Revenge at last!

[ghen]

The entire game India was 2nd in power to me, right next door.. but the time was NEVER right for a war, it drove me mad! So you can predict the results.. comes late game and I'm taking out my frustration on the koreans (they had the nerve to build the UN and wouldn't sell me fission); lo and behold the indians start up their spaceship program alongside mine..

Frantically I get my spies tuned up and searching, finding only one city with SS parts being made but it was going to take them 15 turns to make, plenty of time to research the last tech! In the interim I formulated my revenge, 3 tactical nukes and a ROP signed, I blew India's SS city to smithereens (140 turns to make the last part haha) on my last turn and I lift off to Alpha Centauri with the world at war with me and India launching 3 ICBM's in retaliation.

[dexters]

That's one of the problems with the spaceship and diplo victories.

There is a lot of incentive to let things go and do really crazy things just to meet the goal.

I am not an advocate of realism, in fact, I've defedend Civ 3 against the likes of Coracle who complained that it lacked realism.

But that said, Civ 3 and in fact, all Civ games start out giving players a sense of achieving something. But by the late game, with the victory conditions looming, people tend to not get the same feeling. They engage in world wars because they can. The feeling of running a civilization, and pushing your hard work into the final peak is gone.

If players start nuking each other for a pitiful SS part, then I feel sad. The game shouldn't be played out like this.

This is something that should be reinvisioned in Civ 4. The end game in Civilization needs work, a lot of work.

[Fosse]

I agree with dexters. Not long ago I made this post in a Civ 4 suggestions thread that's been buried since the Conquests announcement.

Basically, I would like to see a future Civ that is evolved enough to create a world that is never truly "won" for each game we play. There would factors that would contribute to a constant ebb and flow of power and capabilities, which would give players something real to do for the length of an entire game.

With such a game, "victory" conditions become moot. Sure, you can achieve a de facto victory by conquering the whole world, or otherwise stabiliizing its politics... but in the end you should feel like you've accomplished something that you might want to go back and admire later...... instead of just finished a chore by whatever means necessary.

For those of you who played an SimCity games, think back to a really great city that you created... you never won, and it could always be improved... but every now and then you were drawn back to the achievment just to think about the great job you did and tweak one more thing....


Now imagine that feeling with a world full of nations and a real history of politics, instead of a constant march toward some "victory" condition.

[CrONoS]

Me I prefer to capture the capital, when you capture any capital you destroy the spaceship....

You sign a ROP, launch a nuke on the city and you capture the city with all your tank!!!(oh yeah)

[M. le Comte]

I just put off the diplomatic victory and the domination's victory. It makes me avoid to win in pityful conditions. Either I conquest the whole world (very difficult) or spread my culture or send a spaceship. These victories allow you to work hard at the end.

But diplomatic's victory is far too easy (respect the rules during the whole game, and at the end, everybody likes you). And domination's stops you in your campaigns, whereas you haven't done the entire work.

[ghen]

I find that by the end game I'm totally out of energy and want to start fresh again (I play on large maps because I like to explore) By that time I usually know I'm going to win or loose so conquest just seems overkill. Wether I win by Diplomacy, spaceship or culture doesn't really matter to me as I just want the game overwith.

[Epistax]

Interesting idea, alternatives to victory conditions.
I think the real reason we have victory conditions is for the game can tell who's winning. Someone might be way ahead in tech, while another person has a huge army. The person with a huge army can attack the techie at any time and wipe them out. Alternatively the techie can mobilize their economy and have an army able to obliterate the military civ in a few turns.

So while no conflict is taking place, who's winning? In this situation most would say the scientific. Why? They are closer to the spaceship victory, and (probably) more respected (diplo victory) by the rest of the world.

Perhaps point accumulation of some sort can happen, such as every turn x points are added to each of many scores based on your performance in a category, then added to a main score. And perhaps this main score can be adjusted based on the actual game played (number of players, difficulty to name the moust obvious factors) to make a single tell-tale number to compare your performance in any two civ games, no matter how different they were.

I'd feel like an ass not addressing the original topic as well, so: Yeah too bad nukes aren't as satisfying as say, planetbusters in SMAC. It was right near the end of the game, science victory for me, when I knocked out almost every one of both my major competitors' cities. It was glorious. It would have been a lot better, however, had they not had pacts with me most of the game. Projects were split between us about one third each, but it was painfully obvious I was about to victorious. I misguessed my winning turn by one or two, so I was quickly PB'd back (even by the Gaian's.. hippies with nukes). They only took out the most remote cities I had. Something tells me that unlike myself, they didn't have my borders lined with ships just waiting to fire.

[ghen]

if you read civfanatics.com they have a scoring method that takes each victory condition into account called the 'jason' scoring method.. They use it to find who plays the better game on the Game Of The Month since people choose different victory conditions as their goals.. I never read how the score is created, and I know you can't change the histograph score so its a moot point for single player unfortunately.