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

[localdisk51]

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.

Really appreciate the relay of this information. Would be interesting to know the exact words they used. I wasn't expecting the reason to be quite that bad.

With that logic, why not force players to choose what tile to work every time a city population grows, and create time limits for a citizen working a tile, where at the end you have to choose whether to keep working that tile or switch to another. That choice can be interesting in the early game too, and many players do choose to manually control it. Yet they evidently know that taking away the option to automate that would not make for good gameplay. So I'm wondering why their thinking diverges between working tiles and improving or building on them.

I don't see what's bad at all with having a few turns with nothing to do here and there. When I've run into that situation it's because I wanted to skip to a particular era. But I didn't want to start the game from a later era because I wasn't interested in spending that era exploring and settling. Plus I like to just watch what the AI is doing as a spectator.

If they find that people automate too much, then that's simply a symptom of a different problem. That means the activity you gave them to do isn't interesting or fun. It should be in their interest to keep the option to automate, as the frequent use of it by players would give them valuable feedback about how much players are enjoying certain features.

 

[Krajzen]

If I have to chose between lategame with occasionally skipping a turn and lategame actions of infinitesimally decreasing importance (manually building a single mine in the empire of 25 cities and increasing my total production by 0.1 - 1% for example, which is realistic order of magnitude), then I prefer the former because at least it doesn't waste my time. However there is one thing that complicates this topic very much.

One thing I forgot to add from my own observations is that yet another of innumerable failures of Humankind was its idea of literal city merging (where the asimilated cities essentially completely disappear from mechanics and UI visibility, they blend with the background terrain), so I hope this isn't going to be the go - to solution to lategame tedium. There were two problems with that approach
1) It seems very hard to balance the ability to merge cities into one without creating even worse expontential snowball effects, with a ton of modifiers from both cities multiplying. And the optimal strategy inevitably being the creation of monstrous super - cities covering entire continents. Which leads as to the point two:
2) It feels psychologically awful in terms of ingame geography, because no matter how huge your lands are, if they consist of extremely few discrete units - they feel small, and as a result there is this unavoidable feeling of map being much smaller and less epic. Keep in mind that because of 1) the less cities you have the stronger you are in mechanical terms, but the smaller and more lame the map and your empire feel lol.

Like seriously, I don't think you can avoid the second problem. I was playing on the Large map and it felt like civ equivalent of Small, like a provincial affair instead of empire building, because my "empire" consisted of like 5 cities while covering a gigantic area where Civ5-6 would see like 20 cities.
Much safer bet would be leaving cities visible on the map and leaving them some active functions but shifting some of them with late game global interfaces, or "regions" to which you assign few cities at once, or whatever. But having big numbers of cities on the map turned out to be unexpectedly important to the "feel" of Civ - like games.

But again, there is a lot of stuff in Humankind which prior to its release seemed to be like "it will teach Civ a lesson" and turned out to be "it will teach Civ a lesson of what not to do, ever, whatsoever", starting from shifting faction identies, lack of historical leaders, and its victory conditions system.

 

[localdisk51]

If I have to chose between lategame with occasionally skipping a turn and lategame actions of infinitesimally decreasing importance (manually building a single mine in the empire of 25 cities and increasing my total production by 0.1 - 1% for example, which is realistic order of magnitude), then I prefer the former because at least it doesn't waste my time. However there is one thing that complicates this topic very much.

One thing I forgot to add from my own observations is that yet another of innumerable failures of Humankind was its idea of literal city merging (where the asimilated cities essentially completely disappear from mechanics and UI visibility, they blend with the background terrain), so I hope this isn't going to be the go - to solution to lategame tedium. There were two problems with that approach
1) It seems very hard to balance the ability to merge cities into one without creating even worse expontential snowball effects, with a ton of modifiers from both cities multiplying. And the optimal strategy inevitably being the creation of monstrous super - cities covering entire continents. Which leads as to the point two:
2) It feels psychologically awful in terms of ingame geography, because no matter how huge your lands are, if they consist of extremely few discrete units - they feel small, and as a result there is this unavoidable feeling of map being much smaller and less epic. Keep in mind that because of 1) the less cities you have the stronger you are in mechanical terms, but the smaller and more lame the map and your empire feel lol.

