Where epic meets boring!

Now, one thing I've always liked is when two races are occuring.   Somebody is runnin' the space race as another player is rushing to try to kill them before they finish it.    The only time I feel this guaranteed victory you mention is when you turn off all the other victory methods except conquest (total destruction of enemies)

I mean in MoM, I remember ONCE, an AI player started casting master of magic.  I nearly peed myself.  I was in the above situation.  I was slowly wipping up all the players on the map.  I was kinda being lazy about it and mostly just letting turns past as the great wasting killed things.   THEN! I saw the animation.  I couldn't believe I had forgotten that other players might have a chance. I scrambled to get to his main castle as quick as I could.  

Luckily he was dumb about it and didn't turn every slider so he could deticate almost all his effort on casting the spell (I've gotten that spell off in about 10 turns before, and he was nowhere near).

 

Anyway, the point is.    Don't turn off multiple victory conditions.   Because, yes, they will come back to haunt you when suddently you lose by diplomic victory dispite your world-crushing army.   But if that happens, its because you didn't play your cards right, (or fast enough, as the case usually is in those kinds of victories).   There will always be a bit of "mop-up" but the climax will be far more worth it since by the time you've done enough damage to stop a space-race (for example) victory, then you've probebly already done most of the mopping.

Spell of Mastery? Spell Blast.

Its not just TBS. On huge SoaSE maps it usualy happens after you control about 40% of the galaxy and realize it is just steamrolling the enemy for the next 2 or 3 hours.

One workaround could be something like Spell of Mastery. A player who's in much much better position than other should be able to legitemately just skip the rest of the game if he wishes.

Another approach is like in Dominions3, where you can set a variety of victory conditions, like capture X out of Y capitols, or XY percent of provinces to win. But that would require campaign designers to specify such victory conditions.

Ideally, AI would always be potentially dangerous, but I have pragmatic view on this. More often than not it's just steamrolling.

This seems to be one of Stardock's big goals for elemental. They want to eliminate the fundamental problems that introduce this kind of extended mop up.

For example, in MoM once you get some key technology (say Paladins), you can start to pump out big armies from multiple sites. They seem to be designing Elemental to counteract that kind of approach -- powerful units are inherently limited in number. This is certainly a big step in the right direction, but there are elements of this in many games. For example, in SoaSE, capital ships are in pretty limited supply. In MoM, you can't afford to have too many summoned creatures.

Similarly, the trade off between localized power (saving your essence so your sovereign) and global power (many powerful cities but weak sovereign) seems to suggest the race mindset. For example, if you have a very powerful sovereign, you may be in a better position to complete a quest victory.

I guess what I am getting at is the game should have a tradeoff between concentrated power and diffuse power. Each should have advantages. With diffuse power you can take over many of the enemies cities and hold down their ability to have an effective economy... but they can take over any single point on the map. If those two things can translate well to two different victory conditions, then we are on a good path towards a race.

 

From my own personal experience of many TBS games the biggest gameplay scenario which is disappointing with AI opponents is how they all always focus on the weakest target... which is fine for early game, but usually bad during late game.  As a result by mid or late game all the weak AI opponents fight amongst other weak AI and human opponents while one or two powerful opponents easily rollover each of them one by one.   Seriously its so bad it's like watching 20 elementary kids fight amongst themselves while a college student walks up from behind and snaps their necks one by one.   During mid and late game some of the weak AI personalities should seek alliances to stop the greatest threat... whether it's human or computer.  Thus on a map where you own 40%... the remaining 5 AI opponents recognize this threat and at least some AI personalities should organize alliances against your empire.   To keep the game unpredictable a few AI personalities should not use this strategy.

The epic scale does not have to become a liability as long as the magical methods and user_interface exist for unit travel, movement orders, forging/spells/town orders and caravan management.  

In regards to unit travel the game should have multiple methods for which units can travel quickly across vast distances.  The following thread has several suggestions and my responses are on reply#11: https://forums.elementalgame.com/331599

In regards to movement orders one of the big pains is that each turn new movement orders must be given.  Ideally you should be able to select a far away location and configure a recommended path which is what others have suggested on the Dominions_3 forums yet never provided from the developers which we can understand from a team of two.  AgeofWonders does a good job by providing a path for future movement orders.

