Does Civ V need a blue shell?

[Blitz Spearman]

If there is one thing that makes my interest in Civ V go down from time to time is the lack of surprises during the course of a game. I play on Immortal, and in half of my games, by the Renaissance it gets pretty obvious that either 1) I won, or 2) there is a runaway AI that I will duel with until the end of the game, with every other AI just watching (if they are even alive).

I wonder if the games would be more interesting if Civ V had a kind of blue shell like Mario Kart, a feature or mechanic made with the only purpose of harming the one who is winning.

One can argue that Autocracy and Scholars in Residence are made to power up the civilizations that are behind, but these come way too late in the game. Nukes also don't qualify as blue shells because the leading players can have them too (and will probably have them first).

What do you guys think?

 

[GoStu]

I would rather see something closer to the rubber band AI of MarioKart than the blue shell. (For the uninitiated, the rubber band effect prevents AI racers from trailing more than a certain amount, while the blue shell was a massive 'screw you' seeking missile that automatically took out the player in first)

Better espionage, more aggressive autocracy, and better collaboration in the world congress could make for a stronger rubber band.

 

[redwings1340]

Possibly. Autocracy is actually not bad at simulating this if you use it well though. The challenge is to make it so that early decisions matter, but the game is still not boring by the end. It's a difficult proposition. If you make the blue shell too powerful, than there's not much point in having a powerful ancient era empire unless you are conquering, but if you make it too weak, the snowball effect takes over, and the strongest ancient era civ will always win.

A rubber band or blue shell would have to be well designed for it to work, but it is possible. I think it would have to involve multiple behind civs working together to give the ahead civ a chance to stay ahead. The world congress might be a good place to do this. Maybe we could add more stuff aside from embargoes there, or perhaps something to counter the snowball effect of world projects.

 

[YertyL]

Maybe upping the amount of science gained from trade routes and decreasing the spy turns late game (they do scale weirdly, don't they?) would be a nice change. Both seem to be only useful at their beginning, i. e. early ages and up to industrial, respectively.

 

[Mr. Grieves]

In single player, I think the AI should get considerable science bonuses if the human player manages to get a clear lead. Trade routes help marginally.

Personally, I find the AI quite challenging on Emperor for the first 150 turns on standard speed, often acting unpredictable, but after that they just seem to stagnate and ignore science. Only the huge runaways ever generate more than 600 science per turn around the late 1800s.

 

[LoneRebel]

Could be problematic, since some players already believe that there is a "blue shell" in the form of AIs ganging up on a human player who's winning. I'm sure it's more a perception than anything else, but you know how perceptions are.

 

[troublmaker]

I love mechanics I can abuse, I hate mechanics the computer abuses. I suspect this might fall into that category of ideas.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I would rather see something closer to the rubber band AI of MarioKart than the blue shell. (For the uninitiated, the rubber band effect prevents AI racers from trailing more than a certain amount, while the blue shell was a massive 'screw you' seeking missile that automatically took out the player in first)

Better espionage, more aggressive autocracy, and better collaboration in the world congress could make for a stronger rubber band.

I tend to agree (although I don't think it'll happen through the AI, I think it has to be through perks). But I've never liked how the difficulty system gives them a huge advantage at the beginning and then very little after that. This makes the early game ridiculously difficult, but, once you get over the hump, not much more difficult than any other game. I think they should tailor free units, free techs, etc. to account for whether or not the AI is ahead or behind and give them new stuff during the game instead of just at the beginning.

 

[Sonereal]

Some of the mods for Civilization IV have something called Flexible Difficulty, where the bonuses the AI gets increases or decreases depending on how you're playing. So if you started on Prince and are doing very well, the difficulty would bump up to, say, King. If you start doing very bad on King, it would drop you down to Prince.

 

[redwings1340]

Some of the mods for Civilization IV have something called Flexible Difficulty, where the bonuses the AI gets increases or decreases depending on how you're playing. So if you started on Prince and are doing very well, the difficulty would bump up to, say, King. If you start doing very bad on King, it would drop you down to Prince.

I feel like that would lead to very easy game exploits if we implemented systems like that.

The game has its own definition of doing well, which doesn't necessarily match reality. How would the game know if you're doing well? For example:

If it's based on points in Civ V, tall empires would benefit even more. Warmongering, conquering gives you a lot of points, but I am often 'winning' the game even when the leading AI has way bigger empires with more points than I do.

If it's based on number of techs, then beelining becomes more important. If it's based on era, then going carefully through the tech path becomes more optimal, and beelining becomes worse.