Like seriously, I don't think you can avoid the second problem. I was playing on the Large map and it felt like civ equivalent of Small, like a provincial affair instead of empire building, because my "empire" consisted of like 5 cities while covering a gigantic area where Civ5-6 would see like 20 cities.
Much safer bet would be leaving cities visible on the map and leaving them some active functions but shifting some of them with late game global interfaces, or "regions" to which you assign few cities at once, or whatever. But having big numbers of cities on the map turned out to be unexpectedly important to the "feel" of Civ - like games.

But again, there is a lot of stuff in Humankind which prior to its release seemed to be like "it will teach Civ a lesson" and turned out to be "it will teach Civ a lesson of what not to do, ever, whatsoever", starting from shifting faction identies, lack of historical leaders, and its victory conditions system.

I didn't know that about Humankind. That's interesting. Yea if using provinces, I'd certainly want all the cities in a province still visible. For one, so that you can change one city from one province to go into another province, and be able to change the provincial capital. Second, for strategic purposes in war so that a city that isn't the province of a capital can still be taken by an enemy, without taking the whole province. Heck, I don't even like that you can't take just one tile in civ rather than a whole city.

 

[vorlon_mi]

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.

I like the *ability* to form provinces, as an option. There are certainly portions of my empire that are not endangered by loyalty or likely subject to invasion, so they would be good candidates for abstraction. On the other hand, there are new cities / land that I conquer (or claim a free city) that are not yet developed the way I want them. For a period of turns, they will need my direct attention while I decide what to do for / with them. I may still form 2 or 3 of them into provinces because I want to focus my attention on other goals, such as prosecuting a war. I might need to break them up again, to respond to localized damage from a natural disaster.

For me, I am not a fan of potential civil unrest. If I'm keeping my people happy, providing luxuries and amenities, and our military is winning glorious battles, they should *want* to be part of my empire. Why penalize me for succeeding in running my empire well? The idea that it is kinda/sorta more historical is not so compelling to me. A World Congress / Apostolic Palace that starts before 1700 isn't very historical. Inability to cross mountains for hundreds of years is not historical. Theological combat is fun, but not historical. Many of the game mechanics -- in all games in the franchise -- are abstractions based on assumptions.

 

[localdisk51]

I like the *ability* to form provinces, as an option. There are certainly portions of my empire that are not endangered by loyalty or likely subject to invasion, so they would be good candidates for abstraction. On the other hand, there are new cities / land that I conquer (or claim a free city) that are not yet developed the way I want them. For a period of turns, they will need my direct attention while I decide what to do for / with them. I may still form 2 or 3 of them into provinces because I want to focus my attention on other goals, such as prosecuting a war. I might need to break them up again, to respond to localized damage from a natural disaster.

Yes, this is exactly what I meant. If someone wants to micromanage every single city they should be free to do so. And if they make a province, remove it later if they want and switch cities around. Giving the player options is really really important so that people who enjoy different things can all enjoy the game.

For me, I am not a fan of potential civil unrest. If I'm keeping my people happy, providing luxuries and amenities, and our military is winning glorious battles, they should *want* to be part of my empire. Why penalize me for succeeding in running my empire well?

Well empires like that obviously wouldn't be prone to civil unrest. It certainly shouldn't be random. But there should be challenges to keeping people happy, because it is a game after all. What's the point if everything is easy. Although it might fall a bit flat if the happiness system wasn't expanded upon.

