Conquest Victory changed

[bonafide11]

Sure, from a human point of view perhaps, but what about the AI? Can a human capture an AI capital at 3500 BC then completely ignore them because you hold their capital?

I don't know what game you're playing, but the AI is done for any time it loses its capital. I've never seen the AI overcome losing its capital to even turn into a competent opponent. The capital is a significant city in Civ, and if you lose it, especially early on, it sets you way back in research, commerce, and production.

If conquest works the way you propose, this won't be a rare and fringe occurrence. It'll be a straight forward strategy to win conquest.

Sure, you can say that someone who loses their capital in 3500 BC could "deserve to lose" (even though I'd entirely disagree) - but would you say that someone who abuses the system for cheap easy conquest victories deserves to win?

Yes! If someone conquers every capital in the game, they do deserve to win. No other player in the game has managed to stop them or else they'd have managed to own a capital city of their own.

It's either that or make the AI psychotic when it comes to their capital cities.

And why? Why not just fix the problem the way I suggest? What is so awesome about never being able to rebuild your capital? Seriously?

The problem with what you suggest is that if you take another player's capital, they should basically be conquered and you should be able to move onto another civilization. You shouldn't have to constantly worry about them building a new capital 20 turns later and then re-declaring war on them so you retake their capital. Once you take one civilization's capital, you'd move onto another civilization to conquer them, only to find that the civilization you previously conquered has rebuilt their capital in a different city so you'd have to once again conquer them. This would turn into the same old style of mop-up conquest victory because you'd have to eliminate a civilization in order to prevent them from rebuilding their capital. It's impossible to take every civilization's capital in 20 turns.

If you can't control a capital yourself, you (or the AI) don't deserve to win. I don't see why that's so problematic considering I've never seen a player or AI overcome losing its capital city. They're pretty much finished once that happens, which is why the AI usually capitulates as soon as it loses its capital city.

Besides, taking cities won't be as easy in Civ V. I imagine it'll take a while to take over a city, especially the capital which will probably have a hit point bonus.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Sure, from a human point of view perhaps, but what about the AI? Can a human capture an AI capital at 3500 BC then completely ignore them because you hold their capital?

If conquest works the way you propose, this won't be a rare and fringe occurrence. It'll be a straight forward strategy to win conquest.

Sure, you can say that someone who loses their capital in 3500 BC could "deserve to lose" (even though I'd entirely disagree) - but would you say that someone who abuses the system for cheap easy conquest victories deserves to win?

It's either that or make the AI psychotic when it comes to their capital cities.

And why? Why not just fix the problem the way I suggest? What is so awesome about never being able to rebuild your capital? Seriously?

More than likely, the AI will get psychotic if you have a large number of Capital cities

ie a 8 player game... 7 AIs 1 Human

3 AIs have been totally/mostly eliminated, 2 others have lost their capital to the human player but are now at peace with him.. and have rebuilt themselves by colonizing other areas.

1. Human player 4 capitals
2. Major AI w 3 Capitals
3. Minor AI w 1 Capital
4. Major AI w 0 Capital
5. Minor AI w 0 Capital
6-8. 3 Tiny/Dead AIs

The Human player is going for a Conquest win so he attacks player 2, and takes player 2's 3 capitals

At this point Everyone declares war on him or prepares to declare war on him...(including his 2000 year friends player 4+5) because he is close to winning the game.... so their massive armies come and rush retake their Capitals (or any Capitals of his that they can get.)


Basic Rule:
Capitals are important as soon as someone starts collecting a decent number of them.

At that point civs fight you for Capitals 'psychotically' (because they are about to lose)

Note: If you don't like this behavior then switch Conquest Victory off (and Space Race/Cultural Victory for that matter) and go for a Domination win.

 

[Chalks]

Boy do I regret saying "20 turns" now as an example. 100 turns enough for you? *insert arbitrary length of time in which you could reasonably conquer multiple crippled civilizations here* perhaps? Christ, talk about focussing on the wrong aspect.

I absolutely do not agree that you can't take one city from multiple defeated civilizations within a small number of turns. You've conquered them - taking a single city from the few that have not capitulated should be child's play.