In regards to the forging, spellcasting and town orders this can take more and more time as maps grow... so each of them should have an option for requeing.  AgeofWonders provides requeing for town orders and Dominions_3 provides requeing for spellcasting... yet the desire for an option with all three has existed within these games and would greatly reduce time spent on repetitive tasks. 

In regards to caravan management the best way to reduce micro_management, exploits, and babysitting pains would be if the caravans were handled by an independent 3rd party merchants guild.  The 3rd party merchants guild can also be paid for different types of protection, speed, stealth, etc., .  Players attacking the merchants guild would suffer trade penalties/costs.  This would also help provide game balance for the underdogs.  This was heavily discussed within another thread which determined this resolution:  https://forums.elementalgame.com/341171

Up to now no TBS like CIv really featured what happed in the real world. First of all communicatons and alarge empires. the bigger an empire got the harder it was to control simply because humans tend to follow there own ambitions. Rebellions whre constant in the old roman empire  and other empires. LAst but not least lines of succesors family infights etc. most empires destroy themselves from within or corruption startws to set in. Usally an outside occurence is only the last strike to seal the fate of an empire.

 

In tBS usally the bigger your empire is the better and the stronger you are. In real life till the modern age the contrary was mostly right. LArge empires mostly slowly advance new ideas and technology, Strict society rules (which limit the influence of "new ideas") are needed to maintain order. Look at the chinese epire, spanish empire, the roman empire etc.

Fact is that TBS games are win-to-win. The more you win, the more chances you have to win. There's little things done to balance players that got a lightning start. In civ4, you often know in the first quarter of the game the two players that still compete for victory.

Some ways to prevent this :

- Events, like flood, volcano, disease. A bigger empire should have bigger chances to get "bad" events, or the bad events should hit them harder.

- Upkeep. Bigger empire, bigger upkeep .. but I don't really like this solution cause it means that whatever is the size of your empire, you'll have roughly the same output.

- Bigger chances of civil wars. Cities that are far away should have a big chance to take arms and fght for their independance.

- The ability to "steal" citizens from other cities. Instead of taking cities from neighboors, the "angry" people from other countries should leave it and come to your "kind" and "peacefull" kingdom.

- Sacrifices : when you want to make your empire grow you chould have some great sacrifices to do, and not only time. I like the idea of sacrificing some of your powers to imbue land in order to create new towns.

- Maybe letting citizens decide sometime what to build in the town. YOU need absolutley that uber-warrior, but citizens just want a new lab to create new fragrances. Well, you are THE channellers ... but ... it's also their live. And ther could be some ways to influence them to do what YOU want and not what THEY want. So a bigger empire doesn't mean an "optimized" one.

I'm still shamelessly fanboi-hopeful that the essence mechanics will be the true path to overcoming late-game TBS doldrums. At least if the AIs are cabable of decently representing the Others to any given human player's choices about how to spend or conserve essence.

well the problem with stopping the TBS of "the more you win, the more chances you have to win" is by doing something that would be...  unfair.   A good example would be to have luck be a factor.   Or have mechanics that are designed to make the people in the lead be pulled back, or the people in back have a better chance... all these are 'unfair'.  

So no matter what, there will be a winner, and just like in any game when a player starts winning badly right away, they are winning the entire game.   There really isn't a way to stop that without breaking something that would make a player in the lead not in lead without doing something cheesy.   The only thing you can do is make the game end once the player has clossed the point of no return (i.e.  he's won)

Unless the devs decide to replace the idea of victory conditions with something broader like game-ending conditions. The talk so far about a quest 'victory' at least implies the potential of 'winning' the game without doing the traditional 4X TBS sprawl-grind.

The main problem with the "win-to-win" situation in TBS is in the technological progress. The more cities/planets/buildings you have, the quicker you are doing research, so your military/economic/cultural power, which was already stronger than your competitor, get even bigger bonus from technology. This is also why in most TBS, one power with 30% of the map can easily beat an alliance of 4 players with 15% of the map each, as its military units can easily be twice as powerful as theirs.

