Goal simplification

[Bluddy]

It seems to me that it would be simple to combine the goals of 'survive to the age of gods' and 'attain a certain score' into one goal. You could simply have the score be mana of some sort, and the goal would be to assemble the 'chalice of the gods' or something like that. The chalice would consist of 2 pieces, one from the Norse and one from the Greeks, and each piece could only be assembled in the age of gods, and would require the target amount of mana.

This would also allow games to end once the target score is reached. It appears that once you reach the target score, there isn't much purpose to finishing the age of gods since you can just run a minimalistic game from that point on.

[x4000]

The goal of score, which was something we added back at the request of a lot of alpha players, is to determine "how well I won."  If you end the game when the score is reached, that is lost.

[Castruccio]

Be that as it may, I find myself reaching the score goal and then hitting "end turn" until turn 90.  I don't want one faction to destroy the other once I have reached the score goal, so I just run a minimal game from that point until the end.  I guess I determine "how well" I won by  whether I reach the score goal, and not by the final number itself.

Maybe there should be some incentives to achieve scores higher than the score goal, i.e. when I get score X I get to do something really cool (use a rare ability or place a very rare type of building).

[Bluddy]

Agreed. Why not have it such that once you reach the minimal score to finish the age of gods, you unlock a new bonus goal to reach 1.5x that amount? Reaching that amount will grant you some random effect. When you reach that number, you get another bonus goal etc. Having that goal in front of you makes you strive for more chaos.

Also, it would be cool if, once you won the game properly, you had the option of starting a massive war where you could let either side win. ie. the game became a sandbox.

[zespri]

Yes, it was suggested somewhere in another thread, and I'd like to back up that with this observation: I'm currently playing Reus, and this is how they did it. Ones you reach the "formal" end of scored play you can continue to play in freeplay mode. In this mode no unlocks or best score advancement happens, but you can see what happens after you "finished" a game.

[Misery]

Yes, it was suggested somewhere in another thread, and I'd like to back up that with this observation: I'm currently playing Reus, and this is how they did it. Ones you reach the "formal" end of scored play you can continue to play in freeplay mode. In this mode no unlocks or best score advancement happens, but you can see what happens after you "finished" a game.

This is a really good idea, actually.

Even I've done that, wondered "Hmm, I caused alot of chaos at the end for some extra points, but I wonder what would have happened with this situation once 10 more turns have passed?"


It's be a cool option to have.  Let the player have a chance to mess around with that ending situation, it could be fun AND allow them to learn more.

[x4000]

Well, that would mean the score gate thresholds would have to be much less arbitrary than they are now, for one. We took a shot in the dark with score gates, as you'll recall, as we had too little data on what scores were reasonable to attain. There is also a "score gates off" mode.

I'm not saying something along these lines couldn't possibly be done, but I'm not sure how wise it would be at this specific point in time. I'm also not sure how constraining that would wind up being for potential future victory conditions: depending on the chosen score gates, you could hit those super quickly and then have no chance to really play the alternate game modes...

And frankly, just choosing the lowest score gate and then really hard other settings would be just the king of cheese. You could "win" very fast on very hard settings. I think there would be major backlash there.

In short: the game was never designed to end early. You start messing with that, and there are consequences. Boredom after you reach the score gate is unfortunate, but I'd rather solve that problem rather than just chopping off the rest of the game at that point.

[FooBarTheLittle]

And frankly, just choosing the lowest score gate and then really hard other settings would be just the king of cheese. You could "win" very fast on very hard settings. I think there would be major backlash there.

Having some kind of mode (e.g. civil war) activated at the moment you achieve the score gate (of the current round or in total) could strongly encourage the player to try to reach the goal at the very last turn otherwise he has to deal with the enormous effects of this mode (world event, stronger woes, more bandits, more often-cited woes, norse and/or greek stat changes, ...).

Actually this would make the score-gating choice much more painful because a to low would active the mode to early and a to high one would be hard to reach (as it's now). Again the golden mean is the best choice (as most other aspects of the game). Additionally this would enable sort of a new game mode where less fighting is the best, but there are still the bandits forcing you to react 

[x4000]

And frankly, just choosing the lowest score gate and then really hard other settings would be just the king of cheese. You could "win" very fast on very hard settings. I think there would be major backlash there.

Having some kind of mode (e.g. civil war) activated at the moment you achieve the score gate (of the current round or in total) could strongly encourage the player to try to reach the goal at the very last turn otherwise he has to deal with the enormous effects of this mode (world event, stronger woes, more bandits, more often-cited woes, norse and/or greek stat changes, ...).

Actually this would make the score-gating choice much more painful because a to low would active the mode to early and a to high one would be hard to reach (as it's now). Again the golden mean is the best choice (as most other aspects of the game). Additionally this would enable sort of a new game mode where less fighting is the best, but there are still the bandits forcing you to react 

Something like this would be interesting, but at the same time it would subvert the "how well did I win" nature of the score, which was the original point of the score for a lot of people.  That said, in another thread we're discussing something more like what you're talking about in general, and I think that something in that ballpark could be fun.