Most 4x games (and civ games) suffer from the exact same problem late in the game: when you reach the stage of development and strength where you become unbeatable, but in order to win the game you still need to individually take out each and every remaining player (this assumes youre playing in a military victory or conquest condition). As far as I know Gal Civ is the only game that has tried to address this problem by allowing AI players to merge together to form a new super nation and thus give you a whole new challenge.



So id like to see this issue addressed in Endless Space either in the same or similar way that Gal Civ did it, or come up with something else that can keep you entertained and challenged even when youre in a superiority position. Other games have tried to penalize you when your nation is too big by increasing maintenance costs and all that, but that does not solve the issue, it just makes winning more of a chore and pain.

Good point.

Late stages of the game are just trivial.

From CivIV onward the AI was able to ally against you, if you were in a conquer spree; no matter the age you were in. Mutual defense pacts against a third party are a solution to warmongers, at least in the higher difficulty levels. A different, although not by much, system is the one used by the Victoria games. In which each nation has a "bad boy" score and the higher it is, the more likely other nations will prey on the "bad" country; they of course also take into account "power levels" and such things before taking action. From a conqueror point of view and in a reasonable difficulty level, any of this mechanism should guarantee that you don't get bored at the end game. Nevertheless if you feel that conquering is easy, try to win through some other victory condition; that's what I always do.

Hey I like the "bad boy" idea. Slowly build up a reputation as a hostile nation.

It's called 'Casus Belli' no? Attack for no reason... then everyone else can/will attack you -- and/or your populace may rise up and rebel if you randomly attack other civs without provocation.



Then again riling up people with xenophobia or WMD fears isn't too hard. Still I always hated games that let you fly a massive fleet up to your enemy's homeworld and then 'oops' decide to attack them. That just doesn't happen. In those games I always ignore diplomacy completely as it's better not to have. This seems like it should be a bit Race dependent.

I don't think you've got to make it race-dependant, but rather skill dependant.



Your governmental organisation pick is then deciding how easily you can declare war and if your people do rebell. Democracy probably makes them grumble a lot, despotism a lot less, monarchy the same, hivemind not at all. Sth. like that.



You could further enrich this concept by the Civ-like system: they like me the more comparable they are to me.

So factions with cybernetic trait won't as easily attack each other as say one civilisation with some kind of creative trait and another with the uncreative trait. Opposites go to war more easily.



This would of course scale the bad boy score of you among each foreign faction and of them among themselves. The benefit of this additional layer of complexity would probably be, that the outcome of the warscape would seem more natural. It is just plain ridiculous if everyone battles everyone without a reason and factions are among totally different allies, half the time.

I liked the way in Civ IV if your empire became too big, part of your empire would claim independence and form its own faction. Perhaps it could be done in so way that no matter whether your empire is passive or aggressive, that when your empire reach's a certain size, say % of systems in galaxy, part of your empire wants to be the opposite, and rebels. So just when you think you have everything under control, a thing like this happens and you now have some more work to do.



Looking through the documentation "Design Overview" it does say this:

The empire is also heavily dependent on the approval of its population, measured for each star system individually, and averaged over the systems to determine the empire average Approval. Success in warfare, Improvements, and Resources will raise Approval. Overpopulation, a high Tax Rate, empire over-expansion or military defeats will lower Approval. Star systems affected by low Approval can rebel or secede if left unchecked.

Seems as though there will be something like this.

SABA wrote:
I liked the way in Civ IV if your empire became too big, part of your empire would claim independence and form its own faction. Perhaps it could be done in so way that no matter whether your empire is passive or aggressive, that when your empire reach's a certain size, say % of systems in galaxy, part of your empire wants to be the opposite, and rebels. So just when you think you have everything under control, a thing like this happens and you now have some more work to do.

Not really a huge fan of this idea. I feel like if you take proper steps to ensure that your empire is happy then it should be happy. Reaching a hard coded number and arbitrarily making your empire fragment seems quite a poor solution to the "endgame problem".

Xervitus wrote:
Not really a huge fan of this idea. I feel like if you take proper steps to ensure that your empire is happy then it should be happy. Reaching a hard coded number and arbitrarily making your empire fragment seems quite a poor solution to the "endgame problem".

It's not something that should be sudden, indicated or dictated by a "hard coded number"; the CIV IV system shows a gradual progression toward instability of the government. This is a mechanism which closely mirrors RL social interactions, when dealing with large multicultural/species/etc populations. Practicably this translates to a reason and further encouragement to purse civic research into government efficiency and related fields.

This why 4x games need multiple victory conditions so having the biggest empire does not always mean winning.

Xervitus wrote:
Not really a huge fan of this idea. I feel like if you take proper steps to ensure that your empire is happy then it should be happy. Reaching a hard coded number and arbitrarily making your empire fragment seems quite a poor solution to the "endgame problem".

