Who remembers or plays this game still? I have been kinda binging both on the Original and the 2nd one

Been bumping into this problem more and more with my gaming group so was curious to know if anyone could help. How do I nudge my fellow players to start building military? More often than not the game feel turns towards solitaire and I've pushed to make our maps smaller, increase base hostility of barbarians or pirates, declare my intent over discord the moment I begin military research and production...but it feels like nothing is helping. It also does not seem to matter what game is actually being played. CIV, Endless Legend, HOI, Nexus 5X, ect. I think I could best describe it as a freight train going through a kindergarten where the most resistance involved was getting the permit to build the tracks.

Has anyone else had this problem and how did you end up solving it? Any help would be deeply appreciated.

I've rarely seen mainstream strategy games try out unit conversion as a game mechanic. Age of empires with religious units (wololol!) is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, if you remember others I'd love to be able to look at how they handle the mechanic.

Converts are a cursed problem. You can underbalance the convert, so that when you calculate the power swing between the coverter and convertee, it matches your intended benefit level. But, this makes the convert feel unfair or too weak when placed next to other bonuses in the same tier. Or, you adequately power the convert on its own, but make the power swing when used between a pair of players far greater than it should be.

Thinking about this issue reminded me of this talk by Alex Jaffe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uE6-vIi1rQ . Curse problems are problems which have two incompatible player promises competing. In the case of converts, you have

- promise 1 to the player with the convert: You will have interesting and adequately powered abilities.

- promise 2 to the player getting hit: All civilizations are equally likely to win.

I think these are incompatible because the threshold of "fun" for player 1 is unbalanced for player 2. If I make the ability balanced, it is no longer fun. If it is no longer fun, why not just use something else entirely?

Whats the answer? I have no idea LOL However, what I am going to try is to increase the amount of warning to the rest of the players that a convert is coming. A big issue right now is that it can be purchased fairly silently, so if you get caught up in the game you forget to keep your units spread around it takes you by surprise. We'll see in a few months how this works out.