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Okay, I know it's been quite some time the game's out now. But I had this in mind since quite come time. I already wrote this text many weeks ago, but my computer crashed and I lost like lot of time of writing... Here is the actual resumed and rewritten version:
What makes a good world is its coherence. You can't have rules that go once against the other and are conflictual, or you can't call it a world and stil consider these conflictual parts. Lords of the Rings is coherent, Dune is coherent, Ann Rice's books, Odyssee, Ultima (not speaking of online, dunno it), Final Fantasy, StarCraft (in its own referencial), and many others. Such worlds make them immersive because they are plausible and strong, powerful. Civ I and II were quite coherent because they were able to make a macro model correctly.
Civ III is not coherent with its own world and it is its bigger flaw, most recognized problems beeing from this. Colonization? Cavalry? Battle system? Spying? Civ III's referencial is History. Civ's world is History. To be coherent with itself, it needs to be coherent with history OR leaving the idea it's following History since humans (which is History) do not do such. It does not at all mean to take it too seriously and let fun go, but it means that you should look at History to try to get its general rules and look what fun you can make from it. Not invent rules simply to make units balanced. Units that really existed in History were perfectly coherent within their world. THEN, you will be able to feel you're ruling a country, a culture, human.
Cavalry? Well they tend to lose 4/5 of their men and come back with all thei men a little later. For people from Quebec, here was my 1st thought: "YÉ OÙ L'O**I DE NÉCRO?!" which means "Where the hell is the necromancer?!". Incoherent. Why did they put cavary like this? Not to make it feel more like real, but just because it seemed fun. For the same reason they added a unit doing this or that in StarCraft: seemed fun. Battle system? I dunno since when some units see a great difference between attacking and beeing attacked. Nor since when such units can kill such other. Results are incoherent based on Civ's reality (we checked). Colonies? Same. And so on.
OR Firaxis decides he wants to build something coherent, OR he decides to let go the idea we're managing a civilization on Earth and is making a game where it's just fun, but isn't a world. Because OR you make fun from coherence, "role playing" as a civilization, OR you just know you play and play it for what it is: a game. From the time it is not coherent, you,re just in a game and not in a world, you just play. Being more than a game, or beeing just a game, there is the question.
I guess I (roughly) said about what I wanted. Think what you want of it.
What makes a good world is its coherence. You can't have rules that go once against the other and are conflictual, or you can't call it a world and stil consider these conflictual parts. Lords of the Rings is coherent, Dune is coherent, Ann Rice's books, Odyssee, Ultima (not speaking of online, dunno it), Final Fantasy, StarCraft (in its own referencial), and many others. Such worlds make them immersive because they are plausible and strong, powerful. Civ I and II were quite coherent because they were able to make a macro model correctly.
Civ III is not coherent with its own world and it is its bigger flaw, most recognized problems beeing from this. Colonization? Cavalry? Battle system? Spying? Civ III's referencial is History. Civ's world is History. To be coherent with itself, it needs to be coherent with history OR leaving the idea it's following History since humans (which is History) do not do such. It does not at all mean to take it too seriously and let fun go, but it means that you should look at History to try to get its general rules and look what fun you can make from it. Not invent rules simply to make units balanced. Units that really existed in History were perfectly coherent within their world. THEN, you will be able to feel you're ruling a country, a culture, human.
Cavalry? Well they tend to lose 4/5 of their men and come back with all thei men a little later. For people from Quebec, here was my 1st thought: "YÉ OÙ L'O**I DE NÉCRO?!" which means "Where the hell is the necromancer?!". Incoherent. Why did they put cavary like this? Not to make it feel more like real, but just because it seemed fun. For the same reason they added a unit doing this or that in StarCraft: seemed fun. Battle system? I dunno since when some units see a great difference between attacking and beeing attacked. Nor since when such units can kill such other. Results are incoherent based on Civ's reality (we checked). Colonies? Same. And so on.
OR Firaxis decides he wants to build something coherent, OR he decides to let go the idea we're managing a civilization on Earth and is making a game where it's just fun, but isn't a world. Because OR you make fun from coherence, "role playing" as a civilization, OR you just know you play and play it for what it is: a game. From the time it is not coherent, you,re just in a game and not in a world, you just play. Being more than a game, or beeing just a game, there is the question.
I guess I (roughly) said about what I wanted. Think what you want of it.
Mais je comprends ton point. C'est quand même juste un jeu, pas la réalité. Mais si Civ3 serait parfait, on aurait pas besoin d'un Civ4!!!
Imagine this... ONE Cavalry is attacking ONE knight... The knight slashes it a bit but gets killed... The Cavalier rests a while, heals and moves on... of course that's just stupid but maybe that was the idea of Sid? 
.. we could say "YE OU L'ASTI D'DOCTEUR?"
cavalry 
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