Early vs Late difficulty balancing

[Thalassicus]

This will only be for humans because I can't change the AI to recognize these things.

 

[bwoww78]

So the question is... for peaceful civilizations, what's the most likely source of rogue hostiles in the modern era? It's probably not unrest. These empires are happy and peaceful! However, they do tend to have smaller borders. Perhaps some Wild West theme? Outlaws in lawless territory robbing and pillaging at the fringes of society...

What about elements of transnational or regional organized crime. Pirates are a good example, but could also include mafia organizations, radical (read: violent) political (e.g. anarchistic) movements, transnational gangs, arms & drug traffickers ... you get the drift. These groups can be (and have been) well organized and put down by state actors violently over time.

It's hardly academic, but this could give you some inspiration.

It could also be regional separatist movements, thereby not requiring a violent response, but rather stiff penalties or costs (i.e. gold) to calm or negotiate... I don't know how political it needs to be, however. plus the whole purpose is to make peaceful tall empires flex their military muscle.

 

[mitsho]

They do spawn when in Line of Sight, right? Otherwise that would have been an option.

Thinking onwards from Organized Crime, Lawless Brigands and maybe even Goldrush, let them spawn on unimproved ressources (of any kind): Can your workers keep up with your expansion rate? Again, more directed at Wide Empires. Maye connect it to Farms or Villages?

Are we talking about Wide or Tall Empires? I'd say Tall Empires can use the buff of not having to have these problems (it's enough to defend against major invaders).

 

[Thalassicus]

@bwoww
I like the idea of organized crime and drug cartels as a modern representation, that's a good way of looking at it.

@mitsho
The general problem we're trying to solve is the late game is less exciting than the early game.

What has put me off CiV in the past is a constant cycle of never quite finishing any random maps because I either move too quickly through my civ's peak eras, or reach the point of winning-w/o-actually-winning-yet and get bored.

So, in short, I support the goal of increasing interest in the mid/late game.

In particular, we're looking for a reason barbs would spawn for peaceful empires in the late game (not a wide/tall question).

• Conquest empires: Freedom fighters spawn around puppet cities.
• Peaceful empires: Outlaws, mafia, drug cartels, etc. The question is how to represent this with an ingame effect.

 

[bwoww78]

In particular, we're looking for a reason barbs would spawn for peaceful empires in the late game (not a wide/tall question).

• Conquest empires: Freedom fighters spawn around puppet cities.
• Peaceful empires: Outlaws, mafia, drug cartels, etc. The question is how to represent this with an ingame effect.

maybe it would make most sense to break it down by era? the types of "invaders" or
"insurgents" in the renaissance would be different from industrial and modern eras...

could you tie it to social policy selections? i.e. anarchist movement if you picked nationalism (i don't mean to dip into that well so much, but oh.. well) or right wing extremists if you picked freedom...

 

[Thalassicus]

I'd be okay with any names we use; it could just be called a generic "criminals." The important thing is to figure out a localized part of gameplay that would cause barbs to spawn in peaceful empires. In other words... what would cause them to appear near city A, but not city B? Population is an obvious approach, but I'm not sure how to rationalize it in a realistic way.

 

[bwoww78]

It could be tied to city geography, as was previously suggested...

Improved (or not?) tiles of terrain type or specific luxury or strategic resource within city radius.

For example:

Gold/silver/gems = x% chance of y barb type spawn (mafia)

Jungle/mountains = x% chance of z barb type (drug traffickers, etc)

This could distinguish cities pretty easily at least...

Building improvements could affect the %, blaming it on corruption or extortion (and could therefore affect tall/wide differently)

 

[rhammer640]

Odds could increase for low pop cities due to 'easy targets' and also increase at high pop cities due to lots of food, etc for them to want to try to steal. That would then effect the peaceful if the stayed too isolated in few cities and also for expanding too fast/warring. Just throwing ideas out there.

Also what era would this start in? The comments about gangs and drug traffickers seems like only modern but I would assume it would start mid game, like medieval on?

 

[MortalD]

In Civ4 there was a quest system. Do this and that and u may pick ur reward or suffer penalty if u fail the task. Not saying that would bring any challenge in later game, but can be entertaining.

Example :

High ranking diplomat is held hostage by "criminals" in far away deserted region of the word. Go there, defeat enemy forces or succ in negotiations to release him. Do it and u will gain influence with X empire/citystate. Fail ( not sure how that would work ) and suffer relations penalty.

Thats just an example ofc

 

[void_genesis]

Ive always considered the option of making the final approach to a victory condition dangerous would be the best way to make the end game compelling.

So for example building spaceship parts places an enormous negative strain on your civ, so that if it isn't managed properly it can destroy the civ. It would mean that you don't always start building the parts as soon as you open the tech- there would be other factors to consider and circumstances to arrange before you push headlong into victory.

This could act as a dynamic/fun substitute for the old civ mechanism of only having a percentage chance of the rocket reaching its destinations. That was fairly random, but ideally it would be a challenge you would need to manage and judge every turn in the end-game......

The only issue is balancing it so that the AI can manage a victory often enough.....

 

[mitsho]

Was there a quest system in Civ4? Did I miss that? In any case, in the scope you described this would be too detached from the strategy game itself and the opportunities cover the flavour aspect of this.

Generally speaking the road to victory at the end needs to be more challenging, not just harder. The AI is very good with SCience Victory and them racing to the win pushes you to race for your victory the same or build up a surgical strike unit and take their capital (or in G&K try to set them back with spies). That's fun so I'm not sure wether that needs fixing since anyway we make it harder for the AI to achieve it, the less fun this race becomes. On the other hand the AI should try to run you over if you've built several Space Ship parts or at least dogpile on you the closer you come.

