Late game still seems weak?

[Fede1893]

Please let me first say I am in total love with what I have seen of Civ 6. I have preordered the deluxe edition and can't wait to play.
I really admire Ed Beach for the new ideas and the effort he put in tweak for the better a lot of aspects.

However I think that the game is still weak after more or less turn 150. This has always been the problem of Civ. It's too hard to recover if you are not in the lead at that point and if you are in the front most of the time it's just a question of pressing the next turn button until the victory screen.

Ed Beach tried to solve this problem with the artifacts/tourism system already in Civ V and has updated this system in Civ 6. However I feel that the tourism victory is not the right way to incentivize culture play and to revive the late game (also because ideologies have been removed so part of the late game payback of culture has been taken away).

Cities built in the ocean, corporations, pollution... I believe there is the potential to revive the late game. I'm still holding my judgement because I first want to play it a couple hundred hours. Still I am curious about your opinion.

Do you think the late part of the game is more fun now? Can civilizations that lagged behind in the first 150 turns really win the game if they play well? Do you like the tourism mechanic? What are your proposals for reviving the late game?

 

[Uberfrog]

There's always a balancing issue with snowballing vs late bloomers. While ideally you want a game to be competitive right down to the wire, you also don't want to skew the balance in favour of late activity too much, as that risks making the early game the inconsequential click-fest.

Civ V, by the end, with its ideologies and tourism and World Congress (as flawed as that mechanic was) did a good job of giving us things to build on and actively do in the later eras. Civ VI appears to take the tourism and expand on it, which is good in my view. World Congress didn't work well, so I'm fine with them leaving it out for now.

As far as introducing/reintroducing new mechanics (like corporations and pollutions) I firmly believe this is the job of an expansion. It takes a couple of years of watching how people play the base game, and what issues they find, before you can identify a new mechanic to add to enhance their experience. I think drastic new additions to the game are only merited when they fulfil some gameplay purpose, rather than adding content just for the sake of it.

Personally, I'm not terribly interested in science fiction content after the Information Era (underwater cities, etc). That's best left to a total conversion mod or spin-off.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

Please let me first say I am in total love with what I have seen of Civ 6. I have preordered the deluxe edition and can't wait to play.
I really admire Ed Beach for the new ideas and the effort he put in tweak for the better a lot of aspects.

However I think that the game is still weak after more or less turn 150. This has always been the problem of Civ. It's too hard to recover if you are not in the lead at that point and if you are in the front most of the time it's just a question of pressing the next turn button until the victory screen.

Ed Beach tried to solve this problem with the artifacts/tourism system already in Civ V and has updated this system in Civ 6. However I feel that the tourism victory is not the right way to incentivize culture play and to revive the late game (also because ideologies have been removed so part of the late game payback of culture has been taken away).

Cities built in the ocean, corporations, pollution... I believe there is the potential to revive the late game. I'm still holding my judgement because I first want to play it a couple hundred hours. Still I am curious about your opinion.

Do you think the late part of the game is more fun now? Can civilizations that lagged behind in the first 150 turns really win the game if they play well? Do you like the tourism mechanic? What are your proposals for reviving the late game?

Tourism is largely fine as a thing, but it needs to be more active. The problem with the late game (unless going for domination victory), is the late game is entirely passive. Aside from choosing production and research, the late game largely consists of passing turns. It simply becomes inevitable, with little need to play it out other than the closure of seeing the end game. This is true whether you're winning or you're on the higher difficulty levels and losing.

Six suffers from the same problems in this regard as the previous versions of the game, so I don't really see the point in waiting. The problems are known and simply unaddressed.

 

[beorn]

We'll see how this plays out next Friday. But I think that they have tried to deal with the late game by making some of the non-domination paths to victory -- particularly religion -- more possible for the AI.

As I see it, the problem with the late game is that no decision is very interesting if it doesn't really matter, and, in the past, it has seemed like no AI civ generally had a plausible path to victory after around turn 150 or so, unless playing on the highest levels. So why ponder my choices? So what if I do the second or fifth best thing?

But it looks like maybe an AI could beat you with, say, religion, thus hopefully it does matter what choices I make. If that tension remains, the late game will be much improved.

 

[Tatran]

The mid-late game excitement has to come from the AIs. They are way too passive and there are enough reasons (lack of resources, not enough land to win a certain vctory, etc.) to start a justified confict/war.
I would like to see a justified world war against the runaway civ anywhere in the game simply to trim them.
The domination victory should include a vassal system once you've taken a capital.

