Usually the mechanics of a game depend on the goals that can be reached in it. This is especially true for 4x strategy games. In this thread, I'd like to explore how putting multiple goals in a real-time 4x strategy game can add to strategic depth and richness. One common additional goal is to forge an alliance among all the players. What would this entail strategy-wise? Obviously it would require diplomatic action. But along with this, I think an ability to prevent conflicts among other players would be interesting. Yet I've never seen this done in any game. Does anyone think such a thing is feasible? Another goal could be to successfully export your culture over a majority or all of the playing area. This would require cultural influence as a game mechanic. Again, it would seem that there should then be units and/or structures that help in achieving that goal. How appealing would "cultural victory" be as a strategy? These are just a couple of ideas off the top of my head. Final thought: in the interest of boosting faction diversity, I think that having a faction geared towards each additional victory condition would be interesting. What do you all think?

Hm. Sounds a little bit like spore, actually. But anyways:

Multiple victory conditions work, but only if it is very clear that a player is close to winning. Nothing sucks more than losing a game mysteriously just when your battle fleet was about to crush the last player.

I would recommend at least to a certain extent have them be mutually exclusive (so: have everyone allied for one player, and have everyone at war for another).

I would definitely not have factions geared to win conditions. I might have factions geared to play styles, but if you make them essentially only able to win one way, that would greatly diminish the value of being able to win any way you want.

I think cultural conquests are honestly kind of lame, unless you use some kind of crazy cool game mechanic.

best of luck!

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Original post by doomhascome Hm. Sounds a little bit like spore, actually. But anyways: Multiple victory conditions work, but only if it is very clear that a player is close to winning. Nothing sucks more than losing a game mysteriously just when your battle fleet was about to crush the last player.

I definitely agree! Another good thing is to be able to enable/disable the different victory conditions.

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I would recommend at least to a certain extent have them be mutually exclusive (so: have everyone allied for one player, and have everyone at war for another).

Not quite sure what you mean here...

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I would definitely not have factions geared to win conditions. I might have factions geared to play styles, but if you make them essentially only able to win one way, that would greatly diminish the value of being able to win any way you want.

Sorry -- by "geared to victory conditions", I meant what you apparently mean by "geared to play styles". In other words, if you want to pursue a victory condition other than kill/take over everyone, there will be a faction for which that victory condition is significantly easier to achieve (all other things being equal).

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I think cultural conquests are honestly kind of lame, unless you use some kind of crazy cool game mechanic.

Hmm, what do you mean by "lame"?

Honestly, in terms of "cultural conquest", I meant something along the lines of religious conversion. :P

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Original post by RobAU78 Quote: Original post by doomhascome Multiple victory conditions work, but only if it is very clear that a player is close to winning. Nothing sucks more than losing a game mysteriously just when your battle fleet was about to crush the last player. I definitely agree!

I definitely disagree!

I think is much more thrilling if the weaker side still has some crazy options to try out and turn everything around - the odds of succeeding should not be high but the possibility is the only thing that keeps the game going. In most competetive games the moment one player has a clear advantage the other player resigns and in most single player campaign missions only the early game is interesting. As soon as you got your base up and have strong units moving it is only a routine of crushing your oponents forces.

If the loosing player knows he has no military chance left anymore he can still try to do some sneaky mission and surprisingly by assassinating an important character, bombing your hq or stuff like that. This should be hard to do and a cautious player might prevent it easily but the possiblity would add a lot to the game in my opinion.
Not a game but imagine it was unimportant if Sauron had his ring or not in the Tolkiens great book. The whole fascinating story wouldn't be possible since the good forces never had a chance of winning the war. And since I think of games similar to books in the way that you try to create a story with the player involved I think a game that enables us to try this 1:1000 odds action if we are desperate to loose.

@RobAU78:
I agree with the others that multiple winning conditions can work and I think they can add lots of depth but as all complex features they seem to be a pain to balance. So make sure they are all achieveable (crushing all foes might be void if there is a condition like conquering 60 % of the land) And that there are sufficient counter strategies against any strategy for all races.
Like one race being stronger in cultural aspects and have weak military and another has very strong military. You don't want the second race to crush the first in an instant but you also don't want to give the first any possiblity to conquer the second - possible but hard with more than 2 races and goals involved.

