To differ is not to poo-poo or shout down another opinion; it is to express one's own.
When arguments are not considered on their own merit but on how much they differ from an entrenched position poo-pooing quickly becomes the order of the day it seems.
Yes. Yes. As follows: I think that ever-increasing controlled territory must be subject to significant diminshing returns. Absent diminshing returns for more territory, the most effective play in most circumstances will be to acquire more territory. That is true in Civ if all you do is eliminate OCN-based corruption.
The OCN concept isn't the only way of imposing diminishing returns and I'm open to others. Your solution doesn't provide alternatives, it simply eliminates the effect I argue is important to gameplay.
Acquisition of more territory beyond what is required for all other forms of victory than domination offers no significant benefit to a game - indeed it hinders it (e.g. a culture player will be more interested in turning out cultural improvements early than expending resources on expansion, a diplomatic player will not want the reputation of a megalomaniac and so on). This is an in-built diminishing return of its own - 99% of Civ games require a modicum of expansion to begin with (with the exception of single city challenges), followed by a concentration on the chosen form of winning. OCN simply enforces a highly artificial dictat of when your expansion should cease, and quickly boils the game down into endless streams of mathematical formula discussions of how best to optimise within a basically senseless formula
Senseless in 'real-world' terms - the diminishing rurns principal is a good one, OCN corruption isn't a good implementation of that - most things in Civ do not take much of a stretch of the imagination to the 'real-world', however I do not remember the British empire suffering from 90% corruption in Hong Kong, or the Roman empire suffering from 90% corruption in Gaul. Since your argument seems to be based on 'gameplay' and 'scoring' etc. I suggest you read my suggestion earlier positing the abandonment of Civ basing score on population and territory, and purely on victory conditions/time. This enforces a diminishing return to endless expansion being the order of the day for all conditions other than domination itself.
Because the other approaches to Civ success in an unmodded game are reasonably well-balanced in terms of efficiency and play-style. Absent a diminshing returns concept implemented in some fashion, alternate approaches to success become much less attractive compared to acquiring more and more territory. If one's goal is simply to have fun playing a certain way, fine and dandy. If the goal is to present intersting strategic choices to the player on how to defeat opponents and win the game, then radically strengthening territory acquisition as a means to an end necessarily weakens other approaches.
Not if your score is based purely on how quickly you can achieve a victory (relevant to the type of victory achieved naturally). I refer you to my diminishing returns of continued expansion argument above
Alternatively, the point might to be to win the game as early as possible, as efficiently as possible. With the diminshing return of productivity from additional conquered territories, domination becomes one approach to winning; without the diminshing return, it becomes the sure-fire way to winning. The difference is that domination in a diminishing return regime requires judging whether continued effort to dominate is more efficient that an alternate approach; without adequate diminshing returns, every approach remains viable while the exploration of domination is continued -- whenever one wants to, one can call off the attack secure in the knowledge that the conquests thus far will be put to excellent use towards most of the other victory conditions
Effort and resources are required for continued expansion - effort and resources that could well have been put towards achieving your other victory condition. As has been stated, all Civ games (well, 99%) require a modicum of expansion at the start, removing OCN & pop scoring simply places the decision as to when this should occur in your lap, not in the hands of the mod maker saying 18 cities are all you are effectively going to use.
If you like being dictated to, thats fine and dandy, I prefer to have my options open. But think of all the formulas and discussions of those formulas that could be had finding optimal 'cease expansion time' for various victory types/maps/scenarios!
Seriously though, winning is rarely the issue, therefore all methods are viable, and it seems that the only real issue is the scoring system for a non-OCN model, which is why I have
suggested that territory/population be removed from final score.
I don't agree that OCN has removed a significant incentive for expansion. If it did, virtually no one would play for domination; and I think the hall of fame games, the GOTM, and other comparison formats of the game rule out the fact that no one plays for domination, and rules out the fact that those who do play for domination do so out of personal preferences as to what sort of game offers fun.
And I certainly am not required to agree that a game involving building empires must view diminshing returns associated with territorial expansion as a "retrograde principal." Make an argument that this is so, and maybe I'll offer my agreement or disagreement. Merely stating it and trying to emphasize it with bold or other text modifiers is not an argument.
Well, I personally have a number of friends who gave up Civ3 in disgust after finding there was no 'in-game' reward for conquering a city, and have personally received a number of emails from various people following my much earlier post on how to remove OCN from their games thanking me for making Civ fun again. Think on.
As for a game of building empires viewing OCN (not diminshing returns, OCN offers no returns) as a retrogrde principal I refer you to the entire history of humankind. If there wasn't any gold in the Incas the Spanish wouldn't have been half as keen, don't you think? If you want to play a game that has no basis in reality I suggest Chess or some other purely abstract game. This argument that I have been making all through my posts has been quietly and conveniently ignored
or poo pooed
Again, just making a statement and modifying it with "certainly" is not an argument. The unmodded game is "linear" in that it follows a set pattern or pathway. My argument about linear approaches concerns how the human plays the game: without your proposed OCN mod, I approach each game with a question of how I might like to win; with your proposed mod, I'd approach each game with an early answer -- acquire as much territory as possible (and maybe decide exactly how to win depending on mood). It's not the "game" that becomes linear with the proposed mod - the game is already linear in the sense that all rule-based games are linear - it's the player's approach that becomes linear with the proposed mod.
You already 'decide how much land/territory you are going to acquire and then decide how you are going to win' with OCN, or more accurately the modders have already decided for you.
Simply repeating your argument is not a new argument.
Neither is there any 'maybe' about how I decide to win my games without OCN, and I certainly will not be belittled by your repeated attempts to poo poo my arguments purely because I like to use certain words or even a little bit of
emphasis
You want no straw-man arguments and you offer this? None of the standard game, your proposed mod, or any of the vast majority of mods out there prohibits any method of winning. Of course anyone can play any game, modded or unmodded alike, in any manner they find enjoyable. How is this at all relevant to your stated view that the game is better served without the OCN concept? Because it makes it more fun for you or like-minded individuals? More power to you - but maybe it would help if you explained what the standards are against which you judge the worthiness of a game. If they're your personal preferences, fine; your view is as worthy as mine anyone else's. If instead they're variability in challenging and intersting approaches to playing and/or winning the game, how about an argument that makes your point?
Well, thankyou for at least the acknowledgement I am not attempting to restrict anyones form of winning. As to why the game is better served without OCN, I refer you to the very topic this thread originally started with - if Firaxis themselves were not concerned about the impact corruption is having on this games playability they would not have made that statement on their patch notes. The standards are as you describe - it makes the game more fun
but it does not invalidate any other form of winning. Myself and 'like-minded individuals' (of which I can assure you there are a lot more than you like to believe) do not want Civ to turn into some pointless excercise of formulaes around highly suspect mechanics.
I have been repeatedly making my argument throughout (straw men ahoy!) - the argument being that OCN is debasing the core principals around which Civ was originally founded and what most people expected to get out of the game until Civ3 arrived. I have suggested a very simple alteration to the scoring system that as far as I can see fulfills the requirements of keeping scoring balanced for all forms of strategies and simultaneously eliminates the need for this highly contentious mechanic. If some people really want OCN, I suggest making Civ4 with a moddable option to allow people to put it back in - and we all know what most people in the great unwashed masses will elect to do in that situation.
I loves a good argument me
Since the discussion seems to have moved away from the OCN mod to an exploration of alternate mechanics for Civ IV, Ill drop out of the discussion and leave it to those with stronger interest and ideas to share -- I'm sure there are many others with more creative ideas than I have.
and yet so true.