If it's based on amount of science beakers, well, that would make warmongering and plays that rely on beelining certain techs without the scientific lead stronger. This would also benefit tall empires, or empires that don't have as much science penalty.

 

[Cyon]

Things that historically have hurt the winners are epidemics (but also killed tens of millions in the Americas), corruption and general tendencies for large empires to fall apart, like far away colonies that breaks free (USA) or quarrels over throne.

But I am at loss how to implement any of this in Civ V.

It would be interesting to examine the difference between the giant empires of the Rome and Alexander with the small fabric of petty states that existed in Europe during the dark age.

Also some expand or die mechanism, the Roman empire had a bit of a Pyramid scheme over it, it could buy the loyalty from its soldiers with the spoils and lands from its conquest, fueling even more soldiers and conquest until it could no longer expand anymore, when it was harder to find loyal legions which forced them to try to sign up those Bararian brutes as soldiers which in hindsight wasn't such a good idea.

And also contrast it to Asia that had a lot of large empires/dynasties during the hole time.

So some more rise and fall mechanism. Also with population, Rome (the city) had over a million inhabitants 2000 years ago but not even a fraction of that a 1000 years ago, bit in Civ V your population only increases slowly and over time.

One very interesting mechanic I would like to see in Civ VI would be a dynamic climate, where a region could be very fertile for thousands of years and then dry out (like Sahara which was quite green 9000 years ago) and also be affected by the players actions - Greece islands very covered with green forests until the were cut down to build all those Triremes, and without the trees the soil eroded to the quite dry and barren landscape Greece has today (at least this is what I have heard, may be a oversimplification)

So a dynamic nature could be a good instrument to hinder runaways.

 

[Sagax]

We already have an instrument for hindering a runaway - World Congress, which IMO is deceptively flexible but not used to the full extent in Single Player because of stupid AI. Have a science runaway? Push Scholars in Residence and/or Arts Funding. Have a warmonger? Embargo him, raise army taxes (well, this one depends) and never let any of his proposals pass. And don't you dare accept the International Games proposal from a runaway Brazil.

Obviously, everything above requires some really good cooperation between the civs falling behind, but it is still doable, especially early on when you don't have many votes from CS allies. And this is something AI is horrible at. They will welcome Brazil's Olympics proposal because it's good for everyone, never realizing what kind of a monster Carnival will become. If they have SV in mind they will accept Sciences Funding proposed by a tech runaway, never realizing they are in fact creating an even larger gap. I don't know how it is handled in Multiplayer, but WC is indeed a powerful tool if played correctly (learnt it in a hard way - there was a game where I was ahead in science but Shoshone dominated WC. It was PAINFUL, and everything ended with me unlocking the "Apocalypse Now" achievement). And I think this is better and makes more sense than an instrument that allows one player single-handedly hinder the leader.

 

[headcase]

One thing I'd like to see is a significant (like 10%) production cost increase of wonders for every wonder constructed by the civ. This would even make some sense because a civ that makes a lot of wonders needs to make new ones extra special to count, an inversion of the "dancing bear".

The major balance-check should be alliances between other powers to overcome a larger power. The AI doesn't particularly excel there, for better or worse.

 

[Kallowe]

If your ahead you're usually also the host for the World Congress.

It seems to be designed for hindering the leader, but usually just allows him/her to snowball even harder.

 

[Sonereal]

I feel like that would lead to very easy game exploits if we implemented systems like that.

The same way the Director in Left4Dead is exploitable?

The game has its own definition of doing well, which doesn't necessarily match reality. How would the game know if you're doing well? For example

Don't need to read rest of the post. Just use the score.

But I am at loss how to implement any of this in Civ V.

The same way Gedemon did it, but with more of a CivIV Revolution mod flair.

 

[Louis XXIV]

I feel like that would lead to very easy game exploits if we implemented systems like that.

The game has its own definition of doing well, which doesn't necessarily match reality. How would the game know if you're doing well? For example:

If it's based on points in Civ V, tall empires would benefit even more. Warmongering, conquering gives you a lot of points, but I am often 'winning' the game even when the leading AI has way bigger empires with more points than I do.

If it's based on number of techs, then beelining becomes more important. If it's based on era, then going carefully through the tech path becomes more optimal, and beelining becomes worse.

If it's based on amount of science beakers, well, that would make warmongering and plays that rely on beelining certain techs without the scientific lead stronger. This would also benefit tall empires, or empires that don't have as much science penalty.

