A little more 'chance' please....

[Pilotis]

Life.....It's just more random.

In Civ right now building projects or units and movement are SO predictable. Battles not so until you get to the big odds.

Anyway, could the guys give some thought to injecting more chance into building and moving.

e.g. moving. "I just have to TRY and get someone to stop that marauding git cavalry!"
We could make a 'force march' (FM) option available to all units but make the chance of success more likely and chance of damage less likely for more experienced units. Whether fail or succeed there might be some damage to the unit after FM is over. We could make the extent of FM optional too - but the further you push them the more likely damage (fail or succeed).

e.g. building. Probably more thought required but even now when slavery or money is used to hurry projects maybe we could introduce a 'gamble' button (you don't have to push it!) that allows us to go even faster (win) or slower (lose).

Huh?

 

[Hyronymus]

That sounds fun for once but it'll soon becoming annoying I think. You'll see that eventually people will have the 'bad luck' with a hurried building not being finished and reload the turn.

 

[Pilotis]

Hmmm. Good point. I've often wondered about how we could make 'reloads' not worth it or severe pain. (And yes I do it sometimes....rrrrr). Shame 'cos I've played other 'live' games where chance is introduced (based on a reasonable distribution curve) and it adds real tension to the gameplay.

 

[Hyronymus]

You might want to throw in the Iron Man feature from Alpha Centauri at the same time: quiting equals defeat.

 

[sligo]

Or just track reloads in the game, so when you get to your ending credits, you are actually penalized for reloads in your score. This has to be done carefully because you don't want a penalty for saving and starting where you left off. Perhaps a counter somewhere that tracks when a given turn is replayed.

- Sligo

 

[Hyronymus]

Or a mximum amount of loads per game .

 

[Lordclane]

If someone has more fun reloading all the time, why not let them? It's THEIR game. Game designers shouldn't be in some sort of war with their customers....

The forced march idea-- or at least variable march skills-- is an interesting one, though. What about making one of the combat advances be an additional movement point?

 

[lordex]

I would like to see the research system in Alpha Centauri come back, where you can only set the direction of the current research, but don't know exactly which one will come out until it does. Also it'd be more interesting to see some early finish/delay. E.g., it'd still report x number of turns to finish at the beginning, but every turn there'd be a small random modifier added to the research points. So then each tech might come a couple of turns early, or late, and you are gonna have to plan for it.

 

[Pilotis]

Also need more chance in the effects of bombardment. There are 'real' instances where the ruins of cities were actually more effective fortification than the original buildings. Moreso in modern times than ancient. Maybe we could have an 'Ambush II' promotion that means that unit recieves the city defence bonus even though its zeroed by bombardment for all other units......

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

man it could get real frustrating when you have real bad luck

 

[Elhoim]

Save restricted to exit...

 

[dh_epic]

You might be able to argue that real life is all causality and chance... with no free will. But even if this were SLIGHTLY true, a game should be designed around balanced choices.

I'm with you that the game could use more variety though.

 

[Mewtarthio]

^That really depends on what you mean by "free will." But this is neither the time nor the place for debating the very essence of existence.

 

[Spartan117]

i just watched master and commnader with russel crowe...

it would be pretty cool to have like withdrawal % high among all navy ships, damaged ships move slower, by the way with better bombardment, and all early naval units to carry at least 1 military unit...

the military units can board the other ship and capture it by defeating the military unit stationed in the defending ship...
but inorder to do this the attacking ship must be directly adjacent to enemy ship...
havent really thought this through too much but maybe some else can
i play with realsim mod so this would is meant to apply to new earlier naval units in the mod... privateer and ship of the line


wrong thread soorry

 

[JustAnotherUser]

You might be able to argue that real life is all causality and chance... with no free will. But even if this were SLIGHTLY true, a game should be designed around balanced choices.

I'm with you that the game could use more variety though.

True.

The main problem, I think, is that outside from other AI and barbarians (and of course the player) , in Civ4 NOTHING happens, that's why IMHO peace is so boring, your cities just grows, you build things, but unless a rival civ attack you or you attack them, well, that's it, there is no chance anything will disturb you.
I agree that the game would need some more random elements, some random events, arandom chance pf revolt for cities with unhappiness, for example or natural disasters, floods near rivers that destroy improvments on adiacent tiles, fire into forests, or even in cities, even some random positive events. speaking of random elements I'd like to see the "50% chance to lose a galley if it enter in a ocean tile" of previous civ. So you should not have to wait for galleons to expand in that land 2 sea squares away from your coast.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well the best thing here would be political events (essentially attacks from your own people.. so you really are always "at war" just some wars are fought differently than others)

 

[dh_epic]

I think the better thing to do than random events would be more things to compete over. Either there has to be more to compete over than just land, or there needs to be overall much more war. Otherwise, you do end with that boredom.

 

[mjs0]

Well the best thing here would be political events (essentially attacks from your own people.. so you really are always "at war" just some wars are fought differently than others)

I like that thought, especially "you really are always "at war" just some wars are fought differently than others"! Words to live by, at least when playing Civ4.

dh_epic, I agree with you about needing more to compete over or more wars, so why not have both...just different wars as Krikkitone implies. So, to provide more things to compete over and more ways to compete especially in the late game I would favour improvements in a couple of areas

1. The Economic model.
   As this could mean resource finds, trading and wars in distant lands could impact your civ in a way that has happened in the real world. (See my description of such a model here...http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=4007329&postcount=10.) I would really like to go further than this and envision game features that allowed the construction of multi-national corporations that siphoned profits from other nations but I don't have simple model for that in mind yet.
2. The Espionage/Subversive diplomacy model.
   One of the weakest areas today that could do with a lot of improvement. Consider how much of the history of the modern era since the discovery of atomic weapons has been driven by what happens behind the scenes. This would not just be spying in the traditional sense, but also the funding of insurgents to destabilize vassal nations of other civs and in effect the larger competing civs end up fighting most wars by proxy.
3. The Political/Government model
   The religion model has introduced interesting new dynamics in the game with effects felt in areas from diplomacy to finances. In the late game a similar model could be introduced to represent the ideological differences between different civs. (One approach would be to have Ideologies founded after the discovery of certain technologies just like religions, since in many ways they behave the same way in real life.) This would provide the domestic and international intrigue. It would provide another diplomatic variable and should lead to trading blocks and military allegiances similar but tangential to those caused by the religion model.
   I know civics is supposed to do some of this but the AIs "we love you because you chose our favourite civic" attitude just feels a little too abstract and is simply too weak a model to build much else on top of.

These should all be done in a way that provides more strategic choices and interesting decisions but without introducing large amounts of micromanagement. The way religion was introduced, whilst a little sterile for some tastes, is a great example of bringing in a complex real world concept in a simple yet elegant way.
These changes if done right should allow for civs to engage in cold war like 'hostilities' and keep the game interesting without always requiring the open hostility of warfare.

 

[dh_epic]

mjs0, I like the way you think. To me, my ideal game of Civ follow the template you laid out -- some people compete for land, some people compete for wealth, others compete for influence. It's almost like a paper-rock-scissors game in of itself.

Unfortunately, competing for wealth and influence aren't as robust concepts as competing for land in Civ. In Civ, land is everything, and that prevents the game from being truly multidimensional.

To me, there really are two approaches to making an ideal Civ game. One approach is to make it the ultimate turn-based empire game... but I happen to think that turn-based empire games will always be intrinsically less boring than real-time empire games. The other approach is exactly what we just talked about -- a multidimensional competition for supremacy that goes beyond just war.