Points is stupid to use to measure victory.

However we could make it like in Galciv 2 Random 'Epic' events can switch the tide as in lets say.

Your losing to an huge and powerful kingdom of men which is good. You are a death mage or at least have talent in dark magic and are an empire. In response a new spell/tech opens up to begin utilizing Disease/viral warfare to infect armies and cities causing people to wither and die from a plague your people are immune to or you have a magical cure to so that at GREAT cost of lives and magical power you can greatly destabalize the enemy and give everyone else a chance to attack.

Or your an earth mage and your people are industrious and your losing a war so you commit all of your efforts to say discovering a new way to fight or a new invention and your people design golems Which either A cost essence to create living golems that are powerful or B if your of a darker morality golems made with the souls of the dead *People you kill and forge their flesh or bone or ashes into the golem during creation* which gives you a stronger army at great cost which allows you to have a chance to push the enemy back.

Those are simply examples but they showcase how in reality whenever a civilization is pushed to a limit they often times develop ways out of it. Necessity being the mother of invention afterall.

Well No i meant as in something YOU have your people find a NEW use for to make an ultra weapon or something similar to destabalise the enemy.

Example.

Your people have a large amount of copper and iron but your enemy is defeating your armies because you simply cannot match his quality of soldiers.

Your people mix the two and create folded steel while sure others have steel you have Folded steel which allows you to choose 3 new armor and weapon times *for diff types of items* as in 2 folds 20 folds 200 folds.

Which increases strength by 2x 4x and 8x respectively of those items making super troops.

Got it?

Lol

Well its like if you had native plants that were aggressive and your a nature/earth/water or whatever mage you could grow Carnivourious plants on tiles as a natural barrier that would kill soldiers trying to pass through *or they'd have to fight a battle to get past*

Just examples.

Well the option i described is pretty similar to galciv's rare 'Mega' events which could shift the balance of the game i'm not saying they should happen every game or often at all I'm just saying a chance would be awesome then it'd be like a book or movie in that at the last minute good or evil or your side or their side pulls out a bluff card.

Well a mix of mega events and diplomacy should be possible...

I just like mega events they were a great part of galciv and they made some of the end game suddenly more difficult.

I agree that late game can become tedious, but i don't think "game breaking events" would be a proper solution. I think anything that can suddenly, and out of pure luck, turn the tide of a game has nothing to do in a strategy game.

I'm no hardcore chess player that can't live with some randomness, but i hate events that suddenly ruin a game with nothing you can do about them. Events can exist in a strategy game, but they should only have small to moderate impact on the game, and certainly not turn the tide of a battle.

I would much prefer have some diplomacy coding so that dominated AIs would gang up on the leading player, propose alliances with dominated human players, and things like this. It would be a much more intelligent way to make the end game challenging from my point of view. As for human only multi games, well, if dominated players are not clever enough to form alliances by themselves, there is sadly nothing to do At least, nations of giving up players would probably become AI controlled, and that AI could thereafter form alliances. Civ4 had something working this way as a heavily beaten AI would often ask another AI (or human player) his protection, thus becoming a vassal state. Unfortunately, it often occured when they were so heavily beaten that they would be soon wiped out, and somtimes their protector was on another continent. It doesn't mean the idea was bad.

On the other hand, if you manage to be the leading nation and have so many friends that dominated AIs couldn't find allys, you would surely be in position to claim some diplomatic victory. Wiping out every other nation is not the only way to win. Often late games become boring because games lack some diplomatic victory where several players could share a victory if the world is at peace or their rivals are largely dominated. Who said there can only be one at the end (no sovereign has such a name as Mac Laod right?).

I think intelligent and multiple victory conditions, combined with intelligent diplomacy can be the "creative" solution to the end game issue, at least in single player games. For human only games, unfortunately, only the dominated players can decide to gang up against the leading player.

If game breaking events are included please make them an option.

How is luck unrealistic?  Shit happens, it's a fact.  Let's say you and I are the leaders of Empires, and we're at war, and you're whuppin' me.  Suddenly, every coastal city you are in control of gets hit by a massive Tidal Wave, effectively cutting off all benefits from those cities.  Now, you're still ahead, but I've got a chance to level the playing field somehow, either via Military, Diplomacy, or Economy booming.

The idea was never that there would be 'Game-Breaking events.'  Game-Breaking, by definition isn't fun, and is only fun for those it serves the first few times.  After that, it gets old.  However, giving BOTH/ALL players a sudden reason to scramble around trying to repair their kingdom/destroy their enemy/fix their economy/etc is never bad.  And giving players a reason to be frantic in a TBS is something that is generally just not very well done or not present at all.  I know even when I was losing a game of Civ, I never felt frantic...  I was just losing, and I knew it, and I knew I couldn't really do anything to stop it.  I either had to rely on my allies, accept defeat, or quit.

In conclusion, these events would be 'Game-Re-balancers,' not 'Game-Breakers.'

Well, as i said, it's my point of view and everyone doesn't have to agree Also, i never told it was unrealistic, i just told i don't like random events that could play too big a role.

Well, at least with events, it's easy to include a checkbox and everyone will be happy, however i would rather have other ways to make the end game more interesting.

However, due to the very nature of random events, i can't imagine an event could be a "game-re-balancer" sometimes, and not be a "game-breaker" other times. It will depend on when it happens, and what's the situation. Imagine in the situation you described, your last remaining cities are large and prosper coastal cities. You are being beaten badly but everything isn't lost already cause your last cities are still powerful and you can try to be diplomatic and gain allies, than all of a sudden, you rather than me are hit by this massive Tidal Wave ...

Same event, different situation, and suddenly your game rebalancing event becomes a game breaker.

Well, to be honest, i never played GalCiv2 (no multiplayer ) so i can't talk about those in particular, but way too often i've seen events that can really break the game completely for someone, either because they occur too early, or they hit a player already in a bad situation.

Also, it's easier to include such big events in a single player only games than in a multiplayer. In Single if an event really puts you in an awfull situation, you can simply quit and start a new game.

On the other hand, even thought i don't think point are stupid per se, i don't think they would fit into this kind of game. I prefer more "real" victories too.

In some of my Nwn Modules I have had script that Creates random Deity(god) acts sometimes good sometimes bad but most of the times they the Gods interfere at the worst/or best time like right when you think you are on your last hit point before you loose when suddenly an army of celestial creatures join your cause and turn the tide around or heal you or you are about to go storm the opponents strong hold when all of the sudden all of your troops become ill and either do not preform well or simply die etc. As long as the players can't predict (cheat) as to when and what this act will be if ever it always keeps the game interesting to the very end.