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

[=DrJambo=]

I really feel that Firaxis need to introduce an effective way for a dominant Civ to lose from a seemingly impossible position. At the moment, the modern age really suffers from the facet. Usually by this time, i'm either in the situation where i know i'm definitely going to lose or i'm definitely going to win! Unfortunately, the massive amount of time spent getting here usually means i'll play to the bitter end anyway, just to record the win/loss in the hall of fame.

I'm sure Firaxis created the UN-diplomatic victory, and to a certain extent the Space Race, with this in mind. However, all that tends to happen is the most dominant civ either builds the UN and can holds conventions at their discretion or easily beats the other civs to the Space Race, since both are geared towards production. For some reason, when the AI builds the UN they rarely hold conventions anyway?!

Is there a way round this!? I would love to continue playing into the modern era if i was aware that as the totally domaint civ i could still lose! Surely then the late game would remain a challenge and not a mopping up procession of tedium.

I've never won by conquest or domination, since long before you reach these victory conditions it'll be very obvious that victory is yours anyway...

Any thoughts?

[NeoStar]

The Modern age does have probelms and I can see what you mean - the big civs usually stay big and dominant.

Maybe some tech in the upper ages could allow powers to 'seperate' as many have done (USSR) into smaller ones - that would be interesting seeing as the AI often neglects happiness.

[Grumbold]

I know what you mean about the inevitability of it all. The one game I played where four of us were all racing for the space ship was brilliant, but it hardly ever happens (and in the end three of them went to war leaving me as the only one able to research the later techs quickly and build the final components.)

On the other hand, I don't think sudden reversals of fortune would appeal to players. For instance I detest the "missions" in RISK. You carve up the enemies, get yourself into a position to take over the world, and suddenly someone else wins because their mission was to wipe out green, which you just did practically for them in dominating most of the world. Minor disasters like the loss of a city improvement (fire destroys granary etc) is one thing. A sensible modelling of the rise and fall of empires is something else entirely. Civ doesn't have the features to cope with that since the game is entirely based on you growing gradually stronger over time until the final conclusion.

[Thrawn05]

The modern age stagnates... in fact this starts for me in the mid-industrial age (there is usaly a land grab of an unused continent, but nothing important there).

The Firaxians said it themselves a long time ago, they only really playtested the game up to the middle ages.

I think with more units, they could make the modern age better.

[Lord Merciless]

If the human player is the dominant civ later, the game is usually over. But if there is an AI civ leading, the exciting part of the game is still ahead.

[Stuie]

This is a common problem with most games. You get past a certain crisis point, and then you know you're going to win. Unfortunately I find this crisis in Civ3 usually occurs rather early. I almost always know in the Industrial Age if I'm going to win.

I'm looking forward to Medieval: Total War for this reason. Supposedly, once your empire gets larger, there's a higher risk of revolts, defections, etc. within your supposedly secure provinces, and you lose trade money as you lose (that is, destroy) trade partners. So a larger empire becomes unwieldy. That is true to Medieval Europe. Guess I'll find out how it plays out tonight...

I suppose corruption was supposed to model this to some degree, but without civil wars or something, large empires in Civ3 become the rule, and usually it's the player's empire that is getting largest.

[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.

[GePap]

I agree with neonext: if the other civs would all look to undermine you they theoretically could make your vicotry much harder.

Civ2 had the same issue about beign dominant, and I don't think tha this can really be solved. Of course, civ2 also had things in it that did make the crisis point harder. Bringing back significant climate change for overpollution, making nuclear weapons highly destructive, and a multiple ways spaceship victory (like in civ2, where you could go fot he huge and steady ship, or the small and fast ship), would all help create late crisis points- aftter all, what has theis century been but one of crisis.

[Gen.Dragolen]

I agree that the game needs something to liven up the Modern Age other than the inevitible World Wars that the AI Civ's tend to start.

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.

Another solution is to introduce things like terrorism, Opposition Movements, and Scandals. al-Qa'ida, the Palestinians and Clinton's legal trials are all possibilities.

Another good idea would be to have a "Fog of War" effect which would only show stacks of units on the screen and reduce the level of details you can see in open ground until satellites are discovered. Then you could see into the stacks. This would make combat much harder when you don't know where the enemy is without a spy or using cavalry as scouts.

All sorts of realism touches that would make it more interesting...


D.

[Coracle]

Originally posted by =DrJambo=
I really feel that Firaxis need to introduce an effective way for a dominant Civ to lose from a seemingly impossible position. At the moment, the modern age really suffers from the facet. Usually by this time, i'm either in the situation where i know i'm definitely going to lose or i'm definitely going to win! Unfortunately, the massive amount of time spent getting here usually means i'll play to the bitter end anyway, just to record the win/loss in the hall of fame. . .

This is why I was yelling for real scenarios since December. By the time I get to the Modern Age I usually have massive amounts of micromanagement of huge numbers of units - did it really take Firaxis four patches to figure out we need a "Wake All and "Fortify All" command??

But I rarely get to the Modern Age as the game has been decided long before then. That occurs in part as there is nothing left to explore after the Ancient period - another mistake by Firaxis. This encourages the "inevitability" that increases the TEDIUM of the game.

Again, scenarios - good realistic ones - were a remedy.
Of course, in historical scenarios such nonsense as flipping cities has to be turned off, diplomacy has to be able to be edited, and the time frame adjusted.

I feel certain now PTW will be wholly inadequate for this purpose, and will just be new makeup on the same old sow.

[Wormwood]

This is really off the wall and will never implemented (and even less likely, happen in reality), but what about the remote chance of an alien invasion in the modern age by a technologically superior alien force? The whole world could forget it's differences and fight for the survival of humanity. And afterwards, assuming the world is not destroyed and all your citizens enslaved, then all the civs can get back to destroying each other the old fashioned way

[Jon Shafer]

Disasters were in Civ 1, if my memory serves me.

They took them out.

Most players just want to sit back, move warrior A, and build up his little empire. Random events, civil wars and the like would be too much for him to handle (or so the game design suggests), so that will never change in this series. Like Coracle, I think that Civ has incredible potential, but it's waaaaaaaaay too watered down for me.

[neonext]

although i'm somewhat wary of the whole GL randomness thing, i like those ideas for random events. it could be something the player can toggle on or off like the random events in MoO2.
i plan to have such things in my alternative civilization game someday.

[The Pioneer]

Alas, I never actually get to play in the MA anymore and the spacecraft race, well I've never done that. I always win or loose long before it even begins?!

Anyway, I tend to get bored at the end though because (I usually play in huge maps) of all the tedious unit movement and the long time between turns (improved a bit in 1.29f)!

So long...

[=DrJambo=]

So far, i think the idea of Gen.Drogolen's on civil war is probably the best way to deal with the inevitability of a dominant civ with a sprawling empire coasting to victory.

Would be easy enough to implement too.

Like Stuie, i am also looking forward to Medieval Total War for that very reason. Big Empire's have a tendency to crumble unless exceptionally well managed.

[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).