All these kind of games suffer from mid-late game challenge (all Paradox tiles + all Civ titles + all that looks like it totles) , i played them all, spend thousands of pleasant hours over last 20 years, but i rarely ever finish them because i get I won feeling way before tanks start rolling in my cities...
And here comes my first post after 20 years of playing, i have put my thoughts together...
To my mind, there is an easy fix for mid-end game challenge and I don’t understand why it is not implemented... Maybe I am wrong and it is not that easy but I still think it can be implemented for a fraction of time they spent on all these cartoonish artworks...
Problem with blobbing and exponential snowballing is that eventually you run out of challenge. You know you can kick every nation one by one, you start with easiest one and then you snowball till toughest king/queen/minister/despot and once you beat that you are good to close the game or click end of turn 150 times.
I think it does not make any sense, nor historically nor gameplay wise... nations do not sit next to big threatening empires waiting to be swallowed. They should unite, form rock solid alliances, closer you are to the victory condition more organised should be a concerted reaction. Negative opinion modifiers are not enough because they stop to matter.
SOLUTIONS
Conquests Sprees – create an opposition
A. So if you conquered smb and became twice as big, at least two neighbours should form defensive pacts (maybe just against you) and settle their differences aside. If US starts going on conquering spree and conquers Mexico with Trump in front and then, let’s say Brazil, whole world should declare war on them. Even then, it is better domination victory winning last world war vs everybody instead of stomping some weak forgotten backwards nation in a distant island just to get a percentage of capitals/territory.
B. There should be alliances and federations, with a sole objective for each. NATO – defensive pact with Article 5. UN respect each members borders. Religious unity – burn heretics, crusades, jihads. Monarchic unity – All Monarchs unite against democratic state advancements... history is full of examples ...
C. Total War, there is a stage of every war, if it drags long enough destroys the defending nation, their city populations should become soldiers, their land should be scavenged. Just building couple of musketeers and killing couple of opponents longbows should not give you big medieval cities under your control with some negative war warness or production penalty. New territories need to be integrated, it should take time and effort. But it should be doable in full.
Science – make it more strategic
We all like chasing enemy riflemen with our bombers , BUT, it gets boring and it does not make much sense.
A. The World, or at least our enemy, seeing our warplanes, naturally should just copy paste what they see. As old Soviet Union did with nuclear bombs, fighters, and any other military technology. I think you can have a tech advantage... but once you start using it, enemy can have sort or research/steal boost on your technology, so does the world on a smaller scale. Greece does not care if Turkey builds pyramids, or has more advanced society, as long as Turkey does not come and starts shooting people with advanced guns, in that situation Greece will try to learn quickly how to make those weapons!
B. Also I don’t think we should know precisely what other technologies other AI has !... it adds layer of uncertainty that could be very exciting and challenging ... So you go to war with some nation and they just show up with some advanced planes that kick your arse badly, you learn them so you are ready next war. That would be a mid-late game challange.
P.S. that would naturally create interesting strategic choices... do you want to use our latest tech army like nukes, on averagely sized enemy now, but that means that everybody soon will have nukes.
International Relationships – update them
A. What i always missed, is getting approval from my neighbours for my actions. I want to declare a war on nation B, i want to make sure my friend is OK with it, there should be a way to get him on board. Typical CIV situation, China attacks Tibet, Tibet is conquered. I liberate Tibet, and then take same Chinese African colonies as a result and Tiber hates my guts. There should be a way that a nation sees other nation as +helps to achieve my goals, -does not help to achieve my goals . It is not complicated, just need some thinking.
B. ALL negative and positive opinion modifiers should inflate over time. It should take a real time situation into consideration more than what happened 2000 years ago. So sneakily picking off weak neighbours that nobody knows or cares about, or conquer half of another Civilizations lands after he DOWed you is just an exploit that is too obviuos to avoid.
Transparency - keep player a bit in a dark, we want to be curious !
We don't need to know everything, it is not chess game... make us build buildings, do actions/things to learn about other civilizations --- we should not just reach the shore of another continent with caravel and now everything about habitants there, what culture do they have, how strong are their armies, what religion do they follow, and all technologies they have etcetera... it is stupid and not interesting game wise...
P.S. there are so many things that can be done... but all these games are super fun first 100 turns, first couple of hours... and then they inflate...
phew... thanks for reading
And here comes my first post after 20 years of playing, i have put my thoughts together...
