Team Victories, or Why does history have to be a solo sport?

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

To state the obvious Civ 7 will exist in the era where DLC and expansions are a standard part of the the gaming experience. I'll be disappointed if at some point they do not go beyond the the standard one-person civ victories. There are alternate victory conditions for scenarios and the pirate mode so it can be done.

 

[GeneralZIft]

Okay chess has a draw? I mean sure you can add a draw to Civilisation but where is the fun in that? Playing for 300 turns so that everyone wins with participation trophy?

I am totally fine for adding settings for team games, that's already there, but if we're talking about the BASE game, there's no need to force the players to cooperate artificially.

You should give the players incentive to cooperate naturally, not whatever Civ6 does, where you have to form alliances...

 

[Patine]

True but not universal.
The card game Bridge is won by a team of two players, not by any individual.

In the old board game Diplomacy the most common end was a stalemate between two teams or individuals, not a clear victory for any one player - and that was the first game I played (over 60 years ago!) which had a multitude of players - the standard game had 7 instead of the usual 'two sides', and so was my introduction to Civilization II's multiple opponents much later.

Chess, as originally formulated in India, was a 4 person game of 2 teams of 2 players each - which is why the modern game has 2 each knights, rooks, and bishops, they were originally run by different players.

So, there are numerous precedents for 'Team' or multiple victories, at least as an Option in the game. I don't think anyone is advocating that to be the only type of victory, because the competitive gamer, by definition almost, wants to Win not Share a Win, so that opportunity has to remain available.

Cooperative and team board games have existed and been popular for at the very minimum decades (edit: centuries to millenia if considering Boris' chess example), so I find the argument that "there must be one winner" quite poor. Heck, tabletop roleplaying games are an entire well-known family of games that not only don't require a winner, or need a winner, but don't even have any such things as a "win" condition. The argument appears questionable in that light,

It is poorer given that most board games ever have allowed for draws since long before any current civilization was born - so there certainly can be an outcome beside "one winner" where two or more players end the game equal in most every board game. Even chess, the elder statesman of gaming, and a game that (being two players) has really limited outcomes, still allows for draws as a perfectly reasonable outcome that is different from losing or having one winner.

Even yet poorer in the context that, board games being played by humans and not AI, they are ultimately governed by social interaction and agreements between players (hence how common house rules are) - the "rules" of a board game are suggestions that humans may or may not follow, not hard rules that the AI is bound by as in computers. I can say quite confidently that players agreeing to draw between the two of the, after defeating their other opponents (ie, a joint victory) rather than duking it out for a single champion has been happening for as long as there have been games, even where the strict rules of the game did not allow it.

To limit games as a whole to "there must be one winner" is simply not true.

As far as I know, SMAC was the only MPS or Firaxis-made 4X on the Sid Meier pattern that had flat-out allied victories for alliances made in the course of the game.

 

[Evie]

Yes, *computer* games have a much stronger tendencies towaed "there can be only one" gaming than other games - in large parts as I noted because "diplomatic" wins never really needed rules in tabletop games - players can just make whatever agreement they want - but AI need actual set rules that needs to be consciously created and coded in.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

And, at least so far, AI need very specific "Victory Conditions" that they can aspire to, if they are going to be of any use as opponents in any game. That makes any type of 'cooperative or 'alliance' victory very likely to be much more difficult to program without introducing Bizarre I behavior. It's not easy for Humans to switch from Sole Victory to Group Victory (as I remember from numerous Diplomacy sessions) so it's likely to be much harder to get the AI to do it 'right'.

But that doesn't mean it isn't possible, or that it wouldn't be a desirable addition to the game's Victory Conditions. It might even be related to or only possible under specific in-game conditions. For example, it's hard to imaging a fanatically Nationalistic or Ideological Civ making an long-term commitment to victory allied with any other Civ or a Civ with any other Ideology - note the near - instant collapse of WWII's victorious alliance between the Totalitarian Communist state and the Democratic Capitalists, and in that same war the complete inability of the hyper-nationalistic National Socialists to actually 'ally' with anyone successfully that, in game terms, they didn't turn into a Vassal.

More variety of ways to play is, IMHO, Always A Good Thing as long as it expands the potential rather than limiting it, so Alliance or Shared Victory would still be a good addition, not detracting from the good old Alexandrian goal of Conquer the World.

