Losing or trading off fame?

[Shadowhal]

Should there be an instances where a player could lose fame? A particularly poorly going war? Cities or wonders lost? I haven't played enough to see if this can already happen in the current version. My impression was not.

An relatedly, could it be an interesting option to sell fame e.g. to buy mercenaries, get tech faster or some other short-term benefit. Thematically, it could represent dishonourable or weak actions by an empire that lowers its standing in history - WW II would have a few examples in store. Game play-wise it might offer an interesting tension between pulling yourself out of a tight situation by sacrificing the very thing you are pursuing.

Any thoughts?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Very much No to losing/trading Fame, that makes it just another score victory/economic victory.

They have the possibility for something unique where your empire collapses after a Golden Age of over expansion...but even though you lost the territories you gained the fame for having them.

 

[timmychompchomp]

A couple of thoughts.

When you are a vassal, you could have a mechanic that gives a portion of your earned fame to your liege. Your liege benefits from the fame, but you may recover the fame when you successfully rebel and earn your freedom. In the modern eras, your liege could grant you independence without a revolution to keep half of the total withheld and a modifier that boosts their own fame accumulation for a brief time.

You could also add a mechanic that allows a player to risk fame to gain more fame by accomplishing a task. Landing on the moon or Mars first would be a good example. You accept the event and success brings you higher fame output for the event if done within the allotted time. Failure would cost you fame. Like Kennedy giving NASA a deadline. It gives you fame to land on the moon at all, but declaring you will do it first and by this turn could boost that fame, but failure will cost you.

in numbers as an example. A moon landing for any leader grants 70 fame. Doing it first grants 85. Declaring you will do it first by turn 300 and doing so successfully grants you 100. If you declare and are first but fail to do so by turn 300 hundred you receive 75 instead of 85. If you are not first and also fail to land by turn 300 you receive 60 fame instead of the standard 70. You are risking reward to gain a larger reward, but your total already earned is not altered. These values don’t matter, just using them to demonstrate the concept.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I believe the game already has a sort of World Achievement system in it: discovering Writing, for example, gives you a pop-up screen to that effect, and I believe things like conquering an entire continent will give you one.
That, and the current Random Events in the game, could be the basis for a set of goals or requirements from your population, Minor Factions, or Major Faction neighbors for specific accomplishments - build a Wonder, settle an island, build certain structures in each of your cities, etc.

The rewards, though, I'd prefer to be more varied: discovering Writing, (especially if you are First) should give a Science boost, keeping neighboring Minor or Major Factions happy by fulfilling some desire of theirs should give a Diplomatic/Influence boost. I think it is better game play to have 'random events' contribute only indirectly to Victory rather than directly through 'gifting' you Fame for some action. Playing for Random Events doesn't have a lot of appeal, frankly . . .

 

[grug]

I believe the game already has a sort of World Achievement system in it: discovering Writing, for example, gives you a pop-up screen to that effect

Given that the only techs that give you fame are writing, moveable typeface, and research institute, I think they aren't supposed to represent how fast you develop technologically but the memory of your history.

And if you think about it, we know much more about Egypt whose writing was deciphered through the Rosetta Stone than the Harrapans and Indus River Valley Civilization whose writing is indecipherable to us because we are unable to decipher their written records - ie, more fame. We have more knowledge of the Romans than say the Majapahit because monks took the time to preserve paper records over centuries as opposed to letting them disintegrate. One of the big roadblocks in studying Mesoamerican history is that there is something of an over reliance on Spanish language sources, in part because so many of the records written in Mesoamerican glyphs were actively destroyed during colonial rule. So I think they chose those specific technologies to give a fame boost because they represent the recording of history.

With that in mind, I wonder if the interpretation of history could contribute to fame in the later eras.

I think one of the early interviews said that they decided to include more grim aspects of history like slavery because of how important a role it played, but also wanted to include consequences down the line. Whether that is random events, which lead to things like slave revolts that weaken you if you took the slavery civic or whatever, or historical judgement, like people in your empire denouncing the imperialism civic and loosing a small amount of fame if you adopted it, there could be consequences for choices that don't show up until the Contemporary or Industrial Era. Sort of a reverse World Achievement system that helps out people who didn't go all Genghis Khan on civilians and made the honorable decision.

 

[Zaarin]

the Harrapans and Indus River Valley Civilization whose writing is indecipherable to us

More to the point, it hasn't even been conclusively demonstrated that they had writing.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Given that the only techs that give you fame are writing, moveable typeface, and research institute, I think they aren't supposed to represent how fast you develop technologically but the memory of your history..

Their interpretation of "memory of history", then, is based on ability to produce a mass of written material so that some of it will survive. I suggest that they missed a bet then, in not also giving an achievement to number of cities having Schools (number of literate people writing things down) and Libraries (sheer volume of written material) - but presumably they wanted to keep the achievements related to Technologies researched rather than volume of Infrastructure built.

Here, by the way, is a place where Civ VII could do better: assuming it builds on the Civ VI Visible Infrastructure system, numbers of Libraries, Universities, and Research Parks surviving unpillaged or nuked, numbers of Great Works from your Civ surviving in venues not pillaged or nuked, could be a Victory Mechanic related to a "Left Your Mark" Victory in a post-apocalyptic Game End.

It would certainly be something different to have a Victory Condition that applies to an end-game situation normally considered a Everybody Loses situation: apocalyptic nuclear winter or environmental disaster . . .