Naokaukodem
Millenary King
- Joined
- Aug 8, 2003
- Messages
- 4,302
I want to treat here about one of the problems of the Civ franchise : the "snowball effect", tranlated in Civ5 by "overexpansion".
Indeed, everything in Civ is accumulated within cities : food, production, gold, even science and culture accumulate inside cities. The more you have cities, the more you will have everything.
The result is that the more you will have everything, the more you will be able to have yet more everything. This is the snowball effect.
Don't get me wrong, this can be a good mechanic : you have to manage your civ in order to get more of everything before your opponents.
However, this has a major impact on the replayability not only of one single opus of the series, but from an opus to the other, it is to say the replayability of the whole franchise.
Indeed, every civ has to grow best, and at the end it create blocks that shock themselves. Once again, it can be cool : it's just that the cold war seems to be recreated !
The problem is that that, happens every time. The result is that the player may feel bored after playing a couple games, not to mention the ensuing problems like "the end game feels boring", which are just a consequence of the "snowball effect".
Therefore, I will try here to gather ideas about how make Civ less redundant.
First off, let's talk about the ideas the developers themselves put in place in order to limit the "snowball effect".
1. Corruption
The more the cities are far from the capital, the more they suffer from corruption, which is basically a limitation if not the obliteration of some of the most important everything.
This system have been highly criticized and finally abandonned by the developers, because it was frustrating and the players couldn't really understand, on the basis of realism no more than on the gameplay basis, why a newly planted city would automatically produce so few ? Plus, there was a feature that allowed corruption to disappear !
2. Maintenance
It works with science being generated by "exchanges". (a resource that was in the place of Civ5 gold) Basically you were producing commerce (exchanges) and you had to allocate it either to science or gold. Gameplay wise, you kept science at max, your gold was minimum except in case of urgent need. When your gold needs expanded for a reason or the other (mainly : planting cities), you could increase the percentage of commerce you allocated to it, but you science was decreasing. The more you planted cities, the greater your needs in gold, the lower your science. Planting new cities too fast was hitting greatly your ability to produce science or raise funds. It was never specified how a new city would cost you, and it varied depending on the number of cities you had and the distance from the capital.
This system was ununderstandable on the first games. To masterize it, you had to play a lot of games in order to weigh the gold cost of each city approximatively, or look at "let's plays !" on the internet.
3. Global Happiness
Every population point in the empire costs happiness, and new cities cost additionnal happiness.
Such a roughly limiting system would have frustrated the player beyong imagination if it would have been unchanging. By consequence, it have been given the player extra means to increase it. The result is that the global happiness may be limiting for some player in some game or moments of games, but it is generally admitted that it is virtually infinite on the late game or for the AI in most played difficulty levels.
The problem with all those solutions, is that as I specified it, they are just limitations. They do not prevent you to acquire more cities, they either just make it less valuable or harder to reach. Those limitations are even integrated in the gameplay, so that you can stretch them and get your superpower.
The ideas I'm expecting from you are then ones that could totally obliterate this "snowball effect", not only limiting it, by for example making everything uncumulative. My maths knowledge is so poor, but couldn't one imagine some formula that could make the deal for example ?
Either you change things at the root, so everything or a part of it (science ? culture ? gold and production ? (see golden ages)) is basically non cumulative, either you change them on the downstream, applying a system or a formula that digests it afterwards.
Example : The following system doesn't change the cumulative aspect of anything, but tries to undermine it as a result by trying to make small civs competitive compared to bigger ones :
Basically, your civ eventually gets bonus by being small. The smallest, the bigger may be the bonuses.
It's not automatic, it's designed by social policies you can pick from a tree with points. Those points can't be increased like culture points can. Either they are fix, and the threshold of new acquired policies rises with the number of cities, either they decrease with new cities.
We can perfectly imagine a civ with 0 points per turn because it's big enough. This civ could not pick further policies.
However, this system may go with a system of revolutions that happens regularly. That way, civ losing cities could go policies again, and take a new start.
Some things should be changed also to the system : the player should have a lot more things to do, because if he chooses to go City-State (with powerfull buffs), he could not have enough things to do to keep him out of boredom.
Downsides : every player would start as a City-State, so he may get the early bonuses even if he goes wide.
