More depth to Civ gameplay

[Winston]

I think Civ 4 should move away from the war-game mentality that is prevalent in Civ 3. Civ 3 is basically a war-game because the main ways to win revolve around expanding your resources (people and cities) in order to produce more soldiers to further expand your resources (by capturing people and cities) in order to produce more soldiers to continue the cycle – this method will enable either a military victory, a conquest victory, a cultural victory, a space race victory and (with a little tact) a diplomatic victory. The scoring system also rewards this style of play because most of the histograph points are earned primarily for population size and geographic area. The game also becomes easier by the industrial ages because the player has already conquered the lands of a couple of empires which makes it easier to grab even more land.
I think Firaxis introduced corruption and waste to discourage players from constant expansion – however this mechanism doesn’t work very well because it is irritating, unrealistic, and uninteresting. There are other ways to encourage players to try different methods to constant expansionism. Firstly, changing the scoring system so that only 25%-33% of the histograph points are awarded for population size, empire size, and army size and the other 66%-75% are awarded for other things such as trade links, economic power, international reputation, domestic happiness, development of infrastructure, technological discoveries, world map exploration, the skills and affluence of the population, the penetration of a civs culture into other civs cultures, number of wonders built etc etc.
In a previous post I suggested ‘great city points’ to encourage players to develop super cities but there are many other ways points could be awarded for developing a civilisation. One suggestion would be at the start of an era players could be given objectives to achieve by a certain date.

For example during the ancient era all civs could be given the following objectives to achieve by 200 AD:

1) Build 12 temples. (100pts)
2) Build 8 coliseums. (100pts)
3) Discover & locate 4 other civs (200pts)
4) Build 8 aqueducts. (100pts)
5) Build 12 marketplaces. (100pts)
6) Build 12 harbours. (100pts)
7) Build 2 Great Wonders. (300 pts)
8) 6 techs discovered by your civ first. (300 pts)
9) Establish trade links with another civ. (200 pts)
10) No unhappy citizens. (300 pts)

Points calculated on 200 AD. Scoring is calculated as points multiplied by number of objectives achieved for a potential total of 18,000 points

Therefore, the player is given a short term aim in addition to the long term aim of winning the game and by constantly throwing in more objectives as the game progresses this should add to the challenge and appeal of the game. Notice that none of the objectives involve conquest – this is because the conventional scoring rewards conquest – the objectives are meant to be a bonus that is available in addition to the conventional histograph scoring mechanism.
Hope that I have made this post clear; I was kind of in a rush when I typed this – any thoughts and opinions (in favour or otherwise) about this idea are welcome.

 

[Theoden]

It sounds like a good idea to disencourage conquest though I think it still would be rewarded to conquer. Conquering other civs will always help you. So in additoin to giving advantages for being peaceful, there should be more penalties for being warmongering.

 

[hr_oskar]

Well, although I enjoy warmongering, I definitely agree...

Personally I wouldn´t quite favor a scoring mechanism as arbitrary as you describe - I´d rather just score points for each marketplace, temple, wonder, tech first discovered, land area explored and contact with other civs made... building 11 marketplaces and discovering 5 original techs is only slightly less impressive than building 12 and discovering 6.

The point is that the scoring mechanism should be more varied and more rewarding for player types who are less focused on defeating all opposition and expanding territory, and more interested in "civilized" achievements. Also not just the score, since some people don´t really care about score - there should be even more in-game rewards for being "civilized".

I must admit that Civ3 is much better than its predecessors when it comes to peaceful gaming, mostly because of the introduction of culture as a game concept.

 

[Vizurok]

Pesonally I like your ideas, but I agree with Oskar, too. It could be easy to calculate the score this way:
Current Expected Percentage Score
Markets 10 12 10/12 ~83.3% 83 points

 

[SewerStarFish]

I'm sure it would be difficult to program but how about weighing victory types for different civ traits. Give more points to Militaristics that conquer, Religious that build temples and cathedrals, etc.

Not that a civ is compelled to win a certain way but to guide the play. I enjoyed the GOTM where it was easier for the Arabs to win a Diplomatic if they were at least faithful to other muslim nations (at least that's how I played it -- my only GOTM win).

While what's important to one civilization is not as important to another there are some absolutes, i.e. if your dead you lose.

 

[socralynnek]

First of all, I agree with the goal, to make warmongering less attractive!
But for most of the players the score is not so important, mostly winning or not is important.
Maybe it should be harder to keep and appease conquered cities and let it take more time to make them useful, give more support to the people that peacefully grow their empire (for example make war weariness harder) etc.

 

[BassDude726]

Why does everyone have a grudge against war-mongering? It's a perfectly legitimate way of winning the game. And it is the way the world worked up until very recently. Things only changed after WWII. Before that, the world generally operated on the principle of "finder, keepers - if you have the strength to keep it." I think penalizing players for waging war is unfair.

 

[Dr. Broom]

We don't need to penalize warmongers we just need to make it so that those of us who don't always want to go to war can actually win the game. The whole reason warmongering is the best way to win is that territory is everything, if you have the most cities you make the most units, money, production and have the highest population. What is the best way to get territory? Go to war....often. The first step in making it so that warmongering isn't the only or best way to win is to fix this territory is everything problem.

 

[judgement]

We don't need to penalize warmongers we just need to make it so that those of us who don't always want to go to war can actually win the game. The whole reason warmongering is the best way to win is that territory is everything, if you have the most cities you make the most units, money, production and have the highest population. What is the best way to get territory? Go to war....often. The first step in making it so that warmongering isn't the only or best way to win is to fix this territory is everything problem.

