Poll: Strategy-game or a world-history simulator?

[Ralf]

Is the upcoming civ-3 game going to be a captivating strategy-game, or a world-history simulator? If its suppose to be the latter; i belive that these guys at Firaxis *never* is going to finish that game.

The problem is that the real-life world is a rather complex and contradictive place, to say the least:

- One cannot say that big population *always* means military strong - look at 19:th century China.
- One cannot say that small population *always* means military weak - look at modern Israel.

- One cannot say that plenty natural resources *always* means industrially strong - look at Russia.
- One cannot say that meager natural resources *always* means industrially weak - look at Japan.

- One cannot say that bigger land-area *always* means more people - look at Russia: 146 mio.
- One cannot say that smaller land-area *always* means fewer people - look at Indonesia: 225 mio.

- One cannot say that big country/population *always* means financially strong - choose a big overpopulated third-world country of your pick.
- One cannot say that small country/population *always* means financially weak - look at 17th century Netherlands/ the minor oilstates.


What im trying to say is if Firaxis have come up with a really good and well-balanced idea in how to make minor empires an equally (or almost equally) appealing alternative as building bigger empires (solving BAB) - you can bet theres always someone there that says:
No, thats not historically correct. No, thats not this consistent with this real-life example!

The fact is Firaxis cannot squeeze a real-life world of parameters into that game. Thats just aint gonna happen. Now, as far as possible i want both real-life consistency and well-balanced game-play...

But, if push comes to shove; whats most important?

1/ Captivating well-balanced game-play must ALWAYS be more important then real-world consistency.
2/ I cant help being ANNOYED if i find compare-flaws between Civ-3 and historic/modern reality.

Make your vote!

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited October 23, 2000).]

[Tim White]

I agree. Civ3 will never be what they want it to be: Civilizations. I mean, just look at civ2, so many problems that every time I play it, I find one. Although they can improve from civ2, it still will never be totaly "real".

[zyxpsilon]

Hold it...
History, as i understand the term, CANNOT be rewritten.
CIV-2 is a "simulation" of a WHAT-IF someone manipulates some parameters of past facts and manage peoples through the process.
That's the strategy; using those boundaries against a realm of possibilities.
Unless i am mistaking, the purpose justify the means.
Even in a game.

[Empress]

I feel that first and foremost civ should be a strategy game.

It should be a strategy game above all, but there should be a reasonable effort to make things as realistic as possible within the limits of time/ resources.

[Tiberius]

I think zyxpsilon said it right:

quote: CIV-2 is a "simulation" of a WHAT-IF someone manipulates some parameters of past facts and manage peoples through the process. That's the strategy; using those boundaries against a realm of possibilities.

Civ is a strategy game, based on the real history of mankind. After all, doesn't matter where you start the game, which is your tribe or how well you play, you still have to research the wheel and philosophy, and end the game building spaceships.
Since a "what if I were Washington/Napoleon/..." perspective if too small for us, our plesure is to play "what if I were God on Earth".

The real chalenge for Civ3's programmers/game desingners is to find a right balance between the position of the player as a God, king/president, diplomat, prime minister, army general, bussiness man, city mayor, and so on.

Good luck, Firaxis!

[rremus]

The challenge is that you, the player, create the strongest civ given the limited resources you have. It's all about how efficient you use those resources and how can you plan the strategy of expanding your empire. That's the game.
I want it as real as it can be, but is still only a game!
What I would also like to see in CIV3 is a more detailed tactical level. Not as detailed as, say Panzer General, but more detailed than is now. More detailed units, with various types of infantry/artilery/armor etc, different costs and capabilities for each type of unit.
The problem is that if is not accurate to the actual history, I don't relate to the game. Look at SMAC. Is not so much fun in playing it, all those advances with strange names and those units you design. It would be much more fun if you would design prototypes that relate to the world history. You design a new Armor and you end up with a T34 or a PzKpfW IV or a Sherman, now that's fun!

[Evil Capitalist]

Hmm- tough question. I'd say historical accuracy is the most important part of the game- I challenge anyone who has played Captain Nemo's Second Front to argue otherwise.

[Ralf]

Civilization-3 *must* be real-world accurate when it comes to units, techs, city-improvements, wonders and terrain-improvements. Of course - thats the easy part. Why should it not be? (At least to year 2050 - after that the designers can only imagine and speculate).

What i was referring to was mainly that Firaxis should *never* let real-life accuracy stand in the way, if this means they have to abandon an otherwise good and well-balanced solution to ICS and BAB (and similar, yet unsolved minor problems).