Solution : limit the early bonuses to the capital, or implement a threshold of number of cities above what the bonuses don't apply.
Indeed, everything in Civ is accumulated within cities : food, production, gold, even science and culture accumulate inside cities. The more you have cities, the more you will have everything.
The result is that the more you will have everything, the more you will be able to have yet more everything. This is the snowball effect.
Don't get me wrong, this can be a good mechanic : you have to manage your civ in order to get more of everything before your opponents.
However, this has a major impact on the replayability not only of one single opus of the series, but from an opus to the other, it is to say the replayability of the whole franchise.
Indeed, every civ has to grow best, and at the end it create blocks that shock themselves. Once again, it can be cool : it's just that the cold war seems to be recreated !
The problem is that that, happens every time. The result is that the player may feel bored after playing a couple games, not to mention the ensuing problems like "the end game feels boring", which are just a consequence of the "snowball effect".
Therefore, I will try here to gather ideas about how make Civ less redundant.
First off, let's talk about the ideas the developers themselves put in place in order to limit the "snowball effect".
1. Corruption
The more the cities are far from the capital, the more they suffer from corruption, which is basically a limitation if not the obliteration of some of the most important everything.
This system have been highly criticized and finally abandonned by the developers, because it was frustrating and the players couldn't really understand, on the basis of realism no more than on the gameplay basis, why a newly planted city would automatically produce so few ? Plus, there was a feature that allowed corruption to disappear !
2. Maintenance
It works with science being generated by "exchanges". (a resource that was in the place of Civ5 gold) Basically you were producing commerce (exchanges) and you had to allocate it either to science or gold. Gameplay wise, you kept science at max, your gold was minimum except in case of urgent need. When your gold needs expanded for a reason or the other (mainly : planting cities), you could increase the percentage of commerce you allocated to it, but you science was decreasing. The more you planted cities, the greater your needs in gold, the lower your science. Planting new cities too fast was hitting greatly your ability to produce science or raise funds. It was never specified how a new city would cost you, and it varied depending on the number of cities you had and the distance from the capital.
This system was ununderstandable on the first games. To masterize it, you had to play a lot of games in order to weigh the gold cost of each city approximatively, or look at "let's plays !" on the internet.
3. Global Happiness
Every population point in the empire costs happiness, and new cities cost additionnal happiness.
Such a roughly limiting system would have frustrated the player beyong imagination if it would have been unchanging. By consequence, it have been given the player extra means to increase it. The result is that the global happiness may be limiting for some player in some game or moments of games, but it is generally admitted that it is virtually infinite on the late game or for the AI in most played difficulty levels.
The problem with all those solutions, is that as I specified it, they are just limitations. They do not prevent you to acquire more cities, they either just make it less valuable or harder to reach. Those limitations are even integrated in the gameplay, so that you can stretch them and get your superpower.
The ideas I'm expecting from you are then ones that could totally obliterate this "snowball effect", not only limiting it, by for example making everything uncumulative. My maths knowledge is so poor, but couldn't one imagine some formula that could make the deal for example ?
Either you change things at the root, so everything or a part of it (science ? culture ? gold and production ? (see golden ages)) is basically non cumulative, either you change them on the downstream, applying a system or a formula that digests it afterwards.
Example : The following system doesn't change the cumulative aspect of anything, but tries to undermine it as a result by trying to make small civs competitive compared to bigger ones :
Basically, your civ eventually gets bonus by being small. The smallest, the bigger may be the bonuses.
It's not automatic, it's designed by social policies you can pick from a tree with points. Those points can't be increased like culture points can. Either they are fix, and the threshold of new acquired policies rises with the number of cities, either they decrease with new cities.
We can perfectly imagine a civ with 0 points per turn because it's big enough. This civ could not pick further policies.
However, this system may go with a system of revolutions that happens regularly. That way, civ losing cities could go policies again, and take a new start.
Some things should be changed also to the system : the player should have a lot more things to do, because if he chooses to go City-State (with powerfull buffs), he could not have enough things to do to keep him out of boredom.
Downsides : every player would start as a City-State, so he may get the early bonuses even if he goes wide.
Solution : limit the early bonuses to the capital, or implement a threshold of number of cities above what the bonuses don't apply.
