DESIGN: End Game Options/General Strategy

[hexagonian]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
First is drastically increasing the resources available to the AI, through a bonus. This is usually seen as a necessary evil, but is known to be "unfair". Players, generally speaking, dislike "cheats" like this, thinking them pretty blunt, and perhaps feel that the game is less satisfying because of it. I basically feel this way too.

Unfortunately, I have yet to see a game where some form of bonus cheat is not needed based on difficulty level. There will always be a need to have some sort of AI bonus in effect, based on difficulty - the goal is to make it as minor as possible.

From what I have seen in my modwork, it is possible to have the AI maintain a strong economic base, and it is possible to have the AI build more cities (in both civ3 and even in my Mod, this is the case.)

The problem ultimately lies in military deployment and a non-existant diplomacy model that if it was in place, would allow for strength through allies.
My ideal way to circumvent this problem would be the following - however whether this could be pulled off is the question...
1. As difficulty increases, the AI is more persistant when it is at war. It is less likely to pull its punches. How many times have you seen in the AI, an unwillingness to continue to press when it does have an advantage? Call this the 'No mercy' rule. This can be augmented by more ironclad diplomatic agreements. (AI/AI alliances that actually work...)
2. I would want diplomacy to focus on alliances that are military-focused and economic-trade focused, but not on tech-trade focused. I do not have a problem with a game that as you get stronger, the AI civs will gang up on you (after all, the goal of the game is to win against the AI). I just don't want it to be overtly militaristic as the sole means to topple the front-runner.

Originally posted by MrBaggins
* Change the combat model, so its easier to defend. This will make offensive war harder, and life for the AI a little easier, generally speaking. The AI has to be taught how to siege, however.

I have actually done this on my 'personal (not public)' Cradle setup - Cradle cities start out with an automatic garrison unit. I have greatly bumped up the HP on the earliest garrison units (40 HP spearmen garrison - from the normal 12HP) What happens is that spearmen act as 3.3 units instead of 1 unit. So in the early game, your spearmen will not hold a city if it is attacked alone by a 12-stack (something that would occur anyhow in any civ game), but it will make a city much stronger in situations when forces are roughly equal in numbers. As you upgrade those garrisons, you trade HP for attack/defend strength. So if you kept your spearmen garrisons and did not upgrade, you eventually would have an overall weaker unit - but at the same time, you should also have the economic structure in place to make sure that you can have the full 12 units in a city.

Agreeded on the siege issue...

Originally posted by MrBaggins
* Encourage peace by rewarding civilized behavior, such as trading and diplomacy. A player who is warlike and breaks agreements will lose certain options and benefits.

However, if you are the strongest, and you have been honorable, then getting economic deals will only increase the gap between you and the rest of the world.
See above - economic sanctions, based on strength (the strongest should be viewed as the greatest threat.) Call it the 'Envy Factor'.

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Keeping a balance between maintaining a tech parity between civs and not allowing for an advantage is a tricky subject.

I.E. Consider if there is a 40% total parity bonus for the particular difficulty level. There are 5 total civs. This would mean a 10% per civ parity bonus. The first civ to develop... say... Democracy would gain no bonus. The second civ would gain a 10% bonus (of the total cost of Democracy) towards completion, (though this bonus would be limited to the amount needed to complete the particular tech.) The second would gain a 20% bonus, and so on until the last civ, would gain a 40% bonus... the maximum available.

This wouldn't mean that a player couldn't keep a tech lead. Overwhelming tech leads would be essentially impossible with high tech parity bonuses, however.

This feature is in place in both civ3 and EU2 and it is a good idea (tech by osmosis) - the problem with the civ3 system is that it also has a hyper tech trading format in place too. It gives the AI the help it needs to keep up, but it also breaks the research part of the game.

Originally posted by MrBaggins
There should be a more graduated system, with increasing crime, and small initial chance for riots and revolt... increasing as happiness drops.

