R&F tries to keep the late-game more interesting through the loyalty system. I read
this article recently and it really spoke to me. I think it really explains my disappointment with the game overall, the lack of satisfaction when finally achieving a victory compared to that in the earlier growth and development phases of the game. This, combined with the emphasis on perpetual growth.
I would turn this around a bit, and say the most important thing in the article was that almost all the 4X games focus on 'perpetual growth' and that it is a symptom of our modern concept (and it's only modern - since the Industrial Revolution) of Perpetual Improvement - that the trend of history is always 'upwards'. This concept would have been utterly foreign to our ancestors prior to the 18th century.
The irony and the disconnect for the potential game designer, is that while individual human perception was that things were not necessarily getting better and that it must have been better Long, Long Ago (the concept of an earlier 'Golden Age' dates back to at least Classical Era), in fact General Progress has been the overall Human Story. Overall Human Population count has risen almost steadily since the Stone Age, and Life Expectancy at birth, and general Access To Knowledge. The Wrench in the Works is that while overall Human Trends might be generally Positive and Progressive, the trends for specific groups, populations, Civilizations and individuals in all of those have been almost completely the opposite. Individual populations get wiped out by other groups, or plague, or are forced to move; Civilizations, notoriously, Rise and Fall, their populations rising and falling with them. Cities disappear, to be rediscovered centuries or 10s of centuries later.
So, I would say our real Challenge from all this is to have a game in which the Gamer, who is, after all, essentially playing a Civilization, has a set of realizable Victory Conditions that include the very real, almost inevitable, Fall, Collapse or Eclipse of his/her Civilization.
Following this same theme of having your civ's history play a role there are a few other factors that could also play a bigger role within the loyalty system, although they are less straightforward to implement and perhaps more debatable whether they should be considered or not.
Your integrity as a leader could be another interesting factor. There seem to be universally accepted ethics within the game that cause other civ leaders to dislike you, like being a warmonger or breaking promises. Why stop the effects of these behavior at diplomacy? These behaviors could impact your citizens' loyalty to you as a leader as well.
It might be even more interesting to make something like how your citizens perceive you as a leader dependent on your chosen civilization. Similar to how there is an option for each AI leader to follow their civ-specific agenda, citizen perspective could be optionally civ-specific rather than conform to 'universal' values. For example if you're Gorgo and you never go to war that will negatively impact your citizens' loyalty. Or if you're Saladin and you don't spread your religion it'll negatively impact loyalty. Obviously these things will further push players to play a specific way with a given leader and hence I emphasize anything like this should remain optional.
So in conclusion, I think the loyalty system is a brilliant way to keep the game interesting and more dynamic as you progress further in the game, but that it could be developed further to make the game more well-balanced, less predictable and less cliche. By giving citizens a bigger role in the game, almost as if they are an extra player through the loyalty system, it would vastly change the experience towards a more dynamic one that encourages more balanced approaches. What do people think of these ideas? Does anyone know if it would be possible to add any of these ideas as a mod to the game?
Loyalty is a product of Other Things. People are 'Loyal' when the Benefits of the Civ/Government/Polity outweigh the perceived Deficits. Also, never forget that Loyalty, Disloyalty, and every grade in between are Individual Traits. A population is not Loyal: individuals are, and if a high enough percentage of them are not, then we say a Population is Disloyal when what we really mean is that most of them, as always, just want to be Left Alone to Get On With Life while a percentage are being Really Loud about their complaints.
So, I would do two things (or, the Mythical Great Game Programmer/Modder should do them):
1. Develop a Victory Type that does not require you to reach any specific turn-related End. That is, your Victory would be based on events in the game rather than an End Goal arbitrarily defined (Explore Space, get more Tourists, Conquer Everything in Sight). Thus, you could when a Victory based on in-game achievements even though your Civilization was overrun by screaming hordes of Dutchmen on Turn 334 of a 500 turn game.
2. Develop or modify systems in the game to give us some Criteria for Victory other than possession of numerous Cities, Tourist Attractions, Scientific or military achievements.
I suggest that a possible Victory Type would be based on Happiness as well as or instead of Loyalty. To what degree and for how long either in absolute Turns or relative to a set number of Turns can you keep Your Population at a certain level of 'Happiness'? Another Criteria - who can keep the greatest number (population points) of people on Earth (game map) 'Happy' for the longest time?
To do this right, we might have to separate our population into Classes - Population points working land tiles are Peasants, those working city buildings are Workers, a certain percentage might be Clergy, Intellectuals, or Aristcrats, and Happness might be measured for each separately. In a well-designed system, you would find keeping all of them equally happy to be virtually impossible, as it was historically!
Tools for the Gamer in this endeavor would obviously be Government Types, Social Policies, possibly Civics, and certainly would involve Technologies, many of which would Upset the previous Civic Order (Introduction of Factories, for instance) and require the gamer to react to them.
Keeping the population Safe with an army, city walls, civilization defenses ( Chna was only one of several Civs that historically built 'long walls' - see Frye's new book
Walls for a discussion) would enter into this, as would losing wars or winning wars, but winning a war by dent of working a percentage of your own population to death isn't going to help towards Victory. On the other hand, a victory won against Odds or against a malevolent attacker would result in a Euphoric reaction - see the Allies after WWII, some of which (USSR) 'coasted' on the Glory of Victory for several decades.
Politically, some measurement of Participation could be invoked. A complete Despot may be able to build mightily and shower his people with glorious Things, but if they have no say at all in what Things or how they are obtained, sooner or later they will resent it all - in a nutshell, that's the history of both Royal France under Louis XIV and every Chinese Dynasty since Chin. That would make certain Government types very important for such a Victory: democracies of all kinds, monarchies with a constitutional basis, etc. On the other hand, trying to maintain such a government when what you need is a military dictatorship to fight off the Hordes could be a disaster!
Ideally, the result of actually thinking through and implementing all these Musings on my part would be a game in which my Civilization doesn't build a City until 2500 BCE because my people have Really Good Terrain for pastoral food raising and no serious opposition nearby, then become a mighty Theocratic Empire by the end of the Classical Era, get overrun by Infidel Armies of Brazilians in the Medieval Era, become a set of City States/Free Cities in the Renaissance Era, become a Republic in the Industrial Era, and win a Victory in the Modern Era because through all that the overall Happiness versus Time ratio of my population remained Positive. Essentially, we divorce Political/Scientific/Military Achievements, the usual 'test' of Victory in Civ, from Victory and replace it (or, are properly, Augment It with an additional Victory Type) with How Well The Gamer Handled Game Events to Keep The Population Happy, measured in greatest number/percentage of 'happy' people for the greatest number of turns/time.
This also gives us scope to really include the Historical Negatives. IF maintaining your Capital/Civ inviolate and constantly expanding is no longer an absolute necessity for Victory, how well you can survive real Barbarian Hordes (20 Horse Archers in One Turn!), volcanoes, earthquakes, plagues, migrations, disruptive Technologies - all become playable options in the game for a change.
