Thoughts on improvements for the end game...!

[DrJambo]

What i have noticed is that all my Civ3 games follow a very similar trend and that is:
1. Build up cities with improvements and culture whilst keeping friends and trading with other civs.
2. Reach mid to late industrial period and run out of city improvements to build...
3. Build military as that's all there is to build.
4. Go to war in the Cavalry, Infantry, Tanks, Modern Ships period.

That always seems to be the way the games seem to work out! Going to war earlier means that the building of useful cultural city improvements suffers, i.e. like Universities, Police Stations, Banks, Wonders, Factories, etc.

What i have realised, is there is a significant lack of depth in the modern era! In the modern era, the main things that new tech brings are new and improved units and other mechanisms of conducting warfare. Also the spaceship comes into the equation a little on the early side, meaning that recycling centres, offshore platforms and the two wonders under Genetics aren't really worthwhile investments. Instead they just waste time.

Now, if i am not at war, my top cities have nothing to build because they have built all the improvements. Instead they just end up building units because there is essentially nothing left to build OR i set them onto wealth. Hence my point is that by this stage the best thing to do is just fight, fight, fight.

SO, how can the modern era be improved?

Here are my thoughts:
1. Expand the modern era making it larger with more tech advances.
2. Bring back improvements like stock-exchange, farmland, superhighways and SDI defence...
3. Make SAM batteries and Coastal Fortresses more useful by making the AI bombard cities as opposed to always bombarding land improvements, which are easily mopped up by workers.
4. Push back the timescale of the game beyond 2050 and make the spaceship parts arrive later.
5. Make aircraft able to destroy naval ships, thereby creating a need to replace a destroyed navy. At the moment once you build a navy that has got control of the seasthere isn't anything that can destroy it other than other ships or cruise missiles.

What ya reckon?

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

good ideas there, doc!



I play a completely different style (early conquest) and end up with the same result:

Endgame Su*ks!

reasons: they keep me fighting but soon I have double to tripple the land - so I quickly catch up culturally. I lead in tech - otherwise they`d have the guts to gang up on me. Now I can simply sit there and wait out the game (often I have Nukes + spaceship launch ready when the others still fight over who gets the rubber they just found - Monarch level)
OR
I can go for domination....


boooooooring!


So i guess we`d need:

1) siginficant culture buildings in modern times - culture flip is completely out of the game except for in wars!

2) indeed a longer tech tree or slower research

3) maybe a city building block on deserts until a certain tech level - when you have the tech you can settle in prviously uninhabitable areas - would keep large deserts open and add a whole new dimension (culture flipping of young towns and so on)

4) additional res and maybe new lux????? add that to 3 and colonies early on also gain importance, too


whaddaya say??

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

just to underline my point:

here`s my current game.....

I`ll crush the Russians (slowly, too lazy to organize an integrated campain), then someone else will piss me off and die - it`s fun for a while to be 1 to 2 units ahead, like Cavalary against Musketmen, but soon it`s tedious.......

Then I`m gonna be too bored to wait it all out and just pick a fight with No 2, so I get dominace....


I WANT MP!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Tarquelne]

I'd like to see some more city improvements in the Modern Era too, and some more techs, sure. But I think what we have to realize is that the better we're doing in a game the sooner we're going to run out of stuff to build other than military units.

If I get to the point where I find myself churning out lots of military units because nothing else needs to be built I quit and start a new game. A military victory of some sort is right around the corner.

I think Firaxis' answer to the late game tedium of Civ1 and 2 is to make sure the game is _over_ in the modern era. The race to the spaceship should end it if Spaceship Victory is enable. If not, then its a race between someone getting a Dip victory and someone getting a militaristic victory. Ah, my point is that I don't think the game is designed to be open ended in time. The player is supposed to win by 2050. (And if your in the situation Doctor described you've won. Maybe they'll publish an expansion that includes lots of "stuff" for the modern era and pushes back the end date.

Heres how I think we should cope with late game tedium: If the game is getting tedius it's because you're not being challenged. If you're not being challenged its because you're clearly winning. If you're that far ahead just quit.

 

[DrJambo]

The thing is though, is that at various times in my games it does hang on a knife-edge. For instance when i initially start a war with a next door neighbour civ their initial strike force can be a scary sight!!

However, if i can withstand the initial assault of the AI's main army then it soon becomes very easy to win the war as the AI has effectively run out of his expendable attack force. Then my quicker producing cities churn out the units more rapidly and it just becomes a matter of mopping up the AI's cities one by one.

THe same goes for both the naval battles and air superiority battles. One the initial close exciting skirmish is over it just becomes to easy..

Giving free upgrades to the AI units on them becoming obsolete might be an idea, assuming they have the resources though...?!

 

[Clubber]

I agree with a lot thats been said here. The number 1 thing I would like to have back is the ability for my workers to modify the land, as they did in Civ II, such as changing hills to grassland, etc. I don't understand why this was ommited from Civ III. At the very least, they should be able to have this ability during the Industrial era. Thats my 2 cents.

