Is civilization an outdated concept?

[Smoking mirror]

I did used to like the old civil war concept in civ II. Admitedly, I never suffered one myself, and my basic strategy was always to try and inflict a civil war when I could, I probably would have got annoyed if I'd spent ages building my empire just to see half of it crumble in one event. Although part of my disapointment would have been from the fact that the other civ was decided by random choice, not cultural group or whatever.

Another thing I liked were independant or barbarian cities. It certainly made the barbs more of a interesting enemy.

I think what I'd like to see is independant sucessionist cities, with the chance of them forming whole new civs.

I think a good way of doing it would be a warning system, where you are told a random event is under way, but you are given the opertunity to stop it from happening. Say if you are told that one of your cities is advocating independance, you could garrison more troops there, or build more cutural improvements.

heres a visual example;


here the player has 6 cities, three of which are atempting to become independant.

a few turns later the situation (shown by the green/yellow/orange/red status bar) has got worse. The player sends more troops to the nearer cities but neglects the outer ones.

Now the situation is realy bad, one of the outer cities has become independant and cultural influence on the others is increased. The independant city enters disorder for a few turns and starts producing barbarian units just like a barbarian camp.

Eventualy all three outer cities become independant and form a new civ, from the same cultural group as the oringinal (japan and china for insatnce) which is a war with the original.

At this point the cities can be recaptured, but war wariness will only increase the chance of adjacent cites joining the rebels. It will be a hard choice between granting them independance or crushing the rebels, either way the civ takes a reduction in trade, production and probably looses some city improvements and population.

The point is, that the whole event is random, somewhat like a culture flip, but it can be avaoided by spending more resources on maintaining control. The bigger a civ the more resources have to be diverted to maintaining control over your empire. so that eventualy a civ could be masive, but cripled, unable to let their troops leave thier home cities for fear of leaving them open to independance movements (think of the fall of the USSR).

 

[Dida]

Good idea. But I think once the city is independent, it should not be producing barbarian, it should be like a full fledged civ like very other civ.

 

[Turner]

@Joey - Don't worry, this forum was created specifically to hold the Civ4 ideas. The Firaxis team regularly reads these forums, as well as a few people from Atari.

 

[loco-newf]

Many of us players believe that the game becomes boring after a certain point. "Random Events" could liven things up a bit, but only if a player is running away with the game. It would suck if you were just edging out an AI opponent, only to have civil war or some such thing ruin your game.

I think, if Random Events are implemented, that they should occur based on your score vs. other civs. In other words, the larger your margin of dominance, the more likely a random event would occur.

For example, if your score was 100% higher than your closest competitor, it would be safe to assume that the game is yours (I would think). If 10-15% of your cities splintered off, formed a new civ "nation", and immediatley decalred war on you it would make things a little more interesting.

As long as you are leading in the point total, the likelyhood of this happening would be greater that if you were trailing. I say this because it should ALWAYS be a looming threat, just not nearly as much if you weren't winning.

Many factors should account for the chance and severity of such an event. A 100% lead could mean a 20% chance that 15-20% of your outlying territory could splinter.

Yes? No?

 

[vesuvius_prime]

One important factor in almost any historic civilization's rise or fall was the presence or absence of strong leadership (or you may call that "Great Leaders"). This is almost universal. Sometimes a whole civilization achieved greatness during the reign of a particular ruler, only to fall back in ruins after the ruler's death. Examples of Great Leaders include Alexander of Macedonia, Genghis Khan of Mongolia, Basil II of Byzantium, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, Napoleon of France, etc. These guys almost single-handedly changed the course of history. And the Leader doesn't have to be a Military Leader. For example, Elizabeth I of Great Britain.