The idea that it is kinda/sorta more historical is not so compelling to me. A World Congress / Apostolic Palace that starts before 1700 isn't very historical. Inability to cross mountains for hundreds of years is not historical. Theological combat is fun, but not historical. Many of the game mechanics -- in all games in the franchise -- are abstractions based on assumptions.

I don't quite follow the logic of justifying one bad mechanic because other bad mechanics exists. The way World Congress works is quite unpopular.

But anyway, it's not just about being more historical. In my opinion it would be more fun to have the possibility of a civil war that is bigger than just a free city forming from loyalty problems. It's really just an extension of that mechanic. Especially in the late game when my county is huge and no other civilization exists that can challenge me anymore. Most players would just stop playing at this point. And the purpose of this thread is about methods to keep players interested in the late game rather than quiting because most of the time the late game lost interesting challenges.

 

[Kaan Boztepe]

the idea of unrest is unpopular but wideflung empires always have had this problem since all the richest were concentrated in the core provinces and the far flung corners were left out of the confortable life. Also the neighbours were never friendly if someone was running away with economy or science. see ww1 and the germans attacking russia before they could industrialize. Or ofcourse the reverse where everyone wanted to migrate and that caused stability problems like the late western roman empire. I think similar mechanics could be easily implemented via in game events. if a player is nearing game winning conditions the others create an alliance to attack the leader or if someone gets bigger it will have reduced effect of amenities on border cities or something similar.

 

[AlexM29]

I think the most essential thing for CIV 7 is to make exploration matter until the end game. What would make the game more interesting is to rebalance it so that the game is not won in the 1st 70-80 turns. Make mid game expansion and late game imperialism necessary to victory. Make it so that land grabs in the industrial/modern era are just as essential to victory as getting your early cities out. Make it so that a global empire is necessary to victory. Human history has not been that when one society got ahead all others fall behind and cannot catch up. Yet that is how the game plays. The AI needs to be given meaningful ways to not only catch the player, but surpass the player throughout various eras in history. Cities added to an empire in later eras in different parts of the world should be given major bonuses. If they have a unique resource, or unique landscape, or be given the opportunity to build unique buildings or improvements in different parts of the world that have major bonuses. Make them major trading posts with civs in other parts of the world that bring an influx of gold or culture or technology. Make it so that late game exploration means just as much as early game exploration. Finding key spots to settle or conquer a city in the mid to late game should mean the difference between winning and losing. When you have your first 6-8 cities in this game, exploring just doesn't mean much anymore in the current iteration of the game. Think about what a game changer in human history it was when the Americas were found, then exploited. But in CIV VI that doesn't matter because your core cities in Europe will win you the game. Shouldn't be like that.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Civ has zero anti snowball or negative feedback mechanics because “it’s not fun” apparently

 

[vorlon_mi]

I think the most essential thing for CIV 7 is to make exploration matter until the end game. What would make the game more interesting is to rebalance it so that the game is not won in the 1st 70-80 turns. Make mid game expansion and late game imperialism necessary to victory. Make it so that land grabs in the industrial/modern era are just as essential to victory as getting your early cities out. Make it so that a global empire is necessary to victory. Human history has not been that when one society got ahead all others fall behind and cannot catch up. Yet that is how the game plays. The AI needs to be given meaningful ways to not only catch the player, but surpass the player throughout various eras in history. Cities added to an empire in later eras in different parts of the world should be given major bonuses. If they have a unique resource, or unique landscape, or be given the opportunity to build unique buildings or improvements in different parts of the world that have major bonuses. Make them major trading posts with civs in other parts of the world that bring an influx of gold or culture or technology. Make it so that late game exploration means just as much as early game exploration. Finding key spots to settle or conquer a city in the mid to late game should mean the difference between winning and losing. When you have your first 6-8 cities in this game, exploring just doesn't mean much anymore in the current iteration of the game. Think about what a game changer in human history it was when the Americas were found, then exploited. But in CIV VI that doesn't matter because your core cities in Europe will win you the game. Shouldn't be like that.

