Civilization Traits

[Impaler[WrG]]

Were starting to hit against the fundamental problem of every Civ game

SNOWBALLING

Basicaly the game rewards you for being powerfull with more power (hense why you always want to play one more turn). The problem is that one Empire rapidly comes to dominate and runs away with the game. Their are realy only 2 possible solutions, weaken the leader or strengthen the followers. No game has yet succeded at modeling the cyclical rise and fall of world powers. Civ III uses golden ages which is a nice touch but still dosn't fundamentaly change the game, some kind of "Dark age" is needed.

That idea for having the advantages be like a trophy that can be taken away sounds like a nice idea. Like the defeat of the Spanish Armada making the English dominent on the Sea's. Unfortunatly thats going to be very unlikly if these bonuses are truely as strong as they apear. Thus is realy shouldn't require a full defeat, rather just a good set-back for you too lose the "king of the Hill" position. That will likly cause the title to change hands more often. You can also trigger these transfer of title/power events on non-combat events like completing a Wonder, entering a Golden Age ect ect.

[Nikolai]

To solve this, would it be a good idea to give a civ very powerful for a certain time, an increased chance for a negative trait called "Decadent" or something? It could be in effect for say 20 turns and then either disappear or have a chance to disappear. Perhaps you could try to battle the effects so that they aren't too bad, but then you'd have to use most on your resources internally on that, and therefore have problems dealing with outside threats and problems, risk loosing your lead, get increased revolt risk etc.?

[dannubis]

Excellent idea !

[Andrewspriggs]

Or continuing with the idea of decadence, the bonuses decay over time--you may have an advantage at first, but that advantage slowly diminishes. Meanwhile, other nations have a better chance of stealing the trophy.

So, this decay could represent how when a snowball is created, the sun WILL melt it eventually. It doesn' t simply continue to grow--one day the sun must come out, and then the snowball will require a little more than rolling to maintain.

[GeoModder]

With all the AND necessities to grow in power, a clever enough AI can make it so that a player simply doesn't get the opportunity to grow in level. Using the sea strength example, how to increase in level if there are simply not sufficient enemy ships to be destroyed, because the AI led civs don't construct them?

[Andrewspriggs]

Then there would be no sea strength for destroying ships in that particular instance.

However, if an enemy sabotaged themselves like that in ALL the aspects of the trait system--you could own them any way you wanted to.

[wallish]

Something that really needs to be taken into account is that when a civilization loses, it loses hard. For example, when Athens was defeated by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, their "Golden" civilization crashed as a feeling of pessimism settled in. So when a civ loses a huge battle, or if they lose a high up power (such as losing a level 5 trait and dropping to 4) they would experience some sort of penalty. Let's say Civ A loses it's place as top of the naval ladder to Civ B. Civ B would gain the bonuses of the top and Civ A would be penalized (like slower ship construction).

[Andrewspriggs]

This is a very valid point... Although, it would make the game a lot harder!

[Addled Platypus]

Originally posted by wallish
Something that really needs to be taken into account is that when a civilization loses, it loses hard. For example, when Athens was defeated by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, their "Golden" civilization crashed as a feeling of pessimism settled in. So when a civ loses a huge battle, or if they lose a high up power (such as losing a level 5 trait and dropping to 4) they would experience some sort of penalty. Let's say Civ A loses it's place as top of the naval ladder to Civ B. Civ B would gain the bonuses of the top and Civ A would be penalized (like slower ship construction).

has any other game tried this?


Great idea wallish

[Adm.Naismith]

Originally posted by wallish
Something that really needs to be taken into account is that when a civilization loses, it loses hard. For example, when Athens was defeated by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War, their "Golden" civilization crashed as a feeling of pessimism settled in. So when a civ loses a huge battle, or if they lose a high up power (such as losing a level 5 trait and dropping to 4) they would experience some sort of penalty. Let's say Civ A loses it's place as top of the naval ladder to Civ B. Civ B would gain the bonuses of the top and Civ A would be penalized (like slower ship construction).

Overkilling, and not historically correct, IMHO.
A civ that loses a war, can still raise again. If that wasn't possible in real life you should explain how the crushed German Empire after the defeat of the first WW raised its head and almost defeated the whole Europe at the second WW.

From a game point of view, you should also consider that if you lose some city and resource, you can already be on your knees, without other penalties (don't forget the diplomatic options of the peace treaty: money, tech, maps, luxuries...).

Overkilling by penalties a losing Civ is not a way to enjoy a better game: it's only a way to finish the game early, and that's not "epic" at all, IMHO.

Keeping the game interesting until late turns means to let Civ to raise up again enough to compete, not simply gang up against you "ten musketeers vs. fifty modern armour tank" as last Civ Conquest I finished a few weeks ago.

[wallish]

True, civilizations do rise up after falling, sometimes stronger than before. This could be do to leaderships, technologic innovation, outside help, etc. You factor those in, and a penalty from a defeat will not be crippling. A civ that loses its naval power from a lost battle may suffer in naval combat and trade, but a strong leader (leadership traits maybe.. shifting leaders, elections?) can even out the effects or maybe reverse them. Also, propaganda could factor in. A civ would use propaganda to lessen or prevent the negative effects. If a game is going to be truly epic you have to put in things that happen in real life. Like my Athens example above, one battle nearly wiped out their potential. If your civ is strong enough or it develops that much slower than the surrounding civs, then it will fail the "test of time".

[vomitus]

Originally posted by alms66

Originally posted by Sn00py
Thanks for the suggestions, we will look into those.


We are also looking into building a sort of database record system, where every single action taken in the game is recorded. So that later events in the game are effected by what happened before, or a foreign leader can bring back an event that happened thousands of years ago.

So for example, if you killed 10,053 of Babylonians spearmen back in 5 A.D, the Babylonians may come back to you two thousand years later and say "Remember those 10,053 men you killed back in 5 A.D.? Well prepare to be nuked."

Well isn't that silly?...

Well, I don't think it's silly. It routinely happens in diplomacy today. Some countries use events that have happened centuries ago as excuses for wars today. Perhaps not as excuses, but just some grievance that keeps coming up over and over.

Example: Muslims point to the Crusades as a grievance against Christians. During the Bosnia-Serb war, there was some bickering about some event that happened hundreds of years ago. I don't remember which.

Complaints about events that have happened long long ago always happen.