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.

[phoenixcager]

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...

[jrhughes98]

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. :-)



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JRH