Making games more balanced and "punishing success"

[Mag Co]

I want to create a thread exclusively for this so we can discuss it keeping things simple.
Losing is fun but the highest difficulty on this game is quite unachievable on nightmore mode, it's basically seeing how much time you can endure without getting destruyed.
However, other difficulties are pretty easy.
Both are unbalanced and I was thinking several ways of "punishing success" and making the game always a challenge I want to discuss with you. I got several of them, feel free to correct me, post more or debunk them if you considered them as not appropiate.

Here we go:
-Creating a new merging of players similar to the vasallage and also similar to aliances, a kind of Non-Aligned Movement where its members receive commerce bonuses and they can defend, trade and help each other creating strong diplomatic blocks.
-Making an ONU political principle of international aid to the development which will be pushed by little nations.
-Making Tech Diffusion mandatory and making it more stronger.
-Creating "Corruption" like in Civ III for larger empires (criminality does the job but affects equally largest and smallest countries)
-Making inflation more pronunced to larger empires and less for little nations.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Have you played with the Win for Losing option yet?

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

One thing we intended to include were some "Bad Karma" mods, disasters and the like. Things you don't see much because they are "not fun". Real Plagues, Real Famines, Rising and falling sea levels, Martian invasions "War of the Worlds" and so on. Some of these could easily be made to affect larger nations more than smaller ones.

 

[Mag Co]

Have you played with the Win for Losing option yet?

Do you mean Final Five, Increasing Difficulty or I am missing something?

One thing we intended to include were some "Bad Karma" mods, disasters and the like. Things you don't see much because they are "not fun". Real Plagues, Real Famines, Rising and falling sea levels, Martian invasions "War of the Worlds" and so on. Some of these could easily be made to affect larger nations more than smaller ones.

Rising and falling sea levels would be interesting if combined with the actual Global Warming due to air pollution
Martian Invasions sounds pretty cool! But it surely give us some trouble combined with pepper modmod.

Edit: "Martian Invasions sound pretty could"

 

[tmv]

Sorry, but I strongly disagree with this. For one, most of your proposals would end up breaking Suspension of Disbelief, and second, why do you want to take out an option? If that option is good in your opinion, fine, but shoving it down other people's throats is a bad idea even if this "option" is so well tuned that you don't break playability completely.

Third, there is still the saying "Just have fun". Punishing success is the opposite of this.

 

[Mag Co]

Sorry, but I strongly disagree with this. For one, most of your proposals would end up breaking Suspension of Disbelief, and second, why do you want to take out an option? If that option is good in your opinion, fine, but shoving it down other people's throats is a bad idea even if this "option" is so well tuned that you don't break playability completely.

Third, there is still the saying "Just have fun". Punishing success is the opposite of this.

Then we should create new challenges to keep the game entertaining not neccesarily punishing anyone. Pepper modmod seems interesting in that aspect.

 

[tmv]

I think that is the way the modders want to go. Cf. https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/keeping-the-game-challenging.477893/

Please understand that the first proposal you made (at least its general direction) is not a new one. At all. And people have already debated this rather passionately. So there are very good reasons to keep both ways open as options.

 

[irishhombre]

I have to agree not to make too challenging, I am a bad player that can barely make it on noble difficulty level with swearing like a sailor. And that is with out revolutions or barbarians.

 

[JosEPh_II]

@irishhombre ,

Noble is supposed to be you and the AI on Equal footing. I still have some tweaking there yet to do. But it's close.

@Mag Co,
Nightmare Deity is Not for everyone to succeed on. That's Why it's called Nightmare!

Play regular Deity instead of Nightmare. Then report how that goes in the Game Speed thread. No one is being "punished" for succeeding. But you are not going to cakewalk thru the higher difficulties as has been done in the past versions of C2C. That is over.

 

[irishhombre]

All the tweaking in the world would not help me, it is a matter of lack skill and intelligence not balance.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

1. Bad Karma and all its sub bits would each be optional selected at game start.
   
   
2. The point is to slow down those who are in front by presenting them with a new challenge while not wiping out, or hopefully not affecting, those who are way behind.
   
   
3. The Martian invasion as in "The War of the Worlds" would be an event that may or may not happen somewhere around artillery. The invasion would happen on Earth but on Mars ruined Martian cities and canals would be built for the player to find when they get there. Thus it should fit in with Pepper's extension. Unlike in the book where only one nation is invaded, I would suggest that all nations with the appropriate tech would be invaded with invader strength proportional to their military strength. With the correct AI they would put the breaks on the major players for a while giving those behind have a chance to catch up a bit.

 

[Rmi]

Is a new random event list possible. Something that only triggers on certain gamescores or other way to decide the top civ.

