Alternative Victory Conditions

I've found that in all of my M2TW campaigns, the first 50 or so turns have been the most fun and immersive by far. Its feels realistic for the Scots to fight off the English, for Venice to struggle against the Byzantine Empire, for Spain to reconquer Iberia from the Moors. However, once your faction has acquired around 20 provinces from the local rivals, the game just seems to turn into a big rush to conquer the necessary provinces to win. To be fair, features like the Mongol/Timurid invasions and the discovery of the Americas do add a lot to gameplay and keep up a decent AI challenge, but by the time Denmark has conquered western Europe things just seem to have lost their perspective.

Rather than the 45 province dash, could some more interesting victory conditions not be introduced. Perhaps something along the lines of:

• Unification (eg. unite Germany as Prussia)
• Imperial Dominace (own a majority of colonial areas spread across each continent)
• IndustrialPower (be the most industrialised nation)
• Social Advancement (in terms of parliaments, government)
• Monopoly on Trade (gain sole influence over certain resources)
• Alliances (build a strong network of alliances with world powers)
• Development (have the most advanced settlements, low taxes, civilian buildings)
• Naval Might (rule the waves as whoever you play)
• Colonisation (establish large settlements in your colonies)

Those are just some ideas of the top of the head, but trying to secure realistic objectives would add a lot to gameplay.

I agree. If this is about Empire it shouldn't be about who has the most land it should be about cash. Trade needs to dominate the game with protection of the sea lanes playing a vital role, otherwise all that time spent drawing seagulls and sail boats has been wasted. Conquering and occupying land shouldn't be the only revenue generator, far flung colonies, preferential trade agreements and a bit of gun boat diplomacy wouldn't go amiss. Its when this is threatened that the powder wants to be primed and the sabers sharpened.

Having just written an essay on imperialism, it seems colonialism was inspired mostly by nationalist pressure and the need for colonies as a measure of status; and in fact the money spent on imperialism was greater than any income gained from it. While this wouldn't work very well in-game, perhaps colonies should have to be acquired in order to prevent unrest within the population at home, and to remove excess population after industrialisation, otherwise squalor and unrest would cause chaos. Also missions to acquire/settle colonies should come from pressure groups, for example in Germany the 'Kolonialverein'.

From what I know, most EARLY colonies (1400's-1700's) were established primarily for practical reasons. Most exceptions occured when non-great-powers were attempting to make themselves look good, EX: Sweden establishing colonies in the Carribbean. Basically pointless, but allowed them to say, "We've got colonies! w00t!"
It was around the 1850's that people started making landgrabs just for the sake of landgrabbing on a large scale.

If I may be so bold and weave some shameless promotion into my post: Check out the link in my sig, different victory conditions are actually workable in M2TW.

Now, on topic: I totally agree. In my opinion there would be two possible ways to go for this.

Way 1: Introduce certain victory types. This is the style that you see in Civilization games and close to the opening post. The advantages with this is that you sometimes get surprise winners you didn't expect if the conditions are done well and that you can put in a decent number of things that determine victory; thus it is very good from a strategical gameplay point of view because it opens up quite a few different paths to victory. The disadvantage is that the victory conditions still need to present a large threshold so you don't win immediately. Small stuff won't be considered at all. In addition, the winner doesn't always have to be a dominating faction, nor does a dominating faction have a guaranteed win (although you could say that this is a good thing).

Way 2: Use a scoring system. This system would monitor a faction's progress in numerous ways (you could for example score points for good diplomacy, missions, etc.) In the end, you either set a key date at which scores are compared or you set a score target which would allow for shorter games.
This system wouldn't allow for real surprise winners; conversely it would require the winning faction to somehow dominate the game. As a last point it's always fun to race against the AI in the score.
This is the way I'm implementing in my mod by the way because it's easier to do. I'm not sure which of the two approaches I'd prefer but I think they'd both work very well with their own distinct advantages and disadvantages. From a gameplay point of view I'd be slightly in favor of #1 but on the other hand I'm sometimes annoyed if the AI pulls off a surprise victory against me :laugh4:

Thats kind of a tricky post you have made Shegorath!

When Sweden had colonies in the carribean Sweden was not a great power no, but then again the carribean colonies were not founded by Sweden, they were results of treaties with other great powers (France and England).

On the other hand Sweden did found colonies both in North America and in Africa but when Sweden founded these colonies the motives were the same as for every other great power and Sweden was a great power when founding these colonies.

Kalle

hey..i like those victory conditions..i love them all..specially the unification one. every empire conquers their own historical provinces...it may seem easy task to do but if CA works out a way to do make it challenging..that would be great.:idea2:

i like the idea of alternate victory conditions.

but really on M2TW play as russia or turks or maybe even egypt with mongels and timurids you wont be getting those 45 provinces early with my russian game, sure i was in germany and mongels were in Asia minor and below but they moved up on kiev and when they struck my unprotected settelments and then i split my army on 3 fronts germany/kiev/constantinople it was no race to 45 regions it was sit and patiently trade provinces back and forth via conquest until i was victor on all fronts where i then presseded till timurids and entered another similiar stage until eventually all the old world was mine then all of the new world for soviet dominance over world :] but really i won before timurids and just kept going but much trickeyer with russia than with an Iberian province

and out of all my rambling im saying that russia pwns and your idea is good so Roma Victor!?