Just curious ... did you play earlier games in the franchise?

Making exploration matter until the end game: I'm not sure how possible this is. In Civ 3/4/5, the map is largely revealed once the human player can navigate open oceans. Each of those games allowed either open borders / right of passage or trading maps (or both, in the case of Civ3) so the human player can scout all of the terrain. I've only seen unexplored territory in the late game in my games of BERT; it's somewhat exceptional. Nothing new can spawn in those areas of the map, other than barbarians. Late strategic resources, such as oil or aluminum, are pre-placed but invisible until the player has the tech to see them.

Allowing the AI players to catch or surpass the human player: This definitely happens in Civ3, Civ4, and BERT. Give the AI player some fertile grassland for its core cities -- especially on a continents map -- and they will grow a productive core. I've played fewer games of Civ5 than BERT, but I've definitely seen AI with well-developed cities and willingness to invade each other. Higher difficulties often included tech discounts, allowing AI players to research faster than the human player. I've seen the AI control lots of city-states in Civ5; I don't play on a high difficulty level.

Making late-game cities matter as much as early game cities: That could be done with fewer instances of key resources, so that one must conquer a key city to get coal, oil, or saltpeter/niter. I'm not sure how fun it would be to mount a cross-continent or transcontinental invasion with non-gunpowder units to reach one of the 3 sources of the key strategic resource on the continent or world. Yes, conquering portions of the AI's core cities mattered a lot in the other games. It served to cripple their ability to produce troops to attack you back or economic wealth to buy influence or research. Once the human player had "assimilated" the conquered city into the empire -- the specifics of that varied between each of the earlier games -- the new city could be just as productive as it had been for its previous owner.
Settling a city in the mid-game or late-game ... how often can this happen? In all of Civ3/Civ4/Civ5, the AI settles all the empty land that is fertile -- or not occupied by city-states. Unless they invent some kind of map-unlock mechanic where new land is magically available, having empty space to found a new city is very improbable. In BERT, yes, there are often map regions that are far away from any of the starting cities. It's possible to found cities there, but it's hard to defend them requiring many turns to get reinforcements to the remote land mass. Island cities are particularly vulnerable in BERT.

 

[UWHabs]

Just curious ... did you play earlier games in the franchise?

Making exploration matter until the end game: I'm not sure how possible this is. In Civ 3/4/5, the map is largely revealed once the human player can navigate open oceans. Each of those games allowed either open borders / right of passage or trading maps (or both, in the case of Civ3) so the human player can scout all of the terrain. I've only seen unexplored territory in the late game in my games of BERT; it's somewhat exceptional. Nothing new can spawn in those areas of the map, other than barbarians. Late strategic resources, such as oil or aluminum, are pre-placed but invisible until the player has the tech to see them.

Allowing the AI players to catch or surpass the human player: This definitely happens in Civ3, Civ4, and BERT. Give the AI player some fertile grassland for its core cities -- especially on a continents map -- and they will grow a productive core. I've played fewer games of Civ5 than BERT, but I've definitely seen AI with well-developed cities and willingness to invade each other. Higher difficulties often included tech discounts, allowing AI players to research faster than the human player. I've seen the AI control lots of city-states in Civ5; I don't play on a high difficulty level.

Making late-game cities matter as much as early game cities: That could be done with fewer instances of key resources, so that one must conquer a key city to get coal, oil, or saltpeter/niter. I'm not sure how fun it would be to mount a cross-continent or transcontinental invasion with non-gunpowder units to reach one of the 3 sources of the key strategic resource on the continent or world. Yes, conquering portions of the AI's core cities mattered a lot in the other games. It served to cripple their ability to produce troops to attack you back or economic wealth to buy influence or research. Once the human player had "assimilated" the conquered city into the empire -- the specifics of that varied between each of the earlier games -- the new city could be just as productive as it had been for its previous owner.
Settling a city in the mid-game or late-game ... how often can this happen? In all of Civ3/Civ4/Civ5, the AI settles all the empty land that is fertile -- or not occupied by city-states. Unless they invent some kind of map-unlock mechanic where new land is magically available, having empty space to found a new city is very improbable. In BERT, yes, there are often map regions that are far away from any of the starting cities. It's possible to found cities there, but it's hard to defend them requiring many turns to get reinforcements to the remote land mass. Island cities are particularly vulnerable in BERT.

