The core of 4X games "boring endgame problem" - a short essay about Rapidly Increasing Complexity

[BackseatTyrant]

I feel like one way to get rid of snowballing problem in 4X games, is by introducing some mechanics that simulate the way historical empires have collapsed under their own weight due to its ruling class becoming too drunk with power. I know previous civ titles have sort of tried this with corruption, global happiness, building maintenance etc, but ever since Rise & Fall came out, introducing its Era Score system, one word has been stuck in my brain for all these years: HUBRIS!

Basically imagine: every time a civilization accomplishes something prestigious and/or noteworthy (e.g. conquer territory, build wonders, rank up in military strength; basically anything that'd give you era score in civ 6), all the while even one of its citizens is without their means of living a pleasant life (food, water, housing, healthcare, education, leisure etc), the Hubris Meter goes up. It can never go down, only up; its rise cannot be mitigated, only worse by even more citizen having their needs unmet. By the end of each era, the amount of Hubris a civilization during that time will determine its fate, and let's just say: the more hubris accumulated for reaping day, the more spectacular the oncoming trainwreck. I'm talking slave revolts, infrastructure destroyed en masse, citizens murdering each other, cities breaking off to form new civilizations, military units deserting (if not flat out taking over the government), even more citizens fleeing towards distant lands, revolutions in plural stacked on top of each other, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! On top of that, I would suggest that meeting your citizen's need should really only become a realistic goal some time after the industrial revolution (the civ games haven't really done a good job at conveying, for example, how much of a game-changer modern medicine has been for most people), meaning that any civilization that focuses on empire-building before then is almost guaranteed to crash and burn. I'm not saying this would be 100% historically accurate (actual historians in this thread: feel free to provide me with counter-examples if you feel the need to), but then again, maybe historical accuracy doesn't matter as much as, say, anthropological insightfullness.

This should, at least in theory, make sure that the importance of your actions don't diminish for each turn that passes, while at the same time not make the game too unpredictable, which would just remove any need or use of actual strategy. But again, that strategy should mainly come in the form of what ideology and what future your civilization is supposed to represent by the late game, not by whether or not to move your first settler at turn one.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I feel like one way to get rid of snowballing problem in 4X games, is by introducing some mechanics that simulate the way historical empires have collapsed under their own weight due to its ruling class becoming too drunk with power. I know previous civ titles have sort of tried this with corruption, global happiness, building maintenance etc, but ever since Rise & Fall came out, introducing its Era Score system, one word has been stuck in my brain for all these years: HUBRIS!

Basically imagine: every time a civilization accomplishes something prestigious and/or noteworthy (e.g. conquer territory, build wonders, rank up in military strength; basically anything that'd give you era score in civ 6), all the while even one of its citizens is without their means of living a pleasant life (food, water, housing, healthcare, education, leisure etc), the Hubris Meter goes up. It can never go down, only up; its rise cannot be mitigated, only worse by even more citizen having their needs unmet. By the end of each era, the amount of Hubris a civilization during that time will determine its fate, and let's just say: the more hubris accumulated for reaping day, the more spectacular the oncoming trainwreck. I'm talking slave revolts, infrastructure destroyed en masse, citizens murdering each other, cities breaking off to form new civilizations, military units deserting (if not flat out taking over the government), even more citizens fleeing towards distant lands, revolutions in plural stacked on top of each other, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! On top of that, I would suggest that meeting your citizen's need should really only become a realistic goal some time after the industrial revolution (the civ games haven't really done a good job at conveying, for example, how much of a game-changer modern medicine has been for most people), meaning that any civilization that focuses on empire-building before then is almost guaranteed to crash and burn. I'm not saying this would be 100% historically accurate (actual historians in this thread: feel free to provide me with counter-examples if you feel the need to), but then again, maybe historical accuracy doesn't matter as much as, say, anthropological insightfullness.

This should, at least in theory, make sure that the importance of your actions don't diminish for each turn that passes, while at the same time not make the game too unpredictable, which would just remove any need or use of actual strategy. But again, that strategy should mainly come in the form of what ideology and what future your civilization is supposed to represent by the late game, not by whether or not to move your first settler at turn one.

