Prevent late game stagnation!

[SalmonSoil]

A trend I see in my games is that they stagnate in the modern era. There's just nothing left to do.
There are no more buildings for my cities, all my land is improved and does not need any more work. There are no wonders. (The land also looks incredibly unnatural, with no more forests or open plains left). Even going to war with someone is boring, because all it is is two stacks ramming each other to death (civ 5 will remedy this though). So I always end up getting a (boring) space win. What I would like is for the game not to stagnate like this, I have no idea how that could be done while still maintaining the esence of civ though.

 

[Ddude97]

hmm. perhaps you could turn off / go for different victory, change some settings, ect. although I agree with the running out of wonders/buildings and improvements makes it less fun

 

[Frank Drebin]

well, you could win the game before it comes to that.

 

[Cjb64]

I definitely agree with you here, once you get to late game you just run out of things to do and most of the challenges are already overcome by that point. I don't know how you could fix this either, but I'm thinking Civ would have to stray a little from being a purely strategic game to include more roleplay or simulation elements.

Maybe to keep the challenge alive late game Civ could implement a decadence option available for custom games/scenarios. This way the civs that reach the highest ranks of approval rating and life span, and maintain their rank for a set time, would have to deal with some serious economic, research, production, and cultural penalties. Random events related to decadence could also have a negative impact on your empire.

Going along with decadence though, it would be a mistake for there not to be anything you could do to remedy or at least mitigate the penalties. I think the penalties should be used as way to incentivize more creative gameplay. Make it so that certain civic changes could start to rollback some of the penalties and be sort of a wake up call to your empire. For example, switching to police state would simulate a dictator coming to power and forcing his nation to progress by shear force of will. Or going theocracy late game could be a way for a nation to "get back to its roots."

Civ could even give the option for a complete transformation of your civ if you've been at the top for so long and the decadence has become crippling despite certain civic changes. Empires could experience schisms with a number of cities breaking off to allow you to play as a new civ. The cities you lose control of stay as your old civ or become city states of their own. This way if you're playing an earth map as ancient Greece or Rome, you could see the Byzantine empire rise in the east with what used to be Roman cities.

I know it's not completely thought out, but ultimately I would just like to see decadence implemented in the game since I believe it's had a very real effect on lots of civizilizations.

 

[Frank Drebin]

define decadence.

 

[Cjb64]

Decadence according to how I understand it is just decay. In the case of a civilization it would be an internal problem of decline in the areas I mentioned before (economy, production, research, culture.) I don't know really, I think some people refer to it as civilization exhaustion though.

As defined in game, I was just thinking its effect could be seen by % penalties to your economy, production, research, and culture that grow over time the longer you've been at the top.

 

[Tomice]

Well, most people here don't continue playing when they are very dominant, they don't wait for the game to tell them: "You've done it!"

Which difficulty do you play in?

 

[1889]

Sounds like you've pretty well mastered whatever level you’re playing on. A step up would certainly give you more of a challenge or try different settings. I know what you mean about the space race getting a little dull, but trying some new victories will expand your repertoire of strategies and improve your skills.

I can beat the game on Emperor but it takes some concentration. If I'm in the mood to drink a few beers when I play then I go for a Monarch game. It’s a cake walk in the modern era though. I still enjoy thoroughly dominating the AI. Conquest is tedious so I just plan raids to eliminate all coastal cities or air strikes to savage all his tiles. Espionage missions are especially enjoyable at that stage. I make up mini games, like how many water supplies can I poison before I reach Alpha Centauri.

 

[JanissaryRush]

What I hate about the modern age is how many units you get. Lots of cities can build tanks, airplanes every turn or two. It becomes so tedious having to spend so long moving units after, especially if you've conquered a lot of cities by that point.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Well I certainly think the changes they've made to combat & the domination victory will both help to make the late-game less tedious. Also, though I'm currently not a fan of it, the Utopia Project Wonder will at least make the Cultural Victory follow a more specified path. The diplomatic victory in many ways sounds *harder*, but also more interesting-due to the greater evenness of the votes & the role played by City-States. Indeed, the only Victory that sounds the same is the Spaceship victory.

Aussie.

 

[Johnny Be]

A trend I see in my games is that they stagnate in the modern era. There's just nothing left to do.
There are no more buildings for my cities, all my land is improved and does not need any more work. There are no wonders. (The land also looks incredibly unnatural, with no more forests or open plains left). Even going to war with someone is boring, because all it is is two stacks ramming each other to death (civ 5 will remedy this though). So I always end up getting a (boring) space win. What I would like is for the game not to stagnate like this, I have no idea how that could be done while still maintaining the esence of civ though.

I'm eager to see the new changes and mechanics in CiV!

Usually I also find the late game/modern times a bit boring. Probably because I'm more of a explorer / builder perfectionist than a warmonger.

