Making Civ3 possible to lose from a seemingly impossible position is a MUST.

[Firebird]

I agree Civil wars could remedy this problem.

the more cities
the more unhappy people
the more military
the more wars one is participating in
the lower the culture is
the lower the reputation is
the fewer the oppenents are
the more corruption

All this should make the chance of a civil war greater.

[Thrawn05]

I think there should be some influencial control over a weaker civ by you in the late game era. For example, pay say 1000 gold to a very weak civ. You then get full control of that civ for one turn.


This would be good for those vassel states you have. I had a game were I land locked a civ down to 3 cities. Totaly surrounding him. I don't want to get rid of him because he gives me tributes and techs that he gets from other civs at a discount price to me.

I'm not a full war monger, so I didn't want to get rid of him too soon. Besides, he is my equal in terms of science, and that's not good for me. Although I have more men then he does, I don't want a sudden streak of no luck in combat. That and I'm busy protecting my southern boarder from some rival civs.

[Augustus Ceaser]

I agree with Thrawn. Ways of "controlling" lesser civs later on the in the game would be a great way of adding to the game during the modern era. I for one don't play just to rack up a high score, or even to win for that matter. I play just for the love of playing, and anything that adds even more strategy would be great. I know this is a little off the topic of "how to allow a dominant civ to loose", but with the way I play it would also be good to address "how to allow a dominant civ to do more than just war monger". I throughly enjoyed in CTPII how there were many ways of "pestering" other civs without actually going to war with them.

[keith morrow]

I think that the original model of corruption and flipping covered this- As your empire expanded past optimal # of cities, you end up having a net transfer of resources
(i mean gold, units etc)from your core cities to your conquered territories, until you would be in a position of just strugling to maintain your empire, and a smaller enemy could take bites out of your empire and previously docile cities could flip back to their prior owners. I think that models what happen to the Roman empire pretty well.

However, I have to say that it does not work very well past the middle ages, and that the howls of protest from people used to civ 2 super empires, have watered it down to the point where you can now
have a huge empire that is relatively stable and productive for the entire game. I think that the industrial and modern eras would be improved with the following-

-Flipping still exists- i would say that Kashmir would be an example of a "city" that could flip from India to Pakistan, but if a city did flip, there might be more serious consequences.

-NeoStar- The old civ1 model of a civil war could be used, but rather than the trigger for a empire splitting being the captial, you could have tech discoveries, like more advanced forms of governments.

- think of czarist (monarchy) Russia discovering communism, caused a civil war which pulled them out of WW1, or religion- monothesism could easily split an empire. Switching goverments should also be a factor, so if you decide to go from republic to democracy to reduce corruption, well, maybe the southern states will go off on their own a la US civil war. ( I realise that is a simplification using game concepts)

Many modern nation states featured civil wars with changes in government-China, Britain, US, Russia, Spain
(ok they're not in the game). This could be the sort of thing that the late game needs to keep interest.

Think of the possibilities- You beat the AI to the Great Library, but you get Republic from it- Whoops! 5 of your cities flip to a new republic civ, because you were still in monarchy building infrastructure.

As the English, you decide to research democracy after steam power, -Whoops- there goes the American colonies....

[Ijuin]

How about, each time you have a revolution and change your government type, civs without the Religious trait will be at risk of losing up to 1/3 of their empire at the outer reaches? You would always remain in control of the areas immediately surrounding your Palace and Forbidden Palace, but your distant cities could revolt and declare their independance.

Say, for example, all cities more than 1/8 the map width (8 squares on a tiny map, 32 on a mega map) distant from either your Palace or your Forbidden Palace would have a base 25% chance of revolting, decreased by the presence of Courthouses, Police Stations, massive garrisons, and high culture, but increased by high corruption, high unhappiness, or if one of the two closest cities to it is already revolting. To keep the Religious trait from getting too powerful from not having these rebellions, I would have all of the distant cities go into civil disorder for a set number of turns instead of declaring independance.

Also, these newly-formed nations would start out hating you for a while (but not at war with you just yet), and would refuse to negotiate with you for the first ten turns or so. You can choose to reconquer them, but you will have to reassimilate their citizens and deal with resistance just as with any other conquests.

[Haon]

One problem with Civ3 is unlike Alpha Centauri it is difficult to unite behinde your Civ because of a Political Ideal, this made some "Cold Wars", eg, the University and Believers would always try and Power play people to there factions.

If they can do it so you can have a Cold War situaiton develop, (and it does not have to be a USA USSR parallel) then it can encourage contant attempts to try and prevent the other superpower from dominating.

[The Mad Monk]

I wouldn't mind seeing the SMAC ideas of trade (in addition to what CivIII has now), submissive factions, and rivals reactions being modified by your internal choices.

[Thrawn05]

Originally posted by Haon
If they can do it so you can have a Cold War situaiton develop, (and it does not have to be a USA USSR parallel) then it can encourage contant attempts to try and prevent the other superpower from dominating.

There should be some sort of deal options for nukes and ICBMs. Say like limiting the number you can have/make. Somthing like that would be cool.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen
Civil War is one solution. I like the idea of ecological disasters like earthquakes, hurricaines and droughts. Those put the economies under pressure, making it harder to finance the big wars.
D.

I absolutely loved Civil War in Civ I, I wish they'd bring it back. But it shouldn't be random, which is kind of the problem with how it'd be implemented in Civ III. What I mean is that in the real world, huge empires (e.g., USSR) can collapse for a variety of reasons, including pitiful economy, internal political strife, etc. In Civ III, chances are that a superpower late in the game is going to be economically secure and politically/militarily sound. The only way to divide an empire as it currently stands is to go to war and/or ally against them.

The only ways I could see how to cause a Civil War in Civ III would be for the AI to actually make good use of an embargo to economically hinder a country, increase the power of espionage to incite revolts in non-Demo countries with unhappy populations (as well as increasing espionage overall), and somehow cause the military to become RESTLESS when unpaid, rather than simply disbanded.

[The Puny Celt]

Originally posted by neonext
IMO a method similar to Civ2 would work well, where if a player (including an AI player) was ahead of the rest of the world, the lesser players would band together to rise up against him. this doesn't even have to include war, with all the trade embargos and tech trading that goes on.

I used to find that annoying in CivII, because it meant every game it was me versus everyone else. It got very predictable and made diplomacy a waste of time (why try and cultivate another civ's friendship if they would inevitably turn on you?). One of the things I like best about CivIII and SMAC is that some games you have long-standing allies.

As for sudden random changes in fortune and difficulties in maintaining a large empire, Keith Morrow rightly points out that culture flipping and rampant corruption were met with howls of protest from people. It's always hard to accept when you do all the hard work to put yourself into a winning position, then some random event comes along to put you back amongst the pack again - is this what we want in the game? It should at least be optional.

Is the later stage of the game boring for the warmongers going for military conquest victory? I wouldn't have thought so. I think it's a problem more for the builder players, so Firaxis should look at making this aspect of the game more interesting, eg more city improvements, and a more complex trading system (if possible).