I think something like this was attempted with Era Score; the higher the Era Score is for an era, the tougher the bar becomes for the next one

The problem was that they then also incuded far far too many ways for the human player to mitigate this, to the point where it’s almost trivial to chain golden ages once you figure out how to miinimax and game the system. To add insult to injury the AI cannot do the same, so it’s a double whammy.

One simple trick (Firaxis hated this!!!!!) to help curtail showballs is to forbid unit upgrades altogether.

Not only is this better from a historical role play purpose (no amount of gold can make a quadreme into a battleship), but it’s also a good gameplay mechanic

Currently once you have a large well promoted military in Civ6 you can keep that military snowball rolling easily with unit upgrades.

If you can’t just splurge some gold then building a large military had the correct opportunity cost of being an investment in obsolescence that hurts you down the road as it should

 

[UWHabs]

I think something like this was attempted with Era Score; the higher the Era Score is for an era, the tougher the bar becomes for the next one

The problem was that they then also incuded far far too many ways for the human player to mitigate this, to the point where it’s almost trivial to chain golden ages once you figure out how to miinimax and game the system. To add insult to injury the AI cannot do the same, so it’s a double whammy.

One simple trick (Firaxis hated this!!!!!) to help curtail showballs is to forbid unit upgrades altogether.

Not only is this better from a historical role play purpose (no amount of gold can make a quadreme into a battleship), but it’s also a good gameplay mechanic

Currently once you have a large well promoted military in Civ6 you can keep that military snowball rolling easily with unit upgrades.

If you can’t just splurge some gold then building a large military had the correct opportunity cost of being an investment in obsolescence that hurts you down the road as it should

Yeah, plus nobody wants the rebound mechanism to be too strong. Like, if it was set so that no matter what you did after a golden age, you fell into a dark age, and dark ages were handled like in the Dramatic Ages mode, it wouldn't be much fun to be constantly fighting to keep your empire together, and suddenly you'd be tanking in the midgame to not run into the collapse later.

Era score and the whole ages mode as a whole is a good try - like in my current game, I pushed to get a golden age on the first time, but when the next era counter hit 10 turns left, I was actually behind the curve and tentatively going into a dark age.

The problems as you noted is that it's still too easy to chain and snowball. Especially since a lot of the era score pieces are dealing with conquest (you can get a golden age alone if you have a religion and spread it while at war), plus the huge bonuses for wiping out a civ, being first to the next eras, etc... just makes it too easy overall to build up the points. Especially once you have wiped out a civ and are going domination, it's almost impossible to miss hitting golden ages.

Probably what they should have done is not just give you diplomatic favor negatives for grievances and foreign capitals, but give you legit era score penalties. So instead of getting +5 era score for wiping out a civ, you really should get -5 era score.

I do agree as well with your other point that upgrading an army is too good now. Especially cheesing the policy card game, speaking again of my current game, I did a bunch of pre-building. Like, if you plan it right, you can build a warrior and then immediately upgrade for 50% gold and 50% iron to a man at arms. There really should be a more variable cost to upgrading - I could even see an argument gameplay-wise for upgrading to be more expensive than buying new. Basically, the only troops you should be upgrading are your already promoted units, if a unit has never fought a battle, there really shouldn't be a way to cheese the system to get it cheaper. That would again add a penalty to decide whether it's worth investing for now, or saving for later. In my current game where I actually was surprised in war, it would have been a real pain, admittedly, since I only turned the tide when I could suddenly upgrade a bunch of archers/horsemen/chariots to crossbows/coursers/knights, and doing that all while both getting a cheaper production on them with one card and a cheaper upgrade with the other policy card, I was effectively saving like 60-75% apiece on the units.

 

[kaspergm]

I do agree as well with your other point that upgrading an army is too good now. Especially cheesing the policy card game, speaking again of my current game, I did a bunch of pre-building. Like, if you plan it right, you can build a warrior and then immediately upgrade for 50% gold and 50% iron to a man at arms. There really should be a more variable cost to upgrading - I could even see an argument gameplay-wise for upgrading to be more expensive than buying new. Basically, the only troops you should be upgrading are your already promoted units, if a unit has never fought a battle, there really shouldn't be a way to cheese the system to get it cheaper. That would again add a penalty to decide whether it's worth investing for now, or saving for later. In my current game where I actually was surprised in war, it would have been a real pain, admittedly, since I only turned the tide when I could suddenly upgrade a bunch of archers/horsemen/chariots to crossbows/coursers/knights, and doing that all while both getting a cheaper production on them with one card and a cheaper upgrade with the other policy card, I was effectively saving like 60-75% apiece on the units.

