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One of the main problems of a lot of strategy games is "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" effect. Basically, if you're behind you tend to fall farther behind and if you're ahead its easy to continually wider your lead. This is especially true in the Civ series since if you have more land, you have more cities, which gives you more production, which gives you more science, which gives you better military which you can use to take away even more land from people etc. etc. etc.
In addition, even if different Civs grow at the same rate, the big civs get farther and farther ahead, since double a big number is a lot more than double a small number. I remember when I looked at all Civ 2 powergraphs, unless I hurt some other Civs you would almost never have all that much change in the relative power of AI civs.
Civ powergraphs should have lines zig-zagging all over the place, representing the rise and fall of powers, but to do this the lesser powers need a bit of a leg up when they're trying to catch up.
Some ideas (which would probably be pretty easly to implement or mod in) to deal with this:
-Get rid of any kind of bonus for being in the lead (free tech for getting philosophy first of whatever), if you're in the lead you don't need bonuses.
-Having people gang up on whoever's ahead is one of the traditional ways of doing this, however if it goes to far it can be a bit of a blunt instrument and on the other hand it can just make the richest civ have to spend a little of their big pile of cash to keep the little Civs happy. Maybe in addition to having people hate the big dog you could have the little Civs be less willing to bleed each others dry and more likely to ally with each other.
-The existing Civ 4 religion model seems to do this well. If you get way ahead in tech a lot of Holy Cities will pop up in your empire, I'm sure that having one of them would be good but having five would be a nightmare, due to making the religion of your empire very mixed and having just about everyone trying taking a bite out of your Civ to get their religion's holy city.
-Have tech tend to leak from high-tech to low tech Civs and have it be very hard to research tech if you're ahead of the curve and very easy if you're behind the curve (EU II has this, which CK having a provinced based version of this). Having conquerers get tech would be bad since that makes the people who can win wars and take cities get even stronger.
-Corruption keeps sprawling empires from getting too powerful, but the way it was set up in Civ III it was a bit of a blunt implement, (at least in the patches I played on, I'd get such insane corruption that it made conquering new cities worth and useless) especially if you like playing on big maps like I do. I hope that there's an intelligent implementation of something that serves the same purpose as corruption in Civ IV.
-The idea on another thread in this forum to make Civs tend to have civil wars when they change civics, especially if they're really big would be an amazing idea, both for game balance and historical accuracy. This would not only knock some sprawling empires down to size but make them have more of an incentive to hold onto outmoded government forms than smaller Civs, which would tend to make the big Civs conservative and inflexible (since they'd hesitate before changing their civics) which would be beautifully realistic.
-Possibly have it cost more to build additional wonders if you already have more wonders than average.
-Possibly Golden Ages could be set up in such a way as to give people who're in the back of the pack a boost.
-Maybe some kind of Vietnam-effect, in which when a rich country is fighting a poorer country (irregardless of civic type) the richer country gets war exhaustion faster.
-Perhaps very rich countries should pay a higher cost to build certain buildings and units (to represent higher labor costs etc.). For example is cheaper for China to pay for a million infantrymen than it is for the US, the "hordes of screaming teenages with AK-47s" should be a viable option.
-Land exhaustion. Maybe if an area is farmed too intensively for too many thousands of years it starts giving out...
-Make it easy to conquer but hard to hang onto new territory (some of this is already in, like having high culture up your defences which makes it hard to hold onto newly conquered cities). Ebb and flow is good.
-Anything else?
In addition, even if different Civs grow at the same rate, the big civs get farther and farther ahead, since double a big number is a lot more than double a small number. I remember when I looked at all Civ 2 powergraphs, unless I hurt some other Civs you would almost never have all that much change in the relative power of AI civs.
Civ powergraphs should have lines zig-zagging all over the place, representing the rise and fall of powers, but to do this the lesser powers need a bit of a leg up when they're trying to catch up.
Some ideas (which would probably be pretty easly to implement or mod in) to deal with this:
-Get rid of any kind of bonus for being in the lead (free tech for getting philosophy first of whatever), if you're in the lead you don't need bonuses.
-Having people gang up on whoever's ahead is one of the traditional ways of doing this, however if it goes to far it can be a bit of a blunt instrument and on the other hand it can just make the richest civ have to spend a little of their big pile of cash to keep the little Civs happy. Maybe in addition to having people hate the big dog you could have the little Civs be less willing to bleed each others dry and more likely to ally with each other.
-The existing Civ 4 religion model seems to do this well. If you get way ahead in tech a lot of Holy Cities will pop up in your empire, I'm sure that having one of them would be good but having five would be a nightmare, due to making the religion of your empire very mixed and having just about everyone trying taking a bite out of your Civ to get their religion's holy city.
-Have tech tend to leak from high-tech to low tech Civs and have it be very hard to research tech if you're ahead of the curve and very easy if you're behind the curve (EU II has this, which CK having a provinced based version of this). Having conquerers get tech would be bad since that makes the people who can win wars and take cities get even stronger.
-Corruption keeps sprawling empires from getting too powerful, but the way it was set up in Civ III it was a bit of a blunt implement, (at least in the patches I played on, I'd get such insane corruption that it made conquering new cities worth and useless) especially if you like playing on big maps like I do. I hope that there's an intelligent implementation of something that serves the same purpose as corruption in Civ IV.
-The idea on another thread in this forum to make Civs tend to have civil wars when they change civics, especially if they're really big would be an amazing idea, both for game balance and historical accuracy. This would not only knock some sprawling empires down to size but make them have more of an incentive to hold onto outmoded government forms than smaller Civs, which would tend to make the big Civs conservative and inflexible (since they'd hesitate before changing their civics) which would be beautifully realistic.
-Possibly have it cost more to build additional wonders if you already have more wonders than average.
-Possibly Golden Ages could be set up in such a way as to give people who're in the back of the pack a boost.
-Maybe some kind of Vietnam-effect, in which when a rich country is fighting a poorer country (irregardless of civic type) the richer country gets war exhaustion faster.
-Perhaps very rich countries should pay a higher cost to build certain buildings and units (to represent higher labor costs etc.). For example is cheaper for China to pay for a million infantrymen than it is for the US, the "hordes of screaming teenages with AK-47s" should be a viable option.
-Land exhaustion. Maybe if an area is farmed too intensively for too many thousands of years it starts giving out...
-Make it easy to conquer but hard to hang onto new territory (some of this is already in, like having high culture up your defences which makes it hard to hold onto newly conquered cities). Ebb and flow is good.
-Anything else?
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