Evolving civilizations simulated

[Iceco]

You have to make the bad moments come off as evident, instead of a sign of bad play. You could for example make the happiness level fluctuate:
You have things that give happiness and things that give :angry:unhappiness/unrest and they combat each other. Now we just add them up and if your empire is happy, you're doing good, if it's unhappy, you're crap. Instead you should get a sine wave, where in times of happiness, the positive factors are slowly diminished in effect every turn and the negative factors get stronger. That means happiness will decline and switch to unhappiness, at what time the effects get switched: happiness factors grow in strength and unhappiness factors fade. (Fading and growth could be exponential factors so maintaining either state will become increasingly difficult the more turns it lasts.)
You'll get a sine wave with peaks. Moments of happiness, wealth, growth and moments of unrest, weakness, decline. The latter being a fertile ground for new civilizations being born.
You then also have golden ages and dark ages. I don't know if they should draw from the same pool or have two separate ones.

The key is to give people control over the fluctuation. Allow them to hunt for more and more happiness, or perhaps artificially keep their empire happy (during a war, for the benefits) in exchange for a serious dark age in the future.

A possible idea for the golden/dark age pools is this:
The two pools are independently filled happiness, respectively unhappiness, but in turns where the balance is positive, respectively negative, that balance is deducted from pool. So in keeping your empire constantly happy, you lower the chance of a golden age and vice versa.
(Think of how prosperous nations are said to become 'lazy', or how the Chinese are currently booming at the cost of the average Chinese.)
People would then need to be given greater momentary control over their overall happiness balance, so they can direct their effort towards either short or long-term benefits.

 

[pileofnuts]

The idea of hitting points during the game is one that came to me also. But, it would not be score points, but rather victory points. The player could hit victory points during his game. The victory would be more progressive rather than brutal. The mean to hit victory points would be having a great empire for example, so the player would still want a big empire even if he is nearly certain that it will fall. No mean the consequences, the player would still always want a bigger empire in order to hit victory points. At the end of the game, a panel would be displayed listing the greatest civs of the all times: the first is the winner.

That's a really interesting idea. I imagine reworking the current victory conditions into scoring categories and adding a few more. The science category scoring at the end of the game could look something like this:

Science (civilization with the highest percentage of world science output)
1. Naokaukodem, The Second British Republic with 32% in 1630. +10 Victory Points
2. pileofnuts, Communist India with 27% in 1932. +5 Victory Points
3. AnotherPlayer, The Republic of Babylonia with 22% in 640AD. +3 Victory Points
4. ... +0 Victory Points

The idea is to always make it possible for players to improve their placement in the scoring categories throughout the game. Halfway through the game I might feel pretty confident in scoring high in the Domination category since a opted for early aggression as the Romans. My Roman Empire collapsed quite quickly, but not before I was able to hold 30% of world population within my empire, making for a pretty hard number to beat later in the game.

A slight problem in my opinion is that there would be no clearly defined finish line. If you are familiar with Settlers of Catan, a similar system could be implemented. In Settlers you fight for, among other things, the Longest Road card and the Biggest Army card. Each card will score the card holder two points at the end of the game. These cards act as the scoring categories described above.

However, the end of the game is triggered when a player has 10 victory points (that player wins). You get one point for each settlement you have for example. Since every player steadily increases the number of settlements they have the game cannot continue indefinitely.

This type of system could work very well in Civilization multiplayer. Let's say you are playing a game and you have a high base score from the number of cities you have founded (like the settlement score in Settlers). You also score +10 points in the Domination category and +5 points in the Culture category. Now you only need another 5 points to reach the finish line and win the game. You have a high science production and is trying to get the 5 points by placing second in the Science category. The other players have figured this out and is trying to prevent you from doing this creating for a tense end game.

 

[Naokaukodem]

You have to make the bad moments come off as evident, instead of a sign of bad play. You could for example make the happiness level fluctuate:
You have things that give happiness and things that give :angry:unhappiness/unrest and they combat each other. Now we just add them up and if your empire is happy, you're doing good, if it's unhappy, you're crap. Instead you should get a sine wave, where in times of happiness, the positive factors are slowly diminished in effect every turn and the negative factors get stronger. That means happiness will decline and switch to unhappiness, at what time the effects get switched: happiness factors grow in strength and unhappiness factors fade. (Fading and growth could be exponential factors so maintaining either state will become increasingly difficult the more turns it lasts.)
You'll get a sine wave with peaks. Moments of happiness, wealth, growth and moments of unrest, weakness, decline. The latter being a fertile ground for new civilizations being born.
You then also have golden ages and dark ages. I don't know if they should draw from the same pool or have two separate ones.

