[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Balance of gameplay

[Greg Wooledge <greg@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Martin Olveyra (bj0v@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx) wrote:

> A complementary idea is to assign different classes of missions to diferent
> nations. I think poor realistic the idea that all nations aspire to conquer 
> the
> world, or destroy the rest of opponents, or reach alpha-centauri. Even
> could be more than one winner. And perhaps the mission of a nation is not
> established from beginning of game, but after some time, when each nation has
> acquire its own features.

A couple related thoughts:

* In the upcoming Civ3, Firaxis claims that they've found a way around the
  "bigger is always better" problem.  But they haven't said what that
  way is yet....  I think Activision has something similar planned in
  CTP2 as well (and CTP2 is supposed to come out in November 2000).

* In SMAC, you can achieve a "cooperative victory" -- if you conquer all
  of the world except for those nations which are allied ("pact brother"
  or "pact sister") with you, you still win.

>       - be the nation with the most active commerce with other nations.

* In SMAC, there's an "economic victory" condition.  You have to spend
  a very large number of energy credits (equivalent to gold) -- an amount
  that's roughly equal to the amount it would take to bribe all the cities
  in the world.  Once you spend this money, you have to survive the next
  20 turns... meanwhile, everyone else has been told that you're doing
  this, and they have 20 turns to capture your headquarters (capital).

* In SMAC there's a "diplomatic victory".  Everyone has a number of council
  votes that's basically the number of people in his faction (modified
  by a few things).  If you can achieve a 3/4 majority vote, you can vote
  yourself into the position of "Supreme Leader" and win the game.

  (Mostly this is used to avoid a tedious mopping-up operation in the
  late game.  If you've conquered 90% of the world, and don't want to be
  bothered getting those last straggler cities, you just vote yourself
  Supreme Leader and the game ends.)

>       - destroy those infamous nations that contaminate the world and provoke
> animal extinction

I'd assume that ending world pollution (for, say, 10-20 turns) would
be sufficient.  And then what happens... the game is declared a draw?

>       - be the more industrialized nation.

If you have sufficient industrial output, you will win the world by
conquest.  (Even without the highest tech.  Try cranking out 7 Riflemen
and 7 Dragoons and 4 Destroyers and 2 Transports per turn, for a few
dozen turns.  (And a few Diplomats, too.)  See how long your opponents
last, even if they have Mech.  Inf. and AEGIS Cruisers....)

-- 
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