I'm BACK! (temporarily)

[Argetnyx]

I know I've been gone for a long time, but I've just remembered something else that I wanted to post.

Does anybody think the trend of civ; you expand and expand, but there are never any 'dark ages' or 'depressions' to slow down, or even stop expansion? For me, this gets repetative and boring. How about a dark age, or depression? If either of these were used, they could also be tied into the factors causing civil war.

 

[Hail]

[...] How about a dark age, or depression? If either of these were used, they could also be tied into the factors causing civil war.

dark ages and/or depressions will never be in the game mainly because they are not fun. especially if they were implemented as (semi)random events.

 

[Camikaze]

Yeah, they aren't there because they wouldn't be particularly fun. Civil wars and civ disintegration (as per your previous thread) would be ways of implementing this idea in a fun and challenging way, so long as it was done properly. But there would have to be some such mechanism for a dark age or depression for a civ, rather than just an automatic slow down or something, for example, in order for it to be a good addition to the game.

 

[Naokaukodem]

dark ages and/or depressions will never be in the game mainly because they are not fun.

On the contrary, I think they would be fun, implemented properly.

especially if they were implemented as (semi)random events.

No randomness needed, only deterministic mechanics.

 

[rysmiel]

Does anybody think the trend of civ; you expand and expand, but there are never any 'dark ages' or 'depressions' to slow down, or even stop expansion? For me, this gets repetative and boring.

Nope, i disagree too; dark ages and revolutions would IMO in general be a pain.

 

[Camikaze]

Nope, i disagree too; dark ages and revolutions would IMO in general be a pain.

It's a fine line between a pain and a fun challenge, but it shouldn't be all that difficult to successfully bridge that line and come up with some fun penalty to work against the traditional powerful civs get more powerful outcome. Personally, I thought the idea of civil war and disintegration with the imposition of ethnicity were good ideas that could work well.

 

[rysmiel]

It's a fine line between a pain and a fun challenge, but it shouldn't be all that difficult to successfully bridge that line and come up with some fun penalty to work against the traditional powerful civs get more powerful outcome.

The balance issue there is that if one can't rely on a powerful civ played with a modicum of skill becoming more powerful, pretty much the most fundamental core of the game becomes beyond one's control.

I did see one mechanism for a "Dark Age" in a mod, which was having a bottleneck tech called "Dark Age" which one had to go through to get to anything beyond a certain point, and which rendered a whole pile of early improvements and wonders obsolete. That mechanism seemed workable to me if that's the kind of thing one wants.

 

[Camikaze]

Well, I don't really see how the civ instability thing makes a more powerful civ played with skill beyond control. It just requires more focus on happiness and stuff, at the same time as allowing for breakdown if you play incompetently.

 

[Panzeh]

Instability in civs is good when you see it in other places, but I think if you modeled it accurately, it would be largely out of the player's control, and thusly rather arbitrary. If a player's good enough to build a big empire, he's probably good enough to keep it unless there are some arbitrary and random elements involved in instability.

 

[Camikaze]

Well, instability doesn't have to be random and arbitrary. If you base it off happiness, ethnic composition and other such factors, it is reliant on your skill to control those factors, or manage them, to offset the instability.

 

[Gamemaster77]

Hey welcome back. Ive noticed that you, me, camikaze, civ my way and a bunch of other people left simaltaneosly. Why did you guys leave?

So back on topic, mabye instability could be based on anarchy or mabye just a longer tech tree during the middle ages.