I wonder, wouldn't that be a feasible concept for Civ4? There's something like that in Medieval Total War, for example. Kings may have attributes like leadership, influence, dread, piety, economical acumen, military skill, all kinds of vices & virtues. A king dies, another one comes to power. The new king may have different attributes. They may aid or hinder his civilization. A big world power may lose a Great King and can have some loser take the throne. And suddenly all start to fall apart. Provinces start to break away, poverty settles in, etc. And vice versa: a small nation may rise suddenly. Like the mongols of Genghis Khan, for example.

I have seen that pattern so often in history, that I believe it's essential to employ in games like Civilization. Unfortunately, though, some people don't like random events all that much. They won't like to depend on some "King" or "Leader". So, this effect may have to be limited somewhat. Like in Rome, where rise to power didn't occur overnight but took many small steps. And the decline also took a lot of time. The economical factors and the Barbarians should play an important role. Just like in history. After all, many Empires fell after being consistently pounded by invading tribes. A huge migration of tribes, the emergence of a "Horde", like the Mongols, may destroy or severely weaken a world power.

But still, just check history and you'll see what huge role the Great Leaders played. In my opinion, this is an almost ideal balancing tool for Civ4. As an Empire grows, it would need stronger leaders to manage it. The bigger the Empire, the harder it will be to rule, and if its leader is not really strong, then the Empire will decline. The opposite will also be true. Smaller Empires are easier to control.

Of course, with the advances in science, it will become easier to rule bigger Empires. That would tend to cripple the balance. But there should be a mechanism which would NOT allow a civilization to advance too much ahead of its neighbors. We can see that in history too. In the history of Europe, for example, we don't see countries using firearms while their neighbors were still using swords and bows. If two Empires have contact with each other, they should not be allowed to develop a huge technological gap between themselves. Only isolated civilizations should be allowed to greatly fall behind (or advance) in tech. Empires should be allowed to "learn" from each other either by observing what the others are doing and "copying" it, or by stealing the techs. If a tech is wide-spread, it should be easier to "steal" or "copy".

 

[Mewtarthio]

Originally posted by Joey Numbaz
I think the ganging up thing is the key. If you are a warmonger, the AI should see you as a Hitler type threat and gang up on you; like happened to him in WWII.

If you have the power lead, the AI automatically feels threatened. The problem is that the AI can't effectively attack with its allies.

Also, I think terrorism would be a great addition. Your country could produce terrorists, which have a 50 or 75% of getting caught after carrying out their mission. The world would frown on (and eventually attack) civs that used terrorists. If you have a big lead, fascist AI governments would be more likely to terrorize you.

Intruiging. You mean something like the Espionage system?

Also, the game could say that once, X number of civs have a tech, everyone gets it, which would keep some civs from falling way behind, just because of lousy starting position or small size. That would be a huge enhancement.

Frankly, if everybody hates them so much that they won't sell a tech for a decent price, they deserve their pariah status. It would also hurt mass tech selling and make the Great Library almost useless.

Call to Power had a cool enhancement too, with Slavery - A modified version would be that when a Civ the builds the Emancipation Proclomation would get all of their slaves converted to workers, while the rest of the Civs would have their slaves eliminated. However, you have a 35% chance (or something) of causing a Civil War when you do this, a region of your cities would split off and you'd have to fight to get them back (at which point the slaves would be freed). You'd get a culture bonus that would make this risk worthwhile once you ended world-wide slavery.

The Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery, nor did it cause the Civil War. It was one of Lincoln's war powers, and it only freed Confederate slaves (slaves in the border states had to wait until the Thirteenth Amendment). Also, you should be allowed to keep slaves as long as you want, but it would have some adverse effects, such as lower assimilation, lower commerce, and a rep hit with those who have abolished slavery.

They could also have it so that cities on another continent (not an island though, would have find a way to code it well) could rebel, like the American Revolution, where they'd form their own new Civ - but they get to start the same techs as the country they broke away from.

A little less random. People have been discussing this idea for a while; it's really a hot topic.

There are plenty of other things they could do to keep the field more level - like making it easier to steal technology. Or having tougher maxs and higher minimums on tech research (not necessarily through corruption though, just making hard national caps).

