Gameplay Balancing through Small Wonders

[dh_epic]

Yeah, I know it's not particularly realistic to build barbarian hoardes or something... but it's more about gameplay balancing.

The problem with triggers that punish the dominant player is that you're not empowering any players. By putting the power in the hands of the weaker player, you're empowering a player and making the game feel competitive. Automatic effects feels anti-competitive.

 

[sir_schwick]

The main concern with giving players these wonders is human manipulation and exploits. Civ 3 is already exploited heavily, so these wonders would be very hard to utilize without either making them nearly impossible to use(Iron Works) or easily exploited.

 

[dh_epic]

I have faith in the gameplay balancing. I think that Civ in the past just hasn't done this properly. You play a couple single players against the AI. The AI is too strong? Well, give the player an advantage. The AI is too weak? Give the AI an advantage. Cheating became the gameplay balancing technique, which doesn't translate well to multiplayer games.

 

[TheDarkPhantom]

Accepted. I do agree that when one power runs away with the game it quickly becomes boring. And it is a good idea for small powers to have perhaps some 'last stand' ability, or no war weariness as I've said before. As Guagle said, even if you don't argue for realism for realisms sake, striking more powerful players with plagues and disasters would seriously spoil the game, and give every powerful skillful player at the game a sense of great injustice.

But some LIMITED help to a weak player, or a player under attack I think is perhaps a good idea, though not high on my list of priorities for changes in Civ4.

 

[Iztvan]

Getting penalized for success is probably going to annoy people, so it's perhaps better to give some kind of bonus to their opponents instead. Some ideas:

* No war weariness when in a defensive war against someone who is much bigger/more powerful (defined in some appropriate way).

* Extra war weariness to the attacker if he is a big representative government attacking a small country.

* If your enemy controlls some of your cities, you could get free/cheap resistance fighters, perhaps even with hidden nationality or invisibility.

* A "desperate defense" button, similar to the "mobilize" button. Gives some kind of combat bonus, but can only be used in certain circumstances.

 

[dh_epic]

Yeah, that's the spirit of the suggestion. Like I said, I'm not married to any of the specific wonders, and I'm even willing to concede that building a small wonder is not the best way to do it.

But I'm glad people are seeing the "run away with the game" thing as a problem, and looking for solutions.

 

[Guagle]

Getting penalized for success is probably going to annoy people, so it's perhaps better to give some kind of bonus to their opponents instead. Some ideas:

* No war weariness when in a defensive war against someone who is much bigger/more powerful (defined in some appropriate way).

* Extra war weariness to the attacker if he is a big representative government attacking a small country.

* If your enemy controlls some of your cities, you could get free/cheap resistance fighters, perhaps even with hidden nationality or invisibility.

* A "desperate defense" button, similar to the "mobilize" button. Gives some kind of combat bonus, but can only be used in certain circumstances.

Good ideas!

I especially like your "desperate defense" as it would not be dependent on wonder building or specific triggers and could be available to anybody. To balance its effects it could have a limited duration and maybe a little downside like mobilization. Like only be able to build units or maybe some kind of limited negative effect when it wears off? (to limit exploits)

What do you think?

 

[Iztvan]

Well, it's difficult to say, since we don't know exactly how CivIV will work. But some limitation on production, like not being allowed to build any peaceful crap or research any peaceful techs. And perhaps some kind of "peace weariness", your people get angry if you make peace if some of your citizens are still controlled by the enemy when you make peace?

 

[ManOfMiracles]

Maybe things like this should only be added to higher difficulty levels. It sure would dissuade a beginner playing on Chieftain level if their success triggered something that suddenly crippled their civ or made the opponents more powerful.

 

[Iztvan]

Maybe things like this should only be added to higher difficulty levels. It sure would dissuade a beginner playing on Chieftain level if their success triggered something that suddenly crippled their civ or made the opponents more powerful.

Yeah, it should probably be optional, just like culture flips and other stuff. And it should not penalize a successful player, but rather help those who lagg behind. This would be good because sometimes you get lucky and the game gets boringly easy, and sometimes you have problems ad it gets to difficult. If the game could balance this out in some way, the game would have a bigger chance of being funny in the industrial/modern eras.

 

[dh_epic]

I agree with boosting those who lag behind, instead of penalizing leading players.

I might even endorse making this a human-only feature, and not something that is given to AI players.

 

[Matternich]

To a certain extent if youre losing then bad luck, start again, it wouldn't be fun if you won all the time.
As Socralynnek says the snowballing effect where a player falls insurmountably behind should be addressed but that's do do with the present games mechanics not additional wonders.

However there are situations where through no fault of the player the AI storms ahead-
I'm playing an archipelago Diety game and keep losing because the start island is too small and keeping up with the tech race is impossible without early contact with other nations.
In this case a small wonder would be useful- something that allows trade with smaller nations tech at half cost. This could be triggered and then only used when the lead nation is ahead by a fixed number of tech. The aquiring of this wonder through conquest would not apply unless the nation was as far behind.
There may be other situations like this which warrant introducing the idea to some extent.

