The Foundation Principle: Empires should die

[vee4473]

it has been my experience that in civ, if you don't improve your cities properly or satisfy your people, unrest occurs and possible invasion, a.k.a. the decline.

i think the civ games reflect the dangers of doing nothing pretty well.

[Harry Seldon]

Remember, the Empire began to decay because of a stifling of creativity and lack of scientific advance. The Empire lasted for ten thousand years before it crumbled. I think this could be accurately reflected in the MOO series. Sure, it's fun to oppress your people and build the 'Spanish Armada' of the Orion Sector, but lose your focus and initiative with the creative process and reap the disaster you sow.

[Capt Dizle]

Well, I have the answer to the problem. Civ type, and I include the Moo series should incorporate leaders as a second level element to the human player/god.

As the empire expands game mechanics should be designed to require the playing diety to recruit leaders who should be evolving, dynamic factors in the game.

These leaders should cover the range of fields, military, scientific, cultural, religious, economic, and whatever else. The playing diety should pick and choose leaders according to various factors but the leaders being dynamic could prove useful or harmful or both. Replacing them might cause negative effects. Letting them remain in place could cause them to become too powerful and a threat to the unity of the empire. Or, should the playing diety choose to use mediocre leaders stagnation could occur.

And the story of the leaders and their interaction, who, being human are born and die within the game, becomes the history of the empire. This is the future of the next generation of empire building games.

[Jamski]

I like that idea. Imagine you pick a leader who is too abitious, who gets the Empire into wars it cannot win. Then you'd get knocked back a peg, and have to rebuild when he was replaced, or a leader who wastes your money and resources on his own luxury, at the cost of defense. Some study of the history of the Byzantine Empire and its Emperors, or the Holy Roman Empire demonstrate this ocillation between good, strong leaders, and poor, weak leaders, and many examples of how a great leader came at the right time to save an Empire, or came at the wrong time... with disastrous results. When will someone make the game of my dreams...

-Jam

[Arnelos]

Along those lines and the topic of the thread...

Wouldn't it be cool if you got a fleet commander like Bel Riose?

But I think it would be FAR cooler to be able to research psychohistory and have that "dead hand" around to make the "iron will" look foolish

[Jamski]

I'm not sure about researching psychohistory.

"Scientists - go and study Psychohistory" And then they come back and SHARE the results with you, and you trade the discovery with other civs... What was the first principle of PsyHist again?


-Jam

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by War of Art
I'm not sure about researching psychohistory.

"Scientists - go and study Psychohistory" And then they come back and SHARE the results with you, and you trade the discovery with other civs... What was the first principle of PsyHist again?


-Jam

Hmm.... perhaps there's some super-duper extra non-realistic "weapon" that removed all knowledge of psychology, sociology, political science, and most related fields from an entire empire so that they'd be properly impacted by your psychohistorical manipulations.... but then your own empire and other empires would mess up your controlled experiment .... ok, then what if we erased all knowledge of those fields from ALL of the peoples of the entire Orion Sector and beyond!



There, so if we collapse all social science everywhere and make sure it never comes back, then we can manipulate all of them

()*@$)(&%@!!!

Stupid Mule....

oh well...

[Imperator Max]

I agree with those in favour of some kind of decline model.

It is a more true to life phenomenon, and (perhaps more importantly) handicaps, at least a little, an otherwise all powerful empire. It would certainly make the endgame more interesting/less uninteresting.

Jimmytrick's comment re leaders manifesting the effect (of decline) is a good one. And also it would (groan... sorry) fit well with the AI leaders/governors etc we were going to get under the IFP system...

And in response to those who don't like the idea of their empires collapsing around their ears... I don't think that's what's being suggested. We're just talking about a "slowdown"... which may become an actual decline if you mismanage the situation, but needn't necessarily.

Another interesting variation is: why does everyone always have to start from the same point (i.e. zero)? It may be fun to play a game where you start as a large, bloated and crumbling empire, trying to fend off the new "upstart" empires and survive. Or, conversely, start as a new, small empire, surrounded by older, larger and more established empires, and try to survive and prosper (think; small country between two superpowers who will remain anonymous).

In those types of scenarios, the levelling effect of the "decline" model (for want of a better term), would be vital.

But anyway...

Jon...