Altering the research limits won't level the playing field, as that would affect everyone. I do agree, though, Espionage needs to be a little easier.

They could make it possible to 'fund rebels' where you could support a smaller country in a war against a rival by selling/gifting them military units; without actually having to declare war on the rival. This would make it easier for a couple of super-powers to emerge and tougher for one of them to take over the world.

Like the Cold War? I like this idea.

They should also find a way to avoid conflicting alliances where Persia is at war with Rome; China with Persia and Rome with China - once two countries are at war, you should have to pick a side if you want to get in, and you can't break the alliance until the common enemy is defeated (like USA/USSR in WWII). Communist/Fasicst could never be allied Republic/Democracy. This would limit the wars, but make them doozies when they occur. It just seems so cluttered sometimes with everyone fighting with everyone all of the time; especially in late industrial/early modern age.

You've already got Military Alliances that last for twenty turns and Mutual Protection Pacts that force the formation of said alliances. Also, people ally with their enemies to fend off a larger threat all the time. For instance, as WWII was being to appear, a Chinese leader (forget his name, was it Sun Yet-Sin?) allied briefly with the Communists, whom he utterly deplored as a disease of the soul, in order to fend off the Japanese. Of course, he later betrayed them.

I'm new to this forum, anyone know how to send these suggestions to the developers?

They check these boards occasionally.

 

[AdHHH]

Id like to see more ways of harming the enemy through GWs/SWs etc. I think it was in CTP2, you could build the Communist Manifesto which put all enemies into disorder. There should be more options for slowing progress of KAIs and of leading Civs in general in order to make the game more interesting.

 

[Smoking mirror]

One important factor in almost any historic civilization's rise or fall was the presence or absence of strong leadership (or you may call that "Great Leaders"). This is almost universal. Sometimes a whole civilization achieved greatness during the reign of a particular ruler, only to fall back in ruins after the ruler's death. Examples of Great Leaders include Alexander of Macedonia, Genghis Khan of Mongolia, Basil II of Byzantium, Nebuchadnezzar of Babylonia, Napoleon of France, etc. These guys almost single-handedly changed the course of history. And the Leader doesn't have to be a Military Leader. For example, Elizabeth I of Great Britain.

I wonder, wouldn't that be a feasible concept for Civ4? There's something like that in Medieval Total War, for example. Kings may have attributes like leadership, influence, dread, piety, economical acumen, military skill, all kinds of vices & virtues. A king dies, another one comes to power. The new king may have different attributes. They may aid or hinder his civilization. A big world power may lose a Great King and can have some loser take the throne. And suddenly all start to fall apart. Provinces start to break away, poverty settles in, etc. And vice versa: a small nation may rise suddenly. Like the mongols of Genghis Khan, for example.

I have seen that pattern so often in history, that I believe it's essential to employ in games like Civilization. Unfortunately, though, some people don't like random events all that much. They won't like to depend on some "King" or "Leader". So, this effect may have to be limited somewhat. Like in Rome, where rise to power didn't occur overnight but took many small steps. And the decline also took a lot of time. The economical factors and the Barbarians should play an important role. Just like in history. After all, many Empires fell after being consistently pounded by invading tribes. A huge migration of tribes, the emergence of a "Horde", like the Mongols, may destroy or severely weaken a world power.

But still, just check history and you'll see what huge role the Great Leaders played. In my opinion, this is an almost ideal balancing tool for Civ4. As an Empire grows, it would need stronger leaders to manage it. The bigger the Empire, the harder it will be to rule, and if its leader is not really strong, then the Empire will decline. The opposite will also be true. Smaller Empires are easier to control.