Heres an example:

Lets say BAB works like this (and, as i said before: i dont know if this is the best solution - maybe Firaxis have come up with something better):

(it perhaps seems that i gets lost from the subject below, but be patient; i shall tie the sack up further down)

After a certain amount of city-improvements (lets say a granary + temple + marketplace in *every* city) AND a certain number of turns of constant inactivity in the city-foundings department (no more empire-expansion - at least for the time being);
the flat same-for-every-empire city-grow rules now changes to instead be based on a logarithmic scale, depending on the current number of cities within that empire.

The lower the number of cities within that empire; the smaller amount of food-units is required for indevidual city-growh AND the bigger the happiness-tolerance is. And the other way around:
The higher the number of cities within that empire; the bigger amount of food-units is required for indevidual city-growh AND the smaller the happiness-tolerance is.

These logaritmic-based rules shouldnt change from one turn to another however. You get a run-in of 3-4 turns in order to adjust to the new rules.

Above is an attempt to solve the BAB-problem. Small empire-cities would be allowed to grow to HUGE end-game mega-cities, but similar big-empire cities would be restricted somewhat in their growh - even if city-area terrains and terrain-improvements otherwise where the same.

Now, at last to my point (and this is regardless of what you think of above): What if someone then come along and says:

"Hey, perhaps it would solve the BAB-problem, but that doesnt matter. It isnt accurate to real-life!! Look at portugal - a small country, but no HUGE mega-cities. Also; why should a huge city in a small well-developed country have lesser happiness-problems, then a similar huge city in a well-developed continental-sized country? These Civ-3 rules are not *always* 100% consistent with our real world, an that irritates me".

See what i mean? Such pedantic real-life accuracy demands (in game-balancing issues that is, Evil Capitalist ) can easily destroy any attempt to do something permanently about ICS, BAB and similar game-balancing topics.

The Civ-game is, and has always been a turnbased evergreen cult-GAME. First and foremost!

[This message has been edited by Ralf (edited October 24, 2000).]

[Tim White]

quote: Originally posted by rremus on 10-24-2000 03:21 AM The challenge is that you, the player, create the strongest civ given the limited resources you have. It's all about how efficient you use those resources and how can you plan the strategy of expanding your empire. That's the game. I want it as real as it can be, but is still only a game! What I would also like to see in CIV3 is a more detailed tactical level. Not as detailed as, say Panzer General, but more detailed than is now. More detailed units, with various types of infantry/artilery/armor etc, different costs and capabilities for each type of unit. The problem is that if is not accurate to the actual history, I don't relate to the game. Look at SMAC. Is not so much fun in playing it, all those advances with strange names and those units you design. It would be much more fun if you would design prototypes that relate to the world history. You design a new Armor and you end up with a T34 or a PzKpfW IV or a Sherman, now that's fun!

I am with you man!

[Jorrit Hansson]

I'm with Ralf on putting playability in front of 'historic accuracy'
Extreme Real world Accuracy is fun as flavor. But it is a fact that the real world is always more strange than we can ever simulate. As long as the mechanics of the real world work I'm happy. And one of these mechanisms is balance. The world cannot stand a one supreme power for a very long time. Let's go BAB again:

Civ2 tries to attack this by worldwide alliances against you. That's good I think. I never got into any problems with this anyway, but that's because the AI is stupid. When that is solved we got more here.

Things I think can put BAB a bit back and/or would generate some form of balance:

corruption
Yeah, it's in CIV2 too, but it could be more extreme. A far off city governor might sell out the city, reveal your tech, create an empire of its own, never pay taxes. And there is nothing you can do about it. This (random) chance should increase with size of empire and move-distance to capital (decreased but never negated by governement type, travel tech and communications tech). Trade colony settlements might be more resistant to this.

cohesion
A far flung empire breaks up more easily than a small packed empire. When a region far from the capital is attacked, it might just break away from you.

you cannot hide the truth, nor science
A big empire is able to produce more 'science' or light bulb. That might be ok. But that doesn't mean the knowledge stays there. After a while knowledge spreads out and the initial gain of the new technology is gone. After a few turns empires who you have a trade relationship with (or something... like when you can reach each other anyway) should gain basic knowledge of this technology. It might still need to built prototypes but the science is out.

[Jorrit Hansson]

Right. I'll shut up then. Lengthy discussion though, and the science leak stuff didn't cross my eyes (but maybe I read too fast), at least not in the way that it should leak to the opponents.

By the way, (obviously) being a newby, it's a bit hard to throw myself into discussions here. Everything has been done so to see. And researching every possible topic to 'be aware' just costs me too much time.

[Ralf]

No, dont shut up! 718+ threads and 9716+ posts means that its more or less unavoidable not to repeat ideas.

It doesnt matter. If the topic is good enough then go for it

[Frugal_Gourmet]

I'm gonna pop in and add a big vote for gameplay above realism.

