Can Civ be made so comebacks are possible?

[Atlantean]

World Builder - you can immediately catch up to everyone....or just give yourself a little boost.

 

[mutax2003]

I think each AI should do its best to win the game. So for example, if one is about to win the space race, all other civs that are less than friendly status will want to gang up and take out the leader or at least stall its progress. I also like the feature in Civ 1 that requires an x number of turns before the spaceship can reach Alpha Centauri, in this time, you would often see dog-pile of civs declaring war on the launching civ, and if they capture the capital, the spaceship is lost. This feature would certainly add to the challenge of the game, and a civ would certainly shore up its military first before it presses the launch button. As an aside, all the parts built would be kept in secret, the only way to find out would be using spies and when the civ finally launches its ship.

 

[Art Vandelai]

What I've always advocated for the game, is that each resource on the map would have a finite limit as to how much can be extracted from that square. Once that limit is hit, the player would have to have another resource of that type in order to continue supporting the units requiring that resource.

It definitely makes sence in terms of the rise and fall of civilizations - a more aggressive civ would burn through its resources quickly, and then die as it overshoots the capacity of the land to sustain it.

For example, an oil resource may contain 10,000 "units" of oil. If each tank takes 10 units per turn, and the player has 50 tanks, that will cause the oil reserve to go down by 500 units each turn. After 20 turns, the player needs to get another oil resource somewhere else on the map, or those tanks will start to deteriorate (lose health) every turn. It would have to be such that the player could build up a force easily, but a large army of the most modern units would require much more resources to sustain. Certain buildings or even pop points might also have resource costs as the civilization becomes dependent on that resource. Modern technology might offset some of the costs as the game progresses. Resource trading would also be more important, as a player who had the key resources might wish to sell a portion to other civs (but not lose access to the resource entirely) for big coin.

Some resources might also have a per turn limit, meaning that it can only support a certain number of units per turn. e.g. 1 horse square could only support a maximum of 10 horse units, so if the player wants to build more, he has to have another resource available.

 

[shadow2k]

What I've always advocated for the game, is that each resource on the map would have a finite limit as to how much can be extracted from that square. Once that limit is hit, the player would have to have another resource of that type in order to continue supporting the units requiring that resource.

It definitely makes sence in terms of the rise and fall of civilizations - a more aggressive civ would burn through its resources quickly, and then die as it overshoots the capacity of the land to sustain it.

For example, an oil resource may contain 10,000 "units" of oil. If each tank takes 10 units per turn, and the player has 50 tanks, that will cause the oil reserve to go down by 500 units each turn. After 20 turns, the player needs to get another oil resource somewhere else on the map, or those tanks will start to deteriorate (lose health) every turn. It would have to be such that the player could build up a force easily, but a large army of the most modern units would require much more resources to sustain. Certain buildings or even pop points might also have resource costs as the civilization becomes dependent on that resource. Modern technology might offset some of the costs as the game progresses. Resource trading would also be more important, as a player who had the key resources might wish to sell a portion to other civs (but not lose access to the resource entirely) for big coin.

Some resources might also have a per turn limit, meaning that it can only support a certain number of units per turn. e.g. 1 horse square could only support a maximum of 10 horse units, so if the player wants to build more, he has to have another resource available.

Sounds like a lot of micro-management

 

[Head Serf]

That sounds like a really good idea but with Civ4's new smaller maps, it may be heard to implement. If Civ5 comes out with much larger maps, it might be easier to blanance and such.

 

[MxxPwr]

Civ4 is a good game, don't get me wrong. However, there were many games when I had too much lead over the AIs during the mid-game, I simply restarted because I knew I'm going to win anyway. In some other games, catching up a builder civ far away watching you beat up by two or three aggressive civs is also extremely difficult...The issue is, currently there are very few mechanisms to allow a late-game comeback if you're substantially behind after the mid-point of the game...I think the game should at least provide a few more winning paths for the lesser players, e.g....Any more ideas?

Random worldwide calamities that could pontentially hinder a top civ (AI or human).

 

[Reignking]

Gozilla from SimCity attacks!