Of course, with the advances in science, it will become easier to rule bigger Empires. That would tend to cripple the balance. But there should be a mechanism which would NOT allow a civilization to advance too much ahead of its neighbors. We can see that in history too. In the history of Europe, for example, we don't see countries using firearms while their neighbors were still using swords and bows. If two Empires have contact with each other, they should not be allowed to develop a huge technological gap between themselves. Only isolated civilizations should be allowed to greatly fall behind (or advance) in tech. Empires should be allowed to "learn" from each other either by observing what the others are doing and "copying" it, or by stealing the techs. If a tech is wide-spread, it should be easier to "steal" or "copy".

Some time back there was an attempt to make an improved version of CIV III by some of the people from these forums, it fell in to obscurity because we had no funding and no one could decide on what form the projects should take, should it be more or less realistic than civ? should we try to fund it as a commercial venture or as a government funded educational tool? Etc...

Any way, some of these ideas did come up. The project was to be called Imperator, and would feature mortal leaders who would have an imperator index, a value that set corruption and loyalty throughout the empire. There were also ideas that some leaders could be better military leaders, while others were better civic leaders.

The idea that I posted above on civil wars is based on the idea that independant cities only start to become a problem when you get beyond a certain point, linked to your tech level. So that if your civ is of an smaller than average size you need not fear independance movements. The "average size" is determined by the technological links in your empire, so that certain techs would allow that size to increase because of improved administration techniques. For instance, below is a table detailing what your optimum loyalty base would be;

tech----size%-----notes
No admin techs----50%----new civ trait; administrative, +15%
Writing----80%
Literacy----100%----120% under republic or other representetive gov
Colonial administration----150%----Wonder; East india company 180%
Telecomunictaions----200%
Satelites----225%---Small Wonder; The Internet 250%

So that while corruption and waste would still be a feature, they wouldn't be such a central idea of size limiting.
The idea of mortal rulers would be that they would have a modifier to this rating that would be in effect while they were alive. The rulers could either be pre-set like this

ruler---modifier
Peter the great--- +5%
Catherine the great--- +10%
Ivan the terrible--- -5% (but could reduce corruption)
Lenin--- -5%
Stalin--- +20%
Kruschev--- -10%
Gorbachev--- -20%
Yeltsin--- -30%
Putin--- -5%

Or they could be generated randomly from a list of politicians and members of the royal famliy of each civ, or even using a random name generating system.

The reason for the title of this thread is that when yous start making modifications to the central idea of building a monolithic civilization with an imortal ruler, is it realy a civ franchise game any more? As it is many civ III concepts have already made it feel like more of a nationilistic model rather than a civilization model.

 

[Jaca]

"Is civ an outdated concept"? Civil wars, Plagues, Economic recessions were already suggested to get more presurre on bigger civs and have more realism and dynamism in the game. What do you guys think of the following concepts to help with this?

1. A more elaborated resource consumption model. Resources appear more frequently on the map, but the need for resources is calculated according to the population in the empire. More people, more need for that resource. To enhance this effect, the techs would give, apart from a military benefit (better units), also a (clear) civil benefit. I.e. Iron Working could get you a 25% faster worker rate, or a slightly increased food production, as long as the resource is sufficiently available to you. But military use puts more pressure on resource consumption. So bigger and stronger civs would need more resources, found either by trade, or war. Lack or shortage could decrease production. All of sudden, a big civ might run into a complete lack of the resource and get into trouble when badly managed or too warmongering (population drops, etc...). I also suggest a resource consumption bar (especially in the Industrial and Modern Age of importance) in the Domestic Advisor's.

2. A more elaborated health care model. Now desease could all of a sudden strike floodplanes, but after Sanitation, this is history. What about a Health Care Bar (or possibly part of the Luxury Bar)? Low health care increases the chanche of a sick citizen. Sick citizens are less productive, i.e. a 2F-2S-2C tile would only become worth 1F-1S-1C. And more sicks increase the chance of a plague breaking out. Big civs would be moire vulnerable (through their larger network!). Plagues coulds also affect neigbouring or connected civs, and the more as the human network grows (after discovery of Astronomy,...).