 

[TCB]

I think that a potential solution to this problem would be to make citizens more difficult to please as your civilization advances (could be a combination of civilization size, wealth and technology). Failing to address this would result in lower productivity (not sure how unhappiness works in Civ5, I'm just following from the "unhappy citizen refuses to work" model). Perhaps also (but this is unlikely to appear in Civ5), that a certain amount of unhappiness could cause cities to break away from your empire as independent city-states.

 

[Zhahz]

I'm eager to see the new changes and mechanics in CiV!

Usually I also find the late game/modern times a bit boring. Probably because I'm more of a explorer / builder perfectionist than a warmonger.

Same.

I'm not sure it's something the developers should or can really address because the game is mostly about history (earlier "ages") than it is about the present and future. There are only so many buildings and things to make that'd serve any kind of useful purpose without excess repetition.

I believe the problem, if there is a problem, at least for me, is that I get so into building up that I never really plan or pursue victory, then it gets to be modern times and there aren't many paths to victory that can be tolerably done.

The game has several clear paths to victory. Creating a sprawling empire of highly developed and heavily populated cities, while fun, isn't necessarily one of them!

I'm not sure this is all bad, because I really enjoy the exploration, expansion, development of an empire, racing for wonders, etc, and I don't necessarly have to exterminate everyone else to have fun.

Sometimes I think I'll just develop a tight empire, tech up to modern times, then wipe everyone out with tanks, etc, but by the time you get there you're looking at conquering 3/4 of the map or whatever and for me the tedium of all that conquering isn't all that fun, so I just abandon ship and start a new game.

I don't find the combat in civ4 to be that amazingly strategic or engaging so it gets boring for me. I'm a big fan of hex-based and 1pt so I think the strategic depth potential in civ5 will help my war mongering side a lot.

If you're more focused and have a plan for victory that starts earlier, it'll usually alter how you play thru and you may not focus so much on building up.

But whatever, as long as it's fun.

I'm actually hoping that Civ5 retains the ability to play thru as a builder type that flounders and never finishes because it's almost a goal itself, and for me is a fun way to play. /shrug

 

[chongli]

Sounds like you've pretty well mastered whatever level you’re playing on. A step up would certainly give you more of a challenge or try different settings. I know what you mean about the space race getting a little dull, but trying some new victories will expand your repertoire of strategies and improve your skills.

I can beat the game on Emperor but it takes some concentration. If I'm in the mood to drink a few beers when I play then I go for a Monarch game. It’s a cake walk in the modern era though. I still enjoy thoroughly dominating the AI. Conquest is tedious so I just plan raids to eliminate all coastal cities or air strikes to savage all his tiles. Espionage missions are especially enjoyable at that stage. I make up mini games, like how many water supplies can I poison before I reach Alpha Centauri.

The problem with adjusting the difficulty level is that it is heavily biased towards the early game. Early game is much harder at all difficulty levels than late game. The AI gets a huge head start but falls behind a superior human opponent.

 

[StStutter]

I found a great mod that I always use now that remedies this called Revolutions. It becomes incredibly difficult to maintain a massive empire until you've unlocked all the civs that give the best bonus to empire stability such as free speech, universal suffrage, etc.

If you try to expand too quickly without the proper civs, you start to lose your cities to revolutions and your empire begins to fragment giving rise to new civs.

This keeps the late game interesting as it is finally your opportunity to expand as far as you possibly can, and it also prevents you from becoming such a dominant power on the map that there are no civs left to chaallenge you.

maybe something like this could be implemented in civ 5 or an expansion pack?

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I found a great mod that I always use now that remedies this called Revolutions. It becomes incredibly difficult to maintain a massive empire until you've unlocked all the civs that give the best bonus to empire stability such as free speech, universal suffrage, etc.

If you try to expand too quickly without the proper civs, you start to lose your cities to revolutions and your empire begins to fragment giving rise to new civs.

This keeps the late game interesting as it is finally your opportunity to expand as far as you possibly can, and it also prevents you from becoming such a dominant power on the map that there are no civs left to chaallenge you.

maybe something like this could be implemented in civ 5 or an expansion pack?

Yep, always loved the Revolutions Mod. We can only hope that the Civ team can recognise the brilliance of this mod & make it part of the core game-either in vanilla or a future expansion!

Aussie.

 

[Peng Qi]

I saw an epic idea on the 2K forums that I expanded upon and will repost here (ignore the first post in that thread, it's a silly idea):

Here's the original post with the idea.

Here's my elaboration:

I forsee two possible settings to this disaster endgame mode: "Complete Disasters" and "Mild Disasters." In "Complete Disasters," every disaster will ultimately destroy the planet entirely if nobody reverses it before it runs its course. In "Mild Disasters," the disasters will only do serious damage to the planet, but the game will go on, and disaster types that would end the world are disabled.

You could also have a "realistic disasters" mode and a "fantastic disasters" mode.

