Prolonging interest

[Nikis-Knight]

I do agree that all of the VCs ought to be lowered.

I won a culture victory the other day as Lanun. It wasn't as bad as I expected, but there was quite awhile of hitting next turn.
Legendary city status could be lowered to 40,000 at least.
The ToM could be a bit cheaper (but this can be rushed with money, so the building isn't the hard part. I think rites of Oghma should be cheaper and repeatable to make this victory a bit easier.)
Religious victory could be lowered to 75%, maybe, but wouldn't want this to accidently hit players before they can do anything about it. Perhaps it could be lowered, but so could the passive spread of each religion.
Time could be shortened a little, but not much, wouldn't want it firing while someone was working towards another victory.
Keep Conquest, Dominion, and the Altar as is.

Changing the subject...
Diplomatic penalty: How about a "This is all your fault!" penalty? (From everyone but the Sheaim.) Applied to the lead player or players when the AC is mid-range and regardless of who has actually run the AC up the most. Since you're dealing with international mass opinion - and Armageddon - I don't think you need to make it reasonable.

Was this removed? There used to be a "You are destroying the world" penalty.

 

[Tarquelne]

Was this removed? There used to be a "You are destroying the world" penalty.

It's quite likely I either never noticed it, didn't realize what it meant, or just haven't played a game that far in too long.

I think I we (LAN group) needs to start using the AC-doubling option (End Times?) if we want to see much Armageddon-action.

OfTopic: Particular game settings that tend to ward higher AC counts? We usually have Huge/Large, crowded, multiple continent games. I suspect civs tend to be relatively small and isolated, and thus don't get into big AC-increasing conflicts.

 

[Kael]

Yeah I never converted that over into the BtS version. There was a lot of tracking done on that and in the end I didnt think it was worthwile just for the attitude modifier. It is a good idea, it just required to much backend work.

 

[Tarquelne]

I always increase the AIs per era modifier.

What's that?

EDIT:

Another idea for Bubos:
"All against all": Every civ is put at war with every other civ. You might make exceptions for good relationships. May be most interesting if triggered after Bubos is destroyed.

For Ars or Stephanos:
"The End Times are here!" - universally applied negative mod, applied as long as the rider is present in the world.

 

[dyvim]

I don't think that the horsemen are too easy to destroy. It needs an entire army for that (like Acheron or avatar of Wrath) and that is exactly what it should be.
Adding them more power is a risk to make them totally unmanageable.

For me the problem is that the AI tends to let them in cities.

Instead of going in your city and razing them, the horsemen stay in barbs cities or in one of yours that have been conquered.

Problem is the same for Orthus or avatar of Wrath or Acheron.
(Orthus is too weak BTW, not the horsemen)

 

[dyvim]

An other idea...

Armageddon in the only game i've seen it wasn't an endgame event. more a midgame event.

Cause i've had to conquer a huge part of the world after armageddon happens.

I've encountered a strange bug too... this dear Hyborem has never been able to settle anywhere in this game. He was "invoked" but take no city. He was moving in the world with its colon when i killed him (was playing Basium)

 

[snarko]

What's that?

The AI per era modifier in the handicaps file...

 

[xienwolf]

I always increase the AIs per era modifier. If you do go this route then I suggest changing the bonus to be based on the games era (CvGame::getCurrentEra()) instead of the players. Partially because of the way eras are handled for religions, partially because it currently gives a larger bonus to more advanced AIs than the less advanced ones.

Well, presently the Era isn't tied to time in the game at all. You ONLY switch Era if you switch religions. So that doesn't tie it to the game's progress at all really, except that you can assume certain religions will be founded a bit later than others. But you cannot assume that people switch to those ones.

Keep Conquest, Dominion, and the Altar as is.

Actually Conquest and Dominion were the main ones I wanted to see reduced. At present it requires that you wipe out EVERY civ in the world except maybe 1 or 2 REALLY tiny ones. It would be nice if you could have it instead be about half of what it is now so that you must actively prevent other people from getting it. But that would require a more agressive AI, and a bit slower of settler-spam from them as well.

But by making those ones lower, you can let the war-monger/earlygame-lover people set them as the VC and not often reach the end of the tech tree before a win/loss triggers

 

[Tarquelne]

It would be nice if you could have it instead be about half of what it is now so that you must actively prevent other people from getting it.

Ah, now I get what you were talking about before. That is a good idea.

But that would require a more agressive AI, and a bit slower of settler-spam from them as well.

I've had some games with multiple-continents where an AI might have won with a modified dominion condition. At the very least I would have been worried about it.

Eras:

Thanks, snarko.

Well, presently the Era isn't tied to time in the game at all. You ONLY switch Era if you switch religions.

The aiperera modifers are still in the handicap file, but I guess they aren't being used. That might explain much of why the AI isn't as strong compared to unmoded civ.

 

[fjordan]

Let me play the devil's advocate: Actually, the horsemen are part of the problem. Just when I have an army to invade my neighbour some threat shows up. No I have to draw back my army, micromanage to heal all the land that was destroyed and rebuild the lost cannon fodder. Also you can never go for an all-or-nothing war to get over the VC line because you may lose the game by a random event. The horsemen reward defensive play.