One option to make late game exploration matter could be about changing what you mean by exploration. So while the whole map would be discovered by the early parts of the exploration era, I could see keeping some modern resources hidden until you actually can rediscover them. Like, just because your galley mapped out a region in 3000 BC doesn't mean that the moment you discover oil you suddenly know that there's a deep crevice of Crude Oil there in the modern game. You could set up something like how Archaeologists (or Maui) go around and interact with the map. You could even do that with more than just the modern strategics - California prospectors didn't know there was Gold there when they first walked through the land, it was only after searching that they discovered it.

And along those same lines, you could have late cities matter more if you had some sort of immigration system, or even something more of a rise and fall within a city itself. The game is still much too static, in that the cities that are good in 2000 BC are more often than not still good in 1800 AD. Like, there really should be a way so that you set up an ancient city as like your "iron mining" core city, but once iron has faded away from relevance, maybe you need to redevelop the lands or else it may turn into a ghost town.

Within the game, you could probably sort of simulate that with something like having a city lose food or housing based on negative appeal, and maybe then have appeal also be something that grows over time. So when you first set up an iron mine, it's -1 appeal to surrounding tiles. But maybe after working it for 50 years, now it's -2 to neighbouring tiles and -1 to tiles 2 away. Maybe another 50 years and it spreads 3 tiles out. You could set up a system where basically a city that is an ancient era industrial power might end up so polluted over time that the city shrivels up to nothing. Now, granted, within the game context, you wouldn't necessarily lose everything, but maybe once the city shrivels out, the tile becomes unworkable for like 20 turns, and maybe the inhabitants simply re-settle themselves a files tiles further away. Obviously the game mechanics of cities and culture and so on would have to change, and you'd also certainly need a further setup to simulate immigration, or cities gaining a large influx of people rapidly as they maybe move away from their old life.

But however all this is done, I think finding the balance between having the game truly rise and fall and shift as real society did, vs the gameplay notion of "Sparta will be my one true powerhouse city for 4000 years", is a balance that is somewhat hard to manage. I don't want to build a perfectly placed city and the game being like "lol iron is dead. Everyone is leaving Sparta now and settling on this horrible tile 2 away". But it would be nice if you could settle a city post-exploration age actually become useful to my empire.

 

[aieeegrunt]

Overall prosperity seems to correlate with declining birth rates and then declining population

At that point your options are mass immigration with all the potential ups and downs that brings or We Are The Elves

That would be an interesting anti snowball mechanic

 

[uhu]

Civ has zero anti snowball or negative feedback mechanics because “it’s not fun” apparently

That is not entirely true. Yes, sure, in the overwhelming large computerized branch of the enterprise, whose development is dominated by the eternal casual player, who indulges his insurmountable fear of being punished by the evilRNG, this is the case and hampers increasingly play balance ...

But in the tiny board based branch of the enterprise, where the mechanics are more transparent (i.e. so better understood), and also cannot be cheated away via reloading etc., the "negative feedback mechanics" are flourishing!


In Francis Tresham’s Civilization board game ( Without dice. ) players trade single and double commodities in order to build larger, much more valuable sets -- which in turn allow to buy the precious tech/civic advancements. Because the traded cards are partly hidden, it is possible to substitute sometimes commodities for calamities ...

The original Civilization board game contains 66 commodity cards and 8 calamity cards:

The game had an official Western Expansion and the sequel Advanced Civilization, which featured double the number of calamities ...




