Can Civ be made so comebacks are possible?

[Kieran]

I agree.
It always seems to be up to me to attack the leader and balance the power. I never see the AI in second or third place attack the leader.

 

[SPQR300]

I couldnt agree more with the first post. You already know after the midgame who the winner is. In my last game Gandhi was much more advanced then we are, still there wasnt a coalition against him, which would have been very logic and helpful.

People always hate the strongest! For example in reality people hate the USA because it's way more advanced then the other countries, and back in time people hated the Romans, because they were the most powerful. So when gandhi attacked me, I stood no chance, even tough the Germans were not much behing Gandhi, and they should have backstabbed him, so the Germans could get the lead from gandhi. gandhi would have had to fight in 2 fronts, making the germans the no1 nations. The Germans even had panzers...

So I think: - AIs will gang up on the leader if the difference is too great will greatly improve late gae balance.

I mean the AI should attack the other AI if he is in a lead. And the nearer we are to the end game, the more they tend to do against the leader. For example in 1800 when a civ is 3techs more developed then the others, have more land, cities etc...it gives -2 we don't like your domination, in 1900 it gives -4, in 2000 -6. When a civ is getting near to any victory condition it's -4, when it almost achieved a victory condition it's -10: We don't want you to win. Or something like that.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

That's always been one of my gripes with Civ: There is no rise and fall. When you fall, you've fallen. When you rise, you're untouchable.

I like your suggestions to balance things a bit more, but I also have to say that Civ 4 is by far the best about avoiding this problem in game play among all the Civ releases.

I'm surprised you're even seeing this happen much at all up on Monarch. I sure don't on Prince. I'll pull ahead and the AI's will start swapping techs left and right and before I know it, my lead is gone and the top 3 or 4 AI's are sitting on several techs I don't have.

This is oh so true. If you research say "metal working" early on, then trade it for a few lower techs with nation x, then a few turns later virtually all nations known to nation x will have metal working.

In my closly obseved experience, the AI nations will trade techs even if they seemingly hate each other, which of course they wont do with you, even if slightly annoyed.

This is the only thing thats really bugging me about the game atm.

E.g. Astronomy is researched , you meet Japan who have different religion and civics to you. They have incense , wines and sheep spare. You have dyes, gold and cows spare. There is no way on earth they will trade with you, and open borders in this situation is a figment of some players over active imaginations.

Yet a few turns later you consult Foreign Advisor , and notice that Japan is trading with 3 other nations,and has open borders with them, all "new" to it (i.e. from your continent and of your religion. So why them and not you? Because your the player.

Please note I don't say its impossible to have trades or even open borders with Japan, just not in the above example.

Trade fairly please AI.

 

[ButSam]

At higher levels, the AI will gang up on you and do a much better job of catching up. If you're getting too far in front, you need to step it up a notch.

The AI does do things at the end that are victory oriented, such as not trading space techs away. The problem is, Space is about the only victory condition I ever see them try for.

I have seen the AI go for diplomacy victory...but have never seen the AI wipe a civ off the map--let alone go for conquest or domination! Then again, I have only had end-games in difficulties up to and including Warlord...

Does the AI ever go for culture, conquest, or domination?

Sam

 

[ButSam]

I couldnt agree more with the first post. You already know after the midgame who the winner is. In my last game Gandhi was much more advanced then we are, still there wasnt a coalition against him, which would have been very logic and helpful.

People always hate the strongest! For example in reality people hate the USA because it's way more advanced then the other countries, and back in time people hated the Romans, because they were the most powerful. So when gandhi attacked me, I stood no chance, even tough the Germans were not much behing Gandhi, and they should have backstabbed him, so the Germans could get the lead from gandhi. gandhi would have had to fight in 2 fronts, making the germans the no1 nations. The Germans even had panzers...

So I think: - AIs will gang up on the leader if the difference is too great will greatly improve late gae balance.

I mean the AI should attack the other AI if he is in a lead. And the nearer we are to the end game, the more they tend to do against the leader. For example in 1800 when a civ is 3techs more developed then the others, have more land, cities etc...it gives -2 we don't like your domination, in 1900 it gives -4, in 2000 -6. When a civ is getting near to any victory condition it's -4, when it almost achieved a victory condition it's -10: We don't want you to win. Or something like that.

Completely agree--with a caveat. Normally #2 and possibly #3 would fight the #1...up to a point But for #6 or #7 to take on #1 would be very unrealistic.