Mechanical possibilities for various endgame disasters:

1. Ice Age. On a certain turn, the ice age triggers. Every turn, X water or ice hexes (determined by map size) along the ice caps turn into ice cap terrain (the non-traversable except to submarines kind), X tundra hexes turn into ice hexes, the same number of grasslands become tundra (always along the northern edge), X plains become grasslands, X deserts becomes plains, and X jungles become forests. Any city or improvement which ends up under an "ice cap" is destroyed; units that end up on one start taking damage every turn. In "Complete Disaster" mode, this happens until every tile is an ice cap. In Mild mode the ice caps would only cover ~2/3rds of the Earth's surface.

2. Global Warming. The opposite of Ice Age. Could be set to Anthropogenic (Mild Disaster) mode, Solar Warming (Mild Disaster) mode, or Solar Flare-Up (Complete Disaster) mode. Tiles progress in the opposite direction of Ice Age above, except a new "dust" tile type would be what destroys cities and improvements and damage units. Additionally, jungles would still become forests, and forests would sometimes disappear. I imagine it stopping with a little less than 1/2 of the planet's surface being a dust tile.

In Anthropogenic mode, you could save the planet by going green and convincing other nations to do likewise. In Solar mode, you couldn't do anything to save it, but it would peak at ~1/2 as above. In Flare-Up mode, you couldn't save it and it would eventually destroy everything, necessitating escape of the planet on a spacecraft.

3. Infection. In mild disaster mode, this would simply start causing massive unhealthiness that would reach a certain peak, and could be reversed by devoting research points to finding a cure. In complete disaster mode, there would be no peak to the unhealthiness, and any city still in negative food at 1 pop would die out and become "unowned." Any player could then settle the city and take control of all of the buildings in it. In fantastic disasters mode, this would be more like "zombie apocalypse" mode, with a random city on each continent plus a few extra falling to the infection that then begins losing population quickly and spawning waves of "infected" units. Any military unit in direct combat with an infected unit would become an infected unit in 1-5 rounds (and are therefore only useful as a delay), unless and until enough research points are invested in finding a cure, at which point your units are safe if you can exterminate any remaining infected threat. Might be fun to be faced with the decision to share the cure you've researched or let your enemies get run down trying to research their own. U.N. Victory is still enabled, but just gives you control of all cities and units to fight the zombies with until they're defeated. Space Race victory still functions normally. All other victory modes don't kick in until after the zombies are dead.

4. Alien invasion. Fantastic disaster mode only. All victory modes disabled, other than U.N. which functions as in zombie mode. The only way to end the invasion is to research and produce a doomsday weapon powerful enough to shoot down ships while they're still in space or possibly an inter-dimensional weapon. Normal victory modes become re-enabled after this is built.

5. Meteor/Comet collision. How much early warning you get is based on your tech level; optics warns you only a few turns in advance, and any "detection" tech such as radio, satellites, computers, and the like give you more warning. The collision would destroy a large area around the impact site and create "wasteland" tiles that function as dust or ice cap tiles above, except without the damage over time. The severity of the climate change after impact would depend on whether you had set the game to mild or complete disasters, but would probably follow similar guidelines as the ice age disaster type. This exact set of mechanics could also be used for a "nuclear disaster" end-game mode.

Any other ideas for this? This would make an epic mod.

 

[DalekDavros]

As I see it, the problem is that if you enter the late game with a good position, you basically know that you're going to win. If the spaceship is going to reach AC in 5 turns, or the last city is 10-20 turns away from legendary culture, then I'm not going to start building some modern wonder that takes 30 turns to complete (there are a few decent late game wonders), or some building that will only recoup the production invested in it after a long number of turns.

In the early game, you're in a race with the AI (wonders, tech lead, founding religions, etc.). In the late game, you're just waiting for the inevitable. So, I'd say the problem isn't the era so much as the AI; if the AI were able to keep up to the modern era, it'd make for some dramatic finishes.

 

[cassembler]

What about some kind of economic or infrstructure-based victory condition? I'm a builder too and don't find cultural victory to my taste generally. Space victory is ok, but perhaps something that requires more interaction with the rest of the world...

Couple of things come to mind:
- Economic: be part of at least half of all global trade, in gold or goods
- Infrastructure: Kind of like space race, but maybe with tiles, buildings, or wonders instead
- Green: Reduce global emissions below X by whatever means necessary
- Peace: Prevent all war globally for X turns, by whatever means necessary
- Control: Kind of like diplomatic, but control 50% of the world's population via puppet states, corporations, resources, etc...
- Demise: Basically pollute enough to kill off the human race (victory or defeat?)

$.02

 

[Schuesseled]

A trend I see in my games is that they stagnate in the modern era. There's just nothing left to do.
There are no more buildings for my cities, all my land is improved and does not need any more work. There are no wonders. (The land also looks incredibly unnatural, with no more forests or open plains left). Even going to war with someone is boring, because all it is is two stacks ramming each other to death (civ 5 will remedy this though). So I always end up getting a (boring) space win. What I would like is for the game not to stagnate like this, I have no idea how that could be done while still maintaining the esence of civ though.

turn off time and science victory, then you can win, by culture, diplomacy or conquest.