[Railroading] Heavy-handed mechanics

Iranon

Iranon

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Many things in Civ are clean and elegant, but there is one major gripe that detracts from the immersiveness: I feel robbed of valid choices, usually dastardly ones.

For example, I should be able to...

-abandon a vassal to their fate/absorb them the hard way
-abuse open borders for a sneak attack
-burn down/abandon my own cities
-renege on treaties
-cleanse foreign nationals from my cities

This would also make untrustworthy allies a bit more of a challenge.

Maybe the developers were afraid of balance issuess... without repercussions, all of these would be cheesy as well as dishonourable. However, in diplomatic repercussions and an appropriately themed happiness penalty ('the world considers you a villain') there are tools in the game to handle it.
 
Iranon said:
-abuse open borders for a sneak attack
-renege on treaties
Click to expand...

Both these were possible in Civ 3, but blocked in Civ 4 specifically to prevent ludicrous exploits. I find the Civ 4 system far preferable. Civ 3 did have an incredibly crude reputation system, but since one act (often completely outside your control, like a third party civ losing a city) would usually ruin your rep it was merely annoying. Possibly if a reputation system that actually made sense was added it could allow for this kind of thing, but the current system is at least exploit proof.
 
I thought this was going to be a topic on railroads :lol:

I wish I could abandon vassals as well, or force someone not to vassalise someone, because I hate fighting 2 people in war, when the master knows that by making my victim their vassal their butt is going to be kicked as well!

As for abuse of open borders, it works both ways, so if you do it, the AI sure as heck will do it and your Warrior-defended Capital is doomed (luckily I put modern defences in mine!)

Abandoning cities, yeah I could do that too. Scorched Earth. Make the cities spawn Partisans to harass the enemy

Is that revenge on treaties? I'd sure as heck want revenge against an unfair peace treaty

Cleansing foreign nationals? Bring it! I don't want to wait 50 turns or something like that before I can draft up a new army. But it should only be allowed under a police state, because democratic civics don't like it

I don't really care about the diplomatic penalties as I play on Chieftain or Warlord, but it should be severe for many of those options
 
Abandoning own cities would be reallt great. I.e. as when conquering a city you must decide on keep/burn before seeing what's there...

I think the rest would make warmongering just too easy...

But where are the Railroads ?
 
I agree. I don't know whether it is that they don't feel you should be able to do that for whatever reason or that every option requires more work, testing, and thus more money in the end. Some of their thinking might also have been towards multi-player. There, you could have real tempers flare due to it being unfair even if people agree not to do it.

It would make me furious if the AI had open borders and declared war on me just outside my city, but at least it would be a challenge. ;) I think they should just have had major diplomatic and trust penalties which could even result in a "Final War" against the offender. Player choice is the way to go regardless of the reasoning behind the omissions.
 
Iranon said:
Many things in Civ are clean and elegant, but there is one major gripe that detracts from the immersiveness: I feel robbed of valid choices, usually dastardly ones.

For example, I should be able to...

-abandon a vassal to their fate/absorb them the hard way
-abuse open borders for a sneak attack
-burn down/abandon my own cities
-renege on treaties
-cleanse foreign nationals from my cities

This would also make untrustworthy allies a bit more of a challenge.

Maybe the developers were afraid of balance issuess... without repercussions, all of these would be cheesy as well as dishonourable. However, in diplomatic repercussions and an appropriately themed happiness penalty ('the world considers you a villain') there are tools in the game to handle it.
Click to expand...

To abandon vassal to their fate or absorb them should be an option. It makes sens from an historical and a gameplay point of view.

Not sure about the open border... I can hardly "rationalized" the open border treaty anyways.

Police State civic should indeed allow the player to do dirty political moves... at a price.
 
Stylesrj said:
I thought this was going to be a topic on railroads :lol:
Click to expand...

Me too. I was all ready to blast how hard it is for us old duffs to see the differrence between modern roads and railroads. :blush:
 
I can see the difference between the roads and railroads. When my units avoid them, by their physical looks and when you place a worker over them you can build a railroad :lol:
 
Stylesrj said:
I can see the difference between the roads and railroads. When my units avoid them, by their physical looks and when you place a worker over them you can build a railroad :lol:
Click to expand...

I have to zoom in to see the difference - like having to wear reading glasses now. ;)
 
In Civ 3, dishonourable actions and their consequences were implemented so poorly that they indeed detracted from the gameplay; a total removal was a lesser evil compared to keeping them as they were.

The penalty for such actions should be severe, considering how upset people can get about holding on to legitimate spoils of war or not adopting everyone's favourite form of government (and it's still often expedient to defy resolutions).
Erring on the side of making them impractical is perfectly fine with me; I merely resent not even being given a choice. For example, if you executed a true sneak attack I wouldn't mind all relations with everyone to hit rock bottom and to be denied Open Border treaties forever even if things calm down.
And why not have a 'binding treaties' option, which I personally would insist on in multiplayer games.