Of course Civilization fans had not enough and did some more (minor calamities) ... in Mega Civilization:

Is it necessary to say, that the more the flock reaches the winning zone, the more exciting the game is??

 

[aieeegrunt]

That is not entirely true. Yes, sure, in the overwhelming large computerized branch of the enterprise, whose development is dominated by the eternal casual player, who indulges his insurmountable fear of being punished by the evilRNG, this is the case and hampers increasingly play balance ...

But in the tiny board based branch of the enterprise, where the mechanics are more transparent (i.e. so better understood), and also cannot be cheated away via reloading etc., the "negative feedback mechanics" are flourishing!


In Francis Tresham’s Civilization board game ( Without dice. ) players trade single and double commodities in order to build larger, much more valuable sets -- which in turn allow to buy the precious tech/civic advancements. Because the traded cards are partly hidden, it is possible to substitute sometimes commodities for calamities ...

The original Civilization board game contains 66 commodity cards and 8 calamity cards:
View attachment 635091




The game had an official Western Expansion and the sequel Advanced Civilization, which featured double the number of calamities ...




Of course Civilization fans had not enough and did some more (minor calamities) ... in Mega Civilization:
View attachment 635093



Is it necessary to say, that the more the flock reaches the winning zone, the more exciting the game is??

Oh man I remember that game!

Crete was the middle of the map so everyone converged on you

Thinking you were gonna get a full set of cloth and you get traded a calamity

 

[uhu]

But beyond nostalgia and in all seriousness about the "boring endgame problem" ...

Linklite said:
I'm a little confused. People are saying that they've occasionally lost battles of 90+% likelihood of winning...isn't that exactly what the percentage is saying? You'll rarely lose, but 5% of the time you will?

@Linklite Yeah, hard to understand (at first sight). The "casual player" often sets [highly probably == almost ever, always] in his expectations. As already Sid remarked in an interview about civ1, especially if the player is benefitting, "because he deserves it for playing good" -- the AI players not so much: if they (with objectively the exact same probabilities) win combats, they are experienced as "cheating a lot".

In a computer based game the RNG has less credibility than cards drawn from a shuffled deck by several human players in a board game as Francis Tresham’s original Civilization.
But that has not to be a problem per se; f.e. Settlers of Catan has a (single player) computer based version (exact 1 to 1 copy of the board game) and I never heard accusations about the RNG cheating when throwing the dice ... (what would result in advantages in amount of resources).
Important: becoming victim of the robber (& pirate & robber barons in the expansions), which are the bad events in Catan, is experienced as deeds of the other players and NOT becoming victim of the (evil) RNG. I think, the bad events are better accepted, because every player is doing the bad events (he is suffering from) himself to the other players too.

Board game Civilization is the same: the bad events are cards drawn from the decks of commodities (& calamities!!) or received in partly hidden trading _and then_ traded away or resolved in the next phase. In interaction with the other players. The bad events are better accepted, because they are obviously not random, out of the sun, falling from heaven ... as punishment.
The player cannot only suffer from the bad events, but also inflict them onto other players. The question is just, how the narrative is told. What are events and who generates them? Maybe even games as OldWorld could include events initiated by players using event tokens against other players. Bad events as game elements, which can be used actively by the players, are probably better accepted than such, which players can only passively suffer from. (( @Solver: I think, Sullla disappeared after a felt overdose of bad events in Old World Early Access Stream: Greek Seafarers Part two))

Btw, everybody who tries to play Francis Tresham’s Civilization or the Settlers of Catan without calamity cards or robber etc. finds out, that the game IS BORING that way.

see also:

Civ VI Funny/Strange Screenshots

Behold, the notorious pirate lair of Lake Trasimene! (Hey, spear dudes, do you guys know how to dig a canal? No?....)

forums.civfanatics.com

just follow the link, quotes from other threads are a mess now

 

[Bleys]

People seem to forget the laws of large numbers. Low percentages just means its guaranteed to happen, eventually, and more than you like. You forget about the other 99 times out of 100 it didnt happen quickly.