[Jamski]

Hmm, could be possible I suppose. It would need some kind of in-game mechanism for tech regression (realistic and on MY wish list) And then you'd have to force the your and the other civs into the situation where this occurs, having researched PsyHist first, then play on, but with the foreknowledge that only you, the player will have. Nice. But very hard to put into a game.

Back to declining empires...

Assuming that noone would play a game which always ended with your civ just "two vast and trunkless legs of stone" I would argue that perhaps a set-back or two could be a welcome addition to the Civ games of the future. Consider the progress of a normal Civ-style game. You expand, you become more advanced, etc. As you expand, the rate at which you can expand increases geometrically, that is to say, the more cities, planets whatever that you have, the more rapidly settlers, colony pods etc. can be produced, and so on. The same with millitary forces, improvements etc. In the long (or short) run you reach the point where you cannot be caught by the other civs. I'm sure everyone has got to this position, where victory is certain, and has been certain for a long while. If you have more bases, cities, whatever, and these bases are well developed, then you are unassailable. In any civ style game, the Roman Empire would still be with us today.

So, my point is, that when a civ once reaches a temporary point of dominance in the civ series of games, it has almost always already won. The rest of the game is just playing out this victory. And that "sucks" a bit, I'm afraid to say. I probably finish less than half my games of SMAC and Civ3 for this reason. So, I propose that any future games have the possiblity of falling back in the race for supremacy, or even losing from a leading position. How this could be done, however, without simply annoying the player, and making them feel all their work was for nothing, is a difficult question, and one that interests me immensely.

-Jam

[viciouscycle]

Empires don't start from entirely even standings to begin with in any of the MOO or Civ games. Starting location has much to do with success... and in MOO and Civ3, each empire has different characteristics with stengths and weaknesses to further comlicate things. In Civ3 and MOO2, the differences in your empires attributes were very important as some traits were much more useful than others in a majority of situations.

Unrest and corruption are elements of decline and if not managed properly your empire will fail. Isn't that enough? This talk of having leaders do everything for you is all very interesting in theory but would it really hold your interest in a game?

I believe there has to be a balance of things a player can directly control and things that he cannot. I think that putting too much emphasis on the internal decay and the performance of leaders takes too much control out of the players hands. If you have too much to do as a player though, the balance shifts the other way and you end up in a MM black hole which isn't very fun either.

Here's hoping MOO3 is a well-balanced game.

[Imperator Max]

Originally posted by viciouscycle
Empires don't start from entirely even standings to begin with in any of the MOO or Civ games. Starting location has much to do with success... and in MOO and Civ3, each empire has different characteristics with stengths and weaknesses to further comlicate things.

That’s true, but you know what I mean. They’re all still at the same point of development.

Originally posted by viciouscycle
Unrest and corruption are elements of decline and if not managed properly your empire will fail. Isn't that enough? This talk of having leaders do everything for you is all very interesting in theory but would it really hold your interest in a game?

I don’t think it would take away from the player’s involvement. On the contrary, I think it would add another layer to what you can do: ie Management of the individuals who execute your orders.

Finding enough good people to fill the expanding number of posts in your growing empire could act as the brake on growth/efficiency that’s being discussed.

Jon...

[dulahan]

In Kebzero's most recent AAR he mentions how the Sakkra Empire Expanded WAY to quickly and literally crumbled into a shadow of its former glory. From largest Empire to just 6 worlds. Thsi was on the Highest Difficulty too...

[Spectrex]

I think the Sakkra fell in that particular game because they expanded beyond the capacity of the military to defend the new territory, etc...

Wasn't the "Heavy Foot of Government" (HFOG) effect one of the original features slated to be implemented in MOO3? I don't know if it went the way of IFPs (good riddance to those) or if it's still in the game. HFOG was supposed to have precisely the effects some people are describing here, including necessitating alliances/trade agreements/research treaties between large empires and smaller ones as the larger empires became less and less efficient at these tasks, the level of inefficiency being related to the size and development level of the empire.

Anyone have any more information about this?

[kalbear]

According to the strat guide, the heavy foot of govt is still in there. My understanding is that it doesn't deal with corruption, but instead deals with happiness. There aren't that many details about it.

[Jamski]

I believe that HFOG is a simple multiplication factor which applies to all construction costs. As your empire gets more inefficient, things simply cost more/take longer to build. This is info from the official "data dump thingie" on their web site. Hope that helps.

But, HFOG is not the same as "decay" , just a way of simulationing the burocracy needed to run a HUGE empire spread across millions of light-years.

-Jam