Yeah, this (highlighted) is imo. a very important point.

Also, some thoughts to consider: There could be promotions that are lost on upgrade, while some may carry over (increasing upgrade cost). For instance, a promotion that is "+ X% combat strength in hills/forest/whatever" could carry over on upgrade, whereas a promotion like "+ X% combat strength with swords/bows/spears/whatever" should be lost when upgrading to a new weapon. Obviously the here mentioned promotions are not in Civ6, but my point is, one can try to think this into the next game's promotion system.

 

[rocksinmypath]

I think Civ needs a mechanism that allows for the transformation of objectives a player needs to or wants to achieve, as the game progresses. Really, the only reason I endure the endgame tedium is because I feel like I have to because Civ provides you a set of win conditions you need to complete before a game is considered done.

One game that's completely unrelated to Civ that I really enjoyed playing in recent years is Parkitect, which many consider to be a spiritual successor to Roller Coaster Tycoon 2. The game provides different scenarios containing different maps and objectives, which you need to complete in order to move onto new scenarios. The objectives of these scenarios are usually pretty easy to meet because they're not really the point of the game. They only exist to nudge your decisions in certain directions, which helps with the creative process of building an amusement park because creating a park from scratch with no constraints whatsoever can be challenging.

I think Civ could try to tackle the endgame problem using a similar approach. For each leader, there could be several different scenarios to play. While Parkitect's scenarios are rigid in that you're always playing on the same map for each scenario, I think for Civ, it'd be more appropriate if a scenario included a set of loose game initialization constraints. For instance, at least some of the scenarios for Kupe should ban playing on a Terra map, but aside from a small set of constraints, you can do whatever you want, and you'll still play on a randomly generated map with random AI leaders. Scenario objectives would be designed to be completed much earlier than when a typical game of Civ 6 would end, which for me is around 220-250 turns. Naturally, these objectives will be very different in nature to the victory conditions currently in the game and should in some way relate to leader traits. For instance, a sensible objective when playing as Qin Shi Huang would be to hoard wonders.

The purpose of this design would be to divide the game into two phases. In the first phase, your goal is to meet a certain set of binary goals. Some players will prefer to focus on how quickly they can achieve these goals, and once they're done with the phase, they'll quit the game probably well before 200 turns. Your civilization, at this point, however, will likely be far from fully developed, and some players will prefer to stick around for the second phase of the game, which will be about continuing to build their empire to the point they're satisfied with it.

One major challenge with this approach I can think of is about making the second phase interesting enough for players to stick around. This approach makes sense in a sandbox game like Parkitect because how beautiful your park is isn't something that can be measured, and as a player, you have to internalize the objective of creating a beautiful park, if that's what you want from the game. For me, at least, I know that Civ definitely has this potential as well, because I stopped playing with the Monopolies mode after a culture victory with Bull Moose Teddy because the game ended way sooner than I wanted it to end, well before I was able to place all the national parks I had planned out.

 

[Civinator]

I know previous civ titles have sort of tried this with corruption, global happiness, building maintenance etc, but ever since Rise & Fall came out, introducing its Era Score system, one word has been stuck in my brain for all these years: HUBRIS!

I agree that this is a very interesting way to have even exciting "late game" experiences, when having "climbed up" the techtree. The core idea for such an ERA Score system was set in Civ 3 Conquests (C3C) with its "Campaign" of the single conquests. For ending each of those conquests (= eras) the player can achieve a differing score, calculated by different factors and these factors can change drastically, as it can be the rules, too, for each one of those conquests. Even factors that are completely ignored in an earlier conquest can play a major role in a succeeding conquest (and vice versa).

The scores of each of those conquests are added to a final result for the player in the Campaign.

Even the combination of self-created conquests to a campaign in C3C is possible. In theory in C3C such a campaign can also be played on a random map, but at present in C3C it is somewhat complicate to transform a developed random map of an early conquest to starting with this developed map in the following conquest. Therefore the current Campaign in C3C is a set of completely preset single scenarios with different civs (leaders). May be this will change with the successor of C3C, that is yet in work.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Yeah, plus nobody wants the rebound mechanism to be too strong. Like, if it was set so that no matter what you did after a golden age, you fell into a dark age, and dark ages were handled like in the Dramatic Ages mode, it wouldn't be much fun to be constantly fighting to keep your empire together, and suddenly you'd be tanking in the midgame to not run into the collapse later.

