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It is inevitable that everyone has different ideas on how the perfect civ game should look like.
Still, there are many similarities between various proposals on how to enhance current civ games (large scale god games).
If we could agree that:
- civ is a fun game
- civ is not a simulation game
- civ is a historical game, drawing inspiration from the past
and thus:
- the optimal civ game has to satisfy all these criteria in a balanced mix
would it be possible to design mechanisms once and for all that, once implemented, would materialise the most perfect civ game of all time?
And the answer ofcourse is: Yes.
What we can not agree on however, is the balance of those three important criteria.
Game slanted towards history comes out as Europa Universalis, fun is our Civ of Sid and one slanted towards simulation would be a tycoon game of immense proportions (this is something new projects, and especially online projects and even more specifficaly, unfinished projects seem to strive for
).
So, how to decide the balance?
In my opinion, it is impossible to visualise the many complex concepts that a civ game consists of (terrain, units, economy..), and thus, abstract balancing of models that haven't seen action is also impossible. Therefore optimal balance should be achieved by simply taking one game that is slanted towards one side and improving its other, weaker, features.
Consequentialy, does it make sense to produce 'baseless' models, which do not have anchor in any current civ game?
I think am begining to think not.
Example of such non-anchored models and discussions is Civ3 (is it 4 now?) wishlist, another would be independant social, economic and other models that appear every now and then in this and other forums.
Neither of which has so far brought imrovements in the genre. Feel free to correct me on this, I might be wrong, but despite Civ 3 supposedly being inspired by the wishlist, I was not able to find direct relation between proposals in the list and what was implemented in the game.
And surely, developing an elaborate model just to inspire someone to do something completely different does not make much sense, does it?
If what I wrote above sounds like stating the obvious to you, don't worry, it very likely is just that. The night is long and Mars is near.. I got philosophical
But I mean this thread as a sort of META discussion. Let's discuss ways how we should discuss civ games.
Some things that may (or may not!) improve discussion of civ games and improvement of their mechanisms:
- realising the difference between three various aspects of all civ games (especially, acknowledging that all three have value and none should be discarded completely, that the equation is zero-sum and thus tradeoffs have to exist. Instead, balance. Important case in point is that many people do not differentiate between History and Fun - while history can be fun, it is not necessarily so)
- realising personal preference towards one of those aspects (this is difficult because one can not easily measure oneself. Best method may be thinking which of the existing titles suits you most. Put in practice, this would mean that you should take a top down approach, realise what the top concepts are and what you want, and then approach discissions of parts with a better vision of the whole)
- stating that preference in discussions, asking others to state theirs too (discussion is more streamlined if you know the direction your collegue is pushing to, and why, before you get bogged down in details which expirience shows, you will
)
- avoiding the discussion of the mechanics of history in the same space as mechanics of game (this usually starts like this: poster number one: so we will make population growth dependant on food ... poster number two: wait! in fact disease was always more important ... poster number three: no, in cities it was disease but not in villages .. blah blah you know the rest)
- disbanding independant models completely, instead, taking one existing civ game as basis and going from there (name new threads as '[Civ 3] New Cultural Model', or '[CtP II] City Radius Solution' instead of 'My Cultural Model', 'ICS solution')
- branching discussion. Threads that discuss these things are usually high volume, they consist of many usually very big posts by many people. Branching threads, ala USENET newsgroups, provide better overview and streamline the discussion. Okay, if the discussion is on Apolyton, this is not feasible, but still, a thougt.
etc, etc, I could go on and on. Feel free to correct & comment
Still, there are many similarities between various proposals on how to enhance current civ games (large scale god games).
If we could agree that:
- civ is a fun game
- civ is not a simulation game
- civ is a historical game, drawing inspiration from the past
and thus:
- the optimal civ game has to satisfy all these criteria in a balanced mix
would it be possible to design mechanisms once and for all that, once implemented, would materialise the most perfect civ game of all time?
And the answer ofcourse is: Yes.
What we can not agree on however, is the balance of those three important criteria.
Game slanted towards history comes out as Europa Universalis, fun is our Civ of Sid and one slanted towards simulation would be a tycoon game of immense proportions (this is something new projects, and especially online projects and even more specifficaly, unfinished projects seem to strive for
).So, how to decide the balance?
In my opinion, it is impossible to visualise the many complex concepts that a civ game consists of (terrain, units, economy..), and thus, abstract balancing of models that haven't seen action is also impossible. Therefore optimal balance should be achieved by simply taking one game that is slanted towards one side and improving its other, weaker, features.
Consequentialy, does it make sense to produce 'baseless' models, which do not have anchor in any current civ game?
I think am begining to think not.
Example of such non-anchored models and discussions is Civ3 (is it 4 now?
) wishlist, another would be independant social, economic and other models that appear every now and then in this and other forums.Neither of which has so far brought imrovements in the genre. Feel free to correct me on this, I might be wrong, but despite Civ 3 supposedly being inspired by the wishlist, I was not able to find direct relation between proposals in the list and what was implemented in the game.
And surely, developing an elaborate model just to inspire someone to do something completely different does not make much sense, does it?
If what I wrote above sounds like stating the obvious to you, don't worry, it very likely is just that. The night is long and Mars is near.. I got philosophical
But I mean this thread as a sort of META discussion. Let's discuss ways how we should discuss civ games.
Some things that may (or may not!) improve discussion of civ games and improvement of their mechanisms:
- realising the difference between three various aspects of all civ games (especially, acknowledging that all three have value and none should be discarded completely, that the equation is zero-sum and thus tradeoffs have to exist. Instead, balance. Important case in point is that many people do not differentiate between History and Fun - while history can be fun, it is not necessarily so)
- realising personal preference towards one of those aspects (this is difficult because one can not easily measure oneself. Best method may be thinking which of the existing titles suits you most. Put in practice, this would mean that you should take a top down approach, realise what the top concepts are and what you want, and then approach discissions of parts with a better vision of the whole)
- stating that preference in discussions, asking others to state theirs too (discussion is more streamlined if you know the direction your collegue is pushing to, and why, before you get bogged down in details which expirience shows, you will
)- avoiding the discussion of the mechanics of history in the same space as mechanics of game (this usually starts like this: poster number one: so we will make population growth dependant on food ... poster number two: wait! in fact disease was always more important ... poster number three: no, in cities it was disease but not in villages .. blah blah you know the rest
)- disbanding independant models completely, instead, taking one existing civ game as basis and going from there (name new threads as '[Civ 3] New Cultural Model', or '[CtP II] City Radius Solution' instead of 'My Cultural Model', 'ICS solution')
- branching discussion. Threads that discuss these things are usually high volume, they consist of many usually very big posts by many people. Branching threads, ala USENET newsgroups, provide better overview and streamline the discussion. Okay, if the discussion is on Apolyton, this is not feasible, but still, a thougt.
etc, etc, I could go on and on. Feel free to correct & comment
. As a Usenet regular, I know this. Newsgroups never develop the kind of community around them forums do. 
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