To my mind, there is an easy fix for mid-end game challenge and I don’t understand why it is not implemented... Maybe I am wrong and it is not that easy but I still think it can be implemented for a fraction of time they spent on all these cartoonish artworks...
Problem with blobbing and exponential snowballing is that eventually you run out of challenge. You know you can kick every nation one by one, you start with easiest one and then you snowball till toughest king/queen/minister/despot and once you beat that you are good to close the game or click end of turn 150 times.
I think it does not make any sense, nor historically nor gameplay wise... nations do not sit next to big threatening empires waiting to be swallowed. They should unite, form rock solid alliances, closer you are to the victory condition more organised should be a concerted reaction. Negative opinion modifiers are not enough because they stop to matter.
SOLUTIONS
Conquests Sprees – create an opposition
A. So if you conquered smb and became twice as big, at least two neighbours should form defensive pacts (maybe just against you) and settle their differences aside. If US starts going on conquering spree and conquers Mexico with Trump in front and then, let’s say Brazil, whole world should declare war on them. Even then, it is better domination victory winning last world war vs everybody instead of stomping some weak forgotten backwards nation in a distant island just to get a percentage of capitals/territory.
B. There should be alliances and federations, with a sole objective for each. NATO – defensive pact with Article 5. UN respect each members borders. Religious unity – burn heretics, crusades, jihads. Monarchic unity – All Monarchs unite against democratic state advancements... history is full of examples ...
C. Total War, there is a stage of every war, if it drags long enough destroys the defending nation, their city populations should become soldiers, their land should be scavenged. Just building couple of musketeers and killing couple of opponents longbows should not give you big medieval cities under your control with some negative war warness or production penalty. New territories need to be integrated, it should take time and effort. But it should be doable in full.
Science – make it more strategic
We all like chasing enemy riflemen with our bombers , BUT, it gets boring and it does not make much sense.
A. The World, or at least our enemy, seeing our warplanes, naturally should just copy paste what they see. As old Soviet Union did with nuclear bombs, fighters, and any other military technology. I think you can have a tech advantage... but once you start using it, enemy can have sort or research/steal boost on your technology, so does the world on a smaller scale. Greece does not care if Turkey builds pyramids, or has more advanced society, as long as Turkey does not come and starts shooting people with advanced guns, in that situation Greece will try to learn quickly how to make those weapons!
B. Also I don’t think we should know precisely what other technologies other AI has !... it adds layer of uncertainty that could be very exciting and challenging ... So you go to war with some nation and they just show up with some advanced planes that kick your arse badly, you learn them so you are ready next war. That would be a mid-late game challange.
P.S. that would naturally create interesting strategic choices... do you want to use our latest tech army like nukes, on averagely sized enemy now, but that means that everybody soon will have nukes.
International Relationships – update them
A. What i always missed, is getting approval from my neighbours for my actions. I want to declare a war on nation B, i want to make sure my friend is OK with it, there should be a way to get him on board. Typical CIV situation, China attacks Tibet, Tibet is conquered. I liberate Tibet, and then take same Chinese African colonies as a result and Tiber hates my guts. There should be a way that a nation sees other nation as +helps to achieve my goals, -does not help to achieve my goals . It is not complicated, just need some thinking.
B. ALL negative and positive opinion modifiers should inflate over time. It should take a real time situation into consideration more than what happened 2000 years ago. So sneakily picking off weak neighbours that nobody knows or cares about, or conquer half of another Civilizations lands after he DOWed you is just an exploit that is too obviuos to avoid.
Transparency - keep player a bit in a dark, we want to be curious !
We don't need to know everything, it is not chess game... make us build buildings, do actions/things to learn about other civilizations --- we should not just reach the shore of another continent with caravel and now everything about habitants there, what culture do they have, how strong are their armies, what religion do they follow, and all technologies they have etcetera... it is stupid and not interesting game wise...
P.S. there are so many things that can be done... but all these games are super fun first 100 turns, first couple of hours... and then they inflate...
phew... thanks for reading
AI players reacting and forming alliances... if done too crude that either can be exploited easily by the human player or leads to frustration (like the warmonger-diplo-penalties in CivV that were in the line of counter-to-conquering-spree).