 

[BuchiTaton]

What if instead of Victories the game have Ends at the last turn (the starting match velocity/length). So civs would look at the different outcomes they achieved like, these have different levels like @Boris Gudenuf suggested plus some being special for certain conditions, like:
- Super Power, your total score from all the topics is the higher but you didnt complete any of thematic end conditions.
- Great Power, get to be one of the civs in the upper quintile by global score.
- Normal, your civ ended the game as independent in settler to emperor without any particular distinction.
- Survivor, you can stand the test of time reaching end game on Inmortal or Diety difficulty.
- Conquest, take over the others main civs capitals. But note that late game anti-warmongering and population management would make it harder than in CIV6.
- Imperial, an easier militar end were it is only needed to control 1/4 of world population and have one of the three stronger armies.
- Diplomatic, when peace and mutual respect is achieved by a global pact of no aggression neither economic embargoes.
- Ideological, when a group of main and minor civs form a ideological Block that share most/key civics, so that block represent at least 75% of the global score.
- Economical, a list of objetives like be top three in money yield, monopolies, corporations. It could even be exclusive for Capitalist ideology.
- Scientific, a trascendental project that this time could be done by team of civs.
- Religious, exclusive for Theocracy and include both convert X% of worlds population to your religion plus secondary objetives that depent of your particular tenets.
- Prosperity, civ that achieve the welfare of their population from a list of quality indicators like education, security, amenities, enviromental, life expectancy, etc.
- Cultural, about the influence of your society thorugh their prestigious and massive cultural products, media, cuisine, great artworks, tourism, wonders, etc.

So like we can see there are many endings that have their own levels of difficulty and conditions, being some good options for teams of civs but still there are the classic solo one vs the world megalomanic challenges. Even you can achieve multiple ends in the same match. After all people like the roleplaying and narrative aspects and games of that kind usually have endings instead victories. Maybe we can have also the list of bad endings.

 

[Evie]

Not sure if you mean the second half of the list as various "points meters" for the game end, or separate game ending conditions. If the later, I question why most of those should end the game. The Original victory conditions made sense as game ends: there are no other civs left, or the civs are moving beyond the game board, so the game is over. Since then, there's been more and more victory that are largely "watch arbitary number go up until it reaches an arbitrary threshold" in a way that makes little sense.Why should accumulation of tourism, or monopolies suddenly result in an end game? The game should end because something happened that makes continuation of the game within its rules no longer meaningful. I am not a fan at all of the ever-increasing push to make every part of the game a separate and distinct win/end condition, nor of the push to make score victory into a poor man's win - the "bad" win you get if you were too incompetent to end the game earlier.

 

[dagriggstar]

Anything along the lines of "team up to beat someone militarily" is basically emergencies. Given the low chance of success those have (I feel like 2% success in my games) I'm not big on any mechanism that could "move the goalposts" for victory.

Buchis post just sparked in my brain that we could have "Ideological Victory". For example - you adopt "Capitalism" you can win the game (as a team) if the combined gold per turn of all Capitalist civs exceeds 90% of the world total per turn.
So we have the 'regular' victories available but also a set of "Ideological Victories" that are won as a team. The difference being these exist from the start (rather than a coalition being formed mid-game). I guess if you switch from your original ideology you can't win (otherwise everyone would switch and win) AND have some boost towards whichever Ideologies are established later/under-represented.

Even more generally, I'd like to see 50% of your science/culture/progress to be determined by other factions. Like science buildings are +1 science per delegation. Or big percentage boosts from having open borders with other civs. Not like diffusion (I'm not against that anyway) but something that applies to the tech/culture leader as well. Make more situations the "winning" player would want to help out the other players. Like, why is the game of civilization (mostly) a solo sport ?

 

[BuchiTaton]

Not sure if you mean the second half of the list as various "points meters" for the game end, or separate game ending conditions. If the later, I question why most of those should end the game. The Original victory conditions made sense as game ends: there are no other civs left, or the civs are moving beyond the game board, so the game is over. Since then, there's been more and more victory that are largely "watch arbitary number go up until it reaches an arbitrary threshold" in a way that makes little sense.Why should accumulation of tourism, or monopolies suddenly result in an end game? The game should end because something happened that makes continuation of the game within its rules no longer meaningful. I am not a fan at all of the ever-increasing push to make every part of the game a separate and distinct win/end condition, nor of the push to make score victory into a poor man's win - the "bad" win you get if you were too incompetent to end the game earlier.

Most of the different Ends are avaible when the preset number of turns is reached, these Ends are the representation of which achievements you reached at the last regular turn. The more difficult, dramatic and/or unrealistic ends like total global domination still are avaible to End the game before the preset final turn so there are still these options.
I dont really see what is the problem with score victories, those are both a traditional way to measure player achievements in games and even can be compared to how real world rank countries by a mix of development indices.

