Rising from the Ashes

[lomendil]

Great game. But I want to ask about something I wish could be improved.

Let's say I want to have an interesting single-player game. So I choose the difficulty where I have a chance to win, but it's gonna be extremely tough (Monarch in my case).

At first, it's all very exciting, as I make many hard decisions and have to react to numerous surprises. However, at some point, a clear leader emerges. Me, or some AI civ, is so far ahead that it is almost guaranteed to win. This tends to happens early, often long before the Industrial Age.

From that point on, the game, for me personally, quickly degenerates into boredom. If I am the leader, I just need to avoid falling asleep. Sure, there might still be a couple interesting choices to make, but they would be overwhelmed by thousands of mindless mouseclicks, where I know exactly what needs to be done, and there’s zero creativity or thought required.

If I am not the leader, I am pretty much guaranteed to lose. I then choose a secondary goal, like stay alive the longest, or kill my worst enemy before the game finishes. Sometimes, it’s quite interesting, but it doesn’t come close to the depth or the fun of normal gameplay (where I still battle for the ultimate victory). Of course, it’s not surprising, since the game isn’t designed to be played this way.

Of course, I’d much rather be playing a close game all the way to the end. But I have no idea how to mod or evolve Civ IV to achieve this.

In many sports games, there are ways to give the losing side a chance to win.

In tennis, suppose you play "first to three sets wins". You can be down 0-2 on sets, and still win the match if you find an opponent’s weakness, or simply get lucky. Of course, you are at a disadvantage, but not hopelessly so. In fact, you might even have a strategy of wearing out your opponent at the cost of losing the first set.

By contrast, in Civ, once you are noticeably behind, it’s almost impossible to catch up. The leader is rewarded with stronger units, more types of buildings, access to new resources and wonders, etc.

Wouldn’t it be more fun if your civilization, crippled in 1500 BC, could rise from the ashes and become a meaningful contender again in AD 1500? Of course, this would encourage everyone to finish off their enemies; so the game would need to be designed so that it’s virtually impossible to kill a civ completely (e.g., by giving enormous defensive boost to cities close to the capital).

Such design would have many other benefits. For instance, when most AI civs have a chance to win all the way to the end, the end game diplomacy is a lot more meaningful and fun (everyone has a clear self-interest, and you are trying to exploit it).

Of course, it’s easier said than done. It’s not clear what interesting strategy can be made available to someone left with just a handful of cities and little territory. Maybe something to do with stealing or developing technologies that allow very efficient economy, which requires little territory and population. Obviously, these are just some random thoughts, not serious suggestions.

I would love to hear what you all think about this.

[baboon]

I'm always restarting when I'm not going to win.

When I'm winning, I'm pretty often also restarting because I want to do it better. For example, I'm doing Prince games now, I can win anytime with Space Race but I want at least a Domination victory. If it doesn't look like I'm going to get there anytime soon (I'm not going to spend a whole week laying siege on heavily guarded enemy areas, I want to crush them), I restart.

Once I even restarted because I didn't feel like I made the right decisions regarding National Wonders and city specialization.

The good part about this is that I'm slowly getting better at it

[Cort Haus]

Check-mate can happen in any strategy game, and there can come a point where the outcome is inevitable. If you're ahead too easily too often then notch up the difficulty level or play a different approach or victory aim.

As for being behind, the more experienced and imaginative the player, the more chance they have of digging themselves out of the hole. This has always been true for Civ games, and the following thread was inspirational for Civ 3-ers learning to play catch-up.

So Very Cold

[dschur]

Being far behind is also a good way to try stuff you never considered. I think I discovered how effective low-tech pillagers could be when far behind a neighbor once...if I remember correctly I still lost, but the lesson applied to all future games.

There are certainly points of no return, but it is interesting to discover sometimes that things were neither as good, nor as bad as you thought.

[Hypatian]

Ending the game early because of a foregone conclusion (guaranteed win, guaranteed loss) isn't an unreasonable thing to do.