Quite frankly, Civilization has never exactly been the pinnacle of realism. Is it even possible to realistical simulate the game's subject in a fun way?

Civ has always been a simple, fun model for empire-building and history-rewriting.

Any changes you make to the game must keep that in mind. Fun is the key.

Add things like religion, realistic war, production, more complex government, leadership, disease, etc., and you're coming perrilously close to crossing over the threshold of boredom and frustration. IMO, some Civ games in recent history have even failed to identify where that line is...

quote: Originally posted by Ralf on 10-23-2000 04:03 PM Is the upcoming civ-3 game going to be a captivating strategy-game, or a world-history simulator? If its suppose to be the latter; i belive that these guys at Firaxis *never* is going to finish that game. The problem is that the real-life world is a rather complex and contradictive place, to say the least: - One cannot say that big population *always* means military strong - look at 19:th century China. - One cannot say that small population *always* means military weak - look at modern Israel. - One cannot say that plenty natural resources *always* means industrially strong - look at Russia. - One cannot say that meager natural resources *always* means industrially weak - look at Japan. - One cannot say that bigger land-area *always* means more people - look at Russia: 146 mio. - One cannot say that smaller land-area *always* means fewer people - look at Indonesia: 225 mio. - One cannot say that big country/population *always* means financially strong - choose a big overpopulated third-world country of your pick. - One cannot say that small country/population *always* means financially weak - look at 17th century Netherlands/ the minor oilstates. What im trying to say is if Firaxis have come up with a really good and well-balanced idea in how to make minor empires an equally (or almost equally) appealing alternative as building bigger empires (solving BAB) - you can bet theres always someone there that says: No, thats not historically correct. No, thats not this consistent with this real-life example! The fact is Firaxis cannot squeeze a real-life world of parameters into that game. Thats just aint gonna happen. Now, as far as possible i want both real-life consistency and well-balanced game-play... But, if push comes to shove; whats most important? 1/ Captivating well-balanced game-play must ALWAYS be more important then real-world consistency. 2/ I cant help being ANNOYED if i find compare-flaws between Civ-3 and historic/modern reality. Make your vote! [This message has been edited by Ralf (edited October 23, 2000).]

Woe! Woe! Wait a minute! Even in Civ2 this type of realism exists. You can have a civ that has lots of land, yet is really small (not a lot of food). You can have lots of people and a weak military (the difference between expansionist and perfectionist). You can have lots of naturally resources and still be industrially weak (it all depends on how you use the land and what type of government you have). You can have a huge population and not be financially strong (lower taxes and higher science rate, luxuries, etc.) This is just an example, but it proves that Civ3 can be just realistic if not more so than Civ2, and Civ2 is almost as real as real life. Not quite, but almost. :-)



------------------
JRH

[Ralf]

Interesting ideas Jorrit Hansson; that about corruption, cohesion and science-leaks. You might want to check out this threadh as well about the "rise and fall of empires (my initial post is perhaps a little unbalanced, but the thread is lengthy and we discussed the idea rather thorough):
http://apolyton.net/forums/Forum6/HTML/001537.html

[Jorrit Hansson]

I got another idea here, about BAB versus science.

There is a rule for science: Necessity makes the inventor. (I put that in thread 1752 also: Think arms race. You can spend ages trying to invent the perfect way to cut grass if that is what is the most important thing in the world to you. But if you have just lost a battle or a war you might want to go and invent some new stuff (that might finally kill those annoying enemies). And only by trying them out you get results.)

To get to the point, small empires historically always found themselves in a lot of trouble (they got picked on, for instance). Some of them got better. Because they had to. In CIV (1/2) a big empire can race arms alone for eternity, because they have the light bulbs. I don't think that is realistic, and neither balancing or fun (after a few games). I propose that the relative size of an outside threath should increase the chance you come up with a relevant scientific advance (up to a certain level of overachieving the local enemy).
A small empire in war with a big one should in this way be able to stand on its own then, making bigger not better necessarily.

You could use this rule for other than militairy issues also. If you constantly have problems in terms of food gathering this should ease your path in researching advanced agricultural things (like the netherlands did; changing one big swamp into major agricultural produce).

Science is a trial and error thing, and there will be less trial if there is no real need.

[Vrank Prins]

The appeal of CIV to me always has been the fact that the game uses "real history" as its setting and not some kind of, what I usually experience as outrageous, fantasy-world. I think that's why we're all able to think along with the gameconcept and come up with the magnitude of ideas on this site.
The question of playability is a matter of practicality, things shouldn't become to complex. I've played, and once in a while still play Simcity (3000). Somehow I often get lost in that game because things very often just seem to happen at random. Rather annoying. CIV is very gently and nicely balanced but could do with just a few parameters more. In the run/progress of the game (history), the complexity, i.e. the number of parameters you'd have to handle and manage should increase. That could make the endgame, where I'm usually only trying to expand my territory and increase my population to get a higher score, less tedious.

