End Game in 4X

The newest expansion for Civ V, Brave New World, specifically addressed this problem...3 of the 4 victory conditions all basically became achievable around the same time, but in order for you to actually have a chance at winning you needed to be prepping for at least one of the conditions throughout the entire game...in most cases, if you were in good shape for, say, winning the science victory, you were not really in a position to win through one of the other victory conditions...furthermore, it wasn't enough to win the science just by being the most advanced nation, because even if you were the most advanced nation by a long shot, you had to win before someone else won a diplomatic victory or culture victory....in essence, you were playing a different "game" than many of your competitors, and you had to both finish your victory as quickly as possible while simultaneously thwarting your opponents from winning through other means...

There were many games where I planned on winning the science victory, but had to put a lot of effort into making sure no one dominated my culture or had too many votes in the UN, otherwise I would lose....all in all, the expansion successfully made it so that each victory type was achievable at about the same time and you had to invest in one or two victory types the entire game in order to stand a chance...

Sins of Solar Empire: Rebellion also has some really nice victory conditions that allow you to bypass that late game grind...you can have Capital Victory, which means a player is defeated once they lose their HW...in this manner, you don't have to chase every last ship or bomb out every last planet...if you are in a dominating position, you can just go straight for their HW and ignore everything else...this exact victory condition may or may not make sense for GC3, but I'm sure similar victory conditions could be put in place so that if you have a huge advantage, you can end the game quickly...

I am so glad I watch the forums closely.

you want the devs to make your dreams come true. And you don't want your superior intellect to have anything to do with victory? The game has mega events if you didn't know to shake up the game, and your difficulty might be playing a factor.

galciv3 is state of the art, gaunathor, Tridus and a developer can tell the specific details better than I. ZlothX the past of 4X games had great ideas, but they are all outdated crap. Don't let decade old experiences ruin the 64 bit goodness that is coming.

As for this.

galciv2 wasn't near perfect. And Civ5 was a degenerate game. But there are no "outposts" in the game, and you don't have to have more resources of any kind to win on any difficulty.

Do you modd the game?

lol. Cheat codes work. Seriously though. You and me are similar, we both like the conquest victory. (I stop short at diplomacy victory, just to tell you.) and it's obvious you are going to win in the late game when you go the war route. (surrenders can speed up the process.) if you are creative, think, and strategize, victory will be easy for you but it will be earned. If you do not feel gratification from your game you are probably playing some old crap with a bad AI, no? Wait for galciv3, let all of it's wonders wash over your mind, and inspire you to find the passion to play 4X games like you used to once again.

Why would you want to have a game were strategies have a low probably of success? Nearly all aspects of the game are variables=luck and we make the strategy.

DARCA

Endless Space had an economic victory, which was pretty much "I've made so much money that I really shouldn't be able to lose anymore, so I win." A lot of 4X games don't have something like that, so even though your production and technology are so far ahead of everyone else that it's basically impossible to lose, they make you play it out until some other condition is met.

Really, what's needed is smarter victory conditions. Brave New World really did an interesting job of that. Even the conquest victory is better, as you only need to take the capitals to win, rather than wiping out little remote outposts in the middle of nowhere. Shogun 2's conquest victory is the same in that you only need to take enough to demonstrate that you're going to win, rather than taking over the entire map (unless you put it on its longest setting, and then it pretty much is the entire map).

The standard conquest victory in something like GC2 is the problem, there. It's very, very prone to becoming a grind.

In just about any 4x I almost never finish my games. I just start over once the issue is clear :p

But In CivIV Ive found myself finishing more games than in others simply because in Civ IV you would often end up with one civ going for Cultural victory or space race victory getting dangerously close to it and you would find yourself in a race to stop them.

The way the game was made somehow the advancement of civs was ususually more balanced than in say galciv 2 where one civ could be Really backward compared to others. But not in CivIV

I remember a game in particular that ended up in complete mayhem it was awesome. Hammurabi of Babylon had a decent civ but at some point he went all in Culture production and I realized he was going to make it to an early cultural victory in like 15-20 turns.

I had no choice, I sent a couple nukes to all his major city and sent a massive invasion force to try to mop him up. Everyone declared me war because Hammurabi was buddy with everyone and also because I had used like 20 nukes.   I realize I was not going to win by force, I had become the villain everyone wanted dead.