 

[Jarms48]

Personally, I think just giving builders an auto feature like Civ 5 had would fix a lot. Make them be able to see pins, maybe add a priority system for pins too, so if I put a farm triangle down they’ll go and use their charges there first.

If I label a series of mines as priority 1 they’ll build those first and farms priority 2 they’ll go there after. If there’s a new strategic revealed have a toggle for them to go and automatically replace the existing improvement with a mine.

If I get hit by a natural disaster they’ll automatically go and repair those tiles.

This would go a long way for me.

 

[dagriggstar]

Exploration - I'd like to see some science benefit, like +0.1 science per turn per revealed tile.

Calamities - Maybe like a year ago I suggested like an "age up" mechanic. Basically you can choose to enter a new era of technologies whenever you like. But your empire has to go through like a transformative event. The earlier you click up, the harsher the event. Any of those calamities could apply.
As an alternative, it might also be interesting to have calamities but these are influenced by other players. For instance, if you have the plague, you can "send" it to another player via a trade route. Or something like bribing barbarians. If there is a happiness mechanic, perhaps you can "bribe" a rival faction, arming them and causing a civil war. Stuff like that.

City regions - I like the concept. I've not played humankind, but one of the things that turns me off that game is that a city essentially starts off as a region, simply because you can only settle one city per area. So when it comes time to "combine" cities, really you are forming more of a country within a country. When I think of a city region, I want to simulate like Baltimore - Washington not "The east coast". Like, cities should need to join their city centers together with districts for it to be possible or something like that.

 

[Krajzen]

Exploration - I'd like to see some science benefit, like +0.1 science per turn per revealed tile.

Calamities - Maybe like a year ago I suggested like an "age up" mechanic. Basically you can choose to enter a new era of technologies whenever you like. But your empire has to go through like a transformative event. The earlier you click up, the harsher the event. Any of those calamities could apply.
As an alternative, it might also be interesting to have calamities but these are influenced by other players. For instance, if you have the plague, you can "send" it to another player via a trade route. Or something like bribing barbarians. If there is a happiness mechanic, perhaps you can "bribe" a rival faction, arming them and causing a civil war. Stuff like that.

City regions - I like the concept. I've not played humankind, but one of the things that turns me off that game is that a city essentially starts off as a region, simply because you can only settle one city per area. So when it comes time to "combine" cities, really you are forming more of a country within a country. When I think of a city region, I want to simulate like Baltimore - Washington not "The east coast". Like, cities should need to join their city centers together with districts for it to be possible or something like that.

I really like your idea of, as I understand it, entering new technological era coming with a risk/gamble the bigger the earlier you enter it (relative to other players). It kind of makes sense - earlier adopters of revolutionary new technologies, civics, philosophies etc may be destabilized by them, or find in them seeds of their downfall, as they are entering entirely new territory not yet charted and tried by anybody else. You can sort of find justification for that IRL (far from perfect analogy but I think acceptable for the level of abstraction of those games) - for example multiple disastrous failed attempts at entering industrialization IRL, Enlightenment causing French revolution when France was unable take on the challenge of reforms, modern tech and ideologies causing world wars and economic crises, industrial revolution gone badly (inequality) fostering communist uprisings, Spanish pioneering new era blowing up in their face horribly, in the earlier eras it is less clear but you could imagine it as a general instability caused by dramatic shift in socieconomic order.
It also offers a nice strategic tradeoff - do you really want to rush new eras first, being vulnerable to their challenges in their full force, or do you prefer to enter them at a slower but more stable pace - as I assume every next player entering new era gets less challenged, so backward players have smooth era transitions.

 

[uhu]

Calamities - Maybe like a year ago I suggested like an "age up" mechanic. Basically you can choose to enter a new era of technologies whenever you like. But your empire has to go through like a transformative event. The earlier you click up, the harsher the event. Any of those calamities could apply.