3. Concept of migration. A unhappy citizen has a chance of migrating to a nearby civ. Chance is proportional to distance (measured in movement points to get there, not just tiles) to that civs city, and further the ratio of (especially) hapiness, cultural resemblance, culture itself, health, money, propaganda,... (like for a flip) from your civ to the other. Sometimes a scientist can migrate, helping getting a tech (just an extra thought). Worse case is a complete flip of the city, and worst case might be the spark of the suggested civil wars. This concept might need balancing to avoid migration back and forth between civs.

Could these ideas help reflecting what dynamism a of a group of culturaly related people (a civ?!) experiences throughout the history of building the world wide human web, without affecting this very nice game too much? Or should I expect rotten tomatoes thrown to my head?

Regards,
Jaca, first-time poster

 

[vesuvius_prime]

Independence movement is a viable and, in my opinion, good concept. It should, however, be linked not only to the size of the Empire but also to things like: nationalities within the Empire, strength of leadership, economical conditions, culture, common goal (or lack of one), propaganda, oppression by the government, secret police, and so on.

Special care should be taken, though, not to overdo the thing lest the game becomes unplayable. I cannot say anything about the others but if done properly, that would greatly increase my own fun. If done poorly, it will ruin the whole game. Perhaps we should give it some more consideration, either here, or in a separate thread. A good game should maintain the challenge (and some unpredictability) while at the same time not completely take away the player's sense of control.

 

[Rik Meleet]

It should never be penalized to be the best.
If you want to get the lines closer together (which I don't) you should think of mechanisms to help the slackers, without making "playing weak" a winning strategy. Perhaps something like: As soon as the "scientific leader" in the game hits a new age; all slacking civs get techs until they are nearly caught up. As soon as the "military leader" in the game builds another unit, the slacking civs get a corruption decrease or a free defensive unit. As soon as the "cultural leader" builds another cultural-giving building the slacking civs get a free unit (guerilla for instance) or gold.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I still get the feeling that people misunderstand me when I talk about 'Random Events'. By random, I simply mean that there should be some random element to events occuring. However, how BIG this number is would be affected by gameplay decisions.
Lets take Civil War as an excellent case in point:
You have just suffered a 'civil war' trigger-an event which could cause a city to break away. These events can include the loss of your capital, civ-wide unhappiness/corruption/war weariness crossing a certain threshold or changes in government (especially to one your civ 'shuns'!). Between turns, the computer now checks each city against the current 'Civil War Chance' (a random number) to see if it 'breaks away'. Whether a particular city DOES break away will depend on specific factors, like:

a) Distance from capital.

b) # of neighbouring 'breakaway cities'.

c) # of foreign nationals in your city.

d) Current unhappiness, corruption, war weariness levels.

e) Government/Religion Type 'factors'.

f) # of troops stationed in city.

g) Ratio of city's culture to average civ culture.

If, when combined, these factors equal or exceed the 'civil war chance', then that city WILL break away to form a new civ-a civ sharing the same culture group as the original civ, but with its own preferred government and religion.
Of course, given factor (b) there is always the chance of a 'domino' effect, with a few early breakaway cities causing some 'borderline' cities to break away too!
Anyway, I hope you can see that, though there is a 'Random Element' to civil war, whether it happens or not is still to some degree under the control of the player. Even the CHANCE that it could happen, though, might modify the players normal game-play behaviour!
Although I've used just this one example, I do see the same 'philosophy' applying to pretty much ALL random events-be they plagues, recessions, dark ages-or even just floods and fires !
By the same token, though, there should be some GOOD random events to even things out! The same principle of 'player influence' should also apply to these too!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Smoking mirror]

The civil war/independence idea that I posted above is actualy based on random events, but with a gradual change idea.

So for example, if your empire is at 150% of standard size but your tech level only allows 100% there is a 50% difference. This could translate to a standard 50% chance of a city taking a step towards independence, this would then be modified by the same sort of pricnciples that currently govern culture flips, distance from capital, government, number of military units in the city, disorder etc.. as well as other ideas such as whether it has any anti independence city improvements. Also the state of independence movements in nearby cities affects the chance.