Secondly, I think we should stick with the idea at the beginning of CIV IV: don't punish players for doing well (like enormous corruption in big cities in CIV III), but try to reward good playing. The most obvious way is to make sure the AI wins the game if you don't do it yourself fast enough.

It being very hard to program the AI to be smart, why not make changes so that what the AI does now is actually smart. For example:
- Reward large stacks of simple units (+10 % per unit on the tile promotion?)
- Wonders requiring a certain number of casualties
- Free military building events (now you feel stupid for spending all those hammers on training yards)
- Free military building in every city wonders (I lose most wonder races on higher levels)
- Upgrade anywhere. The AI will not remember to send his best units home for upgrading, as humans do.

Just some ideas for the next version.

 

[JDexter]

Fjordan, while the idea to reward good playing skills appears more appropriate to me, too, the examples you name sound like not being fun at all (except for allowing the AI to upgrade anywhere, that would be similar to the "no building requirement" I guess, which seems to work well).

 

[Victorvanwavere]

Some Interesting suggestions here,

I would like to see smaller civs with the same religion, to form permanent alliances “Teams”, once the AC reaches a certain amount.

I think it was in Civ 3 that the AI would form packs against bigger opponents, saying you are basically a bully.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

At present it requires that you wipe out EVERY civ in the world except maybe 1 or 2 REALLY tiny ones.

OR vassalize them. That's a significant reduction in work/time already.
Conquest should stay as is for those who want a "wipe the map clean" VC.

As for a difficulty modifier that increases late game rather than early, you could give AI's increased number of free (no-upkeep, I mean) units. Wouldn't matter early, but once they started building their armies, they would have an edge.

 

[Nor'easter]

I agree with Fjordan that a player who's played the early and mid-game well shouldn't be artificially penalized in the late game. The change player option's a good idea, though, to let a player decide to take on a new challenge.

If you do want the AC to be the mechanism for spicing up the later game and making it more difficult, then there are several things you could do:

-- Strengthening the horsemen has been mentioned. If you want to go that route, I like Magister's idea of giving them Blitz and Water Walking. The idea of having them spawn on or near the territory of the player with the highest score, or moving to attack that player, would be an equalizing mechanism, obviously. One problem with the horsemen is that the difficulty they cause is localized, so if it were possible to give them some kind of teleportation mechanism, allowing them to show up in different parts of the globe each turn, that might be more balanced.

Again, if you do want to strengthen them, you could consider giving them Medic I or Medic II. It might be thematically appropriate to give them Death I with Summoning and no limits, so they could raise an army of skeletons once they show up.

I also like Xienwolf's idea of having the earlier horsemen (if they've been killed) re-spawn when the later horsemen show up. You could expand this so that all four re-spawn when the Avatar of Wrath arrives. If you decide to have them re-spawn with other horsemen, then they'll have to appear in different areas of the map, for balance reasons.

-- Wrath. In general, I think the Wrath event can be strengthened to spice up the late game. As it stands now, a few of your units go barbarian each turn and you kill them with other units. I understand that if you went back to the earlier Wrath mechanism, where units became barbarian right away and teleported to the Avatar's location so the Avatar started out with a large army, it would be unbalancing because it would disproportionately affect the civs nearest to the Avatar.

What I would suggest is, instead of having units become Crazed when the Avatar arrives, have those units go barbarian right away but remain in their locations rather than being teleported to the Avatar's location. This way, Wrath would result in hordes of barbarians showing up all over the world and would cause problems worldwide, which I think would be thematically proper.

-- Other AC ideas. WAR: You could consider increasing the chance that good civs will declare war on evil civs, and vice versa, as the AC rises. Also, increasing the chance that both good and evil civs will declare war on neutral civs, since both should be upset that neutral civs won't take a side, right?

VASSAL STATES: the Vassal State mechanism seems to be unmodded from the BtS mechanism, i.e., a vassal can't break away from its master unless it has a certain percentage of the master's population and land and a certain percentage of its own original territory. Is there any way of modifying this for vassals whose alignment and/or religion differs from that of its master? I was thinking you could have the required percentages decrease as the AC increases. So, for example, an evil vassal to a good master would be able to break free at a lower percentage of land and population as the AC rose. I would compound this by having the vassal declare war on its former master (or vice versa) as part of breaking free.

I think something like this could make the late game interesting, especially if combined with an increased chance of war between civs of differing alignments. You'd have vassals revolting against their masters, civs all over the place declaring war on each other, etc.

Just some thoughts.

 

[Toryn]

I really like the idea mentioned about destroyed cities becoming 'fallen' and producing some kind of armageddon unit that attacks nearby civs...If you were going to do this though...potentially make the units a new civ with its own AI as the current barbarian AI is awful and easily manipulated. IE just block off a land mass with a chain of units and the barbs will attack someone else. They also just send units in piecemeal to their deaths rather than building stacks.

I also like the idea of civiilizations joining Wrath and the other horsemen if they are going to lose, or potentially weaker civs grouping together into permanent alliances.