This should allow for a "less unfair" way to reduce the lead of the leader : simply scale technology cost by the size of the empire. If you are twice as big, you need twice as much labs to do your research.

The problem is, we are going up against a fundamental fact that in the real world, the larger/more resoruce-filled countries usually DO keep expanding until something radical happens. In order to stop this, you have to radically alter the game mechanics in a way that does not mesh with reality.

I woulnd't go that far. That's almost punishing the player for expanding. Implement diminishing returns and you have a mild version of what you are proposing. As I read it expanding is costing some kind of focus (or mana if you will) so you can either be very powerful in a small area or mildly powerful in a big influence sphere. that's what they are trying to accomplish, I think. And i like that idea.

SD has already mentioned a ton of ways they are going to combat this - not only multiple victory conditions, but really the size of an army doesn't tell you much. One army with a hundred soldiers might get clobbered by a band of a dozen uber elite units. I don't think there will ever be a rest on your laurels mop up phase if you are playing against a challenging opponent.

Civ never got right the balance that if you have a bigger empire you have to spend more on fighting corruption and keep your citizens happy , have a bigger army to just keep provinces from breaking away. essentially sometimes bigger doesnt mean that you are progressing faster in real life. The citistates and small countries in Europe during the late middle age were resposnsible for most technological advances

OP: You might be interested in this thread, which discusses the steamroller effect and ways it can be avoided or mitigated.

Excellent idea. Alternate victory conditions and AI alliances add variety to the late game. And there's nothing game breaking about certain AI personalities forming alliances of convenience to oppose a superpower.



Not everyone wants to become a globe-spanning empire. From what we know so far, Elemental should allow players to create small kingdoms that wield incredible power. Oftentimes in Civ IV, I'll just hang out for most of the game and watch the AI kill each other, fighting a few wars here and there. Just surviving for 6000 years or so seems like an accomplishment to me, even if you don't "win" by the game's rules.

I don't know, I kinda like steamrolling after building a massive empire.  It's kind of like pushing the giant rock uphill, but instead of letting it roll back down to start all over, you get to roll it over the peak and watch it smash everything in it's path.  Steamrolling is a reward for stellar play (if getting to that point was difficult at all).  

I think the Total War games make the endgame more interesting by having new factions invade and especially by having fringe settlements lose happiness due to their distance from the capitol and dealing with corruption. 

It does seem awfully cheesy to me if the game throws a major curve at you for being in the lead, not to mention being even more tedious by forcing you to rebuild your empire all over again, only to be confronted with possibly another major game changing event.  And on and on . . .     

I so agree, there is nothing more frustrating than to be cheated of a well-deserved victory by some out of left field attempt by the developer to "keep things interesting". Nothing wrong with surprises, just don't have the game go into panic mode because you are winning decisively.

Well it depends on how you define "panic mode." Having some of the remaining AI personalities form an alliance against your superkingdom makes sense. If you can't beat this alliance, then maybe you don't deserve to win? Another idea (mentioned in the thread I linked to) is for some AI personalities to implement last-minute desperation attacks.

I think AI players forming an alliance against the strongest power in the game makes a lot of sense. It's an elegant, natural and logical solution. Human players naturally do that in multiplayer.

So, it would be like this: as long as no nation is very far ahead, it's free for all and there's usually no ganging on some other player. But as soon as a player becomes so strong that things are spiralling out of control, AI form an alliance and even share some technology, information and other resources to stop the superpower from wiping everyone else.

As for bigger empires being harder to manage - in most games, you're essentially able to completely wipe out other 'nations', and cities remain 100% yours. It could be more interesting if conquered cities kept their nationality, and judged your reputation. And remembered. Even if you're able to control them now and recruit army from them. They would have a chance of breaking away and would require some investment and diplomacy (or an army) to keep friendly.

This topic is of great interest to me.  I like the idea of role-playing a nation/leader.  Establishing some large territories with access to vital resources is great, but then development of my society as opposed to an unending territory grab is something that I prefer for my late game.