This could translate into a modified chance per turn of a distant city making a step towards independence. Perhaps its only about 5% or so, however once it makes that first step towards independence (with a visual warning, such as a flag in the city graphic) it is closer to independence. If the player ignores all the signs and allows the city to go all the way to red status, the the city will become independent.

At this point the process that has led to independence is partly random, but is modified by player choice. Thats what people hated about culture flips, there is no way you can fully gauge just how much of a threat of flipping there is untill its too late. You dont get any chance to repond to the aproaching crisis other than garrisoning every border or occupied city and building cathedrals every where. At least with a trafic light system there is some warning of impending crissis so that you know where to focus your efforts.

 

[Smoking mirror]

It should never be penalized to be the best.
If you want to get the lines closer together (which I don't) you should think of mechanisms to help the slackers, without making "playing weak" a winning strategy. Perhaps something like: As soon as the "scientific leader" in the game hits a new age; all slacking civs get techs until they are nearly caught up. As soon as the "military leader" in the game builds another unit, the slacking civs get a corruption decrease or a free defensive unit. As soon as the "cultural leader" builds another cultural-giving building the slacking civs get a free unit (guerilla for instance) or gold.

I think being penalised for being the best is a better idea than being helped for being poor. Any benefits could be exploited, for example you may ignore tech development and focus on military or civil building, trusting that you will get all your free techs as soon as the leader starts to get ahead.

Penalties are much harder to turn in to exploits, and would make for a more interesting game by providing a dynamic difficulty level, the better you are the harder the game becomes, not so much need for the current way that civ handles difficulty levels.

The idea of "playing weak" goes against the current civ game style, but is not nececarily a bad idea. The aim would be not to build the biggest civ at any cost, but to build the best nation. That would reduce the over reliance that civ places on military conquest, having a huge civ made from loads of foreign nationals with weak infrastructure and low levels of administration would be a poor tactical choice, so wars would be smaller affairs with the aim of grabbing strategic resources to strengthen your small empire rather than gaining control over hundereds of hostile citizens and thier worthless farmland which only serves to produce more and more totaly corrupt cities.

The big problem is how the AI could be made to deal with this, Would it be possible to make an AI that would spend time maintaining its empire to the extent needed?

 

[vesuvius_prime]

The aim would be not to build the biggest civ at any cost, but to build the best nation. That would reduce the over reliance that civ places on military conquest, having a huge civ made from loads of foreign nationals with weak infrastructure and low levels of administration would be a poor tactical choice, so wars would be smaller affairs with the aim of grabbing strategic resources to strengthen your small empire rather than gaining control over hundereds of hostile citizens and thier worthless farmland which only serves to produce more and more totaly corrupt cities.

A good point, Smoking mirror. A very motley Empire cannot be stable unless it has its subjects in an iron grip, and even then there will be problems, especially if the conquered nation has had very unique culture/religion/whatever. We can see it in real world too. Even today some smaller nations prove to be a royal pain in the a$$ when conquered. Taking care of "resistance" is way too easy in Civ3. Just stuff enough troops into the city and in just a few turns they'll calm down. (Oh, well, they'll still whine about your "aggression against our mother country", but the actual chance of them creating any serious problems is virtually non-existent. That's not how we see it in reality.

 

[t0mme]

I have seen that pattern so often in history, that I believe it's essential to employ in games like Civilization. Unfortunately, though, some people don't like random events all that much. They won't like to depend on some "King" or "Leader". So, this effect may have to be limited somewhat. Like in Rome, where rise to power didn't occur overnight but took many small steps. And the decline also took a lot of time. The economical factors and the Barbarians should play an important role. Just like in history. After all, many Empires fell after being consistently pounded by invading tribes. A huge migration of tribes, the emergence of a "Horde", like the Mongols, may destroy or severely weaken a world power.

