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Jastiger posted:The bolded part actually sounds awesome and I think would go a long way towards making Civ way more engaging and organic. Other games have done it successfully from Galactic Civ to Europa Universalis 4. I think Civ would do well to borrow those kinds of themes and incorporate them into their own games. Especially the barbarians like they had in 4, it adds another layer of depth rather than "ugh another trade route pillaged by an iron age unit in 1985". Yeah, barbarians were a lot better in 4 City states could be cool if they were like "minor-civs" instead of literally 1-city-states. And they could expand a bit too, and do a bit more, have more agency, more possible interactions. And could be vassalized or annexed peacefully, or turned into a kind of client state. And if they could eventually become major civs, then it would be really awesome. History is full of minor players becoming big ones and vice versa too. But I guess that's would be hard to implement right. Anyway, as they are in Civ 5, they are just an annyance IMHO
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May 30, 2016 16:23
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it would work better if everyone started at the same level, and some civs, early-to-midway through the game, gave up on territorial ambitions, and switched their AI into the "prison bitch mode" where they kingmake and sell out to the highest bidder sure, it means the need to be worth more alive than dead and land redistributed, which is fine, give them a disproportionate number of world congress votes, or bonus happiness, lots of small nations use this kind of thing as leverage against more powerful countries unfortunately, the devs shot themselves in the foot, because there's no way they can put together the leaderhead assets and va files for another 72 civs on a dime
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May 30, 2016 16:40
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MMM Whatchya Say posted:Barbs settling would be cool, but empires fracturing would be extremely irritating given that the game isn't simulation focused. I think, maybe civil war or revolution mechanics could be put in place, but permanent splits don't seem great to me. Why not? THat could be the penalty for other civs espionage, your happiness dropping super low for a long time, or you're culture being outshined by another civ. In Civ 4 civ flipping happened all the time, and thats essentially what is going on-the empire is fracturing.
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May 30, 2016 16:40
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Yeah but you were making it sound like a nation splitting into two states or something, or a colony gaining independence. Those are extremely not up civilization's alley.
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May 30, 2016 16:43
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A civ splitting in two is a thing that was super rare but could actually happen in Civ 1.
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May 30, 2016 17:03
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The game needs empire splitting. The end game gets really stagnant near the end when you're down to only three civs.
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May 30, 2016 17:09
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The hard bit would be making it fun or satisfying for the player who just spent three hours building a nice big empire and now has to contend with the possibility of it falling apart like a wet Yugoslavian newspaper. It would be such a setback that it would be near enough a lose condition. I think the only way to make it work is to put in some arbitrary rules that ensure that it happens only when (a) you're staggeringly incompetent, (b) you're given plenty of warning and do nothing about it, (c) you're miles ahead of everyone else and it's time for that rubberbanding to snap back and leave a giant red mark on your backside. I would love it though.
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May 30, 2016 17:14
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This dicussion reminds me of this video I discovered recently, which is a fun watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymI5Uv5cGU4
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May 30, 2016 17:23
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Yeah it WOULD essentially be a lose condition, thats the point. But I think it would be more fun to have the AI see this too so that way its not just you running out the clock on it. This is something I Think Galactic Civ did somewhat well. It sucked that it was TOTALLY random, but it being a situation for a losing civ to split up, have rebels appear, or otherwise completely throw a wrench in things makes the late game interesting. So you've been conquering civs and razing all their cities, eh? Well guess what this faction is tired of it and won't stand for it, do it again and you're looking at a revolt even if you have the best happiness. Boom another layer added and not too hard to implement.
