GeneralZift
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- Feb 25, 2019
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This is Chapter 2 - the first Chapter of this Civilisation Concept Series can be found here: Chapter 1 - which covers Counter-Yields, otherwise called Society yields.
What is the biggest concern that players have about the Civilisation series? My answer is... the end-game! But why?
People figure that by the time you reach the end of the game, your lead is so enormous, and the AI poses such little adversary to your plans, that the game is a foregone conclusion in your victory.
So how do we fix that?
There are two ways, one is rubber banding. In my first chapter, I proposed mechanics to rubber-band each type of growth in a player's Civilisation, and produce authentic downsides to a large empire that somewhat reality. I believe subtle rubber banding is the best way to go about it in a strategy game like this.
The second way, is instead focusing on redefining the 'win state' to allow for more players to reach the finish line than previously possible.
The rat race style of 'who can build the rocket first' will only ever benefit the person with the most production. Therefore, if you're not at the front of any Victory, then the chances of you winning is 0.
In this chapter, I will combine the use of society stats and newly reworked alternate victory conditions to give all players in the game a chance, even if slim, to pull ahead of the player at the front.
Concept
The idea is splitting some Victories into a Domination victory (Type A) and a Unity victory (Type B).
Type A victories are essentially the old style victories - and they heavily prefer players with self-sufficiency, high production, lots of resources. This makes them good for the strong, front-running player.
Thematically speaking, they tend to sound like 'evil' victories, but that is only to distinguish them from Type B victories.
Type B victories, called Unity victories are different because they require multiple players to access.
They scale with the strongest player in the alliance, and so they tend to prefer groups of weaker players rather than a few strong players.
The concept being that the weaker players will refuse to accept to work on this with the strongest player, and instead work with each other to win instead of the strongest player.
Even though they're team-up victories, only one player (the biggest contributor) may actually win through the Unity victory! The game will cleverly hide important information for this reason, and to add an atmosphere of distrust to the team.
Execution
How Unity Victories work
To access these types of Victories, you have to select at least 2 other players, and at most half of the players in the match, to request to build this team project.
You cannot build this project alone.
If a player leaves the agreement so as to have not enough players, the project is cancelled, but each player saves their progress towards the same project with other players.
Once the project reaches a 50% threshold, you can complete the project even if all other players leave the project.
Declaring war on another player in the team automatically ejects you from the team.
The requirements for the completion of the project scales with the strongest player in the group.
However, there can only be one winner - and the progress of each player in the project is masked until the end.
As such, players will aim to pick others of similar 'strength' to cooperate with - because picking a player that is too strong will allow them to take the victory easily, and picking a player that is too weak will contribute too little. However, the strategy on which players you pick will vary depending on your circumstances.
Information relating to the biggest contributor is freely available to the relevant team only.
Information relating to the progress of any individual member of the project is available to any player with spies in the relevant player.
Information relating to the progress of the entire project is freely available to all players.
Presentation
In this situation, the China player is headed for an imminent victory under the regular conditions. Let's imagine he is going for a Science victory.
The three other players in this 4 player game have no way to individually win the game. Nor, let's say, compete militarily to prevent China from winning.
Equally, the China player knows he's unstoppable and that the game is over - so in the case he's a Human, he gives up and closes the game (supposedly).
Now, with the new Unity victories, a new possibility arises - the Egypt, Brazil and America players are able to enter into an agreement for a (Science) Unity victory.
With their capacity combined, they could complete their victory before the China player.
Between the three of them though, there can only be one victor - this is to balance out the victory, so it's not the winning solution every time.
But if you think about it, any one of the three weaker players could become the biggest contributor, as time passes, so in this situation, any one of the 4 players could win.
Before this victory, only one player could feasibly win.
Victories in Detail
Conquest Victory
- It's just a new name for regular Domination Victory from every modern Civilisation game.
- Simply conquer all original capital cities.
This victory favours warmongers.
Orbital Laser Victory (Science Domination)
- Build a weapon of extreme mass destruction, like an Orbital laser, and use it to exert your control over the world.
- In the late game, the science tree splits into two, with one side favouring the Domination style victory and one side favouring the Unity style victory, so it becomes tough to focus on both at once.
- In terms of gameplay mechanics, this heavily resembles a classic Civilisation science victory, where you build the parts and release it into outer space.
- To win, you may fire the Orbital Laser, thereby showcasing your strength via science and starting a new era where your empire rules the world by threat of orbital laser.
This victory favours high science, high production, strong players in the lead.
International Space Colony Victory (Science Unity)
- Team up with other players to build an International Space Colony. By contributing the most to the colony via Science and Production, you win!