Clarification time:

What I meant by have victory mutually exclusive:

What Spore does is (in the civ phase) gives you three methods of taking over a city: religion, trade, or military. However, each of these accomplishes the same end, which is to say, takes over a city. So regardless of how you are taking over the world, if another person is also trying to take over the world, you are competing for the same cities, just with different methods.

Similarly, if you have some requirements that every win condition needs, then a player won't feel cheated when he loses without knowing that the enemy was a threat, because they took the resource away from him.

Now! You don't need to have every resource being competed for, but at least some should overlap.



What I meant by "geared towards playstyle" was the following:

one faction is sneaky in everything they do. They have stealth fighters, their spies are harder to detect, when they're converting your people to a new religion you have a harder time finding out about it. So they're about equal in any victory condition, but they're stealthy in all of them.



This is just me, but I really didn't like Spore's religious takeover methods. They were basically the same as attacking, but they functioned a tiny bit differently. Maybe if you had cultural takeover implemented in a cool way, where the empire you were taking over very gradually assimilated, and you started getting their stuff over a while, it would work, but it would need to (gameplay-wise) be very different from militaristic control.



This also just occurred to me: if you haven't played/read about master of orion, you really should. They had a bunch of different win conditions in all the games that were reasonably distinct.

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Original post by Leartes I definitely disagree! I think is much more thrilling if the weaker side still has some crazy options to try out and turn everything around - the odds of succeeding should not be high but the possibility is the only thing that keeps the game going. In most competetive games the moment one player has a clear advantage the other player resigns and in most single player campaign missions only the early game is interesting. As soon as you got your base up and have strong units moving it is only a routine of crushing your oponents forces. If the loosing player knows he has no military chance left anymore he can still try to do some sneaky mission and surprisingly by assassinating an important character, bombing your hq or stuff like that. This should be hard to do and a cautious player might prevent it easily but the possiblity would add a lot to the game in my opinion. Not a game but imagine it was unimportant if Sauron had his ring or not in the Tolkiens great book. The whole fascinating story wouldn't be possible since the good forces never had a chance of winning the war. And since I think of games similar to books in the way that you try to create a story with the player involved I think a game that enables us to try this 1:1000 odds action if we are desperate to loose.

You bring up good points. If the player's intel has holes in it, he should not be all that surprised if the enemy is able to exploit them and win "mysteriously".

Perhaps a good compromise is to feature the extra victory conditions as options when setting up the game. That way, if the player doesn't want to feel cheated out of victory by an enemy pursuing a "hidden" strategy, he can disable that victory condition.

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@RobAU78: I agree with the others that multiple winning conditions can work and I think they can add lots of depth but as all complex features they seem to be a pain to balance. So make sure they are all achieveable (crushing all foes might be void if there is a condition like conquering 60 % of the land) And that there are sufficient counter strategies against any strategy for all races. Like one race being stronger in cultural aspects and have weak military and another has very strong military. You don't want the second race to crush the first in an instant but you also don't want to give the first any possiblity to conquer the second - possible but hard with more than 2 races and goals involved.

True, balancing is always quite an issue. But before one can balance the game mechanics, he must first decide what they are. ;)

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Original post by doomhascome Clarification time: What I meant by have victory mutually exclusive: What Spore does is (in the civ phase) gives you three methods of taking over a city: religion, trade, or military. However, each of these accomplishes the same end, which is to say, takes over a city. So regardless of how you are taking over the world, if another person is also trying to take over the world, you are competing for the same cities, just with different methods. Similarly, if you have some requirements that every win condition needs, then a player won't feel cheated when he loses without knowing that the enemy was a threat, because they took the resource away from him. Now! You don't need to have every resource being competed for, but at least some should overlap.

Right, I definitely agree with this as well. Currently I'm envisioning the following methods of victory: military conquest, cultural conquest, global alliance (i.e. diplomatic "conquest"), and technological singularity. The first two compete for resources directly, the latter two indirectly (through allying with other factions and gaining more resources for enough research, respectively).

