It's no secret that I strongly disliked the final third of the game. Partly it was because I got embedded in a firm alliance that had its agenda pretty different than mine and that there was no space for personal decision-making, but mostly because the last few dozen turns were not really a game of Civilization, but of a slow, turn-based game of Warcraft.
I said this much earlier in a discussion, that this game shouldn't have the feel of Warcraft, and I got a reply that it shouldn't be a Sim City either. Well, guess what, the essence of Civilization is much closer to Sim City than to Warcraft.
However, I respect that there are many people who prefer this Warcraft-style and I have no right to demand that they play it different to their own preferences only to appease me, so I'll stick to my own personal preferences and stick to the terms "I liked" and "I disliked".
First of all, the end game conditions - there can be only so-and-so winners/survivors - was murder (for me). The most important aspect of this game for me is diplomacy; particular goals and hidden agendas of different people, fluid dynamics of player interaction, changable alliances, the occasional backstabbing... All of this was gone the moment firm alliances were established in the first third of the game. After that moment, it was one super-bloc agains the (potential) other and it was all just a tech and arms race; once one block got the upper hand, the balance was irreversible. Once StratThinker lost the first five cities, it was clear to me that the game was over; Wieder kept worrying how some of ST's allies would emerge and counterattack, but seeing the blitzkrieg that wiped ST off the board, I didn't see this as a realistic possibility. Simply, there were too many of "us", too many advanced players, one or two could have been smashed, but in a matter of turns, a counterstrike would have been devastating. If there ever was someone to counterattack, which there wasn't.
And, having the end-game condition we had, there was no reason to stop and consolidate, even less throw people out of the alliance if not really necessary. It was simply a short-term race, not many detours, not much room for plot twists. Find who's next, smash him, repeat.
The other thing that I found utterly unreasonable was too much unit mobility. Triple movement and effectively turning fighters into bombers made the game one-track-minded: get the tech for this one unit, produce as much as possible, smash. Within a few turns multi-continental empires vanished, well established players were annihilated, a hundred days of playing simply deleted.
This isn't the game that I want to play.
Regarding the current point system, I said this in a chat discussion, don't remember where anymore: with this endgame, there are three tiers: winners, "survivors" and losers. All losers lose the same amount of points regardless of how and when they "lost". For example, Fractalhead - gone inactive very early, swallowed by Xandr very soon - suffers exactly the same penalty as StratThinker, who managed his empire brilliantly, and at the same being punished more than, say, Xanox, whom he harrassed enough to throw him off balance and would have destroyed him if it wasn't for the winning alliance. On the other hand, I got more points, even though I contributed basically nothing, simply because I got befriended due to my favourable geographical position. I believe that this is drastically unfair and, more important, destimulating; you play the game very well for months and what have you got to show for? A minus in your score.
So, to conclude, I've decided that I won't take part in future games that have
- x3 movement (or more, gods forbid)
- such powerful, basically game-breaking fast units
- fixed number of "winners" with most of everybody else being "losers"
I am also strongly opposed to a concept of allied victory. It makes alliances block solid and removes a huge amount of diplomacy from the game. And what is a multiplayer game - especially Civilization - without diplomacy?
Wieder has said multiple times that we can run "unofficial", custom-ruleset games on this server, too. I've been toying with a very different ruleset and very different victory conditions for a year now, but RL isn't giving me enough time to make it happen. Also, I don't have too much knowledge about running a server to actually make a different game happen. If someone ever decides to administer something like that, I'd be happy to play, and support with ideas and comments.
Like I said, this is a 100% personal view. I'm not saying that other people shouldn't play it the way they prefer.I'm only stating my case.
Sorry for your time
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On a slightly different topic, one of the main remarks arguments about a slow(er) game was that people tend to go inactive. I don't see this as a problem. There were fifty people here. Half of them going inactive, that's still 25 which is more than enough for a nice game. And even peaceful people like me then get to swallow the inactives' lands with great pleasure
Besides, Civilization is for me a historical simulation, and during history many nations and empires simply evaporated and were swallowed by their neighbours. No, I'm not against war, I'm simply against blitzkrieg that swallows half the planet in two weeks. So, I'd be willing to try a VERY long game, just to see how it goes.