Era score and the whole ages mode as a whole is a good try - like in my current game, I pushed to get a golden age on the first time, but when the next era counter hit 10 turns left, I was actually behind the curve and tentatively going into a dark age.

The problems as you noted is that it's still too easy to chain and snowball. Especially since a lot of the era score pieces are dealing with conquest (you can get a golden age alone if you have a religion and spread it while at war), plus the huge bonuses for wiping out a civ, being first to the next eras, etc... just makes it too easy overall to build up the points. Especially once you have wiped out a civ and are going domination, it's almost impossible to miss hitting golden ages.

Probably what they should have done is not just give you diplomatic favor negatives for grievances and foreign capitals, but give you legit era score penalties. So instead of getting +5 era score for wiping out a civ, you really should get -5 era score.

I do agree as well with your other point that upgrading an army is too good now. Especially cheesing the policy card game, speaking again of my current game, I did a bunch of pre-building. Like, if you plan it right, you can build a warrior and then immediately upgrade for 50% gold and 50% iron to a man at arms. There really should be a more variable cost to upgrading - I could even see an argument gameplay-wise for upgrading to be more expensive than buying new. Basically, the only troops you should be upgrading are your already promoted units, if a unit has never fought a battle, there really shouldn't be a way to cheese the system to get it cheaper. That would again add a penalty to decide whether it's worth investing for now, or saving for later. In my current game where I actually was surprised in war, it would have been a real pain, admittedly, since I only turned the tide when I could suddenly upgrade a bunch of archers/horsemen/chariots to crossbows/coursers/knights, and doing that all while both getting a cheaper production on them with one card and a cheaper upgrade with the other policy card, I was effectively saving like 60-75% apiece on the units.

Yeah, this (highlighted) is imo. a very important point.

Also, some thoughts to consider: There could be promotions that are lost on upgrade, while some may carry over (increasing upgrade cost). For instance, a promotion that is "+ X% combat strength in hills/forest/whatever" could carry over on upgrade, whereas a promotion like "+ X% combat strength with swords/bows/spears/whatever" should be lost when upgrading to a new weapon. Obviously the here mentioned promotions are not in Civ6, but my point is, one can try to think this into the next game's promotion system.

I feel like this is needlessly overcomplicating things

 

[BackseatTyrant]

I think something like this was attempted with Era Score; the higher the Era Score is for an era, the tougher the bar becomes for the next one

The problem was that they then also incuded far far too many ways for the human player to mitigate this, to the point where it’s almost trivial to chain golden ages once you figure out how to miinimax and game the system. To add insult to injury the AI cannot do the same, so it’s a double whammy.

One simple trick (Firaxis hated this!!!!!) to help curtail showballs is to forbid unit upgrades altogether.

Not only is this better from a historical role play purpose (no amount of gold can make a quadreme into a battleship), but it’s also a good gameplay mechanic

Currently once you have a large well promoted military in Civ6 you can keep that military snowball rolling easily with unit upgrades.

If you can’t just splurge some gold then building a large military had the correct opportunity cost of being an investment in obsolescence that hurts you down the road as it should

Yeah, I've never found unit upgrading to make sense, but I don't think not replacing it with anything else would solve anything, to be honest. I would much rather have military units just have limited lifespans, conditioning the player to keep their military at size and up to date at the same time.

Also, my problem with current Era Score system is less that human players can exploit it, and more that dark ages are caused more by relative inactivity than anything else. You're being punished for not achieving enough milestones in time, rather than achieving milestones despite your subjects' pleas for subsistence.

I agree that this is a very interesting way to have even exciting "late game" experiences, when having "climbed up" the techtree. The core idea for such an ERA Score system was set in Civ 3 Conquests (C3C) with its "Campaign" of the single conquests. For ending each of those conquests (= eras) the player can achieve a differing score, calculated by different factors and these factors can change drastically, as it can be the rules, too, for each one of those conquests. Even factors that are completely ignored in an earlier conquest can play a major role in a succeeding conquest (and vice versa).

