Didn't work in Civ 4.

 

 

Civ4 had upkeep and maintenance costs, and corruption in Civ3.  Both help somewhat keep city acquisitions down.  But whatever the solution is, it should be fun and risky, rather than calculated.  Maybe instead of upkeep costs, there is an increased chance of desertions/revolutions/pretender kings as the player increases the number of cities and increases army size?

 

But yeah, what brenavi said.  There's supposed to be widely different specializations so steamroller armies may have a very different counter.

The counter to the steamroller is probably the desperation game-breaking spells.

 

One thing I'd like to see to balance things out- tech diffusion.

 

Instead of tech trading, have it where techs automatically transfer between neighbors based on a number of factors

-open borders (closed borders for trading would drastically reduce the odds of this happening)

-size of empire (smaller empires would gain effect quicker)

-bordering neighboring cultures (both independents, if they research, and other civs would count, but seperately)

-civics (more open the civic, more likely to receive learning of new tech

-whether the tech is one you can research now or not,  (If you can more likely to get it)

-war (increases the odds of tech diffusion)

 

In fact, I would not have tech trading outside of this system.  Too many imbalances and exploits, and it's sorta illogical.

You could spy to gain a tech though.

think about it.  In any game today, if there was a big I-win button, even if it took 10 turns to push, the game would be considered unbalanced.  And it is, you have a 10-turn time frame to take the capital or you lose.  Now you can have a fun game of it, but its not 'balanced' by the strategy game community's opinion.

 

I don’t think the developers will go for this. They are making this game 64-bit native to enable very large map sizes and what good are very large map sizes if you can only have 11 cities from which you gain income. Even if you scale this idea with the size of the map it strikes me as an arbitrary game mechanism. The existing mechanism for city foundation where by the sovereign must impart his essence to the land is a superior method b/c you don’t want a monarch that is feeble yet you will need some cities.

Another idea is to keep track of "nationalities" of conquered peoples and if those cities have insufficient garrisons there would be a chance every turn every that those cities could revolt. This could be even more likely when the owning fraction is at war. Naturally the nationality of a city will slowly change to that of the owning nation if is originating nation is no longer in existences. This would make it much more difficult for an empire to expand b/c every time it does so it will need to put out revolts on its boarder.

 

Yet,if you read what I quoted, just because you're going for the "game-breaking" end of game spell, does not mean you'll win, because that third guy over there might be within walking distance of finishing the "questing" victory condition.

Quote please, or you going to make me work for it?        

Perzactly.

I would say it is the complement : the steamroller effect is problematic when it kicked too far from the end.

As Cuddlelump said, the steamroller effect is necessary to make the game end. So the issue is when victory is assured, but you still need to play half of the game to get the "Victory is your" screen. That's the boring part of any TBS.

I mention this because most proposal to attenuate the steamroller effect (like supply, or big empire penalties) would do nothing but exacerbate the length of the mop-up phase. Instead, ways to make the game end sooner should be devised, like the surrenders and cultural victories of GalCiv2. One way I could think of would be to make the AIs take increasingly large risks when pushed to the wall, like sending their channellers on the front line. So the dominant player would have to deal with the last breath assault of the remaining (hostile) AIs, which would be challenging and would allow him to finish off them quickly (instead of having to do long siege on all the AIs capitals).

I like this. I've never played a 4X game where the AI would become appropriately desperate. I've played games where some AI personalities tend to take more risks than others, but it's hardly ever contextual. When an AI (of sufficient difficulty, maybe even personality) decides that its chances of victory are rapidly vanishing into nothing, it should act in desperation. It could decide to mount a final, desperate attack, it could try desperately to build an alliance with anyone who will listen, or even surrender to a stronger civilization to combine forces against you.

Also, if you're the reigning power in the region and you have bad relations with a lot of smaller civilizations, I'd love to see them get passed their own differences with each other and team up against you; and actually coordinate. One thing that AIs are notoriously bad at are coordinating with each other. When an alliance is formed, maybe it can create sort of a 'parent' AI that works to coordinate goals and efforts. If two civs are in an alliance and fighting the same enemy, that 'parent' AI could kick in and act is a sort of liason between them.

 

I think the important thing is that the AI avoid predictability. If you know that there is a final wave coming when the AI gets desperate, again you will just be prepared for it. The truly important thing, in this regard, is that there are several AI personalities at least that will respond differently, and it need to beprocedural enough that you will not be able to deduce the personality type you are playing and always be able to react accordingly. You need to have a rusher personality that may switch to being a turtle (not just randomly but under the right conditions) The work they are doing on the AI to make it indistinguishable from human is promising.