 

[Lucas87]

I think people like to feel in control of their game. Random events may be acceptable but only if the player is to a significant extent control its damages. Nobody is going to want to just get ravaged by a random event without having anything they can do about it. One thing that I think would help with the rise at least is an improvement in golden ages. Right now they're just not very golden. I think you could definitely say that most civilizations in the game have had their golden age in history, but once that expired and/or a rival nation's started, they fell back to earth. You could even make golden ages by their nature expansionist, like you don't pay any maintenance in a golden age or something. Obviously if golden ages were to be greatly improved they would have to be made a little rarer and more expensive.

 

[MxxPwr]

What I've always advocated for the game, is that each resource on the map would have a finite limit as to how much can be extracted from that square. Once that limit is hit, the player would have to have another resource of that type in order to continue supporting the units requiring that resource...

Resources have excellent potential of showing rise&fall/balance.

I was thinking of an international market for resources. Civ 'A' would put their supply of a resource (like oil) up on the market and any unit trained that used that market (like by a civ not willing or capable of obtaining their own supply) would pay 'A' a certain amount of gold. The gold wouldn't have to come from the civ using the oil, it would just come from some phantom exchange. The amount the exchange paid out would be fractioned by competing supplies. If say, 4 gold per unit were paid out with just one oil supply on the market, then only 2 gpu would be paid out if there were 2 oil supplies on the market (2 gpu to each supply holder).

This would have some initial balancing effects in that one civ is no longer in deep trouble if it doesn't have a much needed resource, as long as at least one civ was greedy enough to put their supply on the market. And why wouldn't they? As soon as one civ did, there would be no reason for other civs to hold back.

A rise and fall effect could potentially arise once every 'oil' unit was made (or every civ got their own supply of oil) because a civ that got rich off of being the first one with oil would now be 'normal' (or be on the receiving end of a civ getting rich because of aluminum.)

Anyway, just thinking out loud.

 

[He-Who-Hunts]

Everyone knows that civs take a huge research hit for expanding right?

Well, maybe they could have it so if an empire gets so big and stays a certain size (say 6 million for comment sake), then a certain tech needs to be researched (befor a set number of years is up) in order for that empire to exist... say "civil upkeep", or "Mass order" or what have you

But because the civ is already takeing a major hit it would be very difficult for that to happen. then if the time expires the civ is thorwn into a backword type golden age... all cities loose production, money loss is huge, your units go on strike, science is virtually non existant.

And its right about then that the domestic adviser reminds you that giveing cities away will reduce this anarchy.

It would also help set the pase of history... that is, countries like the United states, with there masss population/expansion could exist in modern times, because they've researched all the nessesary population techs. While empires which are similer that existed in the ancient age, such as the Romans, would eventually fall.

 

[MxxPwr]

Gozilla from SimCity attacks!

Actually, I was thinking of plagues and typhoons from Romance...

 

[MxxPwr]

I think people like to feel in control of their game. Random events may be acceptable but only if the player is to a significant extent control its damages. Nobody is going to want to just get ravaged by a random event without having anything they can do about it...

True. I guess you could have certain buildings soften the damage from these calamties (like aquaducts or hospitals).

 

[heythere84]

I think they should have some kind of great person that would get created if you were at the bottom (or close to the bottom) of the scoring or tech race for a long period of time. I dunno what effects to give it but you could maybe have somewhat of a special golden age that would give you production bonuses, unit bonuses, science, and financial bonuses for a short period of time. There would have to be a limit on how many of these great people you could create though, something like 2 and on the 3rd strike, if you are still at the bottom of tech race and/or scoring, to bad. Wouldnt have any idea how to balance all this out but I am sure someone on this forum would know how to.

 

[heythere84]

Also, forgot to put this on my last post, I do support the idea of the chance of gaining a tech from taking a city. I think that if you capture a city and that city has an aqueduct, you should have some kind of percentage that you would get the tech. And if you captured another city that had another aqueduct and still dont have the technology yourself, that percentage could go up.

 

[LaborUnion]

How about a WTO loans and UN humanitary aid and such? i mean there are alot of things that can be done to make it difficult for the top dogs to stay in power. Lets say one civ just conquered half a continent, crushed opposing armies. If they have a different religion, and they are different culturaly in all then there would be guerilla warfare, terrorism, underground resistance, insurgents, rebels in conquered parts of the world. This will continue untill you either manage to maintain control of this region for too long so that conquered civ blends in with yours and resistance stops.