A couple of concepts to consider.  In real life, if we model the development of the world from -4000 BCE to 2000 CE, active colonization occurred from -4000 BCE until around 1600 CE.  That's 93% of the "game."  In the Civilization series, a settler becomes a pretty much obsolete unit by about the 10-20% point.  After that, you might build one or two to take a desert spot that just turned up uranium or something, but even that is unlikely with the way borders work in the game.

So I'd like to see colonization remain a factor through the majority of the game.

In real life, itsy-bitsy teeny nations can develop powerfully.  In real life, Japan and Germany have stronger economies than Russia.  If the real world worked according to Civ rules, the strongest nations would be the United States, Russia, China, India, and Canada.  Germany would be lucky to be able to compete with Brazil in economic strength.

I'd like a strong sense of balance of power and nationalistic identity.  Wars should be able to end like World War 1/2, where losing nations maintain territory, or some portion of their territory, but agree to consessions like a change of leadership, economic agreements, etc.  The more complex, the better.  The world learned that it was better for everyone to end WW2 with global reconstruction led by American corporate interests, rather than the resolution of WW1 which involves strict penal reparations.  For the US, or even Britain or France, to hold and occupy Germany/Italy/Japan after the conclusion of WW2 would have been a mess, to say the least.

I realize that a lot of what I'm raising is more "modern" in nature than the scope of Elemental.  They're just ideas to consider.  Looking at the medieval scope, though, permanent steamrolling was still never feasible.  Napoleon probably came closer to it than most others, but the borders of France were not permanently extended.  I would like enough factors in place so that border wars, resulting in the acquisition of 1,000+ square miles of territory (a fraction of the size of New York state for Americans), are feasible.  Larger acquisitions would need to be backed by positive sentiment in the conqueree's population or an extreme technology/economy difference with minimal balance of power concerns (i.e., the European conquest of North/South America).  Holding such grabs should be exceptionally difficult though, as in real life.

Indeed. I love Civ 4, but there are a few things that really bug me about the game. One is way borders function. The way the cultural influence works makes since, but I wish that game had both "Cultural" borders (that function as they do now for influence), AND "Political" borders that deteremined the actual control of various tiles.

--I agree with the above poster that holding conquests should be difficult (Especially for cities that have differend races a.k.a if a Fallen empire takes a Human city). In Civ 4 you have a few unhappiness in the city for a little bit after you take, but once that goes away everything is honkey dorey. I think that there should be strong insentives against full conquest of an enemy. The whole way Civ 4 handles vassilation and the like isn't bad, but still some more options would be good.

Good point. One of my favorite aspects of 4X games is eXploration. Certain Civ IV map scripts can generate "new world" continents and islands. The first civ to explore and settle them can become extremely powerful from the additional cities and overseas trade routes. Depending on the map, I might avoid conquering my own continent and instead focus my energies on sailing and trade techs/wonders. So during the early game, I'm comparatively weak, but once I settle the new world, I can start kicking some ass.

Large maps, I reckon, are ideal for old/new world situations. For several hundred game turns (longer?), your continent develops independently from the rest of the world. Once the age of exploration arrives, you have culture clashes, conquests, and colonization. It would be really awesome to land on a foreign shore and observe completely different political/economic/cultural dynamics.

In that sense, exploration is an awesome long-term strategy that adds an extra "wrinkle" to the game. It just seems that Civ maps are never quite big enough to give exploration the epic qualities it deserves.

I also like the notion of AI alliances in situations where it makes sense.

 

Likewise, I reckon we've got a bead on something of a solution to late-game blues in the Universe of Magic topic.  Because even if attaining a normal "win" is nuanced to prevent steamrolling and such in most cases...you'd still be left with a case of "What then...is this really all that is out there?"  Especially since, historically, there's a recurring notion of conquering the KNOWN world...and pretty well every single time when all is thought to be wrapped up there's suddenly a new area, a new player on the scene, something that doesn't invalidate all that has been accomplished thus far but knocks it down a few pegs in terms of the NEW real scale so to speak---and thus the adventure still yet continues  until "_____": that being ____ since it isn't like we folk of the world know either.