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May 30, 2016 17:25
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It's not fun because Civ isn't a simulation game. You've got a goal, and try to get to that goal ASAP. As do the other civs. Even in Europa Universalis, getting bits of your land split off via rebellions is only tolerable because the claims/cores mechanic makes it easier to reclaim lost land than to conquer new land, so it isn't an endstate you can never recover from. It also happens frequently enough that it's just part of the game, with its ups and downs, and the player doesn't get frustrated because the endgoal isn't to hit X development or whatever, but to see how well you fare by 1821. Civilization is an entirely different beast. Losing one city is usually a serious setback to the point where it delays victory by years. The player is encouraged to keep climbing forever until they win; you can't rebounce easily from a setback. The way to make your country imploding or having a revolution fun is by making sure you don't end up in a permanently worse position, but that it's a setback. For example, you might play Rome and mismanage the itnernal aspect and whoop, four emperors are marching to Rome. This can be fun if the player, when all is said and done, ends up in a different but not inferior position were he not to have had this. Perhaps another dynasty name, another government form, other policies. A sidegrade from the Rome he would have kept if he hadn't let it implode. Or maybe, if none win, the player can regain his lost territory by having a coalition some time down the line and federalising later in the game, snapping "back" to his pre-civil war borders. The way to do this is to have the player catch up with this hypothetical perfect play by letting catching up be faster than the normal curve (e.g. rebuilding buildings or growing dead pops is a lot faster than teching up new buildings and pushing the pop barrier to the next tier) As it stands, if you lose a city or two in CiV, you may as well quit. You're never catching up. It's a good board game but it's not a good simulation of actual civilization, funnily enough.
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May 30, 2016 17:29
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I mean Civ 1 had all kinds of random and frequently detrimental events, but that stuff was quickly dropped from the series and never revisted so it's pretty clear it's not wanted.
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May 30, 2016 17:33
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I don't think it should be RANDOM, I think it should be based on your choices. Its strange to have a Freedom loving America that unilaterally invades other civs and burns all their cities to the ground, and yet have NO consequence other than already dickhead other civs hating on you more. There should be internal consequences or gameplay mechanics that force you to adjust your strategy. Vice Versa if your Mr Peaceful McPeacyton, the other civs should treat you differently than Atilla who is trying to kill everyone and you should get events that reflect that.
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May 30, 2016 17:41
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Yeah because the game being hard coded to make your life miserable if you dare to conquer anything in a Civilization game wasn't bad enough already in Civ 5. More seriously though, I don't think trying to be more like a Paradox game is a good direction for Civ to go.
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May 30, 2016 17:45
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The problem with empire splitting is that it would be very fun when it happens to the AI because it will make the end game less stagnant, but you can't have such a devastating effect only apply to the AI. The solution would be to somehow make it fun. Maybe when an empire splits, all other civs get to use culture or gold in order to bid to design it. You get to choose an existing civ not in the current game, and both of its agendas. Civs closer to the breakaway civ get a bonus to this amount. So when you split, you can pay to have your new neighbor be the Mongols with an agenda that makes him like you, or you can put Morocco next to you and make a new trading partner, or you can pay to put a highly aggressive civ in next to an enemy when their empire splits. Anyway, my main gripe with V is the end game, three civ slog. If the modding isn't some ludicrous puzzle like it was in the V, I'm going to try to find a way to put more civs in.
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May 30, 2016 17:56
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Well, no. But they could learn a thing or two (as the EU franchise could also borrow some elements from Civ) For instance, a big problem with Civ is exactly that once you fall behind enough, you may as well quit. Games could be more dynamic, loosing civs could have more opportunity to catch up, as winning ones could have also some chance of falling
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May 30, 2016 17:59
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The Human Crouton posted:Anyway, my main gripe with V is the end game, three civ slog. Especially since one of the three endgame civs is always Hiawatha.
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May 30, 2016 17:59
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Empire splitting could be done as a combination with vassalization / city flipping: as a civ gradually gets conquered, the cities in that civ become more likely to split off and join the closest neighboring civ for protection. After all, their original nation isn't able to protect them. Sort of a form of war weariness: cities don't like being on the losing side of conflict, so if there's a way to skip out on a war (short of surrendering), they may be inclined to take it. Gameplay-wise this would mean that if you're winning a war with a civ, then you may find that the city you had planned on taking is now the possession of another civ that you weren't at war with, which introduces interesting diplomatic wrinkles. In practice, the player is very unlikely to be on the "losing" side of this effect (losing their cities even as they're struggling to win a conflict) as most players don't stick out wars in which they lose significant amounts of cities.
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May 30, 2016 18:03
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Ehh the idea that it goes to a third party makes little sense on its face. Maybe only if they were influential to begin with. So you have to be invested to begin with. Still a unique idea.
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May 30, 2016 18:12
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Jastiger posted:The bolded part actually sounds awesome and I think would go a long way towards making Civ way more engaging and organic. Other games have done it successfully from Galactic Civ to Europa Universalis 4. I think Civ would do well to borrow those kinds of themes and incorporate them into their own games. Especially the barbarians like they had in 4, it adds another layer of depth rather than "ugh another trade route pillaged by an iron age unit in 1985". Yeah, it would be awesome if barbarians could capture a city and then become one of the other Civs that didn't make it into the campaign selection.