More aggressive horsemen would also be a big improvement.

 

[WhitewolfIV]

I would like to suggest that the horsemen would always raze a city (and instead of city ruins have some other improvement that would spawn monsters) and that once they die they would produce a random unique improvement in the world. This improvement has a chance to be destroyed (If the armageddon counter gets high enough) and respawning that horseman from the improvement with no exp. The improvement would also give a healthy bonus like 5+ hammers or 7+ Commerce so that it would entice people to settle nearby and risk annihilation. The improvement could be the exact opposite of what the horseman stood for.

This could be also an interesting role playing problem for the Elohim as they protect the wonders of the world, but they are also a good civilization. Would they risk destroying the world to protect these wonders? Or would they destroy them to save the world? It would be interesting if only the Elohim could make this decision.

Also while I'm on a roll on thinking about making the end game harder, someone already mention having fallout as a replacement for the pestilence event when the counter hits 40.

 

[Dora190]

Disunity and Dissent: When it looks like your civ. is going to be dominant your people become less united. The external threats don't seem so threatening anymore and domestic rivalries become more important. The Crime mechanic might see a lot of use.

When the dust settles and the other civs pacified, dominated, or destroyed which one of us will be on top?

This is one that I like, its also quite believable. Powerful empires can always be run better by one of your minions, at least they think so...

under the category of rubber banding never works, i feel compelled to point out

i bring it up to point out that such a mechanic is likely going to be easily countered by the more experienced and adaptable players who are doing to the complaining. It will work the first time maybe, and then they'll likely figure it out, and prepare for it, and you will be back to square one.

This is the perennial problem, the only answer is a better AI which is not going to appear soon. Any changes will at best be temporary until players get bored of the new solution. Unless, there are a variety of wildly different possibilities each has to be tackled in a different way. Tactics which for example that are successful against the horsemen would be detrimental if employed against solution Y, the best tactic to deal with Solution Y would of course be a bad idea against solution Z and so on. So if you had:

Horsemen - Effect punishes large expansive empires, forces defensive play
Dissent - Large empire splits and half your lovely army goes to a naturally an empire with a natural antithesis to you. This would hinder defensive play, (I Think, but you get the idea)

and so on. There needs to be several (5?) possibilities. The players won't be able to predict which one will strike, up to a point (but thats always going to be a problem).

Couple that with very race specific victory conditions and you could create quite a variety of possible outcomes. Which would make a massive stretching lead seem slightly less useful.

 

[Toryn]

Yeah that would be fantastic. You spend most of the game building an empire and then have it randomly fall apart.

Great on paper...annoying in the game.

 

[Tarquelne]

Great on paper...annoying in the game.

It can be great in game too, actually. Here's an example of the dissunity/dissent stuff: Revolution

The whole Armageddon series of events can also wreck and empire, of course.

Of course it's a matter of taste. But the key is that you make the "empire falling apart" bit not quite random.

 

[Mesix]

I have a couple of ideas to add.

On the original post about the game being "won" midway through with a tedious continuation to get a victory...I think that tweeking the victory conditions could fix this. Perhaps there could be more than one tier of victory selectable at the start of the game:

Example: Domination could have three tiers requiring 60%, 70%, and 80% of the world to achieve selectable at the begining of the game. It would default to 80% and could be changed by the player.

Different victory conditions could also be added that are not default, but can be selected. They might require a lesser form of domination with a "quest like" additional (i.e. 50% domination + eliminate a specific opponent who would start with an advantage and be far away).

On the topic of Armegeddon/Four Horsemen modifiers...give the horsemen unique effects.

The "War" horseman could cause every unit within three tiles to become enraged AND revert to the barbarian player giving him an entourage to start his scourge. All players could also have a negative modifier (maybe -5) to all other players while War is alive that makes them more likely to war with one another. This modifier could be doubled if War is in their cultural borders. The enraged effect could have a lesser continuation that has a chance to cause units to become enraged in adjacent tiles as he goes about his business. When he attacks, he causes collateral damage to the entire stack.

The "Famine" horseman could be linked to Blight. Either move blight later in the AC or make him appear earlier (to coincide). Reduce the initial effects of Blight, but make the unit cause events to continue in a localized fassion. Make him move around and share the pain. Make him invisible and difficult to kill (like Loki). This would both add flavor and fix a lot of the player complaints about the severity of Blight.

The "Death" horseman...well...causes death of course. When he spawns, units all over the world die (weaker units more likely). Units that attack him have a chance to die without dealing any damage. He (of course) causes fear. When adjacent to a city, its population decreases by one every turn. Like Famine, Death should move around to share the pain.

That's some ideas for three of the horsemen anyway.

All of the horsemen should be immune to first strikes, immune to collateral damage, resistant to magic, and overall tough sons of guns to kill. Capturing the horsemen shold not be allowed. If possible, tweek their AI to make them engage one player in a limited fashion and then turn on another player to both share the pain and stop them from eliminating civilizations completely which may cause balance issues.

edit: sorry for the long post, hopefully it will springboard some further discussion.