me 700 gold really hurting for amenities, as opposed to the other guy who isn't? Diplomacy is still rough and needs work to be as polished as Civ 5's.

That's another reason why it should be important to avoid warmongering, by the way. If Civs didn't pay you for multiple copies of the same resource (which can't possibly benefit them), it would become more important to avoid alienating civs so you could secure multiple trading partners.

 

[Leyrann]

You could make it a hybrid, I'd say. You get VP for having a strong army, having improved cities, etc, but also for being the first to circumnavigate the globe, build wonder X, etc. Important will be that a meaningful amount of victory points is handed out only at the end of the game, while you can look up who would get them if the game were to end now.

 

[juanpavo]

The downside of this approach, however, is that it can grant victory to an empire that is clearly not the strongest.

This should be avoided it at all possible. It was shocking to me that you could win Civ5 BNW with just a few cities and a microscopic army.

 

[Vaclac]

One of the points in the article is that the game gets boring once expansion and exploration are done, which I agree with. One approach to solve this would be to have a "Terra" type of map be the default game mode, ensuring that there is a second wave of exploration and expansion to occur later in the game.
Alternatively you could have limits to expansion exist which go away with certain techs and/or civics, creating waves of exploration and expansion, rather than just continuous exploration and expansion throughout the game. For example, you could not allow for settling or conquering cities that didn't connect to your existing cultural borders until you get some colonization civic in the renaissance era which allows them to be treated as colonies. At that point you would have a new incentive to explore the world, settle open land, and conquer weak countries all over the place, rather than your immediate neighbors. You could also make colonies start causing unhappiness until you let them be independent based on some emancipation mechanism, similar to civ4's civic, so that you would know when expanding all over the world that the boost will be temporary. It may still be worth it, but it's less of a snowball because you know it will end. It also creates a tradeoff where if you are in a more marginal position to go off colonizing the world you might prefer to focus on your core empire, research techs that will cause emancipation problems faster for your colony-loving AI friends and hope to catch back up with them when their global colonies declare independence.
I think another critical component is the tech diffusion. If your science automatically bleeds to the AI and vice versa, it lessens the runaway nature of a science lead. Of course it is always valuable to be one step ahead, but diffusion can keep you from snowballing beyond that. Similarly, if you want to avoid focusing on science, you will end up permanently one wave of techs behind, but not more than that, and maybe you can compensate by being strong in other areas. It would at least open up more different strategies.

 

[king of nowhere]

I have to go against the current here and say that snowballing is not the problem, merely a symptom of the problem. And that every measure to prevent snowballing would be worse than the problem.

I play civ4 competitively (closed games with passwords joinable only by invite; except that now only a handful of people still play civ4 and there's no need for passwords anymore), and snowballing isn't a problem there. Why? Because everyone is matched closely enough that they will stay close. This is especially true of team games, because if one player is doing particularly good or bad, the rest of his team averages it out a bit. Those games often enough run for 3+ hours with both sides separated only by half a dozen turns in tech. In the case of ffa, while one or two players will often drop out, having more than two players reaching nukes together is not rare; afterwards, the game always ends in a big nuclear war.
Civ4 had some small anti-snowball measures; namely, research would become cheaper the more other people had researched it, and the stack-catapult mechanics made it so that a significantly bigger army was required to invade, so small advantages did not snowball. Those were mechanics that made sense and did not penalyze the players; they were also mechanics with a very definite cap, and if you could go past that point, you won. Games could easily be surrendered by then. In fact, they were often surrendere at the first city conquered, or at most at the second.

So I argue that the problem is not that there is snowballing, but that players of too different strenghts are pitted together. Of course if you take a strong and a weak player, the strong player is going to snowball and win. That's what's supposed to happen in a competitive game when a player is stronger. To deny this mechanic would be to decrease strategy and thought in the game: decisions wouldn't matter than much anymore, because it is always possible to make a comeback later. This is how casual games are designed, to be played without much effort and such that everyone can win once in a while. They are different types of games, and appeal to different people, and civilization is firmly rooted in the "strategy geek" side and should remain there.
If we need a fix, it could be to introduce some ranking. Other games where snowballing is an important consequence of early decisions and that are meant to be deeply strategical are chess and league of legends, and both have ranking systems and games between players of too different levels are boring. And in both cases games of skilled people are protracted and entertaining because of the thin-edge equilibrium and the careful balance. And the victory condition is not whatever arbitrary win condition the game has set, but merely snowballing; when you snowball, your opponent surrender. At professional levels, chess games almost never end in checkmate; they end when one player has secured enough advantage to snowball, or they end in draw if no player can manage it. No boring protracted endgames with a foregone conclusion.

Let us not castrate players who perform too well, arbitrarily trying to force them into some kind of equality with the others. Let's rather put those players who perform too well against other players of similar strenght, so that all can enjoy a nice game. And let's not put more random events to give the underdog hope that a lucky roll of the dice will lead to an undeserved victory; rather let's recalibrate random events so that they will statistially even out for every player, so that snowballing will be only dictated by one's skill. civ4 did it well enough.