Despite giving a good fight I ended up losing many cities and I fell back to the core of my empire where I resisted desperately, often using nukes as a defensive measure while I was rushing Space ship parts in my core cities. I achieved space race victory but in truth I was going to lose crushed by everyone else in the longer run.

Define your own victory.  You don't have to actually win a conquest victory to tell a story about the ride of a galactic empire, just crush the opposition.

So, any official word on the victory conditions for GalcivIII?

Shogun 2 kind of solved this one with a phenomenon called Realm Divide where once you reached a certain point, all AI players would gang up on you.

I think people want two things:

a) A way for the AI or player to "sneak-win" and go around the main crush my enemies victory condition.  Brad talked about having that constantly in the Elemental games, but it never materialized

also

b) When the game is over, the mop-up phase is quick.  Here AI's that know how and when to surrender is best.  (if you've committed atrocities against the AI race, having a super-event where that race quits organized government and goes into full-fledged piracy directed at the other AI with all sorts of bonus ships and a bonus vs races that used mass drivers on their planet would be interesting)

I think once the RD hit, you suffer an immediate massive diplomatic penalty which prompts most everyone to DOW you but if you have really strong allies they may side with you after RD. At least initially, as I think you lose a steady amount of diplomatic points every turn after RD.  Still, I managed to keep a strong Alliance even after RD when I played as Tokugawa. The Alliance remained long enough to witness the steamrolling of the rest of japan.

I think vassal states would be enough change without radically changing the way we win conquest victories. Everything can't be solved with penalties, waiting, and sanctions in the 4X industry.

DARCA

I've never seen this as a major issue for GalCiv II. Diplomatic, science, and influence victories were always possible, putting you in a position where you really did not have to mop up the galaxy.

Interesting variant of (in)famous "Last alien" problem...

Yeah. There was an initial penalty which would turn most of the map against you, but then there was also a stacking penalty each turn. Making a very strong ally was useful because you wouldn't have to fight them right at the start of the realm divide.

Well, at least a complete civilization cannot hide in the corner closet on the very last floor

I've faced the same problem as OP when it comes to the end game for most 4x games, including GalCiv 2, being kind of dull. Once I own most of the map I just stop playing and even though I tell myself I've achieved victory it still feels like kind of a let down. I see a lot of people are focused on varied victory conditions as a solution to this problem, which is something I whole heatedly support, but I thought I'd bring up something I haven't seen mentioned in this thread yet.

Why not have some end-game threats to really challenge a player later in the game? I'm thinking along the lines of SOTS's grand menaces and Distant World's Shakturi invasion. The GalCiv universe already has an ancient, evil race from another dimension in the form of the Dread Lords who could show up in the late game to threaten a player who had amassed a lot of power. Obviously the Dread Lords were beaten back in GalCiv 2, but since this would just be something for sandbox mode I don't see a big deal with using them again outside of the campaign.

Things don't have to be limited to just one threat either. There could be lots of possible end-game threats like an AI virus sweeping over the galaxy, taking control of ships and colonies of empire that have risked researching powerful AI technologies. Or there could be a biological virus that invades from beyond the galaxy which infects ships and colonies like the Flood in Halo or the Beast in Homeworld Cataclysm. I'm sure others have some cool ideas about end-game threats as well. These are just a few suggestions of things I've seen done well in other games since GalCiv2.

To make things even better, there could be a randomize setting in the game setup screen so you never know which threat you might face which adds replayability to the game. There would obviously also be a button to disable end-game threats if you aren't interested in them.

Just thought I'd add my two cents to this conversation since the dull ending to most 4x conquest games is a problem I've run into a lot personally. I've seen this problem solved in several different games by the use of end-game threats on a galactic scale which can really shake things up and make for an interesting finish to a game.

I do that a lot, actually, but didn't like doing it in GalCiv 2 because then I wouldn't get credit in the forums for the win.  Can't have that!  I actually stuck to mostly non-violent victories, too.  They were just as grindy in the end.

I'm seeing a lot of good ideas, though!  (Sure the Dread Lords were gone but we haven't yet dealt with the Dread Ladies!

Another victory condition from back in the olden days was from Master of Orion 2 where you could attack the Antarans in their pocket dimension to win.  They were a pretty tough group and seemed quite a bit more fun to win against than slowly taking apart (of schmoozing into allied status) your lesser rivals.  In GC3, that might be expanded into an influence or diplomatic victory style, too, if you can get those Dread Ladies to buy your blue jeans and watch your sit coms!