- Colony needs specific high tech parts. Building those parts first gives you the most points, but you may build them second and still gain points.
- Train space colonists, research technologies and build parts. Use science and trade agreements to help boost yourself to the front of team.
This victory favours groups of weaker players with high production or science, potentially recovering from past war.
World Ideology (Culture Domination)
- 'Unite' all nations under your cultural influence. This is like an Orwellian dystopia where everyone follows your nation's media.
- Similar to Civ5 Culture Victory where your Tourism needs to trump enemy Culture.
- Use your diplomatic ties to push your propaganda to other Civilisations until everyone follows your Ideology.
- Win once your Culture is Dominant over all other Cultures.
This victory favours cultural powerhouse players with many diplomatic ties.
Museum of Peace Victory (Culture Unity)
- Team up with other players to build an International Museum of Peace. By contributing the most to the Museum, via donating artifacts, running media campaigns and keeping a high Peace score, you win!
- Peace Score: a value that is dropped when you declare war. It is also affected by society stats (corruption, education and health).
- Reminder: society stats like corruption go up and education / health go down when players are focusing growth and progress over their people -- this makes weaker players more likely to have better society stats relative to the number of people they have!
This victory favours groups of weaker, defensive players with high infrastructure stats.
Summary
In summary, what do we have? 8 or 10 players in a game where 2 or 3 of them might be going for Type A victories, and the remaining players are going for Type B victories.
As the late-game era comes to a close, you'll find players betray each other to change teams. Type A players might be plotting to destroy Type B teams (or vice-versa).
Incessant spying! Everyone wants to know who is ahead in a team so they can eliminate them and their progress before it's too late.
If the journey is what counts in a game, then this is the culmination of that journey, by focusing on the player relationships foremost, and putting the 'winner' of the game in the backseat (anyone can win, that makes it tense).
When it comes to AI, they pose far more of a threat together than they do alone - that by itself will finally make the late game dangerous and fun to experiment with.
Of course for human players, it needs no argument, it's definitely more engaging than just the classic victory conditions by themselves.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this one! It took me a while to write up, and I even made a custom graphic this time.
I got tired of hearing that the only way to fix Civ is to forcefully rubber band players quite hard, and that snowballing is just how these games are, and that the late game will always be boring -- and all kinds of opinions that I just don't agree with.
Anyway, I'd love to see something like this from Civ8, or another 4x game, eventually.
Next time - could be anything, stay posted.
Thanks for reading!
What is the biggest concern that players have about the Civilisation series? My answer is... the end-game! But why?
People figure that by the time you reach the end of the game, your lead is so enormous, and the AI poses such little adversary to your plans, that the game is a foregone conclusion in your victory.
So how do we fix that?
There are two ways, one is rubber banding. In my first chapter, I proposed mechanics to rubber-band each type of growth in a player's Civilisation, and produce authentic downsides to a large empire that somewhat reality. I believe subtle rubber banding is the best way to go about it in a strategy game like this.
The second way, is instead focusing on redefining the 'win state' to allow for more players to reach the finish line than previously possible.
The rat race style of 'who can build the rocket first' will only ever benefit the person with the most production. Therefore, if you're not at the front of any Victory, then the chances of you winning is 0.
In this chapter, I will combine the use of society stats and newly reworked alternate victory conditions to give all players in the game a chance, even if slim, to pull ahead of the player at the front.
Concept
The idea is splitting some Victories into a Domination victory (Type A) and a Unity victory (Type B).
Type A victories are essentially the old style victories - and they heavily prefer players with self-sufficiency, high production, lots of resources. This makes them good for the strong, front-running player.
Thematically speaking, they tend to sound like 'evil' victories, but that is only to distinguish them from Type B victories.
Type B victories, called Unity victories are different because they require multiple players to access.
They scale with the strongest player in the alliance, and so they tend to prefer groups of weaker players rather than a few strong players.
The concept being that the weaker players will refuse to accept to work on this with the strongest player, and instead work with each other to win instead of the strongest player.
Even though they're team-up victories, only one player (the biggest contributor) may actually win through the Unity victory! The game will cleverly hide important information for this reason, and to add an atmosphere of distrust to the team.
Execution
How Unity Victories work
To access these types of Victories, you have to select at least 2 other players, and at most half of the players in the match, to request to build this team project.
You cannot build this project alone.
If a player leaves the agreement so as to have not enough players, the project is cancelled, but each player saves their progress towards the same project with other players.
Once the project reaches a 50% threshold, you can complete the project even if all other players leave the project.
Declaring war on another player in the team automatically ejects you from the team.
The requirements for the completion of the project scales with the strongest player in the group.