Cheers! ~:cheers:

they should change the basic principle from conquering everything to something like what was mentioned above. Alliances should be somewhat more permanent. Instead of making alliances just to later break them, they should be more set in stone as time goes on.

I'd like the multiple/alternate victory conditions also like in civilization games.

Multiple/different endings wouldn't hurt. Maybe get +points - points in many different areas. Ex. Bad ending (Your generals overthrow you at the end) if you kill many prisoners, people unhappy, kill too many people when taking over cities, etc.

Ok, I have a bunch of fine ideas, but while making a post, I fugured out that CA will not be reading this anyway, so, why should I waste my time? I will leave them for a later time, maybe for a mod for Empire: TW.

One thing that I hope for, though , is to see much more regions, which would make the world conquest near impossible. As the map is much larger, there should be not 200, but 400 or even 600 region limit. That would make each continent as a small "kingdoms map"'. With a new engine, it should be no problem.

While alternate victory conditions are not something we usually see in TW games, you may see something similiar to Kingdoms. Where if you unite this country and this country you get this unit, or if you units this little area this guild opens up for you. Perhaps even something like Barbarian Invasion where if you set up this, this and that, then this faction comes to age.

While I don't think they'd change actual victory conditions (I mean the control provinces thing has been there for a while now.) You may see some additional bonuses if you do certain things as related to history.

There comes to my mind one small thing, what do we mean by victory here? Do you want that when you accomplish a goal, you see that standard message, with that piece of nice music? (I specially loved the one in RTW:BI, the bards will sing of your deeds with their word hordes :laugh4: ).
But seriously, what does it mean? If one wants alternate goals, one can eaisly set them himself, and keep track of them........like one can keep a goal of advancing every city to the highest possible......why do we need CA to set these for us? We have an open ended grand campaigne, we can set our own minor and major goals.............. :yes:

I say they bring back an improved version of GA back from mtw.The point system is the way to go. That way the playing field can be level, and you can get small victories for your accomplishments, ie unification, trade, colonies. Just like in mtw, as a catholic faction you could win by brute force, but if you had a couple successful crusades you would get a decent lead over the other factions, while getting the same number of points, because you accomplished a major historical goal.

Love the idea of colonial/industrial, naval and trading conditions, not sure how the social one would work though, especially if you're a monarchist :laugh4:

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"They should change the basic principle from conquering everything to something like what was mentioned above. Alliances should be somewhat more permanent. Instead of making alliances just to later break them, they should be more set in stone as time goes on."

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Definitely Plaidwarrior, alliances need to be more tangible and sensible. Perhaps benefits for good behaviou/relations over timer, but definitely penalties for breaking alliances for no good reasons, other than just 'bad global reputation'...:embarassed:

Love the ideas presented here. On the alliances, maybe some sort of time limit and goal could be useful, again borrowing from Civ IV. Say sign an alliance with Prussia as Britain against the french for say 10 turns. The AI then has a specific goal, and then you know for sure when to move your armies back onto the frontier with Prussia. The converse would be defensive pacts so you can get military aid that way. As is stands, alliances don't have any real impact than someone supposedly not attacking you. I know I never had an ally come help with an offensive or send help when my cities were besieged.

What I would like to see is the idea of "Balance of Power" that was introduced during the War of the Spanish Succession, with alliances forming to balance each other, and diplomacy and underhand vying for maps and resources in the colonies. As weaponry across Europe is more or less similar among all nations, it is diplomacy and all the other sides of resource gathering and indirect warfare that are going to be decisive. I'd like to see that reflected.

Imperial dominance is certainly a good idea. Unification historically accurate as well. As for the rest they would work up to a point. Alliances would be hard to hold on to and Social advancement uneven across the different factions. naval might and colonisation would be different in the case of Russia or Poland-Lithuania. The major issue is could they be adopted. Still good ideas for discussion.

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Originally Posted by Caledonian Rhyfelwyr

• Unification (eg. unite Germany as Prussia)
  ...
• Colonisation (establish large settlements in your colonies)

Those are just some ideas of the top of the head, but trying to secure realistic objectives would add a lot to gameplay.

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I think that Prussia/german factions should only be put pressure to colonise places when they unify germany

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Originally Posted by alpaca

Use a scoring system. This system would monitor a faction's progress in numerous ways (you could for example score points for good diplomacy, missions, etc.) In the end, you either set a key date at which scores are compared or you set a score target which would allow for shorter games.
This system wouldn't allow for real surprise winners; conversely it would require the winning faction to somehow dominate the game. As a last point it's always fun to race against the AI in the score.

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I really like this kind of "victory conditions". It reminds me of the way Paradox has done with their games. In Victoria - An Empire Under The Sun, for example, there are three areas of point-gaining: military, industrial and prestige.

What I like about this, is that not any odd country can actually "win". Rather, there will be different achievents (when it comes to final ranking) considered good and poor for each country played. I played a game as Dominion of Canada once, and ended up in 5th place or so, and that was considered very good indeed. On the other hand, ending up 5th as Great Britain or Germany isn't consider impressive at all.