However, there are exceptions. In a Warlord game I just finished a couple days ago, I was in 3rd place, about 400 points behind 1st, but I won a space race versus first place person...second place went for diplo and just barely failed.

Sam

 

[Eigenvector]

A lot of the ideas I see here a rather artificial in my own opinion. The idea that a large civilization should have increasing maintenance costs is a little too artificial. There's no intrinsic reason why a large country should be harder and harder to maintain? There are several examples in history where large empires fell for reasons completely unrelated to finances.

England - this empire crumbled due to repeated civil wars and overall societal issues. As evidenced by the American Civil War, the Indian conflicts, issues in Africa. None of these happened at the same time, rather they were a general trend of unhappiness by the conquered.

Roman Empire - there were numerous reasons why this empire crumbled, a large part was due to repeated attacks by barbarian nations, and civil wars. Economic factors played a large part too, but I believe there is enough evidence to suggest the repeated wars played a much bigger role.


Personally what I would do to enhance the realism of the game would be to increase the unhappiness in each city the farther away it is from your capital. Conquered cities would retain a much higher amount of unhappiness. But at the same time, I would slowly reduce the amount of unhappiness from conquered cities to that of a normal city - but it should take centuries to do this.

I would also make certain civics generate unhappiness over time. Say, despotism would slowly create more and more unhappiness, the Caste system would slowly reduce science output or something like that. A way to reflect the stengths and weaknesses of each civic - whereas now they are all basically benevolent and harmless. Even Representation and Free Speech would generate unhappiness during times of war for instance.

I don't think the penalties should be monetary, that's too artifical in my mind.

 

[gettingfat]

A lot of the ideas I see here a rather artificial in my own opinion. The idea that a large civilization should have increasing maintenance costs is a little too artificial. There's no intrinsic reason why a large country should be harder and harder to maintain? There are several examples in history where large empires fell for reasons completely unrelated to finances.

In fact, money is a big issue, just not the only issue.

I don't know too much about history of other civs other than Chinese history. But use ancient China as an example. Some younger extrapatriotic Chinese always blame the ancient Chinese rulers for not being more expansionist, when Chinese before Ming dynasty was technologically, culturally and financially superior to all the neighboring countries (so now they will have a gigantic China to be proud of). The reality is, occupying a land that is far away from your capital before modern ways of communication were developed is terribly costly. You send in too many officials and military forces, they will drain more resources than you can gain from that area. If not that area will be unstable for several years, and creating more enemies. Maybe it's not strictly money, but it's about resources.

USSR broke down because of love for democracy and freedom? Maybe only one part of the story. If they were not financially drained due to the arm race and the corrupted bureacracy, which forced them to demand more from the non-Russian areas, this big empire probably wouldn't have disintegrated faster than a sugar cube in hot coffee.

And people do get lazy, or maybe more correctly, more demanding when their country has blossomed for a while. They want to be treated better. The outsourcing of US jobs to the developing countries is actually a warning sign that Americans have become "high maintainence people". I'm not saying this is not right. People always expect better treatment if resources available. Unfortunately, this also means loss of collective competitiveness as a group. When I was young I had less than 5 pieces of toys, now my nephew has a whole room just for toy storage. I really don't know what people like him are heading to, when resources like oil are going to be depleted soon.

 

[Eigenvector]

Well I was looking at it more from the standpoint that in the game it seems like the larger civs get more and more expensive to maintain - but not for any real valid reasons, they just get more expensive.

I would prefer it to be represented as an unhappy face in the city. Unhappy people don't produce as much and the total shield production drops for the city. For me that would be better way of reflecting the reality of the situation.

 

[MeteorPunch]

Fix the combat changes (see my sig).

 

[romelus]

it's pretty easy to fix. make warfare cost money. instead of units auto healing by not moving, it should cost money to repair damaged units. so the more wars you conduct, the more money gets drained, and you need to build up infrastructure before warring again.

wars have always been expensive, and besides a half strength fighter squadron doesn't automatically make new fighters if you just leave the planes alone for a few years

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

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.)

This is an excellent idea! I love the concept of a market - I once used a similar concept in a board game of mine, where each player could sell ressources to the "world market" which would determine the prices for other players to buy ressources.

