Lifespan of civilizations

[Gatsby]

How many civilizations do you know of that have lasted 6000 years?
Yet in the Civ games, it is very much the norm for both human and AI civilizations to last 5000 or 6000 years, and pretty much the only way they die is to be conquered by another civilization....which itself manages to last 6000 years.
Civilizations have in fact ended for various reasons (and probably will continue to do so in the future...), not just war, but disease,climate change, bad government, cultural breakdown, starvation, resource depletion, and environmental degredation. Yet the Civ games don't really reflect this.
Civilization (the game), as the name implies, is supposed to be about sustaining a civilization and making it survive "the test of time", against the odds. Perhaps Civ4 should be made more challenging in regards to a civilizations' survival, not just its prosperity.
So in Civ4 there should be several things that can end a civilization apart from conquest, such as environmental degredation, resource exhaustion, becoming too large for the present government type, massive civil disorder/anarchy, plague and disease, random mass starvations, (like plague in Civ3), droughts and floods, simultaneous cultural conversions of multiple cities, etc.
Also, in Civ4 there should be enhanced options for accelerated start, such as medieval and industrial starts, and within each of these one can choose to start "On Par" with other civilizations (eg Persia after the fall of Rome) or as "emerging" (eg like America, which started small around the start of the industrial age).

 

[Zild]

Wow... that could be pretty harsh, but I see where you're coming from.

Without wishing to detract from your main point (which I don't feel I can add to right now), I must agree that I would like to see a simple option for starting in different eras, at the very very least. It surprises me that this feature is still missing in the third game of the series. I'm sure that you can find mods to allow this (only if you're playing the PC version - I was playing Civ2 on PSX) but it really seems like such an obvious and simple thing to add that players shouldn't have to go searching for them - I imagine the majority of Civ3 players are not part of any Civ community...

 

[warpstorm]

You can start in the different eras in PTW and C3C. There are built in scenarios for this. You don't start on-par, but everyone is just as weak.

Back to the original topic, while this may be more realistic, I'm not sure where the fun is. I suspect only the most hard-core will like this. Players like to win, not be killed off by random events.

 

[rhialto]

One idea that someone suggested once was that you play as a civ until a preset point, then 7 new civs are spawned as single city civs, and you have to choose one of those until anotehr preset point, then another 7 civs spawn. This way, you aren't forced to create an eternal empire to win, but play towards a more realistic history.

It got squashed flat when first suggested. You like it? Run with it.

 

[sir_schwick]

Actually I suggested that the bonuses and penalties a civ gets is based upon a curve which is generated by the first 50 turns of play. This curve would continue to be modified so good play would make your golden age even more golden and your dark age less dark, but still be the one way till the other arrives. Also I suggested that during a great fall from a great goldne era(rome) then your civ would start to splinter. THe point is to build up as many great achievements during your golden era rather than trying to last 6000 years.

 

[dh_epic]

I'm personally a fan of this, but I see where Warpstorm comes from. Personally, I'd like to see a middle ground -- that way the player is empowered to control their own destiny, while there is still a challenge in trying to survive. Random events is a terrible idea. But foreseeable, preventable events is much more key.

Just compare Rome to China and you'll find your answer. I know that's where I'll find mine.

Whatever forces you decide killed off Rome, and whatever forces you decide kept China together for milennia, those will be the forces that a strong Civ player has to master. At the lowest levels they could be unlikely, and at the highest levels they could be real-world levels of difficulty.

Sir Schwick raised a good idea, once, where even if your nation dies off, you could live on as a splinter nation. This is probably contraversial, though. I happen to like it, even then.

 

[sir_schwick]

Mine would not necessarily be random, since your advisors would know you are in a golden age. You eventually know your bonuses will go away and you might even get some penalties(to production and happiness, no random events).

I'm not sure you can consider China being 'together' for millenia. They went through many major splits, civil wars, and re-joinings.

 

[Jake5555555]

The way to do this would be to have a constant stream of new civilizations coming from barbarians, civil wars, and rebelions, thus making it harder for the civ that wins to be 6000 years old and more likely that it will be one of the many civs that have popped up throughout the game. You will be able to choose if you start at the beginning or if not, which period you will appear in.

 

[Hugin]

Starting new civilizations isn't particularly realistic. Take the Germanic tribes for example. In reality, they were a sister civilization of Greece/Rome (well... the germanic language and culture were sisters at least, all of which are thought to have split from the Indo-European language/cultural root) and even though they were called Barbarians (which basically meant they didn't speak Greek) they were quite civilized. Unfortunately they built stuff out of wood more often than stone so much less of their accomplishments survive. They didn't happen to appear around the 300's C.E.

I would propose that to account for this that more civilizations are included in the game at every map size with the direct intention that many of them will not survive. Take Greece, it contained Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Megara, etc, all of which were really different peoples (no closer related than England and France, in some cases less so). Over the course of time those powers were condensed into panhellenic leagues and after Alexander the Pretty-Good they started to act as a unified power. Similarly, Germany doesn't have roots back into antiquity but rather it is a modern state that congeled out of many different States.