 

[bbbt]

I'm hoping an expanded espionage system helps with that somewhat - I.e. for the cultural victory you are sending out agents to steal great works and the like.

 

[Olleus]

There's always a balancing issue with snowballing vs late bloomers. While ideally you want a game to be competitive right down to the wire, you also don't want to skew the balance in favour of late activity too much, as that risks making the early game the inconsequential click-fest.

Essentially, this is the problem. If you're ahead in the classical era, you can simply snowball until you can steamroll what ever victory conditions arise. This is true in every game but especially so in Civ that has tons of boosts for being ahead: can get first choice of wonders, free ideology policies, first choice of great people, ect...

What we need is the opposite, rubber band mechanisms that help the laggards catch up: cheaper techs that are already discovered has existed in the past, but it's not as big as it needs to be. But the problem is that if these mechanisms are too big, then there's virtually no reason to try and do well in the early eras.

It is a very fine balancing act.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

The mid-late game excitement has to come from the AIs. They are way too passive and there are enough reasons (lack of resources, not enough land to win a certain vctory, etc.) to start a justified confict/war.
I would like to see a justified world war against the runaway civ anywhere in the game simply to trim them.
The domination victory should include a vassal system once you've taken a capital.

I would agree. I think having a justified war (it should not be random or arbitrary) against the human who is about to win would make the end game more interesting. The end game needs to have that one last challenge for the player to overcome to make the win even more satisfying.

 

[Fede1893]

I agree that AI behavior should be tweaked. When a civ is close to winning (be it a human or an AI) the others should ally against him.

I understand that you need to reward the players that have played well the first turns but if there is no chance for the others to win after turn 150 you might as well stop the game and give a score victory.

One change I like in Civ 6 is that cities are easier to capture. This will make the AI weaker but at least it will make conquests in later eras more doable.

Considering how much has already been done by the designers up to now I really have high hopes in future expansions (especially on the diplomatic and economic part).

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I know Firaxis probably won't go for this but maybe the game should have a "climate change" feature in the late game where certain tiles change to desert, coastal tiles turn to water tiles etc to add a sense of urgency. This would force the player to hurry up and win because they know that time is not on their side and if they wait too long, their cities will deteriorate, making victory harder. I just think that a sense of urgency is needed in the late game so that the player is not simply coasting to victory. I know it is a different game completely but XCOM2 has the avatar timer that creates that sense of urgency and the final mission gives the player that one big final challenge to overcome and it makes the win more satisfying.

 

[Acken]

I always felt the lack of late game interest was a challenge issue. What I mean is that a player will lose interest if after t150 winning is a formality.
And the problem we often get with higher difficulties is that only the early game is challenging. Sometimes so much so that a player wont even attempt it because it kills his fun to deal with early bonuses shenanigans like hard to get wonders and religion.

To help this, ai behavior and bonuses should have a more snowballing feel to it similar to a player. Where it becomes stronger but relatively fair in the beginning rather than start so far ahead and slowly lose steam.

 

[Nixalo]

Really, I only see 2 ways to spice up late game.

1) Ideologies/GreatWar/GreatColdWar

Basically make Ideologies into full on Factions of Alliances. Then the factions could move to a Great War that is either hot or cold. When the war is over, the top nation in the winning faction win.

2) Corporations. Basically create corporation s which give a nation tons of gold at the expense of unhappiness and resources (they buy them up). Civs do quests for their national corporations to make them stronger. Strong corps buy weak corps. .

India Steel has purchased Russia Metals and China Alloys.

Lose all your corps and your nation is a puppet and their cities can be "bought out".

EDIT:. Basically late game can only be fixed by adding a new mechanic that everyone must be involved in actively. My ideas is straight up World War or creating bigger Megacorps.

 

[juanpavo]

When a civ is close to winning (be it a human or an AI) the others should ally against him.

I think this is a good approach, although the challenge will be to determine how "close" is required to trigger. So called "rubber band" mechanisms to allow others to catch up are gameplay killers if they are too strong.

 

[SammyKhalifa]

corporations.

Yuck.

No thanks, except if it is a totally different mechanic that just has the same name.