I know what you mean & agree to the point you are making, The % of systems was just an example. It does seem as though that may be it will be like you are saying, in that there is a number of things that can effect your approval rating. Though in the end each will have a set point & the combination of these will have a code limit. I don't think there is a way around that.



Also, the faction you choose & traits etc. you choose, should have an effect on these. I wonder, for example, for a warmonger faction, the success / failure with warfare, would / should it have the biggest effect on your approval than the other effectors like research & resources? These set points for each effector need to be different depending on what you choose I think.

I know people are often against this idea, but being able to destroy planets/suns and systems, would spice up the endgame considerably. Even if you're an extremely powerful empire, if enemy factions develop the tech, then a well-placed missile or ship could potentially ruin your day. On the polar opposite, maybe factions could band together against an over-powerful enemy to do combined research on extremely powerful defensive (or even offensive) technology that will give smaller factions an edge against larger factions. The tech could only be researched through cooperation between x number of factions.

Or you could make super large empires and controlling rebellious worlds very expensive and difficult. Which also would be realistic and more or less make total galaxy conquest impossible. Not totally impossible.



Why not simply have a scoring system and let time be the ultimate factor for determining the winning faction in any game, that would make you struggle more or less until the finish line, no more end game mop up actions needed.



I would surely play that type of game any day.



Things like internal politics and trade could take serious blows when empires expand and or destroy other civilisation worlds. Repercussion that will last for very long periods.



Serious rebellion and creation of independent factions during the game if you neglect individual worlds interests. Conflicting interests and social differences between colonies and planets in different part of an Empire should have huge effect on a game.



I don't want things to be too detailed or dragged down in to a spread cheat game, but enough that you must, from time to time spend huge resources in countering these things or you will end up in civil war... sometimes civil war should be unavoidable if you push things too far.



All these thing will hinder one faction from gaining too much power, too quickly. Unless you build up a solid infrastructure and trust or social belonging among your subjects/people there will be huge problem, wars should usually create many problem, especially if you start to annihilate or annex enemy worlds. Both internal stability and external relation should suffer very badly in these types of event, not to mention the damage to en economy that war usually has.



Perhaps each planet should have some sliding scale how close it is in following the overall Empire social understanding. This would in turn govern how much morale will be lost and recovered due to events occurring in the galaxy and within the empire. Strong planets with very differing view systems should also influence other worlds, mostly through trade relations. This way you also need to manage your internal politics and belief systems as an important resource. Do you really want to build a large naval production facility at a world that is on the verge of declaring independence or revolt?!?

How will characters react when their home worlds defect?!?

What problems will multi racial planets face?!?

Will trade increase the number of multi racial planets and how will this effect game play and internal politics... will you even allow such things to happen or reduce trade efficiency etc...

What I liked in Fall from Heaven was that when you were so strong noone could stop you, the game proposed you to switch with another faction (so you would have to struggle with your "old" faction)



Another thing that can alter the endgame is having gamebreaking things like creating wormholes that destroys a whole system, or a techonology that let dust coming alive and you can agregate some of your system in a powerfull killing machine (think "sentient quasar").



Or something like the final spell in populous. Everyone in the middle and a huuuuge fight.

Ashbery76 wrote:
This why 4x games need multiple victory conditions so having the biggest empire does not always mean winning.

Very much agreed here.



This is probably the toughest problem in strategy game design. On the one hand, having the endgame become a boring slugfest where you have to mop large amounts of helpless enemies is, well, boring. On the other hand, I always disliked arbitrary "that faction is doing well, so let's all gang up on them!" mechanics as well, especially if it didn't take into account a player's "honour" score or something like that. Allying against a galactic bully makes all kinds of sense, provoking a war with a large and powerful but up-until-now peaceful empire just because they're big just makes me groan and roll my eyes, especially if it was done by an ally you always treated well. I think the best solution is alternative methods of winning and a practical subjugation system that allows you to force other factions into becoming your vassals without having to completely destroy or conquer them, once the power difference grows large enough.

Why not just have something in the Diplomacy section where you can ask them to literally surrender their empire to you and be annexed. Use some basic checks to compare the two empires to make sure they are badly losing or horribly behind before accepting. Then put a time limit on it (maybe to indicate setting up for all the changes of govment and so on all the planets need to make ect i don't know). Maybe say it takes 2 years in game to fully activate giving another empire a chance to join the war against you in order to try and "save" the other empire cancelling the affect until you are back at peace with those involved in this particular war.



Then the option of continuing all the way or not will be in the players' hands. It would also be another way to see if the player is as strong as they really think they are. It would be a kick to your ego if you started this just to have another empire join the war against you and start beating you back. :P. Come to think of it. It would be cool to be able to "liberate" planets as well and reclaim your allies lost territory for them or something. Which they would love you for i'm sure hehe. After all it's never been a good idea diplomatically to join a war with your ally and then claim their lost territories for yourself lol.