Rise and Fall of Empires

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Eusebio Ptolomeu
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Joined: Sat Oct 07, 2017 1:51 am

Rise and Fall of Empires

Post by Eusebio Ptolomeu »

I don't know if this is the right place to post this kind of thing, but I would like to sugest new mechanics for Freeciv.

I've played lots of different games, like Europa Universalis and Civilization (and Freeciv, of course), and, although I like all of these games, there is always one thing that bothers me: there is always one empire that will "rule" the world. For example, if you watch any timelapse of EU4, in the end of the video, you'll have an empire that covers most of the world, and you know there's no way this empire can fall. And things didn't work this way troughout history: ALL of the largest empires the world has ever seen, all of then came and disappeared. Rome fell, Alexander's conquests were split among his generals, and even the Brittanic Empire, one that got very close to "rule the entire world", even they went away. No empire lasts forever, as we can see. Of course, I might be looking to much on the realism side here, but what about the gameplay? Well, I believe that if this scenario comes true, there'll be lots of improvement for the gameplay too, because we would have a truly never-ending game.

So, how can we achieve this? It seems that all of these empires I talked about (Mongols, Rome, etc.), all of then were victims of their own size. They were simply "too big" to maintain. Rome had to split in eastern and western halves, the Mongol Empire was divided later on, too. This happens because huge empires are an admnistrative nightmare, and sooner or later, problems will arise. So, how can we achieve this in Freeciv? My sugestion is to make city management harder. To make it harder to satisfy your citizens, basically. Nothing about war or battle here, only the management part. I also think that, after some turns, cities in revolt should separate from your nation, and form a new nation of it's own (like a civil war, but only this city and it's home unities would be affected). If the city in question is your capital, well, you lose your game, and your nation turns into a new nation entirely, with all your cities joining this new nation. So, when your empire gets too big, it would have more cities for you to take care, and the game would become harder.

Another idea I have, is to add the hability to create a client state (I don't think this one I am going to talk about is the right definition of 'client state', but I need something to name this). If your empire is too big for you to control, you can designate part of it to become a client state, basically a new nation in the game, which would be your ally. Imagine that this is like when Rome divided itself in eastern and western empires. So, why would you do this? Well, when you create a client state, an AI takes care of this new nation, so you don't need to worry about it's cities, sparing you of some cities to take care. However, this AI will be a very loyal one: this new nation is your ally, and it's forced to accept any deals you make with it (whether you are asking for gold, to attack another player, literally anything). By doing this, we'll give the AI free will enough to take care of this part of your empire, but not enough to "stop being your nation". It's literally a slave nation of yours.

This client state should have it's own capital. It would work just like your nation's capital: if the capital falls to an enemy power, all of the cities belonging to your client state goes to this enemy. Also, if a revolt strikes in this capital, all of it's cities joins the new nation (so, it's like your client state revolted against you). When this happens, the client state becomes a full nation, able to work by itself, with the freedom to make and refuses any deal, to start and end war with anyone, etc. It becomes a nation like any other.

This is some of my sugestions. It doesn't need to be part of the main game, it could be a new ruleset, or something like that. And yes, english is not my native language
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Alien Valkyrie
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Re: Rise and Fall of Empires

Post by Alien Valkyrie »

True, this would make things more interesting. However, I don't think a revolting capital should just make you lose your game. Firstly, since that would be a dick move – it's not like you're going out of power once your ruler dies of old age or you fail to be reelected; and secondly, since you could just /take the new nation. Instead, here's what I propose:
  • In general, when there is civil war, the cities switching over shouldn't just be picked randomly, but revolting cities should have a higher chance of switching and celebrating cities should have a lower – more extreme the longer the city has been in either state
  • If a lot of cities have been in revolt for a longer stretch of time, there should be a chance (slowly rising every turn based on the number of rioting cities) to cause civil war. Combined with the first one, this would cause the revolting cities to secede.
  • There could be different levels of civil war – the one caused by revolting cities would only claim revolting cities, whereas a proper one (caused by losing the capital) would also affect other cities (as it does currently). If the capital is revolting for a long time, the former could cause it to secede, causing the latter
Of course, some of this is maybe a bit more complicated and should probably be ruleset-controlled. Also, making the AI deal with it might be difficult (since it would have to favor more useful cities' happiness over less useful cities' happiness).
~ AVL
Eusebio Ptolomeu
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Joined: Sat Oct 07, 2017 1:51 am

Re: Rise and Fall of Empires

Post by Eusebio Ptolomeu »

Yes, basically it's all about creating new players in the game, and prevent empires from getting too strong
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Corbeau
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Re: Rise and Fall of Empires

Post by Corbeau »

Well, I would leave the possibility of having a long-lasting large empire, but only if the leader is competent enough and takes care of the details. And the mechanism is already in place: unhappy citizens due to empire size. What I'd do is

1. increase unhappiness (+1 unhappy in every city for less cities built)
2. Enable more make-happy wonders so that more of them need to be built
3. Make those wonders obsolete at one time or another and after that make other wonders available for that

This way, the leader would have to keep juggling with the wonders, keeping track of which is obsoleted when, and if he makes a mistake, unhapiness rises. OR keep his empire smaller.
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