The key is to give people control over the fluctuation. Allow them to hunt for more and more happiness, or perhaps artificially keep their empire happy (during a war, for the benefits) in exchange for a serious dark age in the future.

A possible idea for the golden/dark age pools is this:
The two pools are independently filled happiness, respectively unhappiness, but in turns where the balance is positive, respectively negative, that balance is deducted from pool. So in keeping your empire constantly happy, you lower the chance of a golden age and vice versa.
(Think of how prosperous nations are said to become 'lazy', or how the Chinese are currently booming at the cost of the average Chinese.)
People would then need to be given greater momentary control over their overall happiness balance, so they can direct their effort towards either short or long-term benefits.

Interesting, but here is for now how i see the decline: by culture mainly. If the culture of your cities are alike your core/starting culture, then they do not rebel. If the culture is different, then, they can "denounce" you and break apart if they feel they are strong enough together.

You can keep your cities your core culture by having a strong culture. Also, you have to make roads to your cities in order for culture to go in there, and reinforce. If your culture is strong, you should open your frontiers and make roads to the surrounding civs/city states, for a better culture conductivity. If your culture is weak, you should not build roads to the surroundings civs or city states, and not open your frontiers. Not open frontiers would be a strong wall to culture spread. So, we could encounter situations like in Europe, with a lot of different countries and cultures. Note that if a city you own "switches" more or less of culture, it should not be automatically assimilated by the foreign culture owner. Most of the time there would be a need of war. But, if this converted city is taken, then its chance to switch back would be thin: let's say the conqueror takes several cities around him: if those cities aren't assimilated, they will make a pact and rebel milirarily. Then, the conqueror would be in bad shape. If those cities are already assmilated, then there would not be rebellion.

If you conquer a lot of not assimilated cities, the same will happen to you: you will face an uprising that will probably cost you a lot of your empire. Note that very wide conquered empires would nearly every time be in that situation: far away cities could not have been assimilated, so they will rebel soon or later.

The China case is different. Let's say they maxed out the migration factor early. A lot of city states with the same culture than China would appear. Let's say China opened its frontier to them and built roads. Then, the culture of all those cities would have little chance to differenciate. Then, one conqueror among all those people could take all those cities without the fear of a late rebellion: it is the unification.

 

[Naokaukodem]

That's a really interesting idea. I imagine reworking the current victory conditions into scoring categories and adding a few more. The science category scoring at the end of the game could look something like this:

Science (civilization with the highest percentage of world science output)
1. Naokaukodem, The Second British Republic with 32% in 1630. +10 Victory Points
2. pileofnuts, Communist India with 27% in 1932. +5 Victory Points
3. AnotherPlayer, The Republic of Babylonia with 22% in 640AD. +3 Victory Points
4. ... +0 Victory Points

The idea is to always make it possible for players to improve their placement in the scoring categories throughout the game. Halfway through the game I might feel pretty confident in scoring high in the Domination category since a opted for early aggression as the Romans. My Roman Empire collapsed quite quickly, but not before I was able to hold 30% of world population within my empire, making for a pretty hard number to beat later in the game.

A slight problem in my opinion is that there would be no clearly defined finish line. If you are familiar with Settlers of Catan, a similar system could be implemented. In Settlers you fight for, among other things, the Longest Road card and the Biggest Army card. Each card will score the card holder two points at the end of the game. These cards act as the scoring categories described above.

However, the end of the game is triggered when a player has 10 victory points (that player wins). You get one point for each settlement you have for example. Since every player steadily increases the number of settlements they have the game cannot continue indefinitely.

This type of system could work very well in Civilization multiplayer. Let's say you are playing a game and you have a high base score from the number of cities you have founded (like the settlement score in Settlers). You also score +10 points in the Domination category and +5 points in the Culture category. Now you only need another 5 points to reach the finish line and win the game. You have a high science production and is trying to get the 5 points by placing second in the Science category. The other players have figured this out and is trying to prevent you from doing this creating for a tense end game.

That's interesting [EDITED crap]