Downfall

[Apoll]

Hi,

There seems there is a lot of skulduggery going on, and I believe need to be sorted before alienates more people.

There are many occasions at the moment, where people put the motions of war declaration against a weak civ. When everything is on, they pull off just few hours before the battle joining the enemies to the opposite side. Leaving the previous civ losing the battle and taking all the 'spoils' with them.

Maybe a cooling off period of 24 hours or so to leave and join another civ should be put in place (without having the rights to vote etc)?

Because how thing is operating atm, is bit annoying and soon nobody will contribute towards the common goals. Or maybe allow people to build a civ of friends and trusted people only, with restrictions on the ministry positions too.

Thoughts?

[Mythdracon]

Absolutely agreed, there's been far too much treachery, and loyalty to any nation is a complete facade. Why some restrictions weren't put in place earlier remains to be seen. You can have Closed Borders as a policy, but that doesn't prevent people with great power in your civ from simply up and leaving. Pfeh.

[merlik]

Yes I have noticed this with the high level players. The people who pull ahead start ruining civs by getting a civ to attack the joining the defending civ and destroying the attacker.

[spacechampion]

Yes I have noticed this with the high level players. The people who pull ahead start ruining civs by getting a civ to attack the joining the defending civ and destroying the attacker.

I don't think a lot of high level players do this sort of thing. I've seen that in the past, but it gradually stopped happening. Now we have a whole bunch of new players its going to happen again. It is a beta test so people are trying to find the exploits in order to point them out to the developers. However leaving a civ and joining a defender I don't think the developers will see this as an exploit, just as a part of the game that makes it challenging. You have to figure out who you want to play with and who you don't.

Personally I'd like to see a tournament system where the top 10 of one game get grouped together against the top 10 of other games, face off in an awesomely competitive game; and the newer players learning the ropes get excluded from those games so they can play in a regular one.

But loyalty and trust are social issues that i don't think the developers should try too hard to enforce. There will always be newer players coming on that see ways to game the mechanics, and players who do annoying things like that. Lots of people will come to the game without any friend playing so they have to be able to be in civs with strangers and make friends (or enemies).

That said, I like being able to play with the group of friends I have made in the game, and I like facing off against them too, because I know how well they can play. So a variety of game modes I think would be great:
1) fast paced mode games to be over in a few days
2) casual mode games over in several weeks
3) player's choice civs where you can play with friends only.
4) tournament games for the high level players

And a leaderboard where all sorts of game stats are collected!

[Mythdracon]

I think having *some* kind of penalties for betrayal/swapping nations would help with balance, even if it's just a few high level players doing it, their movement from one civ to another causes mass immigration. Which is silly. In Civ games you could never "swap" your nation during a game, you stuck with it until victory or defeat. An Egyptian can suddenly become German. Wtf. But more importantly, it ruins game balance, and some of the fun seeps away too.

[spacechampion]

I would wish to see some games be composed of evenly balanced civs of similar numbers each, and for all games the domination victory be not based on size but strength instead.

I once suggested that leaving your civ cost a citizen as the cost of immigration (people die when migrating all the time in real life) but developers i don't think noticed and lots of people thought it too harsh. Really, anything other than a "bad player, bad!" is probably going to be seen as harsh.

So people are fame hounds and will jump from civ to civ sniffing it out. There have been efforts to try prevent that, and closed borders is the only successful one so far.

[DanM]

A suggestion we made a while back is that when you leave your civ you forfeit something - 10% of fame points, or resources, or something.

[brian.shapiro]

A suggestion we made a while back is that when you leave your civ you forfeit something - 10% of fame points, or resources, or something.

Thats crap. There already is a penalty if you arent one of the strong players, like I mentioned in another thread. People here are only thinking of a situation when a strong player gets up and leaves to take advantage of the other members. What if someone in a civ doesn't like how the other players in that civ are taking advantage of him?

[merlik]

Luckily our closed borders was able to stop the guy from jumping into our civ and ruining it, and we were able to work well enough together to start pulling ahead. But when we got to the final era he was upset that we knocked him out of first place so he said he would just end it and did. Something doesn't seem right about being able to just win an era because you feel like it.

[Mythdracon]

Exactly. He had far too much power. He was a great player, but his actions were very arrogant and whimsical. He felt "bored" so he switched sides, incited wars and sold production on the market during the war for uber profit. It's quite evil.

And in a Civ game, that sort of behavior should not be tolerated. Amoral, but more importantly, wrecks game balance and the fun players have (certainly did for me). I switched nations often because I never wanted to be on the losing side (read: lost all wonders, techs were stolen by another, originally much weaker civ).

[JulieG]

If any penalty is implemented for leaving a civ, there absolutely MUST be an "are you sure" confirmation when you click the "leave" button. Right now, it's far too easy to leave a civ accidentally.

[Duncan Colby]

As a possible alternative, simply having a 24/ 48 hour period before anyone can hold any kind of office after joining a civ or propose any kind of war/ civics would make this kind of behavior much more rare and would make the person doing the swapping have a much larger commitment to trying to pull something like this off.

Also simply having a stat on a persons stat bar that says how many civs/ swaps they have done in that game would go a long way to knowing who to trust.

Another possiblility is a "Closed Borders policy" with a vote to allow someone in or out.

[DanM]

If you don't have many fame points to lose, then 10% of not much is not a big penalty. Besides, more common than "a strong player taking advantage of others" is "people flocking to the civ that's currently winning era victories". Just discourages civ hopping.

[brian.shapiro]

If you don't have many fame points to lose, then 10% of not much is not a big penalty. Besides, more common than "a strong player taking advantage of others" is "people flocking to the civ that's currently winning era victories". Just discourages civ hopping.

Losing fame points would be okay if you didn't have the other big penalty of losing all the work you put in on tech/wonders.

[NickC]

The hilarious part is the people complaining about me "civ hopping" very nearly all civ hopped themselves to the civ I supported through most of the game. Less than 1/5th of the population of Rome at the point I left was there when I joined it. Also, I was never upset about being knocked out of first place. I stopped playing the fame game the second I left my emperorship; that should have been obvious. I was on track to have ten times the fame of anybody not in Rome, and twice the fame of everybody in Rome. My intent was to make the game interesting, as the Romans had dominated the game for 3000 years. I was clearly not playing competitively, and as noted, such behavior is likely to decline as players increase in experience. I was a little bemused to note that the last two eras w/Hollywood were worth ~ as much as the first 15 eras. I mean, the first victory as king of the ancient era is worth a whopping 4 fame points.

[DanielR]

I dont see any way of keeping players out of your civilization, so you cant keep civ hoppers out. I too have seen this where players started a war and then sold out and switched sides. While it is true this happens in real life, we tend to not trust them as allies again. If you cant choose who is in your civ, then it doesnt matter if you are a team or not. Thats the problem with civ hoppers.