How to improve the endgame

[Abaxial]

We all know the problem, Victory is assured, but it's a chore to actually get all the way to the actual victory condition, and all the while you have to micro-manage every city while you slog your way through the long and tedious path to a SV. All the other civs are reduced to impotence. You might as well end the game there, except it seems so arbitrary.

So my thoughts turn to chess. In chess, it is regarded as very bad manners to play on to checkmate when you have no hope of saving the game. You resign when the writing is on the wall. What's needed is some mechanic by which the AI civs throw in the towel when it is inevitable that the human has won.

For example - a wild card called "End of History". Only available in the very late game. If you have this slotted, you win if your player score is more than three times the score of the next highest civ. Essentially, the other civs collectively shrug and concede that you are the top nation (pace Fukuyama).

 

[Bactrian]

Honestly, I think the game needs less endgame and more early and midgame. People seem to be in this huge rush to get to the industrial and modern eras to play with tanks and bombers in giant wars that don't ever come about. Instead of short circuiting a huge chunk of the game, I would rather they weight the game towards the ancient, classical, and medieval eras. Add more techs in those eras, make it harder to beeline through the tech tree, and slow research way, way down. Let us build magnificent cities and civilizations in the classical era. Right now everything seems like a giant prelude to the modern era.

 

[Sostratus]

Instead of short circuiting a huge chunk of the game, I would rather they weight the game towards the ancient, classical, and medieval eras. Add more techs in those eras, make it harder to beeline through the tech tree, and slow research way, way down.

I have always been a big fan of re-pacing the earlier eras a bit so it doesn’t seem like you zip through.

I think the lessened amount of techs due to the civics tree + the existing huge splits in the tree that let you ignore big chunks + massive level of early science on tap pushes the player into the industrial way too fast, exactly where the AI quickly starts falling off. I would love to see eras reorganized a little so you generally need more techs from the current era to get to the next era.
For what it’s worth, I also think the campus should be punted back to education and the library made a city center building. (Campus would have something like university-public school-research lab.) Just to tamp down on the insane leverage humans can get out of it and how every strategy is basically one of 10 flavors of campus Rush.

 

[Prester John 2]

Honestly, I think the game needs less endgame and more early and midgame. People seem to be in this huge rush to get to the industrial and modern eras to play with tanks and bombers in giant wars that don't ever come about. Instead of short circuiting a huge chunk of the game, I would rather they weight the game towards the ancient, classical, and medieval eras. Add more techs in those eras, make it harder to beeline through the tech tree, and slow research way, way down. Let us build magnificent cities and civilizations in the classical era. Right now everything seems like a giant prelude to the modern era.

Yes to this! I'd rather have them shorten the modern eras and put more emphasis on the earlier eras. If you want to play a modern war game then they could special scenarios for that. WW1 and 2 are anyway not playable in that short time frame.

 

[Timberdoodle]

I wish that the score victory allowed you to set the number of turns in the game. Or maybe it could be a game mode where the game ends once the world reaches the selected era and the winner is the player with the highest score. If I know I rarely ever play past the modern era, it would be nice to be able to set that as the end point and still have a victory condition.

 

[Larsen]

One thing that causes the AI to fall behind lategame is their abysmal city management. Often I notice that it's turn 200 and some AI city that has been around for 100+ turns is still working a bunch of unimproved tiles. In my last game I took someone's capital on turn 150ish, and it had 11 population and like five improved tiles. It should be simple enough to tweak the AI to prioritize builders more highly. That'll make them more competitive in the long run, which in turn makes it so your victory isn't largely guaranteed as long as you survive the midgame.

 

[rlw33]

Maybe they could have a separate game mode (like apoc) with victory conditions specifically targetted to finish at the industrial age?
Like being the first civ to trigger the industrial revolution (e.g. build three or more factories)
Be the dominant economic power by the industrial age (e.g. by having X amount of gold or X amount of stock exchanges etc.).
Be the greatest cultural power by the industrial age (e.g. by possessing the most wonders or theatre squares at the start of the industrial age).

 

[trev1972]

For me it isnt that the endgame is too tedious, its that i seem to be at endgame before i know it.

I play epic, but still race through the early and mid game.
Marathon- takes forever to build anything.