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May 30, 2016 18:17
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I'm all for making intracivilization conflict in the form of rebellions, civil wars or terrorist sects or something, but actually splitting goes against the nature of the game really. The way civ v does it with barbs appearing as rebels is ok, but seeing that expanded a bit more with the possibility of a city with low happiness splitting or nations vying for independence could be fun.
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May 30, 2016 18:21
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Jastiger posted:Ehh the idea that it goes to a third party makes little sense on its face. Maybe only if they were influential to begin with. So you have to be invested to begin with. Still a unique idea. Right, it'd be more likely to happen with border cities that are presumably more multicultural. Core cities that have little direct contact with other civs would be less likely to flip, and capitals would never flip.
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May 30, 2016 18:21
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I remember Civ III, maybe IV, could have entire cities flip if a neighbouring Civ had stronger culture. But players got a pop-up: "Do you want to lose this city?" Why would a human player ever pick "Sure!"? It was pretty unbalanced! I may be remembering wrong
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May 30, 2016 19:12
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I dont remember 3, but Im playing 4 lately and its exactly that. Mostly I got this popup after founding a new city near a bigger city that belonged to another civ. And I asked myself "why the gently caress would I choose to give this city to my rivals?" Unless that is some advantage Im missing, I dont know why even ask Elias_Maluco fucked around with this message at 19:26 on May 30, 2016 |
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May 30, 2016 19:23
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Elias_Maluco posted:I dont remember 3, but Im playing 4 lately and its exactly that. Usually by that point, the city barely has any workable tiles and may just be dead weight. Of course by that point you just declare war because America needs to get its loving rock and roll music out of your autocracy.
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May 30, 2016 19:29
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It wanst the case at all, when it happened to me. It was just freshly built cities that happened to be near the border of another civ. They had their reason to exist and enough workable tiles
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May 30, 2016 19:33
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Eric the Mauve posted:I mean Civ 1 had all kinds of random and frequently detrimental events, but that stuff was quickly dropped from the series and never revisted so it's pretty clear it's not wanted. Civ 4 had random events and I really miss them when I play 5. The Community Balance Patch has reportedly brought them back, so I need to give that another shot sometime.
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May 30, 2016 19:34
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Eric the Mauve posted:That's pretty much it, isn't it? In Civ 1-4 trade was everything because trade converted to science. In Civ 5 food is everything because food = population = science. Implement paradox-style "ahead of time" penalties and bonuses for neighbors having better tech
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May 30, 2016 19:49
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Stellaris has an ethics system, and ethics divergence for more far flung colonies. If you do a bunch of poo poo that conflicts with what the people want, they will create factions of their own and eventually split into a totally new empire with their own ethics, but the same racial bonuses. And that's alot more likely to happen the further the colony is from the core worlds. I had a super shithead fanatic evangelist empire south of me, and they eventually split into 3 nations over differences in war and slavery. I ended up bringing the two ceding nations into my federation and we turned our guns on the original fascist empire and wiped them out. Something like that might work, because Stellaris is totally NOT a sim, even tho it is Paradox. Sandwich Anarchist fucked around with this message at 22:00 on May 30, 2016 |
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May 30, 2016 21:45
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Elias_Maluco posted:I dont remember 3, but Im playing 4 lately and its exactly that. Because you get super happiness penalties and the city become a lot less productive. If you keep saying no long enough without fixing it, I'm pretty sure the city flips of its own accord anyways. What you're describing in Stellaris makes a lot of since in what I'm advocating above. That's really cool. Really wanna get that game.
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May 30, 2016 23:51
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I'd say stellaris's set up allows for that kind of thing more since you're customizing your start and you have more actual choices to make. The ethics system wouldn't make sense in a civ game. Even though stellaris isn't as much of a simulation as other doc games, it's more of a simulation than civ
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May 31, 2016 00:02
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Stellaris is the only Paradox game I've actually played, and it has outstanding internal politicking and fun narrative elements that are RNG based, but it is no Civ game. Civ should be Civ, it's a golden standard for the genre and shouldn't be hosed with. That's how other franchises died.