The scores of each of those conquests are added to a final result for the player in the Campaign.

View attachment 633715

Even the combination of self-created conquests to a campaign in C3C is possible. In theory in C3C such a campaign can also be played on a random map, but at present in C3C it is somewhat complicate to transform a developed random map of an early conquest to starting with this developed map in the following conquest. Therefore the current Campaign in C3C is a set of completely preset single scenarios with different civs (leaders). May be this will change with the successor of C3C, that is yet in work.

That... doesn't sound anything at all like what I suggested. Or address the issues I pointed out. This sounds more like getting rid of the tech tree and eras altogether, instead chopping the game up to AoE-like scenarios, all fully focused on conquest. What I was suggesting, was to take the focus away from conquest, away from empire-building, more towards the humanitarian and civilian sides of history.

 

[Civinator]

That... doesn't sound anything at all like what I suggested. Or address the issues I pointed out. This sounds more like getting rid of the tech tree and eras altogether, instead chopping the game up to AoE-like scenarios, all fully focused on conquest. What I was suggesting, was to take the focus away from conquest, away from empire-building, more towards the humanitarian and civilian sides of history.

This thread deals with the "boring endgame problem" of 4x games. My suggestion, especially with the focus to future versions of the civ series, is to divide the epic game into several parts, that you can call eras, conquests or scenarios with a point score in total. For the performance of a civ in every one of those "eras" that civ receives a point score. This point score is not relevant for the civ to enter in the next era a Golden Age, Dark Age or Normal Age. It is simply a part of the final score of the game. If a civ performs bad in one of those eras, it must compensate this by a very good performance in other eras. With other words: You can have the biggest and most powerful civ on the map, but you have not achieved the final score victory, because here a smaller civ had a better overall performance.

The points that can be achieved for certain successes can vary massively for each one of those eras. The challenge of those single eras can be far away from fully focused in conquests. Even in the C3C Conquests created 20 years ago, there are conquests (per example the starting Mesopotamia Conquest) where you receive the "big point scores" for building great wonders, not for military victories.

Spoiler :

In the Medieval Conquest a civ earns the "big points" by bringing a holy relic to Jerusalem. The scoring points can be changed in the editor so eliminating units of other civs, conquering cities and so on can have a very high score value or no value. The advantage of such a system is, that it is very flexible and it is not always the same for the complete epic game.

Spoiler :

In C3C you have a statistic screen called "Demographics". Here is a late game screenshot of my current test of the next version of my mod CCM 2.50:

The idea is, to connect the performance in these statistics to the scoring points in the single conquest scoring lists and in the final scoring list. BackseatTyrant, here in my eyes, you have the connection towards the humanitarian and civilian sides of history. Unfortunately in C3C this connection was not done, but may be this will happen in a new version. A lot of additional scoring settings (per example turns in peace with a difficult government or in general in an aggressive era, or newly founded cities on another continent) in the single eras are possible.

The campaign setting can be played with the same techtree for all eras (conquests) of an epic game, it can be played with going into more details of the techtree in the single "eras" or it can be played with complete different techtrees (as it is done in the C3C Conquests). In C3C it is very difficult to use a map that was individually developed in a conquest with cities, improvements and so on for the following conquest (era). Per example at the end of a conquest a new biq must be extracted from the save file when the older conquest is finished and than may be changes by the biq of the following conquest must be done to that individual biq. As this is much too complicated for most civers, such a C3C mod was not done (until now?) - but for a new game of the civ series, I think, this could be an interesting idea.

The challenges in the single eras should be set so, that in the endgame always some dangerous enemies are surviving to avoid a boring endgame. The settings by the different era scorings and the final score in my eyes could be a proper instrument to achieve this goal.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Yeah, I've never found unit upgrading to make sense, but I don't think not replacing it with anything else would solve anything, to be honest. I would much rather have military units just have limited lifespans, conditioning the player to keep their military at size and up to date at the same time.

Units having expiry dates is just replacing one bad mechanic and bad historical role play with another

History is replete with examples of formerly formidable, elite units (Janissaries, Manchu bannermen, Mamelukes, Samurai) refusing or unable to be retired and dying gloriously

I mean the Brits clearly have the Retainer Card slotted so they get an Amenity from the Royal Guard

Also, my problem with current Era Score system is less that human players can exploit it, and more that dark ages are caused more by relative inactivity than anything else. You're being punished for not achieving enough milestones in time, rather than achieving milestones despite your subjects' pleas for subsistence.

