Civ5 should provide a check against the snowball effect

[Dida]

From civ1 to civ4 there seems to be no effective check against civ over expanding. We had corruption in civ3 and city maintenance cost in civ4 but these tend to be either really annoying or minimal. There is really nothing that can stop a warmongering civ from snowballing to victory just by its sheer size. This is one factor that makes the second half of the game so unfun. Once I have reached a certain size I can just win by putting my civ on auto pilot.

I think there are a few things that contribute to this. First, everything in civ is too closely tied with land. Not only do civs get food and production from working a tile, they also get gold from tiles as if gold grows on trees. This is highly unrealistic and means that small civs can never catchup to larger ones because smaller civs don't have sufficient number of tiles to match the economic might of the larger ones. This discourage civs from building up the tiles they already own and encourage conquest to grab more tiles. Cottage economy in civ4 and corporations in BTS are good counters to this. They are not nearly enough but are giant steps in the right direction.

Second, the lack of a civil war mechanism means there is no downsize to a very large empire (except from corruption or city upkeep). Historically when an empire grows bigger than the communication technology of its time allows it will tend to fall apart because it is infeasible to administer such a huge empire. Civil war should solve this problem.

Lastly, military conquest is too easy and by far is the relatively cheapest way to develop your civ. I am a raging warmonger myself and love fighting, but I think I would enjoy it more if they would make it more challenging.

 

[Skallagrimson]

MTW's size balancer is a random civil war, which gets more likely with empire size. Many times playing that game it looked completely lost with me trapped on tiny little England and the French owning most of Europe, until BAM, they get a civil war, all fractured, and suddenly I'm in the game again, making headway in my invasions of Normandy, etc. It's still difficult because the loyal French are still bigger than me, but not *impossible*.

 

[Dida]

I certainly don't think civil war should be random. That would be really annoying. I think when a city goes into civil disorder, people will start attacking the military garrison, some troops may join the rebels outright. When all your garrison troops are dead or forced out of the city, the city will revolt and start a civil war.
To be interesting, the rebels should have their own agenda rather than just walking around trashing your countrysides. For example a city that revolted because it is a Buddhist city and you are a Hindu should inspire other Buddhist cities to revolt and that should be the rebels' goal.

 

[TheLastOne36]

Dida, play the Civ revolution mod, it has civil wars.

 

[armathas]

Rise of Mankind integrates the Civ Revolution mod as well.

Cities do split away. Rebels arise.

Just this afternoon my glorious Siamese Empire, which was poised to launch a massive invasion of my Viking neighbors..well..my two primary production cities decided they didn't like me anymore and made a ridiculous demand.

I am only a few turns into my civil war but my neighbors the Vikings and (shudder) Aztecs are starting to get belligerant.

Give it a try, lots of fun to watch your carefully laid programs of conquest go up in smoke because you have a bunch of whiney peasants complaining.

 

[Naokaukodem]

I do not find military conquests too easy, particularly on Emperor. On emperor, the AI expands so fast that if you don't go into war, you fall behind in score and tech pretty surely. You need to go in war in order to catch up with the AI. And you nearly can't attck them in ancient era, you have to wait for catapults.

What I dislike with actual Civ4, is that your catapults are suicide ones. War weariness will increase surely. You don't have the reward you should have if you manage your troops right, because you will always have war weariness from your suicide catapults.

What i also dislike in Civ4 is the fact that your new conquered cities are full of foreign culture, so they are useless. You should be able to work the tiles aound any city as long as it has no other foreign cities working those tiles. It should be a little like your actual Civ4 culture over vassals ones: the cities may be fully workable but you still suffers from foreign influence, putting your city in revolt if they are "too foreign".

So no, conquest is not too easy, especially if you play on superior difficulty levels. What difficulty level the OP plays on?

 

[rysmiel]

From civ1 to civ4 there seems to be no effective check against civ over expanding. We had corruption in civ3 and city maintenance cost in civ4 but these tend to be either really annoying or minimal. There is really nothing that can stop a warmongering civ from snowballing to victory just by its sheer size. This is one factor that makes the second half of the game so unfun. Once I have reached a certain size I can just win by putting my civ on auto pilot.

I don't think this is inherently a problem. I think this being too easy to achieve is a problem, but if you work hard and play well and get your civ bigger than anyone else, you really should be winning.

First, everything in civ is too closely tied with land. Not only do civs get food and production from working a tile, they also get gold from tiles as if gold grows on trees. This is highly unrealistic and means that small civs can never catchup to larger ones because smaller civs don't have sufficient number of tiles to match the economic might of the larger ones. This discourage civs from building up the tiles they already own and encourage conquest to grab more tiles.

My preferred solution to this is for more tile improvements to come along that allow continued development of existing tiles to be exponentially more useful than expanding to new tiles.

Second, the lack of a civil war mechanism means there is no downsize to a very large empire (except from corruption or city upkeep). Historically when an empire grows bigger than the communication technology of its time allows it will tend to fall apart because it is infeasible to administer such a huge empire. Civil war should solve this problem.

So long as it is a thing you can see coming, predict, and act to mitigate, I'm fine with this; I'd rather see it arise out of numbers of unhappy citizens myself.