Oh this reminds me... if we aren't given more sway to be true villains, at least catching a spy at doing something naughty should give immediate pretext for canceling treaties/going to war. I mean, which nation would take it lying down if they caught a supposed ally at poisoning their water supply?


Regarding the railroads... I'm sorry, I hadn't thought people would take it literally in the context of the title. But I'm perfectly willing to expand my list of demands to include railroads that are easier to recognise as such. Does Sid have a wife we could kidnap to give them more weight?
 
Look carefully at the square, don't just place a unit there and realise it's a road. You can see from a standard view (when the game begins) what the differences are.
Roads are all over the place, railroads, well they arrange into circles
 
Stylesrj said:
Look carefully at the square, don't just place a unit there and realise it's a road. You can see from a standard view (when the game begins) what the differences are.
Roads are all over the place, railroads, well they arrange into circles
Click to expand...

True. But with the forest and what not in CivIV I still find it much harder to see the railroad. One thing I misses sorely is the easy ability to mod the railroad graphic like in CivIII. We have so many choices for railroad in CivIII: Straight, Circular, less messy and easier on the eyes. :) (And are we hijacking the thread to turn it into a REAL railroad thread like the title suggest? ;) :lol: )
 
Iranon said:
-cleanse foreign nationals from my cities.
Click to expand...

This one I'd like.
"We long to join oujr mother state" :mad:
"Well then you know what to do... else there's plenty of walls you can go stand by" :trouble:
 
Why kill the nationals? You should be able to ship massive populations of nationals to the AI. Flood their cities with refugees, make them starve and kill off their nationals. Of course they can do the reverse with your own cities, but either way, it annoys the AI and makes you feel happy as you use strategy (more people in a city, more sickness, more anger! Of course it can be a benefit to them if they can support it, so use it carefully!)

EDIT: Yes I know you were suggesting the same thing, but my method is better :lol:
 
You can start to nuke your own territory these days, enact slavery in modern times, use spy missions like destroying water supplies, so why not have ethnic cleansing?
In fact, even have Religion Reformation, like they had in Gods of Old, or in CTP
 
Iranon said:
Many things in Civ are clean and elegant, but there is one major gripe that detracts from the immersiveness: I feel robbed of valid choices, usually dastardly ones.

For example, I should be able to...

-abandon a vassal to their fate/absorb them the hard way
-abuse open borders for a sneak attack
-burn down/abandon my own cities
-renege on treaties
-cleanse foreign nationals from my cities

This would also make untrustworthy allies a bit more of a challenge.

Maybe the developers were afraid of balance issuess... without repercussions, all of these would be cheesy as well as dishonourable. However, in diplomatic repercussions and an appropriately themed happiness penalty ('the world considers you a villain') there are tools in the game to handle it.
Click to expand...

I agree with you in theory, but unfortunately not in practice. I would think that if the game were played only with humans, being able to do these things would make more sense. But these are actions that give humans a tremendous advantage over the AI.

I know people will say, 'Well, build better AI'. Easier said than done. I would rather the programmers improve the AI's core abilities than spend time on these issues because they are quite complex.


So, there do have to be consequences, and I don't know if a temporary happiness penalty is enough. Say you can declare war on vassals. To be honest, if I were programming the AI, I would probably program that the computer NEVER surrenders or becomes a vassal! Why? Because it doesn't do any good. I know the human player will extract as many techs as he can, etc, go to peace, make me his vassal, and then declare war at his leisure. So, I'll just never become a vassal.

Is that a better solution? I suspect people who want to DoW vassals are doing so precisely for that reason. So, we put in rules and the computer practically never becomes the attacker's vassal. Then we get 30 e-mails a week of complaints that the attacked country became a vassal of a former friend who Dowed me.

Best wishes,

Breunor
 
Cleansing foreign nationalities and non-state religions would be appreciated, but it should come at a cost. Atleast the nationalities, if you purge them from your cities you should take a MAJOR diplo-hit.
 
Iranon said:
-abuse open borders for a sneak attack
Click to expand...

No thanks. The term "abuse" lacks the birr to adequately describe the debilitating effect this would have in any game, single or multiplayer. Not to mention it doesn't make any sense; whole foreign armies tramping about the countryside won't be able to do so without arousing suspicion. Saying otherwise is tantamount to claiming that no one in India will ever find it odd if the Pakistani army hoofs it through the countryside to take strategic positions outside of major cities.


The other ideas would be nice to have, however. Alpha Centauri is a great game in that sense.
 
Frankly, open border usually applies to trade and culture AND troops passing through to attack another nation. Definitely not like in Civ (be it III or IV) where the AI unit will start to wonder around your land as if like they have nothing better to do! :p In CivIII at least its because the AI want to get to the other side of your land to settle or kill some barbs, but in CivIV they are just like patrolling you land. The question is for what?
 
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