Chess stalemate, yes like real world "rules" make a fantasy a total world domination and even world powers try to dont make too risky moves (just look at the mess in Ukraine). After all real people want before anything dont die in a pointless war, luckly real world leaders are not god-like entities like in CIV.
Dont CIV's slogan is "Build a civilization that will stand the test of time"?
Under that idea reach end game as and independent nations is pretty much a "victory" like in real world be an independent state is the priority of nations.

Instead of look at score ends as "´poor man" wins lets exalt unrealistic victories like domination to an epic status.
The irony is that despise the "non-abolutist" endings is pretty much the mentality why team-victories are not in singler player game, teaming with AI players can be seen as less competitive "poor man" cheap/cheat victories, the other reason is the difficulty to make AI to work with them.
Futher more even "team victories" are unrealistic like is absurd to think that only USA is a winner and their allies like France would lose since they are not the number one, it is also absurd to think that China is a loser because is not in the top team. The only real defeat is total subjugation.

 

[Evie]

Ah, yes, it they're meant to be different scores that are tracked at the end of the game, I have not much of a problem with that, though I think there should be only one point total used to determine winners at end game, to which those many ends all contribute. I'd call them Scoring Conditions or Goals rather than Ends, though,

Because my problem isn't with counting point at the end of the game; it's with what cause the game to end. Controling everyone else's capital, or having lots of tourism, or wealth shouldn't cause the game to end. The game should only end because something has happened where the game can no longer meaningfully happen:

-because the game has expanded beyond the limits of the game board (ie, a single planet) - Space Colonization
-because the game has gone past its ability to represent technological and development progress - Time
-because the game no longer no longer has enough players to meaningfully continue - Elimination

These are the classic "End conditions" of the game, there may be more possible ones. That's what I would use "ends" for.

Once one of these things occur, then you calculate scores and determine winners.

 

[megabearsfan]

How this would be done I haven't thought at length about, though the existence of alliances of different levels and different types in Civ VI suggest an easy path where a maxed out alliance of a certain type comes with the ability (and commitment) between the two civilization to share that victory, if either of them win. EG, if two nations have a maxed out science alliance, then not only do they both get to count each other's pieces and great work toward completing a spaceship - but the moment either of them win a science victory, they are both the winner. Likewise military - if at any time the two allied civilization meet the conditions of the victory condition that match their alliance type, they win.

There's other templates for how joint victories could work even within the Civ franchise. The Ideologies of Civ VI and the Beyond Earth's affinities are one such example. Those mechanics force all civs in the late-game to divide themselves along political affiliation lines. I could see a victory condition in which an ideology wins, instead of a specific civ, and the civ(s) that have done the most to advance that winning ideology would share in a victory.

The emergencies of Civ VI and the global projects of Civ V's World Congress could provide another template for a shared victory. Both of those mechanics allowed multiple civs to collaborate towards a mutual goal. I could see this being adapted into a victory condition in which each victory type is a "project" that multiple civs can compete and/or collaborate to finish. For example, instead of a single civ building all the parts for a colony ship to Mars, multiple civs could contribute parts, materials, or research. Similar concepts could probably be developed for Diplomatic/UN victory, in which multiple civs collaborate to pass global policies and provide foreign aid and peacekeeping to smaller, vulnerable nations. There could be an economic victory project in which multiple civs donate money and resources. And so forth. Civs who are hostile towards one another would not be able to contribute to the shared project, and a hostile civ could potentially sabotage the progress of another faction's victory project through military action, economic sanctions, espionage, the UN, or other such means.

This can be designed in one of 2 ways. There could be a maximum amount that each individual civ could contribute, and so every civ participating would have to "pull their weight", or else the project would sit un-finished. For example, if you have 3 civs participating, the rule could prevent any 1 civ from contributing more than, say, 40% of the total investment required. This way, no 1 civ can do all the work, and all civs must contribute at least 20%, or else nobody wins. This would prevent free-riders from joining last minute, or putting in only a token effort in order to ride on the winners' coattails. Civ(s) who aren't pulling their weight could then be kicked out of the alliance, and lose eligibility to win with the other civs.

The other option is to base the rules more off emergencies of Civ VI, in which there are different thresholds for different rewards. A civ would have to contribute more than a given threshold towards the project in order to qualify for the win. This would also prevent free-ridership, but also allows a single civ to potentially just do the whole project themselves (which may or may not be desirable, based on the goals of the mechanic). So one very powerful civ could potentially push a bunch of smaller, weaker civs over the finish line to a victory.

And then, of course, there's the Permanent Alliance diplomatic option from Civ IV.