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What I meant by "geared towards playstyle" was the following: one faction is sneaky in everything they do. They have stealth fighters, their spies are harder to detect, when they're converting your people to a new religion you have a harder time finding out about it. So they're about equal in any victory condition, but they're stealthy in all of them.

Ah okay, I understand now. I think a plurality or majority of the factions should follow what you describe above. However, I'd also like to create a faction for each of the three extra victory conditions that I outlined. So figure about 3-4 "normal" factions and 3 "special" factions, giving 6-7 factions in total -- more than your typical RTS.

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This is just me, but I really didn't like Spore's religious takeover methods. They were basically the same as attacking, but they functioned a tiny bit differently. Maybe if you had cultural takeover implemented in a cool way, where the empire you were taking over very gradually assimilated, and you started getting their stuff over a while, it would work, but it would need to (gameplay-wise) be very different from militaristic control.

This is actually close to what I was thinking already. Your cultural influence could spread slowly outwards, leading to rebellion among the other factions' cities/colonies/bases/whatever. There would need to be units/structures which can block (further) spread of your culture, and you would likewise have access to those to block other cultures.

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This also just occurred to me: if you haven't played/read about master of orion, you really should. They had a bunch of different win conditions in all the games that were reasonably distinct.

Of course I have! :)

The original Master of Orion got me hooked on space 4x games. But it did not have multiple victory conditions. There were only two: conquering all the other races and being elected as the head of the galactic council. Its sequel, Master of Orion II, added a third: conquering the Antaran homeworld.

Meh. Still a little bit ambivalent on the concept of having factions designed to be better at a single win condition. They have a huge potential for game breakage when one player can expand more rapidly than normal because they simply are better at it.

Consider:
If we go with the sneaky race example, combined with the mechanics you've described, then overall, the sneaky race expands at about the same rate, regardless of whether they're using their cloaked fighters or their sneaky cultists.

BUT!

If the War-men start attacking, they expand at a slightly faster rate, or if they try religiously converting, they expand at a slightly slower rate. Therefore, they attack.

Late game, the two empires meet, but regardless of what the sneakies did, the war-men will have a bigger empire, because they could expand faster.

Also!

Diplomatic conquest: clarify, please.

Somewhat of a shamless plug, but you might want to check out a post I made a whiles ago (drone ships 2.0). Card game somewhat of a similar idea, at least from the customizable angle.

I always like to pimp the paper i wrote (please forgive me). It includes some ideas on winning strategy games you might find helpful (and hopefully the formatting will be preserved):

Ways To Win

Keep in mind that the options here pertain only to strategy games. There are plenty of non-strategy game victory conditions outside the scope of this document:

• Elimination - Win by eliminating, destroying, moving, or removing opponents, obstacles, targets, or non-playing characters. Elimination can require a player to remove everything or a specific percentage or number of things.
  
• Acquisition - Win by acquiring something or a certain level of something: money, resources, cards, tokens, opponents, or items on map. Victory by acquisition could also be victory by conquest.
  
• Points - Victory by high score is a lot like victory by acquisition, but so much greater because "points" are an abstract representation of value. Points can be awarded for anything. Additionally, different amounts of points can be awarded to players for different things. Players are then assessed by their overall skill level in the game and not by any specific skill. This encourages mastery of all the game's elements. Points are so flexible that you can even subtract or multiply points if so needed. Points can also be adjusted if the game is unbalanced.
• Physical Goal - Win by getting to a location or several locations. This victory requires a game space to play in. Not all games have a game space. This victory could also be a victory by travel, discovery, or exploration. RoboSport (by Maxis) had a clever game mode called "baseball" where the player had to move units to four corners of a map to win.
• Abstinence - Win by not doing something or by doing something efficiently. You might consider not losing something the player already has, going "out of balance", going out of bounds, losing resources, spending resources, or trying not to receive points. Victory by abstinence can also be victory by efficiency (like golf).
  
• Riddance - Win by getting rid of something. Players may start with an item or items that need to be played out of the hand (like a card game), placed on a map, spent (like money), traded away, or destroyed. Victory by riddance provides the intriguing concept of giving opponents something they don't want as a hindrance (as opposed to not giving them something they do want) and of "going out" to win.
  