If they had a speed option that trebles tech cost (and GP cost) but only increases production cost by 1.5x i would most likely not mind endgame

 

[Sirsquier]

In real life the earlier eras where longer. The new eras where fast pased scientific discoveries.

 

[Naokaukodem]

Beware with "you're dead but you don't know it yet". In multiplayer, I saw a number of players have those kinds of misjudgements, me included.

But, it may be because of how AIs work. They might be able to unite against you either by mass declaring war (what might seem unfair to some players, and not change anything for some other), or simply merge.

There could also be a late game gamble, similar to the early one's where you could be declared by 3+ civs in the same time in Deity, plus barbarians : AI aggressivity especially if they have giant death robots or nuclear weapons. (even if i know you will never see it on youtube )

 

[The Civs 6]

My problem is that Civ 6 is really just surviving the early game, and then implementing your Civ's unique strategic system to practically guarantee success once the AI gives you a tiny bit of breathing space. To me it feels like if I lose in the early game, I learn "gee I didn't single mindedly produce slingers and warriors from turn 1, and rush archery. I guess in the future I gotta do that instead of, you know, having fun."

 

[Chris_LL]

Agree about city management of the AI being an issue.

One thing that was kind of nice about 5 is you'd usually end up in some kind of ideological war in the industrial/modern eras (unless you paid them to war with each other). Is there a reason they can't program the AI to do this again, ie a large diplomatic penalty for ideological differences? This could work for earlier eras too, so wars would just be more common all the time. Additionally, I think it would also be nice if being the first to pick any government type provided an extra wild card slot. That would encourage potentially choosing different ones than at least some of the AIs.

Obviously then there's the issue with the AI not being too amazing at war, but at least it might spice things up.

 

[The Civs 6]

Agree about city management of the AI being an issue.

One thing that was kind of nice about 5 is you'd usually end up in some kind of ideological war in the industrial/modern eras (unless you paid them to war with each other). Is there a reason they can't program the AI to do this again, ie a large diplomatic penalty for ideological differences? This could work for earlier eras too, so wars would just be more common all the time. Additionally, I think it would also be nice if being the first to pick any government type provided an extra wild card slot. That would encourage potentially choosing different ones than at least some of the AIs.

Obviously then there's the issue with the AI not being too amazing at war, but at least it might spice things up.

The AI seems to react to different government types once you get to Tier 3... but there are so many games where you and maybe 1 other rival get to Tier 3 governments and the rest... just sort of don't. Tier 3's might be a little bit too far down the civic tree.

 

[Sostratus]

Agree about city management of the AI being an issue.

One thing that was kind of nice about 5 is you'd usually end up in some kind of ideological war in the industrial/modern eras (unless you paid them to war with each other). Is there a reason they can't program the AI to do this again, ie a large diplomatic penalty for ideological differences? This could work for earlier eras too, so wars would just be more common all the time. Additionally, I think it would also be nice if being the first to pick any government type provided an extra wild card slot. That would encourage potentially choosing different ones than at least some of the AIs.

Obviously then there's the issue with the AI not being too amazing at war, but at least it might spice things up.

Where civ5 took 3 end game socia policy trees and made them into full fledged Ideologies, in civ6, the "ideology" governments are just the third tier of governments; they are much less special that way. So they may not intend it to be as defining. Plus, the issue of tier 4 - do you link them together with a tier 3? Why would a fascist or communist government feel kinship with "Corporate Libertarianism" or "Synthetic technocracy?" It's much less clear. Governments are much less unique than ideologies were in terms of their policy card deck - most of them have a couple exclusives and their major bonus.

The AI seems to react to different government types once you get to Tier 3... but there are so many games where you and maybe 1 other rival get to Tier 3 governments and the rest... just sort of don't. Tier 3's might be a little bit too far down the civic tree.

Continuing my remark from above, something as simple as scaling the penalty at each tier of government is an easy solution but would need fine tuning to account for civic progress differential. Because civ5's ideologies had just 3 factions- and you had an ideology or you didn't. With tier 3 and 4, now you've got up to 6 factions, but the current t3/4 penalties interact with t1/t2 governments. It's quite messy.

