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[steveg700]

My post about wanting to win with "power" was in reply to some suggestions that victory points be awarded for some random achievements that didn't really require any kind of dominance.

Well, words like "power" and "domination" have broad and subjective application. Any achievement that has been suggested requires you to excel at something. You mention various expressions of power, but in Civ productivity (or industry, if you will) is a core expression of power. Civilizations can make the history books for their prowess at architecture and engineering. Wonders have become a facile expression of that power.

The big issue that this expression of "power" you're talking about really boils down is to hyper-specialization, which generally leads to the unexciting by-the-numbers rote strategies that inspired the creation of this thread. A civ is deemed the best civilization in the world because of min-maxing one aspect of the game, basically meaning that if you ever tried to pivot you were doing yourself a disservice. You should decide to go for a tech victory early on, which amounts to slamming down campuses and not bothering with museums. So, this domination isn't the result of daring decisions so much as it is...spamming.

For tourism, I'm not really clear on how that works, and I noticed that at some point foreign tourists keep growing while domestic tourists don't, and well, maybe if I understood better how the tourists are calculated I would like that win condition more..

Domestic tourists are based on a civ's total Culture output, while foreign tourists are based on Tourism output. So, spam theater districts, maybe try to build some wonders (depending on difficulty), chase the topmost branch of the civic tree, and for the most part just wait until after Flight to really see the needle start to move.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well, words like "power" and "domination" have broad and subjective application. Any achievement that has been suggested requires you to excel at something. You mention various expressions of power, but in Civ productivity (or industry, if you will) is a core expression of power. Civilizations can make the history books for their prowess at architecture and engineering. Wonders have become a facile expression of that power.

The big issue that this expression of "power" you're talking about really boils down is to hyper-specialization, which generally leads to the unexciting by-the-numbers rote strategies that inspired the creation of this thread. A civ is deemed the best civilization in the world because of min-maxing one aspect of the game, basically meaning that if you ever tried to pivot you were doing yourself a disservice. You should decide to go for a tech victory early on, which amounts to slamming down campuses and not bothering with museums. So, this domination isn't the result of daring decisions so much as it is...spamming.


Domestic tourists are based on a civ's total Culture output, while foreign tourists are based on Tourism output. So, spam theater districts, maybe try to build some wonders (depending on difficulty), chase the topmost branch of the civic tree, and for the most part just wait until after Flight to really see the needle start to move.

The "specialization" route can be avoided by having ways that you can be attacked.

A cultural power can be invaded, preventing them from making more advances, a scientific one can fall to internal strife from cultural pressure, a military one may lose their economy as it is diverted away.

So you specialize for achievement points, but you also have to defend in all areas to continue to make achievement points.

 

[king of nowhere]

The big issue that this expression of "power" you're talking about really boils down is to hyper-specialization, which generally leads to the unexciting by-the-numbers rote strategies that inspired the creation of this thread. A civ is deemed the best civilization in the world because of min-maxing one aspect of the game, basically meaning that if you ever tried to pivot you were doing yourself a disservice. You should decide to go for a tech victory early on, which amounts to slamming down campuses and not bothering with museums. So, this domination isn't the result of daring decisions so much as it is...spamming.

The "specialization" route can be avoided by having ways that you can be attacked.

A cultural power can be invaded, preventing them from making more advances, a scientific one can fall to internal strife from cultural pressure, a military one may lose their economy as it is diverted away.

So you specialize for achievement points, but you also have to defend in all areas to continue to make achievement points.

and those two factors bring some equilibrium into it. you have to specialize in something, but you can't completely neglect everything else. religion is the only thing you can really skip. you can't neglect military or you are invaded, you can't neglect science or you are invaded as your outdated army becomes useless, you can sort of neglect culture but you need at least some civics, you can't neglect money because you'll need that gold to buy stuff to get military, science or culture. You have to dominate a field while still being passable at everything else. Seems balanced well enough to me.

 

[steveg700]

and those two factors bring some equilibrium into it. you have to specialize in something, but you can't completely neglect everything else. religion is the only thing you can really skip. you can't neglect military or you are invaded, you can't neglect science or you are invaded as your outdated army becomes useless, you can sort of neglect culture but you need at least some civics, you can't neglect money because you'll need that gold to buy stuff to get military, science or culture. You have to dominate a field while still being passable at everything else. Seems balanced well enough to me.

Well, I submit that "be passable at everything else" is not promoting equilibrium. It's just saying you do the minimum to get by. It's not challenging the player to achieve anything.

Maximizing science tends to both give you both a reasonable victory condition and addresses issues with military, economy, and more.