I couldn't tell you all the permutations but Distant Worlds has a ton of different victory conditions and options, and you can usually win by combining a variety of methods.  You kind of shoot for a score that could come from a variety of different things, and you can tweak the crap out of everything when you start the game.  So you might set a % threshold of conquest required, along with a variety of other contributing factors that ultimately mean you win.

Perhaps have a random event trigger at a certain point where either the Crusading Humans start appearing and attacking you as they deem you to be a threat or some additional ancient race wakes up and starts its quest to cleanse the galaxy and you have to survive for 50 turns, if you do you win.

I do think all strategy games need a way to make the AI turn into a big threat once you start to gain too much of a lead, they should put aside their rivalries and start to ally or even unite completely to counter you like in EUIV coalitions forming when you become too aggressive.

Wow. I do agree that this looks like a way to spice up the end game, but this does look like a formula guaranteeing that you lose.

That's Shogun 2's Realm Divide. At higher difficulty, surviving that was a real challenge.

As much as I like the "unite against the player" and "End-game threat" ideas, I'm still unsure of how they would address the problem well..

I don't want to sound like a broken record, but to compete in the early-mid game in GCII you needed hundreds of billions of soldiers ready to go at a moment's notice, alongside thousands of ships and the infrastructure to replace them rapidly. By the time I've reached say, 50% game world dominance, my power not only exceeds the AI, it eclipses them all combined easily. Even if they united against me, it would only delay the inevitable and lengthen the grind even longer than it is now. The Jagged Knife from GCII is a good example of this, and it really sucked.

Meanwhile, any 'late-game threat' would have to either ridiculously outnumber me, or outclass me in every way across the board and have the ability to mitigate any losses I inflicted with 'bug bites'. The Dread Lords and Peacekeepers were dismal failures in both respects, and were trivial to deal with.

I feel the only way to stop the end grind would be to introduce an 'ultra event' which spawns a nigh-unstoppable 'infection' of enemies, like the Flood, Tyrannids or even the Terran Crusade. They would destroy everyone and everything in their path, turning more over to their cause as time wore on, effectively making the 'massive retaliation' tactics that make the end-game boring invalid and forcing everyone to band together to fight the common enemy. When the enemy was defeated, whoever contributed the most, or accomplished objective X,Y,Z would win.

From what Ive read It seems my favourite way so far is the description of Distant worlds system. You have configurable win conditions.  Personally I know that once I own 50-60% of the planets in the galaxy in GalCiv II, I have pretty much won. So why not set a victory condition to ( Own 60% of habitable planets ) and be done with it.   

That might need some tweaking to work with a system such as Metaverse where people could set really cheap win conditions and fake high victory count but for me that would work because I do not really care about that. I only care about having a fun and challenging game experience.

Edit : Talking of Distant worlds, I really want to try that game but damn, its the most expensive game ever. They announced they will release a new expansion along with a "Complete" version in about 2 months. This will contain Game + all existing expansions. I will wait till then, hopefully this game will finally be affordable.

The ending is not the issue, the issue is the journey to the end. For games at such large scales, people are forced to find a balance between automation and control, since we humans have physical and mental limitations. Chess has been around for thousands of years not because the game takes forever to win, but because there was a way to end it quickly for those who are just too good for the opponent.

What I am saying is that there needs to be shortcuts to a victory conditions like what if you need to achieve multiple victory conditions rather then just one.

For example we can make the victory conditions more of the "best in the whole universe" sort of logic.

Ok so in order to achieve a science victory you must maintain science superiority for at least X amount of turns (gets harder each time a player loses the lead)

To achieve a conquest victory is to own all major civilization home worlds.

To achieve a cultural victory you must own X% of the galaxy (the % increases as the game goes on) and have more influence points then any other player.

IT is better to have the victory conditions change as the game progress so that somebody has a chance of ending a game early, just like how somebody can checkmate a king at any stage of the game. This way the game finishes before you get board to death.

Maybe the first player to outdo everyone at everything for an x amount of turns wins the game just because the other people or AI cannot compete.

This is a problem in many strategy games. "Solutions" to this problem are difficult and controversial

Shogun2 has "Realm Divide" which effectively made the game 'gang up on you' after you reach a certain threshold

EU4 has mechanics that effectively make it impossible to conquer the world

Civ4 had 'corruption' which tried to control gigantic sprawing empires

The problem mostly that these mechanics feel like 'rubber banding' and unfair to the player