Addition of Dark Ages

[qwerty25]

I was wondering about how much of a snowball effect researching technology can have in the game and also of the Golden ages and thought about an opposite occurence.
(not sure if it can still be balanced for civ 5, but for civ 6 if most of research works the same way this event would be quite interesting)

So the event would work mostly like how it sounds like, research would be stalled and all techs would cost more for some time. (maybe 15 turns??) The effect would most pronounced in countries that are the most ahead in science giving the others a chance to catch up. This would prevent countries from gaining too much of a runaway advantage in technology. This would also let players experince that era for a longer time.

It would probably happen just randomly. But, I guess it could be an espionage event or maybe if say a library world wonder was destroyed it could occur.

Some dangers I see with this is if a small, but high science producing nation is caught by this event and has to face a military nation who just has to keep pumping out units. Though in most games, the nations with the largest armies have the decent tech, so I don't think this will be too much of a problem.

Thoughts on this??

 

[Gatsby]

The developers of Civ3 considered adding dark ages to the game, but in the end they decided against it because they said it would be too "unfun". It's generally a no-no in game design to arbitrarily and unnecessarily punish the player, and it's particularly undesirable to punish a player for playing too well (e.g. getting ahead in science).

That said, I agree with you that there needs to be some sort of dark ages feature because imo it would enhance both realism and gameplay. But rather than having dark ages that either occur randomly or as a direct result of playing the game too well, they should be more organic and implicit. They also need to be part of a trade-off that can also impart benefits of some kind to the player.

What I mean by "organic" is that they should occur primarily as a result of how the player plays the game. This would likely involve a radical rethink of the whole structure and the overall theme of the game, e.g. making the game less about achieving arbitrary victory conditions and more of a sandbox-style game that focuses on standing the test of time.

To make organic dark ages, it is necessary to look at the causes and circumstances of historical dark ages. For example the European dark ages that followed the fall of the Roman empire were essentially the result of the collapse of a large sophisticated empire in that region of the world. In many respects the Roman empire carried the seeds of its own destruction, and these seeds started to germinate in Rome's glory days. In the end it was a complex interplay of internal and external stresses (mostly relating to the empire becoming too large and complex to expand any further and maintain itself) that bought about the empire's protracted collapse, thereby ushering in "The Dark Ages".

The point I'm trying make here is that dark ages should be a natural consequence of how you play the game: civs should always be trying to meet the challenges posed by pressures such as political stability, climate change, plagues, natural disasters, environment and resource degradation, foreign wars and barbarians. One option for meeting these challenges should be expansion, but if you try to expand too far and/or fast these challenges should naturally become more intense so that they overwhelm your empire and cause it to decline. Even if you don't over-expand but just don't do enough to prevent and protect your empire from these risks, this should still put you in danger of decline/collapse.

Dark ages should also be "implicit" in that it should be naturally apparent based on the ebb and flow your game that you are in a dark age, rather than actually having the game explicitly announce 'your empire is in a dark age'. If you start:

• losing cities and experiencing armed revolts due to political instability
• losing knowledge of already-discovered technologies
• getting overrun by barbarian armies and migrants
• experiencing land degradation and resource depletion due to overexploitation
• experiencing rapid inflation and financial paralysis
• losing infrastructure due to pillaging and natural disasters faster than you can rebuild it
• being more severely affected by famines, plagues, and natural disasters
• feeling compelled to keep increasing your bureaucracy even as it becomes increasingly ineffective
• being compelled to run civics which do not support scientific or cultural advance but have advantages in terms of defence, sustainability and social cohesion

then it should be clear that your empire is experiencing collapse and entering into a dark age.

A major advantage of not having the game explicitly mention dark ages is that the term "dark ages" has very negative connotations, even though the phenomenon they describe is not necessarily all bad. Another way to look at dark ages is to regard them as a natural and normal part of the life cycle of civilizations. I once read a very interesting article which proposed that the middle ages were actually a natural solution to the systemic problems of the Roman Empire; had the Romans seen the tide of history turning toward the middle ages and tried to work with that tide rather than fight it, much more of the ancient Western world's knowledge and culture - and perhaps even the Roman Empire itself - might have survived through late antiquity. So maybe in-game dark ages could offer advantages and opportunities for civs such as improved sustainability and greater cultural unity, particularly if civs had the option to proactively scale down their expansion so that they could improve their resilience (and thus their prospects of long-term survival) in the face of various in-game challenges.