And perhaps more to the point, even having achieved the goal of equilibrium, that doesn't necessarily produce a game with satisfying, dynamic decisions. You can have a game with balanced victory conditions, all of which are pursued in a static and routine fashion with no chance for upsets, surprises, no narrative, no stand-out moments. Balance is important, but by itself balance tastes kinda like Styrofoam.

 

[Drakul]

A good way to balance out war would be to make it so that wars contribute to a population loss. Example,for every 2 killed unist you get you minus 1 citizen. So even by conquering you would still not easely snowball others. If you win a war with your last 5-6 units,despite all the citites,resources you are still not the top dog because the war made you weak. Combined with the vassal system of civ4 and the mechanic that lost wars make you pay reparation costs could balance out wars. And a mechanic that makes you unit cost go higher if you play as wormonger. Because men want bigger payments for their service if everything in your empire is about war.

 

[steveg700]

A good way to balance out war would be to make it so that wars contribute to a population loss. Example,for every 2 killed unist you get you minus 1 citizen. So even by conquering you would still not easely snowball others. If you win a war with your last 5-6 units,despite all the citites,resources you are still not the top dog because the war made you weak. Combined with the vassal system of civ4 and the mechanic that lost wars make you pay reparation costs could balance out wars. And a mechanic that makes you unit cost go higher if you play as wormonger. Because men want bigger payments for their service if everything in your empire is about war.

See, that sounds like an interesting mod right there, where building military units actually consumes some population (not 1-for-1 like building a settler though, obviously). Then if you disband a unit, you can get some of it back. Then you can have some military policies that influence that.

 

[UWHabs]

A complimentary way would be for healing units to drain resources from your empire and your cities. The switch to units not instantly lethal combat in Civ5 means that the human player can easily win a war without losing any units. That is a big change from previous civs where, even if you were better, you would certainly bleed to capture cities.

You'd probably need some sort of "support lines" type of mechanism, where your units essentially eat global food from your cities. Whether that would always impact them, or only for healing, or what the deal was, that could be debated, but there definitely needs to be more punishment than the current war weariness mechanism if you continuously war.

 

[God of Kings]

You'd probably need some sort of "support lines" type of mechanism, where your units essentially eat global food from your cities. Whether that would always impact them, or only for healing, or what the deal was, that could be debated, but there definitely needs to be more punishment than the current war weariness mechanism if you continuously war.

Having armies eat food while at war would be a good idea.

A new civ's unique ability could include not needing to eat while at war.

 

[stinkubus]

Civ 5 had a supply cap.

 

[God of Kings]

Civ 5 had a supply cap.

In practice, the supply cap isn't reached upon entering the medieval era, even with an extremely large military; the lone exception is that Germany pre-BNW can reach the supply limit during the Renaissance era.

 

[Leyrann]

Well, I submit that "be passable at everything else" is not promoting equilibrium. It's just saying you do the minimum to get by. It's not challenging the player to achieve anything.

Maximizing science tends to both give you both a reasonable victory condition and addresses issues with military, economy, and more.

And perhaps more to the point, even having achieved the goal of equilibrium, that doesn't necessarily produce a game with satisfying, dynamic decisions. You can have a game with balanced victory conditions, all of which are pursued in a static and routine fashion with no chance for upsets, surprises, no narrative, no stand-out moments. Balance is important, but by itself balance tastes kinda like Styrofoam.

We need a Mastery Victory.

You'd probably need some sort of "support lines" type of mechanism, where your units essentially eat global food from your cities. Whether that would always impact them, or only for healing, or what the deal was, that could be debated, but there definitely needs to be more punishment than the current war weariness mechanism if you continuously war.

This is actually what Gedemon is working on in his (currently pre-alpha) mod. It looks friggin awesome.

Civ 5 had a supply cap.

I came across that cap only once, and that was when playing an OCC...

 

[Photi]

A new civ's unique ability could include not needing to eat while at war.

does that make their unique unit "speed freaks"?

 

[Drakul]

You'd probably need some sort of "support lines" type of mechanism, where your units essentially eat global food from your cities. Whether that would always impact them, or only for healing, or what the deal was, that could be debated, but there definitely needs to be more punishment than the current war weariness mechanism if you continuously war.

What about to use forts/citadels ? It functions in a lets say 8-12 tile radious and all units that are in that radious can heal. If the improvement is in your borders,units heal faster. Also even if it is outside your border,you need to connect it with a road.

 

[juanpavo]

What about to use forts/citadels ? It functions in a lets say 8-12 tile radious and all units that are in that radious can heal. If the improvement is in your borders,units heal faster.

Interesting idea. I'm in favor of giving greater significance to forts.