I also think that if you have a war between another civilization in 3000 BC, they take 9 of your cities and you take two of theirs before you beg for peace, the game should not consider you to have "won the game" because one of the two cities you have taken is their capital.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Boy do I regret saying "20 turns" now as an example. 100 turns enough for you? *insert arbitrary length of time in which you could reasonably conquer multiple crippled civilizations here* perhaps? Christ, talk about focussing on the wrong aspect.

I absolutely do not agree that you can't take one city from multiple defeated civilizations within a small number of turns. You've conquered them - taking a single city from the few that have not capitulated should be child's play.

I also think that if you have a war between another civilization in 3000 BC, they take 9 of your cities and you take two of theirs before you beg for peace, the game should not consider you to have "won the game" because one of the two cities you have taken is their capital.

Unless that is a 2 player game, you have not "won the game"

And if it was a 2 player game, then they will Not give you peace if you are about to win the game... (unless you give them their capital back as part of the peace deal)


How about this... instead of 20 turns or 100 turns to rebuild their capital, a civ has the whole rest of the GAME to rebuild an ARMY and take their capital back.

If they can do that then you aren't the conquerer you thought you were... if they can't then they are conquered.

That is when they are conquered... when they can't beat you.

If you are really worried about it, make it 5 turns that you have to hold all the Capitals. so that everyone has at least 5 turns to counter attack you.

 

[SeptimusOctopus]

I'm all for changing the conquest victory conditions. I've only had one conquest in civ4, and that was when I quecha rushed an AI on a duel map (a situation designed specifically by me for a conquest). Every other time I've gotten close to a conquest, I ended up being granted a domination before I finished off the last civ.

I even once vassalized everybody and still got a domination win (this was the DeGaul Monarch Club game on this forum). In that game I think I had some conquered cities come out of revolt on the turn I vassalled the last AI which pushed me over the Dom limit for area or population under my control.

The only way I know to win a conquest is to leave the second largest civ for last, then raze their empire. This method of victory is, to me, far stupider than requiring the capture of all capital cities.

 

[bonafide11]

If you are really worried about it, make it 5 turns that you have to hold all the Capitals. so that everyone has at least 5 turns to counter attack you.

I think that's a fair solution. If you know a player has 8 capitals and they need 9 to win, I don't understand why a player wouldn't declare war on them to try to gain a capital back anyway, but to make it even more fair, make the conquerer hold the capitals for five turns or so.

 

[Zhahz]

It'd be good if they had options.

So you could take out a civ by capturing the capital OR require a complete kill, or maybe even conquer a % of a civ before it gives up. Options!

You could even make it tied to the civ - some civs might rollover and die easily and some might fight to the bitter end, or something in between (% chance to fight to the end kind of thing).

 

[Chalks]

If you are really worried about it, make it 5 turns that you have to hold all the Capitals. so that everyone has at least 5 turns to counter attack you.

This might be a solution to it, certainly.

The idea of the change is to avoid tedious mopping up, not to allow people to go for spear point attacks directly to the capitals of their remaining enemies at the end of the game to instantly "conquer the world" even if, had the game gone on for another few turns, the counter attack would have been so brutal that they would have been completely erased.

That's simply not a conquest of the world. That's abusing the system.

 

[Churchill's Hat]

If you capture every AI capital, you've beaten all their armies.

The computer can simply be programmed to watch out for people getting close to victory conditions. Also, spear attacks won't work nearly as well with 1upt. You try using a spear movement while the enemy can attack you from 5 different hexes and see how well you do. To me, this is akin to saying: what if you start near 30 tribal villages and get Astronomy in 3500 BC for Civ 4: it's never going to happen, so why worry? You could rebuild your capital, but the point is so that the original capitals are all taken-- i.e. you could get palace bonuses anywhere, but your capital is still lost.

 

[eireksten]

The idea of the change is to avoid tedious mopping up, not to allow people to go for spear point attacks directly to the capitals of their remaining enemies at the end of the game to instantly "conquer the world" even if, had the game gone on for another few turns, the counter attack would have been so brutal that they would have been completely erased.

That's simply not a conquest of the world. That's abusing the system.

As all players know the rules of conquest victory at the beginning of the game, it will definitely not be easy taking all capitals. Making spear point attacks hard (with the proposed combat system making it harder than in the previous games).