This, of course, would mean that there would need to be more ways to take over a civilizations capital. Specifically, a few peaceful methods. The cultur flipping is an ideal method already implimented in the game. After Theodric the Great, Rome was actually more loyal to the Ostrogoths than to the "Roman" Emperor Justinian. The Goths used both force of might and culture to take over Italy. Culture flipping would need to be a little easier in such a case, however. Specifically, Culture should be able to decrease while the city is still held in its native civ's possession. Perhaps cities on the fringe of a declining Civilization would be more prone to flipping to a rising power even if the original civ still has a fairly high culture rate.

As has been discussed, however, there needs to be a way for new countries to appear. America, for example, has only been around for 200+ years. England isn't much better, only starting to achive its modern form with William the Conquerer and not really beginning to find itself till the late Middle Ages and the Magna Carta. France? It is younger than America (the French Revolution, remember, changed France too much to reasonably says that the France of 2004 is the same France of 1604). The easiest method for this is Civil War (either in the botched/bloody French version or the glorious English version) but that has been discussed in great detail elsewhere.

~Hugin

 

[dh_epic]

If starting new civilizations isn't particularly realistic, then having America start from the very beginning of the game is on par with Lord of the Rings.

I think it's all relative. Starting new civilizations as the game goes on would be an interesting improvement -- a new nation rising from the ashes of an old nation.

 

[riadsala]

I like some of the ideas here.

Would take away from the "trying to win" situation. in real life, we're not trying you "win" are we.

It should be a much bigger challenge to keep your civ going. So when you replay the game, instead of "lets try and get more points than the last time" it was more "lets try and get my civ to last longer than the last one.


Also, if the chance of a civ disintergrating are high that means that I'm far more likely to carry on with a "losing game."

In civ 3, if I start out badly, I usually restart. Last time, I was on small island. So I researched map making as fast as possible, got my boats, then found all the nearby islands were popluated by "superpowers" who were far more advanced than me.

And I couldn't really be bothered to carry on.

But, if there's a good chance of the ingame equivalent of ancient rome caving in, that would have meant that my little island civilisation might have a window in which to become great.

Would change the nature of the cv game a lot, but then I think that would be a good thing. What I don't want from civ4 is just civ3 tweaked a bit with flashier graphics and a better AI. As, I'll still be playing the same game more or less.

So, some radical changes would be nice.

 

[North King]

I like this idea a lot. I find myself playing to the end for the most part only when I have a real challenge to overcome.

 

[warpstorm]

A board game which did this well was Vinci. It was about the rise and fall of civilizations. The problem is that you can't get too attached to a given civ since it won't be around in a few turns. But it did handle the fact that all civs ran out of steam eventually to be carved up by more vital new comers.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/viewitem.php3?gameid=60

 

[Gatsby]

These events would not be totally random: they would be partially random, but partly determined by a civ's stats eg. city sizes, empire size, technologies not yet acquired (eg sanitation),terrain (eg swamp and desert) overall happiness of people,wealth inequalities between cities, amount of irrigation and forest clearing, pollution, etc. Also, luxury and strategic resources should be alot more important to a civilizations' overall well-being and survivial, not just for units and luxuries-this would reflect how societies develope a dependence on resources which are not infinite.
By the way, the destruction by Golden Age is a great idea. Not only does it bring a cool double edged sword element to the game, and not only is there some historical truth to it, but it makes sense as well; people get used to living well in the golden age, and society gets used to functioning at higher level, but when the Golden Age ends, people are bound to be unimpressed by the drop in living standards, and society would have trouble re-adjusting.
Of course, there would be ways for a civ to prevent destruction by golden age, eg building up temples and marketplaces etc. Also, cities not connected by road or harbour to the capital or forbidden palace should stand a small chance of spontaneous revolt.
If you think these options make the game too difficult, you could turn them off at the start of the game, just like "Allow Cultural Conversions" in Civ3. That way, Civ4 could be about making a super-civ if you wanted, or just making a civ that survived, and in the latter case your civ would get points for longevity-this would greatly increase Civ4's overall appeal.

 

[sir_schwick]

The only problem is that new civs would be way too easily carved up. If that was solved then this would be awesome.

 

[warpstorm]

Vinci (whose name means "I was conquered") did this by having old civs lose vitality rather than constantly being able to grow. After a while you abandoned playing a civ and moved on to playing its successor. Each player would play a half dozen civs or so in an average game. It didn't ahve the constant exponential growth mechanic of most 4x games. Empires grow for a while, slow down, stagnate and get carved up by the new kid on the block.

 

[sir_schwick]

Maybe we do want the same thing for civ then. When I describe my curve concept, it goes 'normal', 'GA', 'normal', 'DA/Declin'. That last stage could be described as 'losing vitality'. The civ starts to become behind the times and archaic. Culture would have been the seed for the new upcoming powers, so having conquered a bunch once gives you many options of who to become.

 

[dh_epic]

I think a more extreme curve could occur at the higher levels. This would be more interesting than just giving the AI a handicap. At the lower levels, getting carved up with be more rare. At Chieftain, you might even be able to go through the entire game with growth slowing down only a touch, without ever hitting a real decline.

 

[sir_schwick]

I do like that idea, the realism of the limits of time would become very strong at Diety but much less at Chieftain. That would be the big determiner of skill, not AI handicaps.

 

[dh_epic]

Exactly. If keeping your civilization together is like walking across a bridge, Chieftain would be taking a walk across a concrete bridge, regent would be like taking a walk across a wooden bridge, emperor would be like walking across a balancing beam, and deity would be like walking across a tightrope, over an ocean full of sharks with lasers on their head.