Improved Poll: When should Civilization IV end?

[Roman]

Ok, I am trying to create a better poll of when the game should end. Take your pick from the following options (all are AD of course ):

Before 2000
2000
2004
2005
2010
2015
2020
2025
2030
2040
2050
2100
2150
2200
2300
2500
3000
After 3000

[Optimizer]

Maybe there should be a banana option?

If the Alpha Centauri victory remains in Civ 4, the timeline should end no later than 2050. (Any ideas of manned interstellar missions before that year are just too optimistic.)

I also think that it should end in 2100 or earlier, because a true Civ should, in my opinion, consist of technology, scientific discoveries and social concepts familiar to mankind today.

So - the end year should be somewhere between 2050 or 2100, possible earlier at higher difficulty levels. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

One open question is whether there should be some better explanation to the game ending than the self-ironical "Alexander retires after 6000 years of government". Shall the ending date be illustrated by the second coming of Christ, transcendence, an alien invasion or an incoming meteor? The risk is that an alternative gets even sillier, without the irony.

What do you think?

[Abdul Alhazred]

Yes my sir ! this classic explanation of Civ 3 is too frustrating

[MrBaggins]

I demand a poll with yearly increments.



You really don't get how to construct polls eh?

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Optimizer
So - the end year should be somewhere between 2050 or 2100, possible earlier at higher difficulty levels. If it ain't broken, don't fix it.

2075 wasn't an option for you!! We must demand a new poll!!!

I voted for 2050, naturally.

Shall the ending date be illustrated by the second coming of Christ, transcendence, an alien invasion or an incoming meteor?

Please... none of these. For so many reasons.

[Shogun Gunner]

2050. It's a nice round number, just far enough into the future that we seem to have a reasonable idea what to expect.

[aahz_capone]

I agree with the 2100 date. 2050 is just to close to my life. It would give enough time to have a real internet/sateliite-canon/bio-chemical war and then rebuild from the disastor before the end.

[vmxa1]

Lets go back to the Civ II year of 2020. You can change the rate of eras togive it more or less turns. I find 540 turns more than enough for me.

[asleepathewheel]

2050

[Trifna]

I think it's not only about a specific year, it is in great part a deal of "which technologies are out". If the civilizations from the past had all diminished their R&D section, we could still be with the 19th century technology right now and we wouldn't have reached what we presently know of technological/social/else development which forms "history".

So I want my banana!

[Fosse]

Trifna makes a good point, but in Civ it seems that they pick an ending date, come up with the appropriate techs, and then "balance" the game such that we have "2050" level tech in 1400 AD.

But since that's a whole different can of worms...

[Trifna]

Maybe the game would be more fun and coherent if the tech wasn't balanced "low grade" and make it easy to have nuclear in 1800. Past leaders didn't got nuclear easily from Middle Ages, so why would an unexperience PLAYER get it easily around 1800?!

Maybe it should be balanced so that bad players would be in late compared to our real world 8) I could understand that good player would have techs earlier or around the same periods though, depending on their play style and how all the civs play (very R&D-oriented or less).

[Plotinus]

2050 makes the most sense to me. Near enough to avoid turning it into science fiction, but far enough to imagine a manned mission to Alpha Centauri. Yes, I know that really there is no way on earth such a thing is going to happen by then in real life, but it's better than having it in 2000. Perhaps 2050 is far enough to imagine the kind of technologies that would be necessary for such a mission - shall we put it like that?

[lajzar]

Am I the only one who found teh whoel idea of a manned alpha centauri mission completley ridiculous? Any serious attempt to calculate teh fuel requirements would prove we either need a generatioon ship takings hundreds of years, or science fantasy technology.

I think that victory condition should be replaced with a Mars colony ship. Alpha Centauri would be more appropriate for a game ending in 2500, not 2050.

[Plotinus]

[lajzar] That's a very good idea! That would make much more sense.