Excellent point.

In my opinion, the reason that "territory is everything" is that all cities are essentially the same. Here's what I mean: (1) only one improvement (granary) affects how fast cities grow, (2) only two improvements (aqueduct and hospital) limit city size, and (3) most cities have plenty of time to build money and production related improvements (marketplace, bank, factory, etc) by the time those improvements are useful. So, the result is that you typical have a number of cities that are "maxed out" ... they're growing as fast as they can given the available food (or are stuck at a improvement imposed limit because the improvement isn't avaiable yet), they've already got marketplaces, banks, etc., etc., and basically, there's not much you can do to improve the amount of money or shields those cities provide you. You're stuck waiting for some new advance to let you build new improvements. The only other way to increase your income, as well as the number of military units, science beakers, etc, that you can produce, is to increase your number of cities.

So, what I'm suggesting, is that one way to improve the "territory is everything" problem is simply to rebalance the shield cost, maintanence cost, and effects of many of the improvements (perhaps adding additional improvements as well, and perhaps also rebalancing the cost of military units) so that there is some advantage to not always trying to expand your territory: your empire can always be improved by building new improvements, so that is as valid a means of advancement as territorial gain. Basically, try to reduce the number of times I say to myself "self, this city has no decent improvements left to build (as least until I discover XXX) so in the meantime, I guess I'll build more military units and go capture so new cities to improve."

Along the same lines, I think newly acquired territory should not be immediately profitable. Newly built or conquered cities shouldn't be returning a surplus to the national treasury right away: they should be draining your treaury for a while until you get enough improvements built. In other words, it should be possible for the cost of running a city to exceed the money generated by the city, especially in cases where the city is a new part of your empire. It would seem much more realistic to me if you had to sink some money into new acquisitions for a number of turns before the investment started paying off. Currently, a marketplace can only increase an already positive income from a city (by 50%). It'd be better if sometimes you needed a marketplace to even get a positive income in the first place. This would make it so that constant expansion was a financial drain (as well as the current drain on military units). Even those who wanted to be warmongers would occasionally want to stop for a bit to consolidate their gains, pausing their wars long enough to build some improvements in newly acquired cities so that those cities became profitable.

 

[Winston]

I also think it is unnecessary to 'penalise warmongers' - whenever I play civ I pursue a warmongering, expansionist strategy because this is the most effective way to win the game and gain a good score.
I think the aim should be to provide incentives and rewards to peaceful players in order to provide alternative methods to winning the game - this ultimately improves gameplay and variety.
At present the most challenging period in the civ games is the ancient and middle ages because the player is unable to establish any kind of dominance during these periods - but once the player has conquered a couple of rival civs; the game becomes exponentially easier becuase the player is able to use these resources to double and treble the size of his/her empire in comparison to any rival.
I find the game becomes less interesting by this stage because the result has already become a foregone conclusion - the player will eventually emerge victorious because they have superior resources (in terms of land and population).
By giving smaller empires advantages for being small and allowing them to remain capable of winning the game this would maintain the challenge of civ into modern times.
There are many ways of giving small peaceful empires advantages against large empires as opposed to just giving them a bonus to their score. Some suggestions of mine would be:

1) Introducing the concept of city and army loyalty. I have posted ideas relating to this in a previous thread a few months ago but the general gist is that if you are good to your people they will be loyal to you - if you abuse them they will become disloyal and wreck havoc within your empire by rioting, passive resistance, breaking away from your empire, appealing to foriegn nations for support. Obviously this will be less of a problem for a peaceful empire that focuses its attention on developing infrastructure when compared against a warlike empire that aims to conquer and subjugate foriegn nations.

2) Introduce the concept of different skill levels within populations as opposed to the current citizens that are all identical to each other. I will probably post these ideas on another thread but the basic idea is that civs will be able to expand specialist elements within their society through actions that they take within the game. Examples of specialists could be doctors, artisans, architects, professors (Art), professors (Science), clergy, teachers etc etc). The benefits of expanding upon these specialists is that they would unlock research paths to study (e.g. once a civ attains 5 doctors per 1000 people your civ may study 'anaesthetics' or once a civ attains 10 architects per 1000 your civ may study 'sky-rise buildings' etc) - another benefit of these specialists is that they would have general benefits such as increasing culture and international reputation or reducing maintenance costs etc. These specialists would be acquired over time through a civs actions as opposed to simply toggleing a menu, therefore rewarding players that set out to develope skilled citizens.

3) Another idea relating to '2)' is the concept of education and affluence - civs that develope their infrastructure and institutions should be rewarded with more productive (in terms of commerce, science, and shields) workers that are less corrupt. This would allow small nation with skilled citizens to continue to compete with large expansionist countries that have focused their efforts on exansionism.

4) Civs that are not at war could also benefit from a trade bonus because investors and entrepreneurs are able to benefit from economic stability, which encourages investment and consumer spending.

5) Introduce a government bureaucracy cost that would increase with population and territory size.

These are just a few ideas for ways to provide bonuses to smaller empires so that they can remain competitive - to anyone that thinks I am suggesting ways to penalise warmongers this is not the intention. My aim is a Civ 4 that has more challenging and interesting gameplay by insuring the game remains competitive throughout. To do this it becomes necessary to introduce mechanisms that give all civs (big and small) a fighting chance of ultimately winning.