 

[Bactrian]

I don't expect this will be popular, but I think one of Civ's problems is that there are victory conditions at all, and the way their existence skews the overall balance of the game. To have a domination victory means you have to make it (relatively) easy for someone to conquer the entire world, and that someone is, by definition, a runaway leader. I suggest making Time the only victory condition, combined with a more general orientation toward success and failure being measured by the simple fact of survival ("to stand the test of time"). This means much more punishing gameplay, but I find small or moderate gains that are hard won much more satisfying than a cruise to victory. I don't mean to advocate simply upping the bonuses the AI gets, but to move the game mechanics toward making strength in every aspect of growth important (no more min-maxing to victory), and to make it difficult to have your empire hitting on all cylinders. Maybe I should start thinking about a mod...

 

[steveg700]

The alternative is to give VP for things that aren't directly linked to making a civ more powerful. For example, being the first to build 3 castles, circumnavigate the globe, discover all natural wonders, etc... These things are more interesting because they force the player to choose between gaining some VP or becoming stronger (and, hopefully, using that strength to gain even more VP later on). The downside of this approach, however, is that it can grant victory to an empire that is clearly not the strongest. Someone might have been quick at getting everything all the 'side projects' that give VP while having an empire that is lacking in cities, population, army and resources. This may feel wrong to players even though it is pretty much exactly what the system is designed for.

Well, the issue is what criteria is used to define "stronger". Improving research, production, city expansion, population, economy, and many other factors contribute to an empire's strength.

Now, this can be countered by including achievements that small-tall civ's can pursue. These can involve reaching milestones in a single city, such as population, amenities, city defense strength, number of buildings, number of tiles improved, multiple wonders, etc. And, like I said, you could even provide achievements for achievements that are accomplished specifically when a civ is not the strongest or highest-ranked in an area, such as resisting an invasion from a stronger civ.

 

[king of nowhere]

I think you are going less against the current than you say. You are of course right, a better player should win. But the questions are:
How big a difference in skill level is required to win 100% of games?
Which skills in the game matter the most?

The first question is important because not all (or even a sizeable minority) of Civ games take place in a 1v1 mirrored map. There is a lot of randomness involved. You want there to be some uncertainty in the outcome. A tiny difference in advantage (from skill or luck) at the start of the game leads to a bigger difference in power at the end of the game. The important thing is how much this difference increases by. If it is too small, then early skill (or the map) doesn't matter enough. If it's too big, the game is decided way before the end, and we never get to see the late game. From your description, Civ4 hit the sweet spot in the case of closely matched players, probably in part because of the very mechanics you describe. But most people who play Civ don't want to find human players that are close enough to their skill level and play an entire game on quick speed in one sitting. They want to play epic/marathon, in their own time, vs an AI. This AI's 'skill' can be tuned via difficulty levels, but it can never be fine grained enough to match the player exactly. Furthermore, the randomness inherent to the game makes such exact matching of early advantage impossible in practice. So we need the threshold at which early game advantage translates to automatic win to be significantly higher. Not disappear altogether, but be higher. This is done by reducing snowballing.

The second question also comes into this. With steep snowballing, early game skills matter the most because no level of skill later on in the game can ever catch up. This makes the late game not matter and kills ton of the interesting features that Civ has. Again, we don't want late game skills to overpower early game skills, just to balance it. If nothing else it kills replayability if your initial build order makes-or-breaks the game more than anything else.

You bring good points, which ultimately lead to the fact that different players like different kinds of games and it's impossible to please anyone.

regarding the "early game optimization vs late game optimization", the argument is ill-defined. by the time one has a bigger empire with twice as much production of everything, then he has won and there's no realistic way to get back, save for intentional suicide of the stronger player. in that case, late game decisions are really made irrelevant. however, if better early game decisions lead to a 20% more production of everything, there is still enough margin to recover. And among players of similar skills, that's the kind of differences that are usually to be expected.

I admit I am not much of an expert of Civ6 balance; I have a much greater experience with civ4. So I don't know how skewed is the civ6 balance. but here are a few things about snowballling that most of us can agree
1) if snowballling comes from MUCH better play, then it is not a problem, and in fact it should stay there.
2) the treshold for snowballing should be high enough that random factors like starting location do not automatically translate to a victory. it should also be low enough that consistently good decisions can snowball in the face of consistently acceptable decisions
3) great differences among players should snowball. Small differences should equalize.