That's a real interesting approach. A way to merge your idea with a lesser-random idea is to have a choice which "potential great leader" follows the "soon-to-die great leader". If we take a quick peek in some history books we would find Scipio Africanus Maior, who defeated Hannibal in the second Punic War, had a weak son. His son adopted a boy who then crushed Carthage, in the third Punic War (ceterum censeo Cartaginem delendam esse, what Cato (I thought) said) and became Scipio Africanus Minor.
In some government types it would be fairly easy to have a choice, for instance in democracies. That is because of elections. A great leader could support a wannabe-great leader. But under tyranny or monarchy the choice would be severly limited to sons/daughters of the dying great leader. That way a Nero or Caligula (who made is horse a consul)-type is still a possibility.
But the people offcourse could set a leader home, like the ancient Greeks did. They carved the names of the ones to be exiled in pottery (paper of papyrus wasn't widely available, apparently). And what to think of coupe d'etats? Or civil wars to get rid of a certain leader.

Wow, six years of following Latin courses and two year Greek courses does has its advantages.

 

[judgement]

It should never be penalized to be the best.
If you want to get the lines closer together (which I don't) you should think of mechanisms to help the slackers, without making "playing weak" a winning strategy. Perhaps something like: As soon as the "scientific leader" in the game hits a new age; all slacking civs get techs until they are nearly caught up. As soon as the "military leader" in the game builds another unit, the slacking civs get a corruption decrease or a free defensive unit. As soon as the "cultural leader" builds another cultural-giving building the slacking civs get a free unit (guerilla for instance) or gold.

I have to disagree. Penalizing the leader is a much more appropriate thing to do than helping the slackers. The game gets boring quickly if one civ becomes far stronger than all others, because the outcome is no longer in doubt. On the other hand, if one civ falls way behind, it doesn't wreck the game at all - there can still be plenty of interesting competition between the remaining civs. Making it harder for one civ to fall behind the pack isn't useful at all in prolonging the "competitive" part of the game (the part in which its not clear who will win). Making it harder for one civ to pull ahead of the pack, however, does directly address the problem of runaway success and prolongs the sense of competition.

Also, Smoking mirror is right, any game mechanism to benefit "slackers" would be open to exploit by clever players.

In any case, there are already mechanisms in the game that penalize the leader (or big civs in general): corruption gets worse the more cities you have, tech is harder to research if you're the first one to go for a new tech, and so on. So the question is not whether such things will be in the game (they will), the question is whether things like rebellions/independance movements/other random events would be a more interesting/entertaining way to do it than corruption/waste, etc. And regardless of which mechanisms are used, they'll need to be carefully balanced so that success is still rewarded and the player still feels like they have control over their empire's fate (too many random events would disrupt this).

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Well, from my way of thinking about it, a penalty to the leader is better than slacker bonuses. But even better would be something that is neither penalty nor bonus but simply inherently more difficult for the the big civs. (You might say "leading" civs instead of big civs, but I think a civ that stays small but leads in score somehow is already treading a thin line.)

As just an example, assume Civ3 as the baseline, but with a working migration system--made interesting by well done religion, cultural, and ethnic trade-off and escalating consequences for failure to manage it. Let's say that the a big civ with varying ethnic, religious, and cultural groups gets some modest bonuses from all that diversity, but mostly it benefits from being big and powerful. The diversity may be swell from the population's POV, but it's a pain for Ye Old Civ Leader.

Let's further say that the trade-offs involved give the player some good stategic and tactical choices. Maybe he can set immigration policies (perhaps even negotiating with other civs) and policies for assimilation. Perhaps assimilation requires some money. Perhaps not assimilating gives trade and research benefits if one is willing to deal with the hassles.

So there is nothing in that which will arbitrarily penalize the big empire, though managing a big empire will certainly put a strain on resources. If the player can pull it off, he will have an advantage. Or perhaps he finds this part of the game more interesting than a big empire and thus deliberately runs a small empire that encourages immigration.