 

[WiseMan999]

Hmm, I like this idea. It would obviously have to apply to the AI too of course, but I think it might set up a nice rhythm between empires over the game of expansion and consolidation/retreat as the empire became too much to hold. I agree with Gatsby though that punishing the player for playing well or even just randomly would only result in lots of very annoyed people. It needs to be a natural and unforced event, as opposed to for example the random events from BTS.

As to Gatsby's points, I thought I'd add my thoughts on them.

Losing Cities/Armed Insurrection: I like this idea and if you linked it to the extent of the empire it would provide a natural limit on expansion. So for example a city that is further from the capital would be less under their control politically and more likely to revolt. You would need to be able to increase it's loyalty and the political control you have over it though. Possibly it would be more loyal the less time it takes to get from the capital to the city in question, the more culturally aligned it is with it, buildings (unlocked by techs) could increase the amount of control you have over it and military units stationed there/nearby. Also it could act somewhat like religion with cities exerting pressure on each other to become loyal/disloyal and if one revolted the chance of nearby cities revolting increases. It would be interesting too if cultural borders and political borders were two different things, a revolting city might share the same songs and legends as you but still wish to be independent. If borders became more fluid revolt would become much more fun.

Losing Techs: Don't see how this could really be implemented without having hundreds of techs, generally the things lost in a dark age were not the big ideas (which is what techs are in Civ) but smaller things - for example europe might lose ideas as regards the organisation of cavalry but they didn't lose the idea of horse riding itself. I'm not sure though, it might be doable.

Getting overrun by Barbarians/Migrants: You would have to generate quite a few barbarian units I would say to generate a good risk of them actually taking cities. Going with the idea above, if cultural and political borders were separate then it might be good for barbarian culture to spread on its own. Then where your cultural borders and the barbarian culture intersect there would be an increased risk of barbarian units spawning. Also since barbarians were generally not suicidal there should be an increased chance that if they spawn they spawn near the weakest defended city.

Land Degradation: This would be very annoying. I'm not sure how this could be implemented without being annoying. The only reason Global Warming was acceptable is that it was late game and the game had usually been decided already.

Inflation/Financial Paralysis: The financial model in Civ is not particularly conducive to inflation, especially if it unlimited, because the land is limited and for some reason almost all money comes from improvements on the land. It might work if taxes played a large part of how much money you get, because larger cities would obviously provide more money to counteract. Some way to counteract it would be vital no matter how it was implemented - maybe controlling the issue of currency like in real life? A percentage slider for currency (unlocked with tech) that can go negative (taking currency out of circulation) or positive. Or maybe interest rates (later techs)? Presumably trade would take a sharp decline too, because the empire would be caught up in it's own problems.

Losing Infrastructure: Not sure, it would depend on how it was implemented.

Famines/Plagues/Natural Disasters: See Previous point.

Civics: Obviously you're thinking in terms of Civ4 here - I personally prefer them over SP's because you can change them. Social unrest forcing you into civics (assuming they make a comeback) sounds like a good idea. I was thinking that certain civics could have different synergy with other civics that make them more likely to occur/cheaper to maintain. It might however be annoying.

One thing that I think would be useful would be the ability to rescind control over a city and leave it to it's own devices. Sort of like vassals in Civ4, but not tied to you like they were.

Something that would tend to put a damper on these ideas (IMO) is the fact that the turn times in the early game cover a large amount of time - so anything that takes several turns would be unreasonably long in chronological terms. Shortening the time they cover and increasing early game options would IMO make a civ game better than it has been so far. Anyway, I like this idea but think it would take a lot of work to implement well.

 

[Gatsby]

Yes I think a distinction between cultural and political borders is a great idea. I also like the ideas of 'loyalty meters' for cities that can mutually affect one and other, and of barbarians spawning in regions bordering barbarian territories.