Anyways, there was a long standing issue with Ai never switching out of monarchy even at end game, which i think was resolved. But similar behavior could exist. The gap between t1 and t2 is pretty short - monarchy is only like 4 civics from political philosophy, theocracy is 1 after that; exploration might be 7-8. But the ideology governments require a ton of civics. You need to grab 3 medieval civics if you didn't go for exploration, every non govt civic in the renaissance, plus 4 civics from industrial, 3 more in the modern era and then you can select one of the 3.
I do think they would be better off consolidating the t2 governments to all require the same tech like political philosophy, ideology, and near future governance gate their governments. They are a mess balance wise - monarchy has horrible slots while MRepublic has godlike slots - and the fact that the branch to monarchy/theology can be entirely skipped is bad.

 

[The Civs 6]

Where civ5 took 3 end game socia policy trees and made them into full fledged Ideologies, in civ6, the "ideology" governments are just the third tier of governments; they are much less special that way. So they may not intend it to be as defining. Plus, the issue of tier 4 - do you link them together with a tier 3? Why would a fascist or communist government feel kinship with "Corporate Libertarianism" or "Synthetic technocracy?" It's much less clear. Governments are much less unique than ideologies were in terms of their policy card deck - most of them have a couple exclusives and their major bonus.

Continuing my remark from above, something as simple as scaling the penalty at each tier of government is an easy solution but would need fine tuning to account for civic progress differential. Because civ5's ideologies had just 3 factions- and you had an ideology or you didn't. With tier 3 and 4, now you've got up to 6 factions, but the current t3/4 penalties interact with t1/t2 governments. It's quite messy.

Anyways, there was a long standing issue with Ai never switching out of monarchy even at end game, which i think was resolved. But similar behavior could exist. The gap between t1 and t2 is pretty short - monarchy is only like 4 civics from political philosophy, theocracy is 1 after that; exploration might be 7-8. But the ideology governments require a ton of civics. You need to grab 3 medieval civics if you didn't go for exploration, every non govt civic in the renaissance, plus 4 civics from industrial, 3 more in the modern era and then you can select one of the 3.
I do think they would be better off consolidating the t2 governments to all require the same tech like political philosophy, ideology, and near future governance gate their governments. They are a mess balance wise - monarchy has horrible slots while MRepublic has godlike slots - and the fact that the branch to monarchy/theology can be entirely skipped is bad.

Yeah Monarchy is just terrible. +1 housing for each level of walls? Gross. How is that even useful at that point in the game where you could only have 1 level of walls?

I just think the tier system is bizarre. Actually, I still just don't really like the policy card system. It is really lacking in flavor, except for Tier 1.

 

[Sirsquier]

I always go monarchy just because of the cards it gives. I feel It's a little weak though and would love if it got a little buffed. The only reason I use it is becuase of the cards. The other stuff is just meh.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

I've been thinking...honestly, I think the founding of cities and improving tiles should STOP by the modern era.
In countless games I see others civs settle at the north pole...probably because they can't do much of anything else.
Without that ability, maybe the AI would then put more of am emphasis on coming after you, either militarily or undercutting you by some other means.
Sort of like a musical chairs scenario. Keep taking away things which have made your game easy up to that point and make conflict more likely.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

Honestly, I think the game needs less endgame and more early and midgame. People seem to be in this huge rush to get to the industrial and modern eras to play with tanks and bombers in giant wars that don't ever come about. Instead of short circuiting a huge chunk of the game, I would rather they weight the game towards the ancient, classical, and medieval eras. Add more techs in those eras, make it harder to beeline through the tech tree, and slow research way, way down. Let us build magnificent cities and civilizations in the classical era. Right now everything seems like a giant prelude to the modern era.

Well said. I loved the Caveman to Cosmos mod on Civ 4. The long early game, exploring the world around you - a world full of can danger where a wild animal can kill you at any moment - was great fun.

 

[Galvatron]

Yeah Monarchy is just terrible. +1 housing for each level of walls? Gross. How is that even useful at that point in the game where you could only have 1 level of walls?

Walls are tremendous. The best. They're huge. Bigly. The best. People ask me how can you keep people out and I tell them there's only one way and that's the one I'm talking about. Believe me when you put up defenses it's just hopeless and so they just let you win because that's how it's done ands everyone knows it. That's what people say. You've got to believe me: walls.

 

[criZp]

Just make it so that you win when you lead with 1000 score over the guy in 2nd place