Cultural Victories on the other hand are just plain boring. I'm not sure making the other civs attack you to get away from it is the right thing to do here (duplicating effects). However, where conquest means dominating the other civs, and science means being the most advanced and diplomatic is a mixture of cleverness, narrow (focused) power and economic/tall might, cultural meant for me that your civilization is so good and well-off, everybody else is in awe (and gives you the world president position because you are so damn good at ruling). Just tacking on additional buildings to build makes it boring again, so why not have there be other conditions to be fulfilled before you can build utopia, like you have to have 75% of all luxury ressources possible? This runs into the same problem of making it too hard for the AI again...
Spinning this idea further, what if filling a tree + fulfilling a condition lets you build a World Project that can only be built once. Whoever has x projects, wins. So for example, to be able to build the Tradition Tree one, you'd need to have 4 world wonders, for the Victory Column of Honor, you'd need to have killed x units. For Commerce, be in possession of 66% of luxury ressources while for Order, every city needs a forge, factory and reseach facility. So in theory, you could win by the middle Ages, but it'd be bad if you can pick up all policies of Liberty, Tradition and Honor first, since they rely on different playstyles. Instead, you'd most probably need to pick up one tree in each era. Of course the AI would never understand that system and it runs into a big problem with the number of civs since ten trees are not enough for large maps, maybe make it that you need at least two more projects than the next one and at least x. But that's just dreaming and I've gotten way off topic...

Diplomatic Victories are adressed with the new Gold Spending model and will be revamped with G&K, so nothing to do here...

What I actually wanted to propose is something completely different: the late game barbarians. Is it possible to create a unique Great General "Great Barbarian" or whatever who spawns with these uprising. It's flavourful (Hey, Timur arrived with his horse archers or Al Capone terrorizes Chicago) and it ups the threat level, if the Barbarian Civ would know how to use them...

 

[wobuffet]

I could get behind spicing up Cultural victories, although that might fall outside the scope of VEM...

A couple times here on these forums, I've seen proposals to have mini-Utopia projects that are unlocked after completing each Policy tree. Each such project could enable that tree's Finisher policy, for example. This might make completing each SP tree actually feel like an accomplishment, and at the very least would keep you updated on Cultural AI civs' progress ("Ramesses II has completed the Freedom project! He needs 2 more Social Policy Projects to achieve a Cultural victory.")

 

[bwoww78]

+1 to the barb general idea (if possible)

 

[Thalassicus]

What I actually wanted to propose is something completely different: the late game barbarians. Is it possible to create a unique Great General "Great Barbarian" or whatever who spawns with these uprising. It's flavourful (Hey, Timur arrived with his horse archers or Al Capone terrorizes Chicago) and it ups the threat level, if the Barbarian Civ would know how to use them...

I could give barbarians experience. +20% combat strength is basically the same whether it comes from a promotion or a great general. I think the main reason barbs aren't a threat in the late game is they never have promotions.

 

[rhammer640]

I could give barbarians experience. +20% combat strength is basically the same whether it comes from a promotion or a great general. I think the main reason barbs aren't a threat in the late game is they never have promotions.

The promotions would help but i think the main issue is that they are usually not a threat on your main continent because they stop spawning at all or as much so the only barbs you deal with are off on distant lands, which while fun to fight, dont feel like much of a threat and more an optional thing to do while exploring.

 

[Zaldron]

Is there an ETA for v137? Or did you mean v136?

v137 is already released.

 

[wobuffet]

v137 is already released.

It wasn't up yet when I posted that! Thanks though.

More on the topic, I thought Barbs were primarily meant to be an early-game menace and naturally die out as the map was discovered/settled. That said, the idea of integrated Partisans arising from puppet cities (and perhaps something similar for large cities) later in the game sound like they could well be fun, as long as they don't become too tedious to deal with during non-warmonger games. This depends at least as much on the mechanism from which they arise (it should be reasonably predictable if not preventable, because random bad luck is never fun) as how difficult they are to actually deal with.

 

[Jaybe]

That said, the idea of integrated Partisans arising from puppet cities (and perhaps something similar for large cities) later in the game sound like they could well be fun, as long as they don't become too tedious to deal with during non-warmonger games. This depends at least as much on the mechanism from which they arise (it should be reasonably predictable if not preventable, because random bad luck is never fun) as how difficult they are to actually deal with.

I'd prefer LESS predictable but rare, perhaps a max of 2-3 times* in a whole game per civ (is this ONLY for the player, or is this potentially also for AI?). Regimes come, regimes go, and I'd STILL prefer potential for the equivalent of plagues/dark ages and other such calamities.

* There could be some scaling due to game speed/map size.

 

[Stalker0]

Speaking as a peaceful type player generally, personally for me the late game is about sitting back and admiring my glorious empire without getting entangled in wars if possible.

I like having tons of gold and science and building what I want and seeing huge multipliers and numbers. That is the joy for me. To that end, war is something I want to avoid.

So while I like the idea of rebels popping up next to puppet states, I wouldn't want a general rebellion system in the game to encourage late game difficulty.

I agree with trying to increase late game difficultyl I think the best tool for the job though will be self balancing mechanics. Tech diffusion is a common example. Another example might be giving free influence to nations behind the curve (sort of how modern states band together against the big boys).

Ultimately any new rebalancing mechanic is going to be very hard to achieve, unless the mechanic itself is a function of how ahead in the game you are.

 

[AlextheGr8]

I try to be peaceful but the AI always picks on me, even though they never really threaten to destroy me, they constantly declare war and denounce me. I think if the Ai was actually militarily capable it would make late game more difficult. Instead combat AI is really a joke, and the only way they become tough is when they pump out hundreds of units.