 

[Sonereal]

What I'd like to see is 'Nationalism' as an late game challenge.... when people talk about wide being viable and talk about the massive empires of the British, Spanish, French, Mongols, Soviets, even Alexander ... all of those broke apart internally... even the American one almost did, and that was all self founded

A mod for Civilization IV and kinda for Civilization V implemented Revolutions. Cities in these mods could grow increasing unstable the further away from the capital they were, the more isolated (not connected by roads) they were, and a lot of other reasons. In the latter mod, cities would form city-states while in the former, cities would become entirely new civilizations.

However, dissolution of empires really doesn't seem to be Civilization's goal. Unlike the idea about the Revolutions mods, or behind some recent games like Stellaris, Civilization doesn't really want the world to be *too* dynamic.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

I would agree. I think having a justified war (it should not be random or arbitrary) against the human who is about to win would make the end game more interesting. The end game needs to have that one last challenge for the player to overcome to make the win even more satisfying.

I disagree, actually. That turns every game (and victory condition) into a drawn out end game war (unless, of course, you just steam roll them, which makes it even more pointless), when what the game needs is something active to do in the late game that isn't war.

And then, a few years later a patch alters text of that message, adding "Around the colonies that remain a faint hope manifests on the horizon: An operation dubbed 'The Seeding' promises to free humanity from the strangles of the lost planet." - signaling the GLORIOUS ARRIVAL of Beyond Earth 2, as the game that the first one was supposed to be.

No, please. I'd rather not see them botch that particular classic again. Do it as an expansion.

What I would like to see is a rebirth of the other classic- Master of Magic. The various clones have never lived up to it.

 

[SupremacyKing2]

when what the game needs is something active to do in the late game that isn't war.

But didn't civ5 try to do that by adding tourism and the world congress?

 

[ExemplarVoss]

But didn't civ5 try to do that by adding tourism and the world congress?

I hope those weren't attempts to add something active and interesting for the late game. That would just be sad. Both were rather passive, uninteresting and also terrible. Spend game stacking bonuses to spam great people then push a button convert them to great works as space opens up, and every 30 turns, answer a pair of yes/no question on min/maxing the correct type of great people, starting the worlds fair, or something irrelevant and random.

 

[isau]

I think what would help is if the Science victory required more steps. In particular 2 things stand out:

1. Resources. IMO this victory type should require obtaining a couple of specialty resources, with only 1 or 2 copies on the map. Don't own the resource? Steal access to it with spies. This would incentivize exploration and claiming exotic locations.

2. The planet landing. Make this cooler by making the requirement to actually build a station in space vs simply going there. You would have to land on an actual planet map and claim tiles. Earth bound civ that can't get to space? You can try to knockout the.opponent with lazers fired from Earth. Make the game full circle: start with a settler on earth, end with a settlement in space.

 

[mitsho]

If civ were a normal 4x game, it would normally end in the Renaissance. By this era, all free land has been settled and you've got to know all civs even the ones on far away continents. But now civ adds onto this two or more eras which make everything just better. In other strategy games, this means war, in civ it just peters out. The problem is enhanced in that there's now a lot of busywork - you must explore the last fogs of war which don't really interest you, there's a wave of missionaries coming in which you need to block manually - and that damn camera circles around all over the globe away from the area you were looking at just because a builder needs your decision... Cities also want you to decide the building choice and even though the puzzle was very interesting for your first city, for your 9th one which is located on an island just to get that oil the decision is more or less completely irrelevant. In short, the types of decision add up to too many ones while simultaneously also being too few - as in peace times you just can click end turn.

I don't think there is a solution to it. Otherwise it would be found in other games, no? Adding new systems like corporations just adds a new layer and thus in order for it to make the game interesting, you would need to remove another decision part. Ideologies and new alliances kinda depend on how successful AI players are in dragging a peaceful human into a war (where their units do show up at your border) - but then wars take so much time in civ with the slow movement of large "carpets" that enduring wars may piss off the player anyways. Lastly, tourism and archaeology and flight and so on do serve as a distraction, but they do not fundamentally adress the problem.

But is there a problem really? The only argument we have for it is that the public relations have - as usual - spend hours upon hours on showing us destacking of cities, the opening turns of a game and religion, while not talking about espionage, aircraft, tourism, archaeology or the space race. There are some hints that the late game may still be interesting. You may have advanced so far that the waves of missionaries are no more (?), the new districts may alter the puzzle and the destacking may allow for surgical strikes against certain "industries" of the opponent. I don't know, it's probably more wishful thinking...

I hope that there will be a working "advanced start" - as that would be the easiest way. If you only start in the medieval, the map should be filled much later after all