It also is often terrible from a role play perspective. Optimum play involves things like forcing Magellan to anchor, deliberatly switching off completing a wonder etc if you have already reached the gold age threshold

 

[localdisk51]

To me the solution is obvious. Later in the game add the ability to form provinces, so that multiple cities can be managed together as one. Each province would have a capital, which is where you would select to manage everything.

As for tile improvements, I think that should be automated similar to the automated system already used for which tiles get worked. If you select food your automated worker will build a farm instead of a mine.

As for the whole thing of, "i have already won" by mid game, I don't think the solution is to help other underdog civs. I think a better solution is to make the challenge more internal. Make it hard for large nations to stay united. Make it possible for civil wars to occur, where half your empire forms a new nation. But likewise, if you are the underdog, make it possible to incite civil wars in other bigger countries.

Civ 5 already dealt with some of these issues, they just needed tweaking. Puppet cities which chose what to build on their own, and automated worker units. They were essential for getting me through the late game. I can't begin to describe how badly I want whoever was in charge of the decision to scrap these features without offering a replacement, to tell us fans why they did this. I've wasted too much time trying to speculate what was going through their heads. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe they got tunnel vision on other details and just forgot. But if that was the case I'd like to hear them acknowledge their mistake so that I can have some hope that civ 7 will be better.

 

[localdisk51]

I would argue the exact opposite! Stacks are strategic challenges because you are thinking about the timing (do I go now with X units or wait 20 turns and go with Y by which time I might be facing longbows) and composition (e.g. balance between siege and melee) and not the logistics of manouevering them all into the right place (because they're a stack!). The notion that stacks were all about size is a fallacy that somehow persists to this day.

Also, most paradox games use stacks, like CK2 and EU4. No one really complains about stacks in those games and I don't see anyone in those communities wishing they had one unit per tile. I don't really remember them being all that unpopular before civ 5 came out either. Yet somehow when civ 5 came out suddenly everyone for some reason hates them. I don't get it.

 

[InsidiousMage]

Also, most paradox games use stacks, like CK2 and EU4. No one really complains about stacks in those games and I don't see anyone in those communities wishing they had one unit per tile.

The next Paradox game, Victoria 3, is getting rid of stacks and players can't move units around on the map. It is a controversial choice but there are plenty of people are in favor of it. Plenty of people have also complained about stacks in general in the discussions about the change. Stacks are not universally loved in any game.

 

[localdisk51]

The next Paradox game, Victoria 3, is getting rid of stacks and players can't move units around on the map. It is a controversial choice but there are plenty of people are in favor of it. Plenty of people have also complained about stacks in general in the discussions about the change. Stacks are not universally loved in any game.

Yea but Victoria 3 isn't moving to a one unit per tile system, which is my central point. That decision had nothing to do with whether stacks are bad or good, but rather the fact that leaders of countries in that era generally don't involve themselves in tactical decision making. The minority that complain about combat in CK and EU aren't calling for a civ 5/6 one unit per tile type of system. And if any are, they are such a tiny minority that they aren't even worth acknowledging. It's usually just a preference for a system like Heart of Iron IV uses, or just how stacks are implemented.

 

[dr_s]

To me the solution is obvious. Later in the game add the ability to form provinces, so that multiple cities can be managed together as one. Each province would have a capital, which is where you would select to manage everything.

As for the whole thing of, "i have already won" by mid game, I don't think the solution is to help other underdog civs. I think a better solution is to make the challenge more internal. Make it hard for large nations to stay united. Make it possible for civil wars to occur, where half your empire forms a new nation. But likewise, if you are the underdog, make it possible to incite civil wars in other bigger countries.

I had a similar thought. Limit the number of cities the player can control directly. For example, on a standard sized map, you could only directly control cities founded within 6 tiles of your capital. Beyond that, you have to appoint a governor to appoint cities in that region ... a real governor, not a fake policy-card governor like in CVI. That would add internal dynamics and politics to large empires, and allow for things like civil wars. It would also allow for different types of governments to be really different, if they came with different amounts of control over the actions of the governors.