 

[Loffas]

I´m makeing a mod mod now. with SVN 9600 something as a base. Just with a few adjustments and i can play on prince and the AI get wonders first. etc.
What i changed is civics, a bit of terain defence and promotions, how slaves work, Tech diffusion is depended on meeting someone but higher.

I got some other ideas to. Like having technology not optinal but rnd. Having weapons and armor made from different materials. etc i can go on

But right now im kind of stuck. Need to learn about how barbarian cities act. When haveing the first civics i made it that cities produce soldiers with food. Thanks to that barbarians dont seem to grow. But im not sure, need to test it more.

Any way, perhaps this was a bit of topic. not sure

BR Loffas

 

[Sakura Matou]

One thing we intended to include were some "Bad Karma" mods, disasters and the like. Things you don't see much because they are "not fun". Real Plagues, Real Famines, Rising and falling sea levels, Martian invasions "War of the Worlds" and so on. Some of these could easily be made to affect larger nations more than smaller ones.

Haha "Not Fun" I have wanted stuff like that forever! If I recall wasn't there a global warming event that begins to occur in older builds?

 

[Tajo]

Punishing success is imo very stupid idea and "balancing" in that regard is ridiculous. Currently there seems to be quite a big gap between immortal and deity levels so I would rather see the difficulty levels themselves balanced. There is not any sense for punish anyone for playing good.

Handicap levels on deity are just astronomical but I guess that they are only way to help ai enough.

 

[Sakura Matou]

Punishing success is imo very stupid idea and "balancing" in that regard is ridiculous. Currently there seems to be quite a big gap between immortal and deity levels so I would rather see the difficulty levels themselves balanced. There is not any sense for punish anyone for playing good.

Handicap levels on deity are just astronomical but I guess that they are only way to help ai enough.

I don't want to Punish success so to speak, more so like the idea of those events. Yes I hate artificial Handicaps.

 

[Dancing Hoskuld]

The this is that big nations have fallen apart in our history. Sometimes they come back stronger than ever and sometimes they never recover. It is something that is not modeled in C2C and should be looked at.

 

[Rmi]

There are many ways to make a game more difficult, challenging or 'fair'. Not all ways are an option for every game.

In a game like Diablo, the only real way to increase difficulty is to make the monsters scarier, tougher and faster with more special attacks.
In a game like chess, the only difficulty is in the AI of the opponent.

In civilization, we have a few more options luckily, but the core of the game remains the same. The power of a civ grows exponentially and for difficulty to matter you need to attack this exponential curve.
This means postponing the curve or softening the curve on the player end.
For the AI this means starting the curve earlier and strengthening it.

The first thing you see with the difficulty settings is that you are hamstrung in the early game by bad health, crime and unhappiness all in order to slow you down a bit. Because you will be playing good, and you will get that economy and production running at peak efficiency. Then the difficulty changes to civic upkeep, science, gold, war weariness and that stuff start to matter to keep your curve slightly less skyrocketing.

For the AI, they get a lot of free stuff in the beginning because they NEED it to start their curve earlier because the AI in this game is not efficient enough like a good human player. An earlier start means an exponentially stronger opponent. Then the AI curve gets enhanced by bonuses and very forgiving costs for thing like army and civic upkeep. The AI needs these to keep the curve going despite being inefficient.

The further the game goes, the more options you have and the harder it is for an AI to be efficient. With time you will always outgrind the AI.

Increasing the smartness of the AI is what we always want in pretty much every game but it simply not feasible. Writing good AI's is timely and incredibly difficult.

One avenue that we haven't touched in civ4 is precise enhancements to AI opponents.
Like specifically making them immune to revolutions, but not you the player.
Giving all AI a free combat promotion or something like that.

Or a special event that truly wrecks a human players curve. Like those big stacks of barbarians and worse specifically targeting you.


In the end, if you want to manage the difficulty in a way that complements your playstyle use the map editor.
I often help out the AI with some herd animals and a strategic resource to keep them competitive.

 

[Noriad2]

+Rmi: Revolution is punishment for letting crime run out of control. If the AI gets better at handling crime (i.e. doesn't garrison his cities with dozens of crime-producing units and doesn't build every +crime building there is even if he doesn't need it) then Rev doesn't have to be adapted.

 

[Septentrion]

Rev has just been timebombs in every AI, even in mods without crime. "Fixing" Rev just puts off the effect off. The AI gets worst in the longterm and REV doubles down on that in practice. Revolutions don't work as C2C intends, with effects that manifests being very different from the goals. This is why the idea of making the AI immune is seriously suggested. This will make it a complex mechanic that exists purely for difficulty.