The dilemma:
If the game is too static, then by the end game you have no way to catch runaways and win it, it becomes determined and boring.
but
If the game is too dynamic, then you can fail constistently and then quickly win at the end, not facing the consequences of your previous actions and not exactly
developing your civilization over time but rather
failing the entire time and then snatching the victory in the last moments.
It's anticlimatic, annoying, unpredictable and makes previous long development feel pointless.
Imagine if victory conditions in Civ were to defeat this one Final Boss of history in military battle, with any means, and any failed mediocre civ could achieve it with some stupid cheese, such as selling all its cities to buy giant death robot and killing it and winning everything.
Of course it's ridiculous scenario but I think it works as an analogy.
To some degree, victory in Civ game should result from good development of a civilization across ages. This feels satisfying and seems to be more grounded in reality. For Great Britain and its colonies (mainly US) to dominate the world in 20th century, they first had centuries upon centuries of slow cultural development which allowed them to make intellectual breakthroughs which enabled scientific revolution, industrial revolution, which led to English language becoming lingua franca of the entire planet Earth and its model of society being copied by everybody, which is the closest to Civ victory and real life culture ever got so far.
So that's the real problem. We wanna for last ages of the game to reflect our great buildup and progress of early eras, but also remain exciting, with the possibility of plot twists and unexpected victories by various underdogs.
Personally I have two ideas how this could be done.
1) World Wars, or
Shogun II Total War brute force method "everybody allies and actively fights against potential hegemon"
In Shogun II Total War if you take control of a certain percentage of the map (IIRC it is 30%?) so in any other game by this point you'd have trivially easy walk to the victory, everybody else allies against you and declares war. Of course, in a game like Civ it would essentially turn all victories into military victories, so
it could be something else rather than literal war - such as some sort of cold war, cultural embargo (against cultural victory), actual embargo (against economic victory), ruining your efforts at UN - I mean World Congress (diplomatic), or everybody else creating joint science organization in an attempt to catch to your levels of tech (scientific victory).
ADVANTAGES:
- It's relatively simple, straightforward solution on paper. You could maybe even make a special Emergency for it.
DISADVANTAGES:
- Could seem really anticlimatic
- Could be very annoying to deal with every game, tedious
- Could not work, due to the way technology works in civ games - if you runaway hard enough it doesn't matter if you fight 3 civs or one on the battlefield, cavalry won't beat your tanks.
2) Creating a specific mechanic which is a gateway to later eras, way easier to cross if you develop well in early eras, but if you somehow cross it while lagging behind before - then you can rapidly rise and become contestant for the victory.
I'd make this mechanic represent Industrialisation.
Think about it. When Industrialisation came in IRL, it completely "changed the game". Old empires which didn't adopt it quickly enough fell greatly behind (China), while those which managed to adopt it became very dangerous despite having no previous imperial history (Japan). In the same time, it didn't just happen randomly out of thin air - in order for this to happen Japan had to be very highly developed society fulfilling certain conditions (I vaguely recall now contents of a certain book I was once reading on this subject). Industrialisation is the gateway to the modern power - South Korea was nothing in the year 1960, Third World country, and is absolute beast nowadays. China generally failed horribly for 3/4 of century, and then it achieved insane growth in last 40 years and now is rising behemoth that could threaten to became victor in civ terms (by year 2050
)
Introduce a gameplay mechanic in the industrial era which significantly alters some gameplay systems, so post industrial civs really dominate over pre industrial civs. However, the process of adopting it is very painful,
disproportionately more painful the bigger the empire is, and in fact it is the first way of making the late game more dynamic - empires which were easily winning so far may be simply so damaged when trying to cross it than others, seemingly weaker, catch up. Industrialising civ is also unstable and prone to invasions, civil unrest etc. However, if it is adopted succesfully,
then it provides the more powerful boost the more backwards state adopted it.
Example:
English civ industrializes first. Then other nearby civs industrialise too (except Spain, which seemed guaranteed victor in renaissance era but now it falls from grace). Japan industrialises too, because it fulfills conditions despite being not very imperialistic and not doing anything really global before. China, the most powerful civ thus far, fails to industrialize and falls behind horribly. Industrialized civs fight for domination in the modern era. In the atomic/information era, China finally manages to industrialise and other powers maybe could stop it but failed - and now suddenly China returns from ashes to threaten seemingly guaranteed hegemon.
ADVANTAGES: Doesn't it sound dynamic?
DISADVANTAGES: This mechanic may be tricky to do, and when done improperly make runaway civs even more runaway, and late eras even more static and boring than before