There's also the model of Humankind, which used victory points. But importantly, Humankind also ranks all the civs by points, and the victory screen highlights the top 3 civilizations, instead of just a single winner. So even though Humankind doesn't have co-op or shared victories in the way that we are discussing, it does allow for a player to try to compete as a "runner-up". I think this is a great way of encouraging players to play outside of their comfort zones, like on harder difficulties or with different advanced settings selected. Since victory in Humankind isn't a binary ("if you ain't first, you're last") win/lose proposition, you can challenge yourself to improve your score and work your way up to that "podium finish". Of course, if you're the kind of person who sees 2nd place as just "the 1st place loser", then I guess this probably won't appeal to you.

The trick with any attempt at a joint victory in a competitive game is balancing it such that the game remains competitive, and isn't just trivially won by all players cooperating. Like, how do you design your victory mechanic such that, in a 2-player game, both players don't always automatically win by simply signing an alliance with one another. So you probably want your mechanic to ensure that there is at least 1 loser, so that (at the very least) there is still some competition to be in the winning coalition, and spots are limited.

You may also need some kind of Prisoners Dilemma that gives the individual players some greedy incentive to want to go for the victory by themselves and not include other civs. So whatever the design is, you probably need the cost of the joint victory to scale up as more civs/players participate. This adds risk to letting more players into the coalition, because it potentially delays the actual victory, and gives competing faction(s) more time and opportunity to secure their own victory in the meantime. A solo civ (or a very small coalition) would be able to complete the victory objective at a lower cost than a larger coalition. But then you also paint a massive target on your back that could turn the whole rest of the world against you.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm surprised Permanent Alliances from Civ IV weren't mentioned until megabearsfan's post. I would say they count as an example of Civ having had a team victory in the past, albeit one that I'm not sure was enabled in a high percentage of games. But if you wanted it, it was there.

Scenarios have also had alliance victory conditions; in Civ3, for example, you could have up to 4 permanently-allied-to-each-other teams in scenarios.

I remember that in Civ IV, I generally turned off vassals, and I think the reason speaks to why I'm skeptical in team victories, outside of scenarios and perhaps multiplayer. Vassals led to an agglomeration of power, and a reduction in the number of independent polities, on a map that was already not burgeoning with independent polities. It led to consolidation, in other words. If there had been 64 civilizations to start with, no problem, but if there are 8 to start with, and half of them become vassals of another, all of a sudden you've got a few megapowers and that's it. It makes the diplomatic part of the game less interesting.

Could it be balanced to allow collaborative victories? Maybe, particularly on larger maps. A science/spaceship victory by teamwork seems a natural option. Perhaps a diplomatic victory is simple creating a multilateral alliance of sufficient size. I'm less sure that it makes sense for cultural/religious/conquest victories, although religious is perhaps the best case of those.

I'll also note that simply loosening up how the end-game works - continuing to tally the first, second, third, etc. to reach a victory condition until the turn timer runs out - may work adequately. If I'm trying a higher difficulty and I finish a spaceship/cultural victory/etc. third out of everyone, that may still be a victory for me.

 

[GeneralZIft]

What you guys are proposing would be hard to balance and even harder to design in a compelling (easy to understand) way.

For example setting artificial limits on how much a player can contribute to a shared project? Is counterintuitive and would need explaining.

The only way it could work and be a default option (anything goes for non default ofc) is by somehow facilitating the Solo player victory and the Team victory simultaneously And also having some kind of Prisoner's Dilemma to make it nontrivial, as previously mentioned.

But you should realise, in the end, this is only going to take you back to Square 1 - players already team up, but have more benefit to "playing Solo" and just warmongering, looting for research than they do in a Research Alliance. You are basically already compelled to team up anyway, and simply race their conditions regardless.

The best benefit for Team Victory is for Losing players to be able to have a chance against leading Solo players. But even then, Solo players would probably find a friend in someone else, given their considerable strength already.

 

[Evie]

With all due respect, there's nothing in your post I (or anyone else) "should realize". You're once again stating random claims as facts everyone should acknowledge, like you did with the notion that it is the essential nature of gaming to be all about single-winner competition. Honestly, from where I stand, it seems to me you are mistaking how you would play games for some sort of universal rule (again).

Beyond that objection, and more generally addressing everyone, I see a lot of concerns about last-minute alliances to try and steal games from a winner ; I don't think that'S something we should be having, and it's not something that was part of my original idea. As I originally outlined, alliances victory would come only with the highest tiers of alliance ; that is, the kind of alliance that you've spent significant number of turns establishing and fostering. They,re a reward for working hard on maintaining and supporting allies from game start, not a catch-up mechanism in the late game.