In the two months I've been around on this site, I've allways wondered why there are so few idea's about the middle-ages. When it comes to the historical techline of the game everybody seems to know about the Romans and especially modern time, and has lots ideas about that, panzer this and panzer that (sorry rremus, no offense meant!!!, but somehow you're a good example of the point I'm trying to make). That all just puts to much emphasis on the end of the game. Not to speak of all the suggestion being made for futuretechs.
It can be fun to fantasise about the future and hardware and it's more easy to contemplate about our own time, because we know it as it comes to us. But that's just not the whole setting of CIV.
I think the question of whether CIV should be a captivating strategy-game or a worldhistory is not the whole question. The question is are we really able to come up with practical ideas for the game which are based on "historical mechanisms". The interdependency of agriculture (the grainshieves), economics (the coins), politics (luxuries, taxes), religion (no parameter up till now), technique (shields), scientific development (the erlenmeyer flasks) etc.

.... and that's why I love CIV, to think about all these things while mastering them in a game. I can tell you, it changed my way of looking at history. But I certainly like to play a good game too.

[Sir Hawkeye]

The reason small empires can be more powerful than big ones is: INFRASTRUCTURE and relatedly, resources

China had no military because it was technologically backward and entirely devoted to agriculture.
Russia had a fairly low population because 30 engineer units working for 100 turns could not create population centers in Siberia. Thusly, there was also no one there to harvest the vast resources.
Third-world countries are poor because they barely have roads and usually not enough farmland to feed anyone. Japan is so industrially powerful because it has mined everything it can, and has sophisto-ma-cated robotics up the ying-yang.

Infrastructure is fairly well-represented in Civ 2, although some sort of double-mine might be nice in modern times, plus some of SMAC's naval terrain improvements.

Obviously in Civ there are some cases where Big is just too BIG to matter what the resources are.
There are plenty of solutions available.

Beuracracy costs have been proposed in several forms, for one thing, and these seem appropriate.

Japan did not just maximize on its own resources, but processes resources imported from elsewhere. We should be able to setup tranfer routes between cities for things besides ephemeral "trade goods" and food. We should be able to transport base production (resources modified only by the receiving city's facilities), and to some extent, luxuries/science/taxes. This should probably be handled fairly easily between cities of one civ.
For example:
-
Transport Menu (in city screen)
>Transport X
>>For X turns or Every turn
>>>To city B
-
Sets up a supply route that takes a certain number of turns based on distance and roads and then arrives every turn thereafter. This route could be hindered by blockades or sieges.

I propose that between civilizations one could propose exchanges such as say: 3 resources a turn/6 gold a turn
or 4 luxuries/3 food, 3 gold/3 science etc., etc., etc.
Before perhaps, industrializatian, such exchanges would require an enhanced form of caravan unit.

That's all i can think of at the moment.
What say ye, O deity-beating Lords of CIV?

[Diablo, Bro. of Mephisto]

I agree with Tim White, oh yeah, I am Tim White!

[Shogun Gunner]

quote: Originally posted by Sir Hawkeye on 10-27-2000 08:52 PM Japan did not just maximize on its own resources, but processes resources imported from elsewhere. We should be able to setup tranfer routes between cities for things besides ephemeral "trade goods" and food. We should be able to transport base production (resources modified only by the receiving city's facilities), and to some extent, luxuries/science/taxes. This should probably be handled fairly easily between cities of one civ. For example: - Transport Menu (in city screen) >Transport X >>For X turns or Every turn >>>To city B - Sets up a supply route that takes a certain number of turns based on distance and roads and then arrives every turn thereafter. This route could be hindered by blockades or sieges. I propose that between civilizations one could propose exchanges such as say: 3 resources a turn/6 gold a turn or 4 luxuries/3 food, 3 gold/3 science etc., etc., etc. Before perhaps, industrializatian, such exchanges would require an enhanced form of caravan unit.

Without specifically stating it, it seems you may also be referring to an improvement in the diplomatic aspects of the game. Many posts lament the limitations in helping an ally, or even how an ally hurts you (sits on a square you want to irrigate, trades a tech to your common enemy, etc). An advanced trading component, as you propose, would add a more enjoyable aspect to the game. A greater degree of sophistication here would be welcomed by many. Another post earlier complained about SimCity 3000 being less enjoyable due to the randomness of the game. Ideas like this, if implemented, would strengthen the link between your actions and outcomes. Good post.