Of course, for this to work, the computer would have to be much better at managing cities than has been historically the case.

 

[localdisk51]

Yea, the point about a real Governor and all that is pretty much exactly what I had in mind.

Of course, for this to work, the computer would have to be much better at managing cities than has been historically the case.

Well, most of the time, in real life, a country doesn't run very well when all power and decisions are concentrated in just one person. There is a reason why every large country divides and delegates power to more regional levels. To reflect this, I think any city or region, or anything that gets automated by appointing a real Governor or mayor or whatever, should get a buff. The basic yields from an automated city or province that you delegated to the locals, are increased a certain percentage, to reflect the fact that the people that live their know better what their needs are and what works better there than you do. That way poor decision making about what to build by the AI is offset.

Although I'd like to take it a step further and have the ability to leave more decisions to private industry. So that the citizens themselves decide to create a stock exchange, and build their own housing by starting their own construction companies, etc. But not force the player to do this. It just be part of having adopted a capitalist ideology.

 

[Kaan Boztepe]

The next Paradox game, Victoria 3, is getting rid of stacks and players can't move units around on the map. It is a controversial choice but there are plenty of people are in favor of it. Plenty of people have also complained about stacks in general in the discussions about the change. Stacks are not universally loved in any game.

paradox games have supply mechanic. if you keep more units in a tile than it can support your units start dying off. the worse the difference between supply and army size the worse it gets. paradox games thus do not need that 1unit per tile rule.

 

[UWHabs]

Yea, the point about a real Governor and all that is pretty much exactly what I had in mind.



Well, most of the time, in real life, a country doesn't run very well when all power and decisions are concentrated in just one person. There is a reason why every large country divides and delegates power to more regional levels. To reflect this, I think any city or region, or anything that gets automated by appointing a real Governor or mayor or whatever, should get a buff. The basic yields from an automated city or province that you delegated to the locals, are increased a certain percentage, to reflect the fact that the people that live their know better what their needs are and what works better there than you do. That way poor decision making about what to build by the AI is offset.

Although I'd like to take it a step further and have the ability to leave more decisions to private industry. So that the citizens themselves decide to create a stock exchange, and build their own housing by starting their own construction companies, etc. But not force the player to do this. It just be part of having adopted a capitalist ideology.

Yeah, there's definitely some levels of indirection you could do as you get later in the game. Districts arguably even simplify the issue - maybe once you reach a certain point like industrialization, I could see perhaps a mechanism where, say, half of a city's production is simply automatically applied to start building the next building for each district - so, for example, if a city has 20 production, once you reach industrialization, 10 production would be hard-coded and applied every turn to every building still needing to be built. So if you just placed a campus, you would get 10 production a turn to the library, but maybe you also get 10 production per turn to the broadcast centre that's next on queue for the TS. And then the remaining half of the production would be the piece that you could direct - so, for example, maybe that would go towards a wonder, or a unit, or a project, or you could simply redirect it back to the infrastructure. That way, you would simply place districts and then essentially cities would more or less auto-develop without any interference. That would be a decent mix between letting you decide things at a high level in terms of district placement, but would delegate to the locals the individual decisions.

I do think the modern era also needs some ways to reduce other forms of micro-management. For example, once you're up to like 25 trade routes, I really can't be bothered to track and manage them, especially since it's pretty much every turn 1 or 2 new routes come up for renewal, I certainly can't be asked to remember it's still best to run it from the current city or if I should move it. Governors as well - while I do sometimes still manage them for loyalty reasons, most of the time I simply can't be bothered to keep shuttling them around every 5 turns to help build infrastructure. It's also the case where the later you get, the less small decisions matter. Pingala in the early era giving you a boost of 5-8 culture when your entire civ's output of culture is 15-20 is super important. When you're making 400 culture per turn, +/- 20 doesn't mean nearly as much - I make decisions on policy cards that matter more than any governor title could mean.