As to the objection that vassals lessen the number of playing civilizations, well, that's true, but vassals are chiefly beneficial to victory conditions in world conquests. Where the reduction in the number of players to interact with is a natural and largely inescapable outcome - better for diversity to keep them on map as vassals than to see them fully annexed. And better for world conquest to involve vassalization or conquest of everyone, than to involve some random arbitrary asinine goals like "capture every original capitals" (seriously, how is that a victory condition?!).

 

[GeneralZIft]

Listen, relax, I'm not saying that everyone would play the game this way, I'm just saying, obviously depending on implementation, that there's sometimes a gap between how you expect an added mechanic will work out, and how an added mechanic could actually play out.

I didn't say that all games are inherently competitive, I cleared it up in the next message. I meant to say that THIS game is inherently competitive and that a tool for Cooperative gameplay can easily be hijacked OR lead to dilution of gameplay.

I respect your opinion! Let's leave it at that

 

[Krajzen]

Not sure if you mean the second half of the list as various "points meters" for the game end, or separate game ending conditions. If the later, I question why most of those should end the game. The Original victory conditions made sense as game ends: there are no other civs left, or the civs are moving beyond the game board, so the game is over. Since then, there's been more and more victory that are largely "watch arbitary number go up until it reaches an arbitrary threshold" in a way that makes little sense.Why should accumulation of tourism, or monopolies suddenly result in an end game? The game should end because something happened that makes continuation of the game within its rules no longer meaningful. I am not a fan at all of the ever-increasing push to make every part of the game a separate and distinct win/end condition, nor of the push to make score victory into a poor man's win - the "bad" win you get if you were too incompetent to end the game earlier.

I agree with everything you said.

Every "end of history" is utterly arbitraly and for me kinda immersion breaking. I play those games to simulate an interesting alternate history, and build a powerful empire in them, not to race to the finish of some imaginary line. All notions of economic, or cultural, or diplomatic, or especially religious victory (what a nonsense, seeing creeping atheism) are purely artificial, we all know history still goes on afterwards.

I also think that ultimately there is unavoidable contradiction between designing such "history simulator" as either an actual simulator of sorts, or a board game race to win. Because, well, real life history has no victory conditions, winners or finish line. So in order to enforce them on history you need to bend everything to fit the square block into the round hole, and either board gamers or simulationists end up frustrated. Or both.

I know it'd be unpopular. But it would be really cool for me if the Civ game simply went until the prescribed date - let's say 2030, whatever - openly arbitrary, with no justification beyond "that's as far as our history goes plus few years, dreams about future require a different game". And then the final state of the ingame world is rated, the world as a whole, and your civ is also ranked and rated on what role did it play in its history.
And then there are no victors and losers, there is reflection on how did this one alternate history go when compared with others, what civs got what medals in what categories.
*How peaceful is the world in 2030? How many wars, hostilities, cold wars? There are points and medals and remarks about accomplishments in this regard, including warmongering ones What civs were the most effective when waging wars? How many units were built and killed globally? How many great generals, experience points? Oh, this time Vietnam again gets the medal for "The Best Military Underdog Civ".
Does UN exist, is it effective? Does something like EU exist, if yes then all of participating civs get points for such endgame alliance.
*How wealthy and productive the world is, and your civ's role in it? Total global pop, yield outputs, global trade, poverty? What civ gets the medal for the "Workshop of the World", which was the "Pioneer of the Industrial Revolution", which gave birth to the "Silk Road"?
*How did the world deal with the environment? What is the state of the climate? What civ contributed in what way?
*What ideologies, government types and religions have dominated and how (better not to assign moralistic remarks here lol)? What civ was the best at promoting their favored ones? Here, you get "Cradle of Democracy" medal, or "Birth of the Revolution" this time.
*How much culture, tourism, archeology excavations, museums, great works, great people? Global tourism output?

And then you compare different worlds and your own civilizations between games, regarding all those separate measures. When you begin a new game, you have the frame of mind "I will get this and this medal this time, for this achievement" and compete with other civs... But it's somewhat different than the framework "this is the Race to the Victory and you must avoid Losing, and AI is counter-immersively designed to pursuit meta-victory at all cost regardless of ingame sense, and the latest eras of history tech tree is compromised to enforce victory race".
You wanna race to Mars? Great, there is a medal for that. Enforce global peace - there is another. Conquer the world - yet another. But there are also medals for just peacefully doing your own business and making your people happy. Or for heroically fighting against overwhelming odds and surviving till 2030, even if your civ is not very important or affluent.