I really like your idea of, as I understand it, entering new technological era coming with a risk/gamble the bigger the earlier you enter it (relative to other players). It kind of makes sense - earlier adopters of revolutionary new technologies, civics, philosophies etc may be destabilized by them, or find in them seeds of their downfall, as they are entering entirely new territory not yet charted and tried by anybody else. You can sort of find justification for that IRL [...]

While I sincerely love your enthusiasm, I'd like to suggest paying more heed to the context of current games we are facing. For civ6, the player accepting that sometimes his empire has to go through like transformative events at all could do wonders to the overall play balance and boring endgame syndrome. Seeing the trend since the beginning (cf. the link in my post above), I expect there just more of the same.
Bad events have an acceptance problem the spontaneous reaction is always No, I don't want it, do it away! Perhaps they would be better digestible, if the game mechanics would allow delay at appropriate higher costs (but unavoidable in principle). Btw, Inflation is like Ketchup in the bottle, first nothing at all, then only a little and suddenly(!) you have your shirt dirty ...

As an alternative, it might also be interesting to have calamities but these are influenced by other players. For instance, if you have the plague, you can "send" it to another player via a trade route. Or something like bribing barbarians. If there is a happiness mechanic, perhaps you can "bribe" a rival faction, arming them and causing a civil war. Stuff like that.

Yeah, I think, such bad events would be better accepted, because every player would also actively inflict the bad events onto other players and not just passively suffer from them himself.

But to be clear, such bad event tokens used by the players as game elements would actually also require the general willingness to develop decent AIplayers using those events (which I see only in OldWorld sufficiently right now).

 

[Krajzen]

I have never understood Civilization's extreme aversion of negative events. A ton of other strategy games is much more challenging, chaotic, random and filled with sudden hits in the face of all sorts:
1) Direct brutal consequences of stupid actions
2) More indirectly: emergent complexity and chaos blowing in your face, with limited player agency
3) And yes even just plain random terrible events ruining your plans.
This has never stopped all those games from being popular and highly rated; the presence of risk, gamble, randomness, consequences, spectacular disasters, overall not entirely predictable and optimizable challenge is spread all over strategy game genres, and here we are Sid Meier's secluded islands which tries to perform crazy alpine acrobatics of how to provide challenge while never taking player's candies, just always giving them.
Crusader Kings, Europa Universalis franchises have been massively popular, and they have never been reluctant to throw unpredictable mess at the player from time to time (taken to extreme levels in CK2, where there was feudal logic of your awesome ruler always being potentially close to dying to some infectious disease, causing disastrous civil war). I have never even seen players grumbling about this aspect of those games too much, they are simply part of adventure, of the living world. Taking to very different (tactical) subgenre, and Firaxis other franchise, XCOM games randomize a lot of things, including most importantly shots accuracy, frequently leading to spectacular disasters. Darkest Dungeon tactical game got massively popular while regularly killing off heavily invested - into team members during some random crazy kertuffles. It was just part of its risk management and adrenaline - pumping allure, also making victories much more emotional and satisfying.

Obviously I am not suggesting Sid Meier's Civilization going to very high levels of risk management and dramatic struggle (...though personally I'd love to see 4X civ - developing game not afraid to kick me in my teeth from time to time) but I just don't understand this talk of random events, probabilities and problems appearing outside of players agency being necessary, logical antithesis to strategy games while, depending on a game, a lot of them has incorporated randomness as part of core strategic experience. Just like real life "strategy games" of politics, economics, warfare etc has always involved a lot of unknown, probabilities, gambling, risk management and challenges suddenly emerging through no fault of parties involved.

Personally I think a right infusion of some of those qualities could go a long way of making Civ games less stale, linear, predictable and "winner is already decided halfway through", "I have optimized the game perfectly by renaissance, now I can capitalize on this forever with no risks".