I am a big proponent of this - seeing as I was the one who proposed it...

Originally posted by MrBaggins
War should indeed cause significant war-weariness... though much less under military style governments, although those governments should be restrictive from a general development and growth sense.

We have the tools already in place for this with the government settings

Originally posted by MrBaggins
As for strategic resources, I'm somewhat wary of their effect in CTP2. Whilst certainly the player should only control an equal fraction of the land available, we all know that a human player is usually able to concentrate forces to dominate a particular area, should he wish, and it be desirable.

I am strongly in favor of strategic goods, but I would press to make all of them more common on the map, so they have a less game-breaking effect.

Or you can have an generic open-market type of situation. You cannot sell your surplus. This may be too simplistic for the game, but it simulates that if you need a good, you will have to buy it, without making it potentially unbalancing for those who have a surplus of a particular good and can reap a cash cow with it.

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by hexagonian

Unfortunately, I have yet to see a game where some form of bonus cheat is not needed based on difficulty level. There will always be a need to have some sort of AI bonus in effect, based on difficulty - the goal is to make it as minor as possible.

From what I have seen in my modwork, it is possible to have the AI maintain a strong economic base, and it is possible to have the AI build more cities (in both civ3 and even in my Mod, this is the case.)

That's true... except the AI can't handle the happiness system well, or expand to other continents well, in my experience. The Cradle setup seems to do excellently up to the middle ages, regularly (given equal terrain,) in fact, in my experience, at which point, perhaps the general simplicity of its heuristics begin to lag behind a human's experience.

The problem ultimately lies in military deployment and a non-existant diplomacy model that if it was in place, would allow for strength through allies.
My ideal way to circumvent this problem would be the following - however whether this could be pulled off is the question...

1. As difficulty increases, the AI is more persistant when it is at war. It is less likely to pull its punches. How many times have you seen in the AI, an unwillingness to continue to press when it does have an advantage? Call this the 'No mercy' rule. This can be augmented by more ironclad diplomatic agreements. (AI/AI alliances that actually work...)

Absolutely agree.

2. I would want diplomacy to focus on alliances that are military-focused and economic-trade focused, but not on tech-trade focused. I do not have a problem with a game that as you get stronger, the AI civs will gang up on you (after all, the goal of the game is to win against the AI). I just don't want it to be overtly militaristic as the sole means to topple the front-runner.

Agree that diplomacy should focus on the aspects of military expediency, and beneficial economic trade.

A certain degree of ganging up is not only necessary, in my mind, but desirable; a diverse group of allies has often rallied against a common enemy, where they felt threatened. (E.G. Greek city states vs. Persia, Allies vs. Axis, Allies vs. Iraq.) There needs to be some sort of "Interest" variable being attached to the diplomatic system, so that beneficial relationships are valued. It should be harder for humans to have and maintain valued relationships with AI civs, though.

[SNIP]

However, if you are the strongest, and you have been honorable, then getting economic deals will only increase the gap between you and the rest of the world.
See above - economic sanctions, based on strength (the strongest should be viewed as the greatest threat.) Call it the 'Envy Factor'.

Well... strictly speaking, an economic system, being largely abstract, is where the AI has the best chance of keeping up and/or succeeding. It takes two to trade, and the AI might choose to cease trading should it consider it counter productive to its victory.

[SNIP]

{Graduated crime/rioting}
I am a big proponent of this - seeing as I was the one who proposed it...

I know... and wasn't trying to steal your thunder. It was included for completeness... and is an important part of a more balanced happiness system.

We have the tools already in place for this with the government settings

Many ideas I've been talking of can be already implemented in the current game as is, in a mod. I'm of the opinion that a "complete" release arising from this source code, and our development of it, will not only include an executable, but a new Apolyton mod, including rebalanced gameplay, based on our best efforts.

I am strongly in favor of strategic goods, but I would press to make all of them more common on the map, so they have a less game-breaking effect.