Why can't it be based on all of the above? If someone is high in techs (weighted so more advanced techs count as more), make techs cheaper for everyone else. If someone has more units, make units cheaper for everyone else (and give them free units around their capital the second the stronger player declares war), if someone has far more gold, make purchases cheaper or give more gold to the other players. Every 100 turns or so, they can determine who has more of what and give the others free stuff to even it out. You can even use more areas - unimproved tiles (free workers), behind in social policies (automatically built cultural buildings and some free social policies), etc.

I don't think it has to be a one-size fits all metric.

 

[Sagax]

If your ahead you're usually also the host for the World Congress.

It seems to be designed for hindering the leader, but usually just allows him/her to snowball even harder.

The first WC gives 1 vote to all the members and 1 extra to host. Forbidden Palace will give another 2. In the best case scenario the host will have 4 votes, which can be easily countered on Standard and larger maps. The reason the leader snowballs is because he starts with all-friendly proposals like World Fair, which in reality benefits him the most.

 

[kaspergm]

I generally dislike mechanics that penalize you for being ahead. In a competitive game, it just feels lame (not to mention problems with realism) to punish you for doing well at what you're supposed to be doing. I do agree what others have said, however, that some sort of rubber-band mechanism might work, and specifically the AI's complete ignorance at how to use the WC is something that could be adressed - for instance, if I'm game leader and playing cultural game, all the AI's will happily applaud and vote for my suggestion for world games, even though I'm leader in production and hence will be likely to win first prize, thus putting me even further ahead in culture. Obviously, in that case AI should have a sanity check to make it realize that even if it is itself aiming for cultural game, because of circumstances it will not benefit from this suggestion.

When that's said, I do feel that the victory conditions of Civ is one of the core issues with regard to this problem. Most of the victory conditions - particularly science victory - are very cummulative over the entire game, and this supports the runaway tendency that once one player gets ahead, he'll be likely to win. I do fell the BnW culture victory shows a path in the right direction (even if there's still room for improvement) in the sense that BnW in many ways resets the game around renaissance era, which is the point were cultural victory starts for real. Certainly, you can accumulate some tourism in early game which will work as a buffer, but even if you neglect tourism early on, you can still win cultural victory if you perform well in the other areas and starts focusing on this around midgame (at least on lower difficulty levels). Early game obviously still is important, because this is where you'll lay the ground and position yourself for second stage of game, but second stage is where actual victory is decided.

I do think the other victory conditions could take some sort of lead by this. In scenarios, we have victory points that you can accumulate by various specific means, and maybe this can be transfered to the regular game - literally or indirectly, a bit like tourism works like a sort of victory points for cultural victory. I know the science-victory-through-spaceship is a stable through the entire civ series, but perhaps we have reached the point where this has to be reconsidered. One could envision an actual space race, where science victory is only reached once you succesfully engage in space race with another or several other civs, rather than just having the civ leader winning a de-facto time victory, as it often plays off. In that way, I don't see a lot of difference between science victory (reach certain tech point = accumulate X amount of science over game) and vanilla cultural victory (finish 5 policy trees = accumulate X amounts of culture over game). I don't have the exact vision on how that would play off, but I do think there's room for rethinking game here.

 

[Callonia]

Well in my own experiences with the World Congress, it basically only help the leader.
I even renamed United Nations to United Empire of Germany for lols. Because I have enough votes and is allied to almost every city state and have a small military protecting each one of them.... Anything I vote.. passes whether the AI likes it or not.

Compounded even more by the fact that AI basically behaves like balkanize countries when it comes to the world congress. They simply cannot make concerted effort and goals.

If they wanted to stop my voting powers.... all they have to do is uh take city states over by force. Although I doubt they will even succeed at that or not at all xD

As it is, there is no way to implement a blue shell in Civ 5 without adding random events back in.

 

[beetle]

The problem with most of these kinds of mechanics is that they only really help (i.e., make play more fun) when players are close to equally skilled. The Rubber Band will never let a weak player win, and things that slow down the leader (but are less severe than a Blue Shell) won’t change that he’s winning. Such mechanics would certainly make a SP game more compelling, since they would narrow the win/loss. I am not sure what would be the equivalent of the Blue Shell for Civ, but I think it would be more frustrating and arbitrary than interesting.

My experience with MP games is that everyone tends to know who the weaker players are. MP games (where players are of unequal skill) are improved by having the option to apply a handicap from the start. This would be a way to improve both Mario Kart and Civ V.