Also, today we dont see middle eastern countries use techs that only THEY have developed, i dont think that they have researched jet engines and heck even automatic weapons and yet they all use them so i suggest that when one civ enters some era, all others automatically enter this new era, it doesnt give them any new reasearches right away but all the researches that have been researched before hand are cheaper and those that have been researched say 30 turns ago are free. There is nothing more attrocious then to see tanks fight longbpwmen just because youre atacking a low developed civ.

 

[aaronflavor]

I agree with the OP, and I think there have been a lot of good suggestions. Firaxis would do well to pay attention here. Fixing this would remove much monotony from my games.

I think its important that the mechanism to allow late takeover come specifically from strategy, not from random or uncontrollable factors. Most of the significant civilizations that 'rose and fell' did so for reasons other than the competancy of the leaders. While not realistic, players (myself included) will be peeved if strategy has less impact than randomness.

Resources definitely are important here. Historically speaking, most of the 'great rises' have had at least something to do with discovery of new resources.

One mechanism that occurs to me for making late comebacks possible is delinearizing the tech and resource progression, and making certain tech paths more vulnerable to other tech paths. For example, a Civ with coal may make very powerful units, but perhaps there could be some other resource/tech that will lead to units very damaging to coal-based units (but not necessarily to anyone else). This would allow a lesser Civ to strategize to exploit larger Civ's weaknesses.

 

[gettingfat]

Gozilla from SimCity attacks!

I've actually thought about disasters. I don't think it's not totally impractical. In a sense, it's basically like barbaric activities in middle or late game, providing some less predictable challenges to the players (and the AIs if the game designers play fair). I think they may try:

- make it an option that the player can turn off, even better, make it adjustable like barbaric activities in Civ 3 (a feature I miss)
- damages reasonable, will ****** the growth of a civ but not throwing it totally out of the game. For example, a flooding may take out some farms and cottages along the river, a hurricane or tsunami may hit only the coastal tiles and cities. By adding elements like these, you won't find leaving the workers "jobless" so often during late games.
- random but the risk can be lowered if the player works hard in proactive manner. e.g. Hospitals and aqueducts reduce risk of epidemic spread, temples,castles and courts reduce riots (which may happen if unhappiness gets too out of control), forest preservation reduces flooding, graneries reduce famine (which may happen if too much unhealthiness), lighttowers reduce damages of hurricanes/typhoon. Players can no longer just build the production oriented buildings and leave out hospitals. People need to be more risk calculating.
- Apply to every civ, not just the human player.

As long as they don't overdo it, the game will have more fun.

 

[Naokaukodem]

- When a high tech civ has a war with a low tech civ, the low tech civ may randomly pick up some techs from the superior invader. (one may learn from the guy who beat him, right?)

Actually in your exmaple they should take a militaristic tech from the winner. And it could work for any other tech also in any period, war or peace. It would be cool that a permanent tech exchange occur. It would be automatic, but would take some time of course. It would make more difficult to win when you dominate, and it would be more easy to catch up with the other civ when you are weak. I think it would fit well to what you describe.

 

[naf4ever]

- When your culture grows very high, maintainence goes up (salaries go up in advanced countries, unions, people go on welfare)

I think this is a good idea. Large nations should basically have a higher upkeep cost per/city than smaller nations to represent the huge bureacratic costs and such that society now has and the things like you mentioned. This is very realistic and i think wouldnt hinder anyones fun. I mean a bigger empire will still have more raw production, research and commerce than a smaller one (not to mention more land which means more strategic and luxury resources) but it would allow a smaller more efficient state to compete against a much larger and bloated one.

 

[croxis]

I think this is a good idea. Large nations should basically have a higher upkeep cost per/city than smaller nations to represent the huge bureacratic costs and such that society now has and the things like you mentioned. This is very realistic and i think wouldnt hinder anyones fun. I mean a bigger empire will still have more raw production, research and commerce than a smaller one (not to mention more land which means more strategic and luxury resources) but it would allow a smaller more efficient state to compete against a much larger and bloated one.

This is currently the case - look up matencence (sp)