Also, I don't consider avoiding mop up the only reason for this change (I believe it is rather a bonus). Having played CivRev quite a bit, I know that there is a lot of strategy to successfully achieving conquest. I find it a lot more interesting than in Civ4 where conquest is basically only viable if you take out all other civs very early (before all lands are settled and while you can't afford keeping all the cities). After that, there is domination. I'm assuming domination will still be a regular victory condition (it might be easier to mop up some civs than to take on the most powerful ones), but now we get more options, and also more viable strategies.

If a "spear point attack" is a way to achieve your goal, then so be it. I doubt that the other civilizations will just stand by and watch while you're only a capital or two short of victory.

I agree that having to hold the capitals for 5 turns (or even 10) is a good idea, though. That way you somewhat avoid kamikaze attacks where all military is lost in the process.

 

[conception]

Everyone here criticizing the capital-conquest idea seems to be interpreting a Civ V rule under Civ IV pretenses. I think its entirely possible that the men designing the game have programmed ways in which it will make sense and it will be fun. I've seen civs in IV fight very hard for their capital, but personally I always hated the fact that the next turn one of their cities magically became a capital which was off-limits in treaty discussions. Also, it was pretty tedious to have to mop-up and take city after city of an opponent's that was obviously beaten, especially when all I wanted was a capitulation and was actually going to give the cities I had taken back to them once the war was over.

I just think the Capital idea makes a whole lot more sense and there are any number of ways the AI could be programmed to make this a much more engaging type of warfare than the gobble-up territory until they get disheartened kind of war.

 

[Chalks]

As all players know the rules of conquest victory at the beginning of the game, it will definitely not be easy taking all capitals. Making spear point attacks hard (with the proposed combat system making it harder than in the previous games).

Also, I don't consider avoiding mop up the only reason for this change (I believe it is rather a bonus). Having played CivRev quite a bit, I know that there is a lot of strategy to successfully achieving conquest. I find it a lot more interesting than in Civ4 where conquest is basically only viable if you take out all other civs very early (before all lands are settled and while you can't afford keeping all the cities). After that, there is domination. I'm assuming domination will still be a regular victory condition (it might be easier to mop up some civs than to take on the most powerful ones), but now we get more options, and also more viable strategies.

If a "spear point attack" is a way to achieve your goal, then so be it. I doubt that the other civilizations will just stand by and watch while you're only a capital or two short of victory.

I agree that having to hold the capitals for 5 turns (or even 10) is a good idea, though. That way you somewhat avoid kamikaze attacks where all military is lost in the process.

I have to admit I know very little about revolutions unfortunately.

Although defending your capital is usually easy, it's perfectly possible for the world to evolve in such a way that your capital is one of your border cities. Strategically, you would move it, but if you cannot move your capital and you instantly lose the game if you lose it, you'd be pretty screwed from the beginning.

It just doesn't seem like a conquest. It feels like that game mode where you could kill the king to defeat the Civ.

 

[eireksten]

but if you cannot move your capital and you instantly lose the game if you lose it, you'd be pretty screwed from the beginning.

I'm pretty sure you'll live on even if you lose your capital (unless of course you were the last one and your opponent won the game). Anything else would be really weird. If that's the only city you lose, he'll likely have a hard time holding on to it too. Even if it lies on your border.

 

[Chalks]

I'm pretty sure you'll live on even if you lose your capital (unless of course you were the last one and your opponent won the game). Anything else would be really weird. If that's the only city you lose, he'll likely have a hard time holding on to it too. Even if it lies on your border.

Well, I'm confident they'll do something to prevent the really strange situation. But if nobody else is in possession of their capital at the time that you lose yours it sounds like you'd be in trouble, even if it was a border city and you could easily defend your empire.

It's not that I don't think starting city acquisition would make an interesting game mode or victory condition in itself. I just think it's significantly different to a true "conquest" victory and I'd be sad to see that option gone - although I'd be very happy to see them get rid of all the mopping up involved with the current conquest game mode.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Well, I'm confident they'll do something to prevent the really strange situation. But if nobody else is in possession of their capital at the time that you lose yours it sounds like you'd be in trouble, even if it was a border city and you could easily defend your empire.

It's not that I don't think starting city acquisition would make an interesting game mode or victory condition in itself. I just think it's significantly different to a true "conquest" victory and I'd be sad to see that option gone - although I'd be very happy to see them get rid of all the mopping up involved with the current conquest game mode.

I'm sure a true "conquest" victory will be in place as a domination victory (ie control X% of cities or land or population... meaning you need to clear out the barbs to truly win.)