 

[troytheface]

the premise of stopping one civ with running away with the game is a good one-one way to implement this without compromising believability is perhaps to have all the other civs somehow have a "jealousy" factor...where deals with that one civ become a bit lopsided (in favor of the stragglers) and perhaps having invisible terrorist units (like in the scenarios) that could really do some damage (and have a cap on the amount of these so that one could not build a billion of them...maybe even have the units of a destroyed civ join its friendliest neighbor that can be utilized as stealth or mercenary units. Maybe the small wonder "The Intelligence Agency" (which should be able to be built earlier-i mean Rome had one as did the Byzantines...even the early greeks used a "spy" in the Odyssey to trick the trojans ..) ....could be utilized as a training/recruiting ground for such operations...course it works both ways...if ur running away with the game u'd have to be prepared to thwart such operations, and too..instead of going for a quick kill leaving enemy stacks about- u'd be a bit more inclined to sue for peace or try to eliminate those stacks...as a matter of fact, there should be a surrender option -
On a side note, perhaps the idea that land area gives one points should be eliminated..Alexander/Ghengis/England/Vikings...small land area did not equal ability to conquer or prosper economically..which is to say that maybe the point system should be based more on Trade/economics than territory...i mean territory would still provide resources so its importance would not be negated..which is to say happiness/trade(gold)...tech?..../population would be the criterea for points

 

[dh_epic]

Yeah, I agree the game needs to be overhauled, and small wonders is really putting a bandaid on a knife wound... A tiny territory with a huge economy is not possible in Civ, but this would not only be more realistic, but permit a more balanced game between those continental powers versus those who are unlucky enough to be on an island.

Still, I think the small wonders thing could be a good quick fix to a lot of problems. The idea being that under huge amounts of pressure and the odds stacked against them, humans have shown great ingenuity. Why shouldn't an unlucky island nation be able to push forward when the chips are down?

 

[sir_schwick]

The point about island nations is a good one. What would really help is an overhaul of the trade system where resources were traded automatically, only the resource controllers earn tons of money. This would really discourage hordeing resources, since you can make tons of money to support that big army of yours.

 

[dh_epic]

Well, that would mean that strategic resources would need to have more meaning, more value. Particularly when it pertains to trade. I know some would say resources are already too important, but what I'm talking about is more of a lateral move.

 

[sir_schwick]

Well, that would mean that strategic resources would need to have more meaning, more value. Particularly when it pertains to trade. I know some would say resources are already too important, but what I'm talking about is more of a lateral move.

A couple things that may reassure you about my concept.
1) Resources would no longer just be used for units and improvements. They would also be used by ordinary citizens, meaning having access keeps them satisfied, or improves efficiency in the city, or something else. Resource demand would be a lot higher, especially for oil.
2) You could still trade resources in the negotiation screen, but you would be then trading them to the other person as a domestic source, lowering the price considerably(Saudi and US, somewhat).

 

[dh_epic]

Explain the "trading as a domestic source". I do like the first part, however.

Personally, I think resources would mean more if you actually had a sense of how large a supply you'd need to support your nation. Imagine being a little nation with a small infrastructure, and a huge supply of oil -- you'd be rich with all the surplus you'd have. Thus you could have the strongest military in the world and yet have the smallest borders. This inherently rewards a non-expansionist style, and balances and varies the gameplay strategy.

 

[sir_schwick]

Explain the "trading as a domestic source". I do like the first part, however.

Personally, I think resources would mean more if you actually had a sense of how large a supply you'd need to support your nation. Imagine being a little nation with a small infrastructure, and a huge supply of oil -- you'd be rich with all the surplus you'd have. Thus you could have the strongest military in the world and yet have the smallest borders. This inherently rewards a non-expansionist style, and balances and varies the gameplay strategy.

Here is how Strategic and Luxury trade would work:
(Demand) - Your have several levels of demand. Your range is from 'Military only' to 'The Affluent' all the way to 'Even the poor'. More people get the resource if the money is avaliable. THis affects happiness and utility. The demand of each city is expressed as RP.
(Supply) - You can close all but one of a resource if you choose. You can also put all of a resource you own on a market. The more avaliable, the less moeny it costs. You usually do not want to constrain the market too much unless you desire to cause a world wide depression, making it hard to sell your products.
(Domestic Sources) - The government will keep prices from being high for domestic trading. All resources will sell at 1 gold per RP.
(Where the Money comes from) - Cities generate gold each turn as taxes. These are transfered to the city that sells the resource.
(Cost of Resource) - There is a total demand for a market equal to all the cities who haven't gotten a resource domestically. There is a total number of sources of resource. Divide the demand by the supply. This number determines the price per RP. Here is some examples of what I mean: 1-10 = 1gpRP, 11-30 = 2gpRP, 31-60= 3gpRP, 61-100=4gpRP, 101-150=5gpRP, 151-210=6gpRP, 211-280=7gpRP,281-360=8gpRP, etc. This keeps early resources from being prohibative expensive. Also, demand for things such as oil and aluminum can get very high. A city will then pay for each resource at the lowest demand, and work its way up on some priority scale not determined yet at a higher level for each. Once the total amount of gold spent on a resource is determine, the gold is split between the cities that controlled the resources based on how many they contributed to the market.

 

[dh_epic]

I like the calculations. They make sense and seem to reflect a lot of automation. I'm just curious how international trade works. (I know we're way off topic, but hey, it's my thread, so who cares.)