I think the most important point is 3). To address it, I think flat bonuses are the best way. in the case of civ4, it was a tech bonus up to 20% if you lagged behind in tech; that way, with a small difference in research you coul still stay close to the lead. they'd be a few turns ahead, and with skill they could use that to their advantage, but it certainly wasn't an auto-win. but if someone had a tech advantage greater than 20% over everyone else, he'd keep on growing. Good thing: small advantage is equalized, past a certain point it snowballs. Same for war, you needed 20% to 80% more army than the other guy to kill him, depending on terrain, promotions and somesuch. Good thing; a slightly greater army can give you more room to try manuevers, like sending some of it to your alllies on the other side or embarking some of it and trying to open a second front, but it does not guarantee victory, while an overwhelmingly bigger army is an insta-win button.
As long as those checks are in place and balanced reasonably well, snowballing is a healty mechanic.

 

[king of nowhere]

Well, the issue is what criteria is used to define "stronger". Improving research, production, city expansion, population, economy, and many other factors contribute to an empire's strength.

Now, this can be countered by including achievements that small-tall civ's can pursue. These can involve reaching milestones in a single city, such as population, amenities, city defense strength, number of buildings, number of tiles improved, multiple wonders, etc. And, like I said, you could even provide achievements for achievements that are accomplished specifically when a civ is not the strongest or highest-ranked in an area, such as resisting an invasion from a stronger civ.

I don't like that because it is too random. To win means to be the biggest baddest on the map; winning or losing based on some arbitrary condition that has little to do with power (one of the many ways that "power" can manifest in this game) is terribly unsatisfying to me. The way culture victory works is already borderline

 

[OnceAKing]

I haven't had the opportunity to read the whole thread so my apologies, I had these ideas leap to my head.


While I agree the late game is a problem, I don't think adding background and invisible mechanics is the best way to resolve the issue.


I think, that while real life doesn't always translate to good game play, in this instance I think it can.


Civil War and Rebellion - While being a god like figure is one of the selling points, I think intrinsic tension within an EMPIRE should be as difficult as it is from the outside. I think the spectre of civil war and Rebellion should be ever present throughout the game play.


Colonialization - this has shown up in many forms and is an annual requests from fanatics. I think Civ6 sets up well with this, considering the cultural gameplay that's been added since 5 and the continents in 6. Make it so that continents can increase the likelihood for rebellion. Make it so that cultural differences can also exhasperate this problem. Perhaps make it so early game pantheons are based on region rather than empire so that this can illustrate a type of culture that has no border or empire allegiance but can be a factor towards civil war.


Coalitions - Hitler was a snowball. As he grew in strength, a coalition formed across a variety of government types and cultures to beat him back. Simply put. If someone is close to a domination victory a coalition should be prompted to start a multifront war against him.


Scientific Leaps - Exponential scientific growth discoveries are often prompted by exesistential threats. Things like plague, flooding, holding empire together, beating back a warmonger, climate change, asteroids. These exponential threats spur scientific innovation. These type of events should be added to flavor the game and spur all sorts of Civs to reach for science victories. For example, in real life, America was well on it's way to a science victory but threats like cyber warfare and global warming have prompted many civs to innovate and arguably surpass America in various categories. Not because of the American impending victory, but because of extrensic threats.


Economic Trade and Corps - another favorite in the community. Trade impacts the why, where and when of warfare in the modern age. For example 2 superpowers like America and China won't do open warfare mainly because of economic MAD.


Assymetric Warfare - Korea, Afghanistan, Vietnam are just a few examples of how massive empires can get derailed fighting what amount to city states. Don't overpower it but make it so that assymetric warfare is viable as a DEFENSIVE tactic against a snowball civ. Especially if you add cold war mechanics of clandestine support from third parties and trade and economics.


Example. If real life followed civ rules, a civ like Assyria should have snowballed into 1 of like 4 superpowers in today's age. Yet it's real life equivalent is a quagmire of war for all major parties in the world. Let's look at what factors have prevented snowballs in our current time and apply them To game mechanics.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

Example. If real life followed civ rules, a civ like Assyria should have snowballed into 1 of like 4 superpowers in today's age. Yet it's real life equivalent is a quagmire of war for all major parties in the world. Let's look at what factors have prevented snowballs in our current time and apply them To game mechanics.

Well, I mean I think the main reason is that leaders aren't immortal and don't have complete and utter control over the entire civilization's actions. Real Civs aren't playing with an "end game" in mind most of the time. Nobody ever researches iron working with the mindset that it will lead to mechanized infantry one day. One start would be random tech advancement (in the fashion of Alpha Centauri) but people would hate that.

 

[Tacgnol]

Not gonna read the entire thread but, that kind of thinking literally just punishes success and makes the late game more of a slog and winning even slower and more boring.

Kind of like Civ 5's happiness system that directly punishes growth and expansion, and makes the game IMO the least fun of the entire franchise even if it does limit runaway expansion more than IV or VI.

There needs to be a reward for doing well, and being able to dominate the last few civs in the game with bombers and tanks against their knights provides that. Especially for kids, who are much more of the game's market than serious adults who want a full-game challenge on Deity.

 

[God of Kings]

I am in favour of having civs forming alliances against players who have a large lead, human or AI.

It happens with multiplayer games quite often.