Or you can have an generic open-market type of situation. You cannot sell your surplus. This may be too simplistic for the game, but it simulates that if you need a good, you will have to buy it, without making it potentially unbalancing for those who have a surplus of a particular good and can reap a cash cow with it.

Wouldn't including strategic goods but making them very common, be effectively moot... that is... the player could easily deal with the situation, and the AI *probably* would.. but maybe not. I'd say that would be a net loss.

I guess I'd like to see it in action...

[drulius]

Just an idea here, but what if there was a graduated citizen cost for settler production?

Say, the first settler out of any city in a given age would still cost 1 pop, but each additional settler would cost an additional pop point (4 pops lost for the 4th settler). Then the number of cities cap could introduce even harsher pop drain for settler production instead of the current cap's riot/revolt solution. Although for me, the only time the cap haunts me is during wars/conquest. Sea engineers would be affected in later ages.

This would make capturing cities way cheaper than pumping out more than one or two settlers per city, but there would probably be fewer cities around to capture. It would certainly mean a trade off between producing a settler quickly in a larger city, or producing it cheaply in a smaller one. I guess it would also allow for human exploits though like building a settler instead of an Aqueduct to take the city back to pop 8 from 12.

Just an idea that occurred to me while reading this thread. hope it's not OT, or very far off.

[MrBaggins]

Interesting, but thats:

a) horrifically tough past the third settler
b) massively rewarding to the warmonger. We are looking to diversify rewarding strategies, not condense them

[centrifuge]

I agree, I think that would be too beneficial to the warmonger. I think that the current method seems to work fine when it comes to settlers. The reason that I say this is that smaller cities should have a much harder time producing settlers(as they currently do), since they have fewer people and the loss of a big chunk of the population would have a severe effect on the local economy.

In addition, city sprawl really isn't as big of a concern in CTP2 due to the city caps.

... On a side note, a possible solution to help increase the peacefull times may be to increase the number of unhappy citizens in some proportional fashion to the number of offensive military units.

[MrBaggins]

Actually, its *easier* for smaller cities. Smaller cities tend to have higher growth, since the growth rate regresses faster than cities improve that. Smaller cities, generally speaking, replace the pop lost to settlers faster. So, maybe thats another reason to have flattened growth.

[centrifuge]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
Actually, its *easier* for smaller cities. Smaller cities tend to have higher growth, since the growth rate regresses faster than cities improve that.

Many smaller cities have stagnate growth, due to less than desirable living conditions.

...if the living conditions are equal then, yes I agree that smaller cities do have faster growth rate.

sorry, I'm not trying to get into another small vs large debat ...let's leave that to the porn stars

[Ekmek]

Another possibility is having cities only buildable in continguos areas like in RON. YOu cant build cities unless its radius attaches to another city. This would prevent the situation where you get the lone city popping up across the planet. This would also open the door to using colonies.

Of course this may have a major impact on the AI and how they use them.


For militaristic city caps there could be atrigger of increasing unhappiness in newly conquered cities. For each city conquered the unhappy population increases exponentially. First city is 1, secnd is 2, third is fur. It would be harder for militaristic civs to go on a war path. But this should be linked to other type civs. i.e. an economic civ could have a greater unhappiness effect on militaristic civs than say a religious one.

And it could be linked to wonders that are available on certain victory paths like an economic civ having a wonder that increases unhappiness in cities conquered by a militaristic civ. We could think of a host of balancing wonders that cause certain effects when different types of civs interact with each other. It would add more flavor and balance to the game.

[Kuciwalker]

I think I see a way to fix both this AND create a true "rise and fall of empires" thing: make research increase instability.