However, there can only be one winner - and the progress of each player in the project is masked until the end.
As such, players will aim to pick others of similar 'strength' to cooperate with - because picking a player that is too strong will allow them to take the victory easily, and picking a player that is too weak will contribute too little. However, the strategy on which players you pick will vary depending on your circumstances.
Information relating to the biggest contributor is freely available to the relevant team only.
Information relating to the progress of any individual member of the project is available to any player with spies in the relevant player.
Information relating to the progress of the entire project is freely available to all players.
Presentation
In this situation, the China player is headed for an imminent victory under the regular conditions. Let's imagine he is going for a Science victory.
The three other players in this 4 player game have no way to individually win the game. Nor, let's say, compete militarily to prevent China from winning.
Equally, the China player knows he's unstoppable and that the game is over - so in the case he's a Human, he gives up and closes the game (supposedly).
Now, with the new Unity victories, a new possibility arises - the Egypt, Brazil and America players are able to enter into an agreement for a (Science) Unity victory.
With their capacity combined, they could complete their victory before the China player.
Between the three of them though, there can only be one victor - this is to balance out the victory, so it's not the winning solution every time.
But if you think about it, any one of the three weaker players could become the biggest contributor, as time passes, so in this situation, any one of the 4 players could win.
Before this victory, only one player could feasibly win.
Victories in Detail
Conquest Victory
- It's just a new name for regular Domination Victory from every modern Civilisation game.
- Simply conquer all original capital cities.
This victory favours warmongers.
Orbital Laser Victory (Science Domination)
- Build a weapon of extreme mass destruction, like an Orbital laser, and use it to exert your control over the world.
- In the late game, the science tree splits into two, with one side favouring the Domination style victory and one side favouring the Unity style victory, so it becomes tough to focus on both at once.
- In terms of gameplay mechanics, this heavily resembles a classic Civilisation science victory, where you build the parts and release it into outer space.
- To win, you may fire the Orbital Laser, thereby showcasing your strength via science and starting a new era where your empire rules the world by threat of orbital laser.
This victory favours high science, high production, strong players in the lead.
International Space Colony Victory (Science Unity)
- Team up with other players to build an International Space Colony. By contributing the most to the colony via Science and Production, you win!
- Colony needs specific high tech parts. Building those parts first gives you the most points, but you may build them second and still gain points.
- Train space colonists, research technologies and build parts. Use science and trade agreements to help boost yourself to the front of team.
This victory favours groups of weaker players with high production or science, potentially recovering from past war.
World Ideology (Culture Domination)
- 'Unite' all nations under your cultural influence. This is like an Orwellian dystopia where everyone follows your nation's media.
- Similar to Civ5 Culture Victory where your Tourism needs to trump enemy Culture.
- Use your diplomatic ties to push your propaganda to other Civilisations until everyone follows your Ideology.
- Win once your Culture is Dominant over all other Cultures.
This victory favours cultural powerhouse players with many diplomatic ties.
Museum of Peace Victory (Culture Unity)
- Team up with other players to build an International Museum of Peace. By contributing the most to the Museum, via donating artifacts, running media campaigns and keeping a high Peace score, you win!
- Peace Score: a value that is dropped when you declare war. It is also affected by society stats (corruption, education and health).
- Reminder: society stats like corruption go up and education / health go down when players are focusing growth and progress over their people -- this makes weaker players more likely to have better society stats relative to the number of people they have!
This victory favours groups of weaker, defensive players with high infrastructure stats.
Summary
In summary, what do we have? 8 or 10 players in a game where 2 or 3 of them might be going for Type A victories, and the remaining players are going for Type B victories.
As the late-game era comes to a close, you'll find players betray each other to change teams. Type A players might be plotting to destroy Type B teams (or vice-versa).
Incessant spying! Everyone wants to know who is ahead in a team so they can eliminate them and their progress before it's too late.
If the journey is what counts in a game, then this is the culmination of that journey, by focusing on the player relationships foremost, and putting the 'winner' of the game in the backseat (anyone can win, that makes it tense).
When it comes to AI, they pose far more of a threat together than they do alone - that by itself will finally make the late game dangerous and fun to experiment with.
Of course for human players, it needs no argument, it's definitely more engaging than just the classic victory conditions by themselves.
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed this one! It took me a while to write up, and I even made a custom graphic this time.
I got tired of hearing that the only way to fix Civ is to forcefully rubber band players quite hard, and that snowballing is just how these games are, and that the late game will always be boring -- and all kinds of opinions that I just don't agree with.
Anyway, I'd love to see something like this from Civ8, or another 4x game, eventually.
Next time - could be anything, stay posted.
Thanks for reading!