 

[Tarquelne]

"THe same goes for both the naval battles and air superiority battles. One the initial close exciting skirmish is over it just becomes to easy.. "

While I'd argue that the CIv3 AI is far better than the Civ2 AI overall (all things, such as Civ3's comparitave "simplicity"), I'm not sure if it fights much better. Before they spend time improving the end-game in particular I'd hope they could improve the warfare AI some.


"Giving free upgrades to the AI units on them becoming obsolete might be an idea, assuming they have the resources though...?!"

I'd like that too. Whatever method the AI uses to upgrade units, I don't think it's good enough.

 

[chiefpaco]

Agreed. Boring. At least on Monarch & below.

The problem to me:
- I find the spaceship is built before I get most of the other techs.

I've never built a stealth bomber, offshore platform, radar artillery, longevity, etc... Perhaps the SS parts should come at the very end of the tree? It might make sense that you have to finish the tree before launching (no question about your scientific dominance). However, there might have to be a tech pacing adjustment on the lower diff levels and communist govts (anyone with a good communist science strat, please help me!).

Free upgrades is a good idea. Though it would kinda defeat the purpose of Leonardo's.

Maybe we should be able to research 2 techs at a time? Or build a wonder to let us do this?

I'm playing my first game on emporer currently & will see how things go. Modern age should be different on higher diff levels (can't get the tech lead?).

Has anyone finished the tree yet? Why not just launch? Can you give a scenario?

 

[Sparrowhawk]

I finish the tech tree most of the games I play. I agree that the spaceship comes too early in the tech tree, however I don't build it simply because I want to keep playing. I play civ for the fun of playing, not to win, and the spaceship is an 'easy win'. I find it much more interesting to wait until everyone has most of the techs and then fight it out.

IMHO, the modern era should definitely be beefed up, along the lines of what =DOCTOR= mentioned.

 

[Lt.Col. Kilgore]

The only way to really remedy this problem, besides adding more improvement options in the modern era, is to put in actual future techs. This would make the "modern" era seem like its part of the process rather than a waiting period that goes on in the backround at the games end while you dominate or build yer spaceship. Granted that these "guessed" future techs may look silly in the future, but we can get a good idea on how things will go scientifically in the future anyway. There's a good book on the subject by Michio Kaku called "Visions". The book has a lot of material and it would take a while to put something fairly plausible down as future techs, but that would enhance the game DRAMATICALLY for me.

 

[Dinorius R.]

I have to agree with all that's been said so far. Even with my pathetic game skills, I'm finding the end-game is beyond tedious. I see my comments as being in addition to - not instead of - the good ideas already mentioned.

Clubber's idea of giving the late game units an enhanced terraforming ability is good, it got me thinking about environmental stuff which is really a modern phenomenon.

Maybe the "greenification" of the planet could be a way to ameliorate or even reverse greenhouse warming, since more vegetation will be absorbing carbon dioxide. It could be cast as one of the "grand projects" similar in importance to building the spaceship. Maybe another way to win the game - a race to see which civ can accumulate the most "greenhouse credits" by converting deserts to grassland, grassland to forest or something along those lines.

Another thing that struck me was the fact that about half of most Civ worlds is essentially unused - I'm talking about the oceans. Maybe with the advent of technologies such as submarines, radar and a new one, sonar, civs could embark on another grand project; map the topology of the ocean depths. Some benefits could be to expand your empire by establishing underwater cities, finding a whole new set of strategic resources perhaps. Of course interesting new units/improvements for this realm would have to be added. Some stiff challenges for the graphics programmers to implement this idea. Maybe we get a 3-D map at last?

Finally, just something that came up in another thread. Since the game is supposedly about getting more and more civilized, perhaps in the modern era penalties should be introduced for "acts of inhumanity". This could include the razing of cities, mass murder of captured workers, whipping of ones population etc. Maybe it could coincide with the signing of the Geneva Convention (a new Wonder or small Wonder?). It might put a brake on rampant militarism in the late stages and would even affect despotic/fundamentalist/fascist governments - not sure that it would be too popular though.

mmm..rambling. Better stop now.

.

 

[DrJambo]

What i did to the tech tree to spice up the game:

1. Made Privateer 3/1
2. Made the Explorer unit into a hidden nationality unit 3/2/1 which appears with Invention
3. Swapped Robotics with Laser to make both the manufacturing plant and radar artillery purposeful
4. Put AEGIS into Rocketry
5. Put SS Life Support from Space Flight into Genetics to make it a purposeful advance
6. Put Smart Weapons where Satellites was and situated the nuclear missile there
7. Put Integrated Defence where Smart Weapons used to be and then Satellites at the end where Integrated Defence was
8. Placed SS Cockpit from Space Flight into Satellites

This makes all tech branches in the Modern Era necessary for creating the spaceship and also makes sure that improvements and units, on the whole, appear before the spaceship can be completed.