Each empire has an "instability" rating. As the number of cities goes up, this increases. It is modified by the government. And the faster you are researching (not the higher your tech rate, but the absolute number of beakers) increases it too. Thus, small empire will be able to research quickly without worrying because they won't get much instability from the number of cities. Larger empires, however, get lots of instability from the city number, so they can't afford as much research. Eventually, they fall behind far enough that the smaller empire have a significant military advantage from technology, and the smaller empires use their militaries to create large empires by conquering chunks of the existing large ones. The large ones are now small and can research quickly, catching up and even passing the new large empires in technology, and the cycle repeats. If a large empire tries to keep researching quickly, its instability number goes so high that several parts of it break off and form smaller empires. The large empire is now a smaller one.

Also, each time an empire loses cities, it gains some of the attacker's tech (though not necessarily an entire tech - possibly just many beakers towards it), which also counts towards the instability number. Thus the large empires could fall apart just by being attacked by a few of the smaller empires (like the Romans). Also, there could be a small preference for military techs when empires absorb techs in this manner.

[drulius]

What if strategic resources affected science through trade, so that if you could set up a two way trade relationship with another nation (trading a strategic pair of resources), both sides would get a big science bonus? Special military units could still be part of the resource model, but you could only build them while specific pairs of resources were being traded, and both sides of the trading partnership could then build the special unit(s).

It would still make sense to include strategic resources in your empire, but it wouldn't make sense to hoard them or deny the AI access. This would be in addition to normal trade, a science trade layer that you have to set up through diplomacy, sort of a research pact through resources. It could also be easier for AI governments to set up multiple trade/science bonuses this way, and you could make it harder for the human to set them up as the difficulty goes up, or tie it to the AI's perception of threat from the human.

This might be a way to avoid blatently giving the AI a head start tech lead on higher difficulty, instead just make them start trading startegic resources for the science bonuses shortly after they encounter each other. (Which doesn't mean they wouldn't stop cooperating and start fighting each other, but they might be fighting each other with higher tech units)

My other thought was linking strategic resources to buildings in your cities, like factory efficiency bonuses for coal access, or marketplaces working better if you have access to draft animals or camels.

[child of Thor]

[tiny brain fart]

Could there be a way to tie in population size with the ability to build units for war(or maybe any unit). I know we already have a unit upkeep cost, but this is purely based on production.
What i'm thinking is that if the player wants to become a warmonger, then he will need the population size to support his armies as well as the production.
Ok so no big deal Bigger is better all over again, but if we also have much harsher penalties running large civs, like some of the ones discussed - it will become a very fine balancing act for the large civ/warmonger human player.
It will need to be on some kinda sliding scale, whereby the smaller the civ the cheaper it is to produce and maintain units, but a small productive civ should not be able to feild as many units as a medium-large well managed civ(with all the right building improvements to keep the crime/unhappiness in check etc).

I'm not trying to give the large empire more power ,but make the human player have a few more shackles on thier arms to try to slow down the warmonger strategy. It would make it harder in the ealry stages for the human to field big armies. I think...........

[drulius]

Just woke up with this one.

What if the warmonger had to build more buildings in cities to get offensive military units, kind of like RTS games make you put up different buildings for horse units, archery units, foot units, etc. If defensive units could be built anywhere, it seems like it would present a real guns or butter choice: build for war or build for peace/science.

If defensive units get to use their defense in battle, then you could just take away some offensive power for base units and add it back if the unit is built in a city with the proper improvement in place. Maybe this could be the Veteran bonus, full offensive power, gained through "boot camp" or actual combat.

[Ekmek]

Those are some good ideas. I think a lot of these ideas would actually work better combined than any one idea by itself. Of course it'll require a lot of p;aytesting and maybe even more AI updating.

Of course I'd love a logistics system that would slow the advance of armies (by having the air operational range apply to all units and require the use of supply points and supply units) and slow the settler diarrhea, but i dont want to start that big thread fight again.

[Myrddin]

Civ3 option of not getting road/rail bonus in foreign territory would slow armies down enough

[Tamerlin]

Originally posted by Myrddin
Civ3 option of not getting road/rail bonus in foreign territory would slow armies down enough

Please, don't implement this Civ3 option... it is one of the worst feature of Civ3 IMO.