• Spacial Dominance - Win by possessing or controlling an amount of physical area on a map. You will need to decide what constitutes "controlling." Victory can be attained by total domination, however a shorter and less exclusive game can be played by making the goal a certain percentage of space or number of areas instead.
• Key Target - Win by removing, destroying, creating, acquiring, or converting a key target or targets. Chess is won by capturing the King, not by capturing other pieces (this minor detail escapes many beginners). Key targets can be per-game (one target for all players), per-player (each player has a different target), or inter-player (each player has a target to defend against the others, e.g. "capture the flag").
  
• Diplomacy - Win by social means. This can include winning by default (lack of other players), resignation of opponents, or a declaration of a draw or tie. Players could also vote for a winner (such as in Master of Orion), or periodically vote for a loser (think Survivor). There may also be multiple winners where a person wins by being allied with a winner (or loses by being allied with a loser).
• Time - Rarely used, but listed here regardless. Victory is given to the player who deals with a scenario in the fastest time. There are some obvious contradictions in making time a victory condition in strategy games.
  
• Combinations - Win by completing multiple simultaneous victory conditions. This is not a victory condition, per se, but interesting to explore. Consider Physical Goal + Riddance. This requires the players to get everything out of something or away from something. Or consider Points + Abstinence, possibly requiring the player to win with the most points in the least moves (or while using the least resources, losing the least number of units, etc).
• Variable - Win by completing one of several different victory conditions. This allows multiple paths to victory which allows for a wider style of play.
  

Ways To End

Important note: Ending conditions are not always victory conditions! - It is important that you specifically consider what events trigger the end of the game. This does not necessarily determine a winner in itself. For instance, some card games are over when someone "goes out," but the winner may be determined by counting points afterward. Go is over when all the available space is controlled, but the winner is determined by counting points. However, in some games, victory and endings are the same. In Chess, the game ends and is won when a king is captured.

Endings that correspond to victory conditions:

• Elimination - End the game by removing all players or competitive forces from the game. This could also be called "last man standing".
• Acquisition - The game ends when a specific number or percentage of items or resources have been collected.
• Points - End the game by scoring a number of points. This requires that score be actively kept during play as opposed to scoring after the game's end. A scoring end condition can be further restricted by only permitting a specific score to end the game with no overage or underage allowed.
  
• Physical Goal - The game ends when one or more players reach a specific physical goal (like a race) or after all players have reached the goal.
  
• Riddance - Win by getting rid of something.
  
• Spacial Endings - The game ends when all space or a specific portion of space is used up, controlled, or owned, either by players in general or by a specific player. For example, play may end and the game won by a player controlling 50% of the available area; or the game may end (but victory not determined) when 100% of the available area is controlled by all players in general or when no more moves can be played in it.
  
• Key Target - The game ends when a specific target (or targets) is captured, destroyed, or collected.
  
• Diplomacy - Players decide when the game is over. This can be a popular vote for a winner, a resignation, or a decision to draw or tie.
  

Endings not related to victory conditions:

• Combinations ("And" Endings) - The game ends when two or more ending conditions are met. For example: a Canasta hand is over when a player has both the necessary number of plays made and gets rid of all their cards. This player may not end the game if the required plays have not been made.
  
• Variable ("Or" Endings) - Allow any number of multiple conditions to end the game. Chess is actually a variable-ending game; although the game is over when a king is captured, it also ends with a resignation or a draw. Variable end conditions usually go with variable victory conditions.
  
• Exhaustion - End the game by exhausting an available resources. This could be a stack of cards, money, game tokens, collectible items, etc.. The game can end with the exhaustion of a specific resource or all resources.
  
• Inability to Play - The game can end either when one or all players cannot make a legal play. Some games end after a player cannot play and all other players get "one last turn."
  
• Time - The game ends when a time limit expires. Time limits are not related to a time victory condition, which is more like a race.
  
• Random - What ends the game is randomly determined before the game starts. This forces more variety in play style.
  

I think the perfect example of all of this is located within the Civilization series. Not only do you have the ability to win through a multitude of different methods, but every nation has two traits which align it to be able to make it easier to accomplish certain methods.

Though Civilization is a TBS, the mechanics could easily be applied to an RTS. It was almost done in Rise of Nations.