I also like the idea that you really are not going to ever feel that you have reached the steamroller phase, because even when you have a channeller down to a small army and a few cities, you still won't know exactly what you are facing until you face it. Maybe he has been building incredibly powerful units that will mow thru your armies. Maybe he has one very powerful unit and 50 units made to look identical to that unit to give the appearance of strength. or vice versa.

Good post, good idea. Have some "outside force" disrupt excessive turtling (but not too much please, i like turtling )

As nathaniel richter already said: the topic starters idea probably does not jive with the extreme scalability the devs have in mind. It would be very hard to implement it properly that way and also feel "rigid" and "meta-game"

Perhaps a good idea to keep in-line with the background story: In the last cataclysm lots and lots of energy got stored up and then went boom, basically. So take the permisse that our channelers are not quite as good as "the old ones" were. Any excessive turtling would probably at one point involve hure stockpiling of mana supplies or putting into ever increasingly powerfull magic items.

Back to the premisse: our "new" channelers at one point start to lose control over that much power. You get "random" blowouts, the chance of which increases as the excess gets greater. So at one point you have to start letting it out and doing something usefull with it or suffer the consequences (and I do believe that there are legion effects one can think of to get to that point: to much magic attracts demons/dragons, flareouts destroy terrain, flareouts "burn out" caster units who are even less in control then your channeler, magic items might get overloaded and go boom or BOOOM, magic frenzy might hit and turn a numer of troops in a certain location against you, fighting for independence).

Basically all this allows for a certain amount of powerhording but doing it too much will cause you damage. You might even make it have effect on other players realms (but less so) as to encourage them to find ways to get you to expend some energy (not wait untill you blow up).

It might even be used as a tactic in an MP game - See other thread: debalancing death effects - Faced with (near) certain defeat a channeler might start hording power to produce a new cataclysm. If I cant win - we all lose kinda thing. Other channelers would be forced to attack him/her to prevent that from happening (after all: they still have a chance of winning) (and pushed to that - not only by end defeat but because once the hoard gets large enough its start to create random effects in their backyard too). This would force other channelers to attack the "hoarder" under unfavourable circumstances - his terrain/his domain on his defensive positions. If the hoarder gets lucky it might even be he inflict sufficeint damage so he becomes a viable force for a while longer.

This would prevent the need for something artificial like a  "counter". The increasing occurance of "blowouts" should be indication enough and I'm sure channelers spy on eachother - it would be rather hard to keep a major blowout hidden.

Depending on which way you choose to develop you might be able to harness more or less power but always within limits

edit: i agree with above posters: AI last ditch efforts I have rarely (never?) seen done well. Either the AI is a risktaker or its not - Switching back and forth (recovering from last ditch if it happened to turn out well) is - I think- not at all easy to program. So many variables.

Not if you link the 'threshold' to an improvable skill or ability. Something like that would seem roughly analgous to the Logistics ability in GC2. Everyone has a base, some civs start with a small bonus, you can research to improve, and random map prizes (anomalies) can give small boosts that can add up substantially over time.

This Armageddon Counter on the other hand, I don't like at all (among other things, it sounds like a plan to Bring On the Steamroller ASAP). But then I also resent the faster-is-better attitude that's hard coded into GC2's scoring system. No small part of that taste I developed is because with the GC2 AIs, you can actually see a remarkable variation in how a given map unfolds, *if* you give enough time for the AIs to develop some strength and complexity before all hell breaks loose and most folks devote most resources to war. To paraphrase the immortal Chauncy Gardner, "Sometimes, I like to watch."

Same here.

I've yet to play FfH2, but the Armageddon Counter is a nifty idea (not to say that it would be appropriate in other 4X's). My mid- to late-game Civ strategy typically involves turtling and going for the tech victory. At that point in the game, I don't feel like managing massive military campaigns and plowing through heavily-defended nations. For me, creating defenses and focusing on research is simply easier. Call it an aversion to a lengthy steamroller process. Whether I would positively respond to a game mechanic that forced me away from turtling has yet to be seen, but I plan on trying out FfH2 soon enough. (If Civ IV's lead dev is interviewing them, it must be good.)



Say amen somebody! Some of my friends and I were discussing how 4X games emphasize victory conditions at the expense of promoting mere survival. Players should certainly have a way to "win" or end up on top, but many of us just want to carve out a small piece of the map and survive through the ages as a minor civ.