On the other hand: remember that you shouldn't do this when the conclusion is still in doubt. For example, don't stop playing when you're losing until you're *really really* sure that you've no chance. And even then, go a bit longer. Otherwise, you're not really reaching to your full abilities.

[Bluefusion]

I completely agree with the boredom problem.

In the game I'm currently playing, it's Noble, small continent map, with 9 AIs.

I'm #1 by a mere 50 points, with Mansa Musa right behind me. I'm Alexander the Great, and I've destroyed two civs (I bullied 'em until they were so far behind I was better off taking 'em over).

The problem: Mansa Musa is on his own continent by himself. I've been trying to build a massive army for some D-Dayish invasion, but he can produce military faster than I can. So now I"m at a virtual stalemate. Since he's on his own island, he's been able to produce a lot of culture, and he's actually ahead of me scientifically, so there's no other way to beat him other than war. (I also disabled space race for this game)

Currently I'm warring with another civ who's way behind so I can get free promotions (using modern armor vs mustketmen is fun!)

[Googlie]

In SMAC, to alleviate the "winning boredom" problem, we've evolved a "revolving faction" game - when you've played 100 turns or so, and are clearly ahead, then open the scenario editor, and change faction control to the weakest one.

Build up that one, and usually after another 50 to 75 turns, that's either the strongest or challenging your first one as strongest.

repeat the process.

you are now playing the weakest faction agaisnt 2 pretty well developed AI factions (that you in fact mostly built)

Gets to be a really interesting endgame, with victory certainly not assured as you build your 3rd or 4th faction from a useless position

I haven't tried this in Civ4, so don't know if it would work

[xxFlukexx]

Form what I experience the checkmate comes very far into the late game, like if I see he has built all but one spaecship part, it's checkmate but beyond that I always have a chance to win. I've defeated AIs on Monarch with 30% and 40% more points than me, it's definetly possible and doable. If you play on continents and not many AIs, yeah then the game is going to come out that way, whoever gets the best continent wins. Civ AI has always been broken on continent maps.

When I'm ahead in points sometimes I still have to smack up the 2nd position in points either by bribing him into war or attacking him for awhile, the AI on Monarch catches up pointwise very fast. The AI also does this nitro science kick at the end game so I wouldnt assume you win if there is an AI out there with lots of territory/tech/cottages but not as much points as you.

Game is usually concluded by the middle of the space race, but I have won many games in Industrial/renaissance/modern eras, I don't think it's over by then at all, unless you play with weird settings.

[Quillan]

I've managed to lose a couple of games in Civ 4 that I thought were in the bag, so even when it looks boring, I don't let myself slack off.

And BlueFusion, in your situation, I think I'd recommend in inital wave of gunships against Mansa. I learned in a recent game that gunships can take a full move coming off transports, so you can spread out and pillage a hell of a lot of his territory on the initial turn.

[Artuero]

That's interesting. I pretty much play every game all the way through, though playing on huge maps at epic settings I haven't gotten all that many games done with anyway. But I don't mind playing to the end and losing (haven't gotten wiped out yet but did not finish first in score once and lost the space race once). Maybe it is just too early for me to get bored with it yet, but even losing can be fun.

[Calvin Vu]

That's a good point. I notice some of that too even though I have no problems with re-starting and having a new game just for fun without playing to completion.