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May 31, 2016 00:26
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Really interesting discussion the last few pages. Empire splitting could work if there was some bonus attached to it, like in IV where the split-off cities formed a super-loyal vassal-- maybe a massive pile of culture to symbolise the changes sweeping your nation. Also, has there been any word yet on whether the ai in 6 is playing to win or playing to be an interesting opponent...?
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May 31, 2016 00:32
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Tree Bucket posted:Also, has there been any word yet on whether the ai in 6 is playing to win or playing to be an interesting opponent...? How would you define the difference?
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May 31, 2016 00:33
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Jay Rust posted:How would you define the difference? Playing to win: Goes for optimal strats, hates you if you're the leader, declares war when you're close to victory Playing to be interesting: Likes or hates you based on what you've done to help or hinder them, plays according to a personality, etc There's pitfalls in both directions. Basically, the first one can be really irritating and the second one can be disappointingly easy. I think I prefer the second, at least when it comes to diplomacy.
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May 31, 2016 00:45
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Jay Rust posted:How would you define the difference? It's more a question of playing to win vs. playing to be an approximation of a historical civilization. In other words, is the AI pretending to be human or not? The Civ4 AI explicitly did not have the same goals that the player did and would make dumb decisions (like declaring wars they could clearly never win) if their leader's personality dictated it so. The Civ5 AI explicitly did try to win, but was loving terrible at it and could only ever stumble into victory in most cases. And still made dumb decisions all the time but didn't have the excuse the Civ4 AI did. Playing-to-win also means that diplomacy with the Civ5 AI was impossible, because the AI always hated you and wanted to see you suffer. Whereas in Civ4, when an AI offered to make a Declaration of Friendship with you, you knew it actually meant something. Civ4 politics generally stabilized into 2-3 power blocs where everyone in the bloc liked each other and hated everyone outside of it, while Civ5 politics is this stupid crab bucket thing where anyone who's apparently doing too well gets yanked down by everyone else.
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May 31, 2016 00:49
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Serephina posted:Stellaris is the only Paradox game I've actually played, and it has outstanding internal politicking and fun narrative elements that are RNG based, but it is no Civ game. Civ should be Civ, it's a golden standard for the genre and shouldn't be hosed with. That's how other franchises died. I don't recall in depth religion systems, corporations, advanced culture mechanics, cultural city flipping, or city states in Civ 1. Developing new mechanics and applying them to a tried and tested formula is what the series has always done.
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May 31, 2016 00:51
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I've often thought that goals for individual eras could make Civilization more interesting, because instead of beginning in the Ancient Era with a goal of building a spaceship, you could be trying to "win" by, say, being the first person to enter a Golden Age. And there would be subsequent win conditions for each era that contribute to a sort of victory score.
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May 31, 2016 01:21
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Chamale posted:I've often thought that goals for individual eras could make Civilization more interesting, because instead of beginning in the Ancient Era with a goal of building a spaceship, you could be trying to "win" by, say, being the first person to enter a Golden Age. And there would be subsequent win conditions for each era that contribute to a sort of victory score. That's interesting idea. Cavemen didn't know what a spaceship even was afterall.
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May 31, 2016 01:29
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The spaceship is just one of several ways of saying "this civilization has achieved dominance". You can conquer everyone, or just get everyone addicted to your culture, or get everyone to peacefully agree you should be in charge, or you can just say "gently caress all you losers, I'm making my own planet". All four are pretty clear-cut ways to say that you're the Best Civilization in some sense. In other words, the spaceship isn't your goal in 4000 BC, it's just the culmination of your actual goal, which was to be the most advanced civilization in the world.
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May 31, 2016 01:32
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MMM Whatchya Say posted:Playing to win: Goes for optimal strats, hates you if you're the leader, declares war when you're close to victory Really, this is a dichotomy that extends to the whole game, not just the AI. When a player is playing to win, they're going to optimize everything they can to win as fast as possible, and that means a lot of "end-game" stuff just isn't going to even matter. If you put all the cool mechanical interactions in the modern age, but the game is over before you get there, what was the point? To this kind of play, stuff like empires splitting is bullshit, because it's stripping away the player's progress. On the other hand, people DO like seeing all the content in the game, and playing into the modern age, and having a cool experience. If people just wanted a pure wargame, they wouldn't be playing Civ. So the hard part is balancing these two contradictory design goals. There's probably no such thing as a perfect way to do it, but as a designer you have to try.
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May 31, 2016 01:37
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