Hybrid between Civ III and EU II

[polypheus]

I apologize if this should be in the Civ 4 thread but this is really a more philosophical thread than anything specific for Civ 4.

First off, I know that it is IMPOSSIBLE to make a game truly "realistic". Nevertheless, I would like for a game like Civ to move towards being a somewhat more accurate and reasonable "historic" simulator than what we have so far. Perhaps others disagree but I don't really care about victory or score as much as I want to experience reasonably accurate "world history" within the confines of a game but on a random world.

Now let me say that in playing Civ I, II and III, especially between II and III, the developers have made great progress towards giving the game greater historic feel. Concepts of culture, border, nationality, differing sea types, resources, complex diplomacy, etc all have made the game far more "realistic" without adding undue complexity and micro-management. Civ III still is not as realistic as it could be but compared to Civ I, it is certainly orders of magnitude more historically "realistic" IMHO.

One of the things that I like about EU is that they have tried very hard to make the game as "realistic" as possible from a "making sense" and "historic" realism point of view. However, it lakes some of the fun of Civ because it basically plays like a complex version of RISK and isn't really geared towards starting from scratch which is where most of the fun of Civ comes from.

I do believe though that it is possible to make a game as fun as Civ 4 and spanning all the way from 5000BC to 2050AD but with the "realistic" feel. I think that the approach to developing Civ 4 should be to think in terms of even greater historic realism and to approach it from that angle. The point is to ask what can be achieved in Civ that simply is impossible to achieve historically. And if so, how can the game be designed via tweaks, rules or new concepts (such as introduction of nationality, etc in Civ 3 or stacked combat a-la CTP) to prevent impossible achievements from easily occuring? And can concepts such as the currently simple culture-flipping be refined to be more realistic? The answer is YES if the game is designed from that point of view.

[Alex]

But in a game with such a broad scope as Civ, which encompasses 6000 years of human History, it is more difficult to achieve that 'historical realism', especially because History does not follow the same rules as other sciences, meaning that its development cannot be easily predicted the same way you can predict the behaviour of an atomic particle given some set of circumstances.

When you approach things within the narrow confines of a particular historical era, it's easier to aim for some 'realism', because the variable circumstances are restrained to specific ranges (and even then, consider how complex EU is as a game, because the historical variables are deeply complex even when confined within a preset period).

[polypheus]

What I mean is that Civ 4 could be made to be broadly more realistic historically so as to better capture the flavor of world history.

If Civ III were an accurate portrayal of history, then by 1AD, Romans would have full knowledge of all of Europe, Asia and Africa be in full communication, contact and trade with civilizations as far away as Zulus and Japan (say they existed then) and nearly every square of land would be within the national borders of some nation and all barbarians have been pushed to extinction. Rome would have trade would Japan and be trading techs, goods, etc.

of course, this could remotely conceivably happen even IRL but in Civ III this is what ALWAYS happens.

So how do you tweak Civ to make it more realistic and be more historically realistic? Well you could introduce attrition so that units away from friendly territory would lose HPs and not be able to heal (at least until Battlefield Medicine). You could refine naval model so that units could only go so far from port using Galleys (thus trade/communication until Middle Ages would be limited). You could make maps contain huge swarths of mountains/desert/tundra that are inhospitable to development so that barbarians are a problem well into the Middle Ages. In this way, you would also simulate each region having just a bunch of Civs operating on a kind of mini-map until technological advances permitted greater contact and trade to expand knowledge of the world, etc etc.

[Antrine]

The relationship betwixt an Age of Time and the actual travel to and fro requires I believe a more tiered approach. Want I mean is being in a time period and moving forward up a tech tree does not well relate to the experience of using those same techs, building units, roads and growing whole cities. However, I do think it can be better handled with a tiered approach that has already began with separating the tech-tree into Ages.

There needs to be more random mishaps to emulate history. City after city, people after people have dissappeared along the way. Introduction of the tension of competing religions and the resulting prejudices thereof. Conquering a people of a vastly contrary religion is near impossible. The introduction of inhibitors to 'progress'. Barbarians need to be able to 'win for a season. A mechanism for civil wars during periods of prosperity and widespread rebellions that move like fire from city to city affecting everything.

Battles resolved on a zoomed in map. City life depicted likewise. Court intrigue needs to be imulated zoomed in on it's own turf. Religious upheavals, in CIV all temples and cathedrals are same considered good and benificial to everything, this is completely inconsistent with fact. Science against superstition. Corrupt science verses ecology or respect for nature.

Rise and fall and do it again, this is history. With a mass amount of war, famine and religious tension. I am not voting for more corruption in CIV, I detest it though it is needed for realism and balance. We need much of it better defined.

Just a few ideas with of course 'access to the AI's routines' so the AI learns from human play. And put all this in the 'Editor'.

[polypheus]

Antrine:

I agree that there is so much that could be modelled but I also know that certain things might be too complex to do so. But some of the things you mentioned could be modelled to some extent to give the game greater historical realism and historic flavor.

Some things you mentioned:
1. Zoomed in battles - This could be done. Whenever there's a battle, it always takes place on the boundary of 2-6 tiles. You could just zoom in on these 2-6 tiles and have battles of stacks take place a-la CTP2. Much better than the units line up and fight one at a time crap and easily implemented.

2.Civil Wars/Rebellions - We had this in Civ 1 although it was a far too simplistic and unrealistic model. Still it was there. With the introduction of culture, nationality, etc there's got to be a way to do it. If the game were designed so that assembling a large homogenous Empire was hard and the only way to do it was through conquest, make it so that the conquered minorities continue to resist throughout your rule and even assemble small armies to fight back, etc. etc.

Of course this would make holding on to and maintaining "Roman Empires" hard but then it should be and would also balance the game and provide players with various alternatives to gameplay. You could play as a perfectionist and create a small, more stable, homogenous nation like Japan or a multi-national Empire of conquest like Aztecs which is unstable and prone to rebellion/civil war. This would be a much better model, better balance and more realistic than this massive corruption/optimum city crap to limit the power of large empires.

[polypheus]

Another thing I wanted to mention was that the initial everyone spread out as quickly as possible to build as big of an empire as early as possible is totally unrealistic, and an aspect of the game that though I have to do it to keep up with the AI that I find takes away from gameplay and makes the game much more linear and repetitive than it needs to be.

Look at real history. Did the Roman Empire, China, Persia, etc continue to rush settlers into all of Eurasia and Africa? By 1 AD was all the land in the world within the national boundaries of all nations of the world? Obviously not as that was much sparsely populated land available for settlement all the way into the early 19th century.

But if there were natural, economic, and technological barriers that were modelled in the early game to prevent this spread out and claim every square tile all over the world by 1 AD, then this would no longer be an issue. Now as time goes on, technologies advance, etc., you'd start to be able to claim/settle these virgin lands only much later in the game. It be much more realistic and fun to have the land grab later in the game than to have it all done while still in the ancient era. It would simulate world discovery, colonization of new worlds (or you could find yourself on the other side of the coin too, maybe "Europeans" will start landing on your shores and find yourself in the role of "Aztecs" instead )

Wouldn't some thought given to implementing this make the game a whole lot more interesting, fun, and historically realistic than the current grab every inch of land by 1 AD model?

[mrboo123]

Originally posted by polypheus
...Wouldn't some thought given to implementing this make the game a whole lot more interesting, fun, and historically realistic than the current grab every inch of land by 1 AD model?

how about have technology limits on the amount of cities build? Maybe even two limits, one sugsted, to face more likey civil unrest, and one manadtoriy(sp?), one where you can build beyond an x# of cities until you reach the next age?