Generally speaking, I find that a lot of the suggestions here are over complicated not because they are too involved but rather because they are provide narrow exceptions where a good design would provide a broad, integrated, elegant element that permeated the game. (This thought is more observation than criticism. Being on the outside, we are seriously handicapped when going for design elegance.)

If Civ already has luxuries and bonus resources, what adds more to the game, twice as many luxuries and bonus resources with special exceptions for each one or the addition of strategic resources? It's the same with Civ 4. Picking the best new element or three--ones that permeate the game and enhance a lot of the things that people want to see--is of course the trick.

 

[perryrutherford]

Okay, here's my take:

Snowball
This is historically valid enough, see Kennedy's Rise and Fall of Great Powers. When it comes to starting locations geography is destiny, all the first civs (IRL) started at floodplains with wheat. I love the idea of Civil Wars and Revolutionary Wars spawning the Johny-come-lately civs (most of them) my sincre wish: you should be able to choose which side to continue leading (think about Robert E. Lee, litterally doing this). Maybe the restless tribe style barbarians should be able to capture cities liike the barbarians in Civ2 -- the Civilopedia itself points this out re: Babalonians and Sumerians. I'd say this applies to scandanavia and mongolia for sure.

Snowball con't
My other idea here is a slider (independant of tax/happy/sci) for Liberal/Egalitarian policies for your civ to run a big empire you need Liberal (read conservative) policies; and you should only be able to slide any domestic advisor slider once(10%) per turn or decade (what ever's longer) to best the 4 turn minimum on tech advance you should need some middling level (think dutch) ... egalitarian and liberal skews should have additional benifits -- ergalitarian policies would act like temples etc, that they make sad people content AND like markets -- if you have everyone content in a small civ and then move to egalitarian limit you would prevent a culture flip (think sweden).

Random Events
rare and important random events are totally lame in a short simple game; but i think would be cool in a 540 turn game like civ. I very much appreciated plauge and volcanoes in Conquests; I would like to see: earthquakes, fires, avalanches, and metor crashes -- yes meteor crashes. if you have aquaduct fires shouldnt be a problem for a city (unless an earthquake or berserkers or terrrorists destroy the aquaduct!) troops on snowcaped mountains should be able to get killed by avalanches. And meteor impacts -- every 500-1000 years would make for nice eyecandy and would basically nuke a city radius on the map. NB on eath these asteroids fall in the oceans 70% of the time, one hit tunguska siberia around WWI, one hit the pacific around GWI.

What'
Scandals and Internet viruses would be nice. Clogging up, thus shuting down, various improvemenets.

Being a dedicated realist true to Civ, I feel some [Easter] eggs would be fun though. e.g., How about aliens landing once in about 17 games or [an interstellar civilization visting on average not more often than every 100,000 years] I'm no UFO believer, but If you wait long enough anything could happen.

Negative Feed back is what happens if you find your self aproaching the red line on the chart above; you risk faliure as a state. And this really happens if you bomb the major terrain improvements. Look at Afghanistan. That's life. To me it is fun enough to simuluate real Civilization; half the time I get stuck without saltpeter or rubber and the game becomes fun because it isn't based on orthodox winning, but just not dying given bad circumstances can be rather fun.

 

[Cheetah]

I think the civil war concept could be a nice tool to stop the snowball effect of strong civs.

Have a slider like perryrutherford suggested, where you decide how much freedom you allow for you people (in MoO3 it's called the Oppressometer).
Now, as a civ grows very large (relative to map size) they will start to experience unrest and unhappiness. Less advanced and despotic governments like Anarchy, Despotism, Monarchy or Communism will need to reduce the freedom and maybe place military units around in the empire. More advanced and liberal governments like Republic or Democracy will need to increase the freedom. Luxuries and some buildings could of course also help.

If you can't manage som parts of your civ will break off and form 1 or more new civs. Some may even join neightboring civs.

This way you will have to work to keep your empire together.