But, to address the issue, I think the game should add the "perceived threat" element to the diplomatic relation. When a civ becomes too powerful, the weaker civs will give it some hefty negative points on diplomaic dealings (after all, their own survivals are at stake). That will result in one or all of these:
- they will stop buying cheap techs from that civ, even at the discounted prices (selling old techs to crappy civs is one gold revenue for me when I'm too far ahead).
- Research cost will be higher when there are more unintegrated citizens in the occupied cities due to sabotage (this will slow down the militaristic dominant civ).
- Some techs might be transferred by the unintegrated citizens to their original civs. The level of the stolen techs (i.e. Civ II spies) should not be made random but should depend on the dice roll, the culture of the invaded civ, and the percentage of unintegrated citizen. This will force an advanced and agressive civ to slow down to build up the culture or he will lose much of his tech advantage by taking too many cities without digesting them. An overly agreesive civ in the medieval age might find itself with high supporting cost besides losing most, if not all, of its tech advantages.
- the smaller civs will likely band together through a Defensive Pact in order to thwart the dominant civ.

With these features in place, it might be able to rise from the ash. Let's say you can band with 5 other civs to battle the biggest civ. In the end, with stolen techs passed to you by the patriotic citizens in the occupied cities you might be able to take the biggest civ down. Then maybe none of the remaining civs have any spaceships built yet but you can still win as time runs out) as the biggest among the remaining civs.

Of course, the "banding together for survival" instinct among the weaker civs depends on how far ahead the dominant civ is.

[MattPilot]

Is a game really lost when the AI takes score lead?

Well, consider permanent alliances. Find some other weak player that loves you and merge with him. BAM, you're back in the game kickin arse.

Perm alliances is one awesome feature!

[Tony]

The long drawn out end-game (where your victory is certain) has always been a weakness of the Civ series (and SMAC). The early and mid game can be really tense and close, the late game is usually fairly tedious.

But I think Civ 4 does more to address this problem than any of it predecessors. The "normal speed" game has quite a fast late game phase. Also, learn to use all the new tools provided by the interface. Queue 3 buildings at a time, queue 3 technologies on your research tree, use shift-click to give workers multiple orders.

Do these things and the turns will fly by with only 3-4 decisions required each turn. You won't be quite as powerful as you could be if you micromanaged everything, but if you have a unsurpassable lead you don't need the extra edge provided by micromanaging. Finish the game off quickly and start a new game. That way you spend most of your "civ hours" making life-or-death decisions in the early-mid game.

The main problem with this method is that warfare is always time consuming no matter how you play it. To rush through the late game you need to be willing to settle for a Diplomatic or Space Race victory.

Tony

[Bluefusion]

Calvin, by doing what you recommend you negate the advantages of being the most powerful. What fun is there in being #1 if you are penalized severely for it?

In the case of Mansa, I had to create a massive water fleet. He had two tiny island cities (1 or 2 square islands) and I proceeded to raze those, which reduced his score. I did pillage with the gunships, but I did most my damage by reducing research to 0 and using $$$ to continually pump out ICBMs, and then nuking his entire continent.

He countered by sending a massive water invasion my way, which I defeated by nuking some water squares. Huge stacks will kill ya :-)

The only problem is that only about 1 in 10 actually exploded on target; he shot down the rest. The failure rate is too high with that orbital satellite thing.

I did win by a margin of a couple hundred, but the other AIs just literally sat there and watched.

[Calvin Vu]

There's little problem when you become the most powerful through peaceful means. However, there will be indigenous problem when invading and occupying other countries/cities. The agressiveness will turn your power into a threat to other countries and force them to unite to protect themselves. Also, the natives will not like to be invaded and will do bad things behind your back whenever they can until they become assimilated. This will address a lot of people who think that military approach will make for a very easy victory.

But, it's not just o simulate real life but to address the point of the OP that the whole game's result becomes too obvious too early. I think it will make the game more fun, especially when you're NOT the most powerful civ but can still play on the diplomacy front to weaken and eventually bring down the most powerful civ (and usually the biggest *sshole aggressive civ, as most powerful AI civs are). [As with Alexander and Isabella when they have a good start and a big piece of land for themselves].

But, that's just for the OP. I only play to relax and a little fun, not to seek for a challenge to the very end of the game, so I always play at levels (Prince-Monarch) that allow me to win 85-90% of the time [i.e., other than the variations, the end result is determined even before I start a new game ]