The Superpower

[dexters]

I suppose I should start this thread by describing a generic scenario of what I would consider a Superpower civilization. Say you alone, or perhaps with a few other Civs have scores/power that is so high that the rest of the Civs in the game are distant runner ups in the game.

I'm interested in knowing what kind of playing style is applied if

a) you are the ONLY superpower, in the game

b) a few other Civs are close to your score, but the rest are far behind, creating a US vs USSR type superpower rivalry

what sort of responsibilities does a superpower have on weaker civs? what sort of playing style is applied?

Is the position of a superpower desirable?

I'm also open to discussions about what you consider would define a Civ as a superpower. A score that is double your closest rival? Or if there are more than one BIG Civ in the game, A score that is double the total score of the weakest 3 Civs?

[ICMB]

As the only superpower, I try to appease the other civs so they don't gang up on me. I'll give out little gifts of money, and when I get far enough ahead in tech I'll sell a few back to all the civs at once to make some more cash.

Ideally, you want the other civs to fight amongst themselvesx, but that can be difficult to do unless you know some civs are angry and you start giving one some resources to make better units.

With one or two close opponents and the rest far behind, I tend to hunker in my bunker and try to get ahead on tech. The key is not to accept any MPP's that can drag you into a war you don't want to fight. I'll also usually give more help to the minor civs in hope they can be more of a thorn in my opponents side.

However, this backfired on me in a recent game when I was focused on the Egyptians as the threat, and the Japanese came up and became the number two civ, threatening my position.

I think the superpower position is great, as it means you have the biggest/best infrastructure, so you can grow faster and get tech faster, as well as being able to quickly build more wonders.

I always avoid giving any strategic resources or techs to the #2 civ, so as not to help them any more than I need to. I'm more liberal with the smaller civs, as even a little civ can be a pain if they decide to throw a bunch of troops your way, and it takes resources away from crushing the #2 civ.

As far as the definition of a superpower, I'd say that if you have at least 40-50% more score/power than any other civ you are well ahead of the game. I've yet to lose a game in which I had a substantial advantage halfway through.

- ICMB

[IronSpam]

I just finished a game where I was on the other side of the superpower situation. For most of gameplay, I maintained sixth or seventh in terms of score as the Americans, while the Russians were number one in a game with fifteen AI players on a huge map. While I was three or four advances behind everyone else, I still had a lot of the Great Wonders with a good culture to boot, and felt this was cause to believe I could still do well.

Apparently, the Ruskies didn't keep their rivals calm, because at one crucial point in the early Twentieth Century, the number two power, the Babylonians, formed a military alliance with just about every other power except myself against the Russians. A true world war was on, with the Russians on one side, and just about everyone on the other.

It was beautiful. First I saw ships from other nations shove off for mother Russia. As I kept an eye on things, I saw the map reshape itself as cities exchanged owners. The Russians held their own, but their once-flourishing border cities became wastelands as enemies simply pounded the area for the better part of the century.

In the melee, I took advantage and destroyed the Greeks, who were next to the former Roman Empire, now just a new franchise of America, Inc. Meanwhile, I noticed that the prolonged conflict slowed down the development of technology worldwide. I eventually found myself the leader on at least one research branch and leveraged that position to trade techs on other branches well into the Space Race advances.

At home, I maintained a solid core of three or four first-rate production cities that produced Wonders and military units quickly. Even though I was behind technologically, the production in these cities allowed me to build every Modern Age Wonder before all other rivals, except for the Manhattan Project, which I instinctively stay away from anyway.

In the end, I won via a Space Victory and somehow still was not first or even second on the score rankings. I think that's because the score is an average of the entire game, and I definitely underperformed for a good part of history, since I started in deep in a jungle continent and early on did a lot of hacking through the terrain while everyone else grew.

We all stayed within a good point range of each other. Here are the near-final scores:

Russia - 1072
Babylon - 915
Zulus - 877
America - 825
China - 783
France - 757
India - 756
Aztecs - 676
Japan - 646
Egypt - 547
Iroquois - 534
Persia - 279
Germany - 252
England - 217
Greece - 180
Rome - 149

In terms of its relation to its nearest rivals, Russia was merely one of several closely-matched powers. But in terms of the weakest nations in this game, it was definitely a superpower.

I guess the lesson here is that if you're the number one power, watch for the jealous rival who can muster the others to ally against you. On the other hand, if you're not number one, the ensuing chaos of a war for supremacy can raise even a sixth-ranked power to victory.