In order to make the losing technology mechanic work, I think it would be necessary to flesh out the tech tree by adding more technologies across all eras. In game terms, technology loss would be uncommon and only occur when a civ is undergoing serious turbulence/collapse. A lot of cultural and scientific knowledge was lost when the Roman Empire fell, partly due to destruction of pagan temples and places of learning by Christian fanatics, and partly because the economic base that supported specialised industries and institutions collapsed along with the Roman Empire. For example, knowledge of pottery making was highly developed within a specialised pottery industry in Roman times, and when the economy that supported that industry collapse along with the Roman Empire itself, knowledge of pottery making in western Europe regressed so much that pottery considered fit for a plebeian in Roman times was considered fit for royalty in the Dark Ages.

So in game terms a civ would be in danger of losing technology when it reaches an advanced stage of collapse and/or adopts certain civics that are hostile to science and non-state religions (but also conducive to sustainability and political stability). However building monasteries of your civ's state religion would also lessen the likelihood of losing technology in the aforementioned circumstances, e.g. Christian monasteries preserving bits of ancient pagan knowledge and culture through the Dark Ages.

Land and resource degradation I see as being tied in with a larger dynamic environment mechanic that would also include depletion of water sources and climate change. It was very unfortunate imo that the developers of Civ's 3-5 did not run with SMAC's brilliant global dynamic environment mechanic and try to refine it further: every Civ game since SMAC has left a great deal to be desired in this area. The Civ5 approach to strategic resources was a step in the right direction, and the resource system I'm imagining would similarly involve varying units of a resource assigned to each resource tile, with each unit of resource being used up by certain units and buildings. So please understand that I do not envision a ridiculous arbitrary land and resource degradation mechanic along the lines of the so-called global warming mechanics of Civ's 3 and 4.

As I imagine them, land and resource degradation would primarily be a function of population growth, intensity of resource usage, deforestation, and climate change (both natural and human-induced). For example: the game would keep a record of which tiles had forests chopped down, and those tiles would stand a chance of desertification that would initially be small and increase gradually over time. Building and working farms on these deforested tiles and (in some cases) climate change would each increase the long-term likelihood of desertification; however civs could reduce this probability by not working those farms for a while, or by reforesting them. I think that such a mechanic could help counter the happy-happy-choppy-chop that was such a popular strategy (dare I say exploit?) in Civ4. Of course players would still have the option to chop every forest in site for food and short-term production bonuses, grow and expand rapidly, and intensively exploit their resources for short term military and economic advantage, but this sort of behaviour would also set them up for the collapse from over-expansion that I mentioned in my above post. Certain civics and technologies could also affect the likelihood of land and resource degradation.

I'm not too sure how financial paralysis and inflation could be properly implemented, but it might involve a "currency" category of civics. Players would be able to choose from a number of currency civic options such as "coinage" and "floating", and each of these options would have their own sets of pros and cons in terms of things like commerce, spending, economic crises and inflation.

Infrastructure loss could occur as a result of barbarian pillaging, insurrectionist pillaging, and natural disasters.

The incidence of natural disasters would be influenced by climate change, proximity to certain terrain features (e.g. volcanoes, fault lines), deforestation, the level of geological activity chosen by the player at game start-up, and rare random events (e.g. asteroid strikes). In most cases natural disasters would have comparable effects to the random natural disasters of Civ4.

Famines would tend to occur in areas that experienced land degradation, fresh water depletion, economic crises and political instability. Their effect might be similar to the random famines that sometimes occurred in SMAC. Civs could also occasionally experience bumper crops similar to those in SMAC, and the likelihood of these could also be affected by factors such as climate change.

Plagues would work similarly to how they worked in Rhys and Fall of Civilization (Civ4), however they would be more likely to start where there are pastures, when/where a city has a lot of unhealthiness, and during times of political instability. Like famines, plagues could both arise from and exacerbate political instability.

I also very much agree with your idea of being able to rescind control over cities. I think players should also be able to exercise various kinds of control over cities, e.g. being able to progressively assume/rescind control over a city's diplomatic relations, research priorities, building orders, and military units. This would be a great way to take forward the city-state concept of Civ5. I also agree with you about shortening the time frame that early turns cover, and following from this I also think that the total number of turns for all game speeds needs to be increased along with the number of city buildings and military units.