 

[localdisk51]

Yeah, there's definitely some levels of indirection you could do as you get later in the game. Districts arguably even simplify the issue - maybe once you reach a certain point like industrialization, I could see perhaps a mechanism where, say, half of a city's production is simply automatically applied to start building the next building for each district - so, for example, if a city has 20 production, once you reach industrialization, 10 production would be hard-coded and applied every turn to every building still needing to be built. So if you just placed a campus, you would get 10 production a turn to the library, but maybe you also get 10 production per turn to the broadcast centre that's next on queue for the TS. And then the remaining half of the production would be the piece that you could direct - so, for example, maybe that would go towards a wonder, or a unit, or a project, or you could simply redirect it back to the infrastructure. That way, you would simply place districts and then essentially cities would more or less auto-develop without any interference. That would be a decent mix between letting you decide things at a high level in terms of district placement, but would delegate to the locals the individual decisions.

Yea I'd be happy with that too. Certainly there still needs to be some decisions still left to the player, and district placement is undoubtedly one of them. If lots of other things are automated, then I don't think decisions like this will feel tedious in the late game.

I do think the modern era also needs some ways to reduce other forms of micro-management. For example, once you're up to like 25 trade routes, I really can't be bothered to track and manage them, especially since it's pretty much every turn 1 or 2 new routes come up for renewal, I certainly can't be asked to remember it's still best to run it from the current city or if I should move it. Governors as well - while I do sometimes still manage them for loyalty reasons, most of the time I simply can't be bothered to keep shuttling them around every 5 turns to help build infrastructure. It's also the case where the later you get, the less small decisions matter. Pingala in the early era giving you a boost of 5-8 culture when your entire civ's output of culture is 15-20 is super important. When you're making 400 culture per turn, +/- 20 doesn't mean nearly as much - I make decisions on policy cards that matter more than any governor title could mean.

Yea you're certainly singing to the choir about trade routes, and luckily people like potatomcwhisky have been helping to call attention to it, so I have some hope here for civ 7.

Having units as traders in the early game makes some sense and is interesting because of the need to protect them from barbarians. A very serious problem in early history. Although I would prefer that barbarians just rob the traders and keep them alive rather than destroy the unit. So that you just lose some gold, kind of like when an enemy spy is in your commercial hub. Because that's what they usually did historically.

But that said, perhaps at some later point in the game, I'd prefer that to be automated and just have the ability to apply embargoes on certain nations, as well as tariffs to influence which nations the traders prefer to do more trade with. That's what leaders do these days. If they want more trade with a certain country, they make a trade agreement to reduce or eliminate tariffs.

So in gameplay terms, if you increase tariffs you get some gold per turn, but gradually it decreases a little due to people not wanting to trade as much with that nation anymore, and your internal economic growth slows down, which can be expressed as something like slower population growth. Thus, if you are in desperate need of money now, then raise tariffs, but if you are focused on long term growth and having more money in the future, then cut tariffs. Somehow it would need to be made more profitable in the long run to have no tariffs. Victoria 2 failed to do this and it always annoyed me how the game made it better 100% of the time to max out tariffs. That's not how it works in real life, despite what some economically illiterate people think. And tie in tariffs with relations with that nations leader. So increasing tariffs on a certain nation makes them not like you as much. And a full on embargo on a nation gives them a casus belli.

The other thing of course is internal trade, which is what potatomcwhisky has focused on. I think I might prefer that that just be automated from the start and not factored into your trade route cap, but not entirely sure. That way your cities with lots of food can always supply your cities that have little. If you build a road to your city, trade automatically starts on its own. And I do think we should go back to building our own internal roads, because that is a decision leaders of countries are involved in. It is the construction of roads and railways that facilitates trade, not the other way around. Just change the implementation maybe and make it so that you can just draw out on the map where you want your road to be constructed, or allow workers to build roads on multiple tiles in one turn.

 

[shaglio]

Civ 5 already dealt with some of these issues, they just needed tweaking. Puppet cities which chose what to build on their own, and automated worker units. They were essential for getting me through the late game. I can't begin to describe how badly I want whoever was in charge of the decision to scrap these features without offering a replacement, to tell us fans why they did this. I've wasted too much time trying to speculate what was going through their heads. Maybe it was nothing. Maybe they got tunnel vision on other details and just forgot. But if that was the case I'd like to hear them acknowledge their mistake so that I can have some hope that civ 7 will be better.

IIRC, the design decision behind this was to keep the player active throughout the entire game by attempting to alleviate the monotony of just pressing "End Turn" repeatedly. But in trying to keep the player engaged this way, they inadvertently created the additional tedium caused by the repetition of basic, mundane tasks.