 

[Kieran]

it's pretty easy to fix. make warfare cost money. instead of units auto healing by not moving, it should cost money to repair damaged units. so the more wars you conduct, the more money gets drained, and you need to build up infrastructure before warring again.

wars have always been expensive, and besides a half strength fighter squadron doesn't automatically make new fighters if you just leave the planes alone for a few years

I don't think making everything costs tons in maintenance is going to make the game much fun. War is fun, I don't want to stay peaceful and hit enter all the time because I can't afford to war.

Any implementation of international markets should also be kept simple too, you shouldn't need a degree in Economics to play the game.

I just think the AI doesn't seem smart enough yet, and it definitely isn't playing to win. I would like to see more alliances between the AI leaders to bring down the biggest empires.

 

[lord_graywolfe]

well there is one way in the game now that you can use to come from behind. i used it in my last game and thats the permanent alliance. i was 4 techs behind elizabeth but when we formed a permanent alliance i immediately knew everything she did. also together we quickly pushed up past the others to the number 1 spot as our tech research is cut by a 1/3 to a 1/2 depending on the ammount we put into it when we are both researching the same tech. so in game time of about 200 years i went from next to last to first. i do agree though that there should be a chance to learn tech when taking an enemy city.

 

[romelus]

I don't think making everything costs tons in maintenance is going to make the game much fun. War is fun, I don't want to stay peaceful and hit enter all the time because I can't afford to war.

well i wouldn't want extreme maintenance either, i only want reinforcements to cost something instead of nothing. the cost doesn't have to be prohibitive, that wouldn't be fun, but it should cause constant warring (and thus increasing war casualties) to wear on your economy. i think this adds a strategic layer to war planning, as well as being much more realistic

Any implementation of international markets should also be kept simple too, you shouldn't need a degree in Economics to play the game.

the cost for reinforcements is applied automatically. every turn some money is deducted to repair your damaged units. if you run out of money your units don't heal, it's pretty simple

I just think the AI doesn't seem smart enough yet, and it definitely isn't playing to win. I would like to see more alliances between the AI leaders to bring down the biggest empires.

this i totally agree with. it would make AIs much more humanlike.

 

[The Q-Meister]

Historically, the rise of any big civ would fell eventually, and give the hot seat to another civ. The culture, land grabbing, tech advances all carry their burdens. I think the game should at least provide a few more winning paths for the lesser players, e.g.

- re-install the tech stealing, and allow some random tech gains if you take over a city (and make sure the AIs will do that on you)
- 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?)
- when the tech lead by one civ is too big, the tech research cost will be even further reduced than the current rate (Isn't that what many Asian countries are doing? It's easy to simulate than to invent a tech)
- Random financial-oriented tech transfer between civs may happen if they do trades.
- When your culture grows very high, maintainence goes up (salaries go up in advanced countries, unions, people go on welfare)
- AIs will gang up on the leader if the difference is too great

Any more ideas?

Hi there. I completely sympathesize with what you are trying to do. I have written already some of my ideas on another post and one of them was the idea of "Dark Ages"; it would work just like "Golden Ages" but of course the opposite. It would trigger a small to moderate (depending on how powerful you are) penalty on research and maybe a slight penalty on your economy, perhaps make maintenance higher. A Dark Age could be triggered by a defeat in a major battle, the loss of a city or another civ finding an important scientific advance before you did (this would be designed against militaristic civs who neglect researching everything else.)

With regards to your ideas, I agree with many of them except the last one about "ganging up on a civ if the lead grows too great" I think that that is very ahistorical and quite frankly, doesn't make any sense: if you're the most powerful civ in the world with vastly more technologies, it wouldn't make any sense for some small, backward civ to attack them, it would actually make more sense to befriend that civ and try to be on their good side (if not for their own protection so that maybe the other civ might "donate" a tech or two!) That was one of my biggest complaints about previous versions of Civ; the more powerful you became, the more unpopular you were and it became extremely difficult to make deals with other civ. The opposite should happen, the more powerful you become, the more other countries should be "respectful" towards you. Perhaps an exception to this might be the 2nd or 3rd most powerful civ who is your rival, but for most other civs, they'd be pretty nice to you (if nothing else, for fear you might attack them...and probably win!)

While the idea of many small countries coming together might seem like a romantic idea to some, historically it is very unrealistic. Think of today for instance: Do most small countries scheme to form a coalition to attack the United States? Or do most try very hard to be on its "good" side?