What the hell is up with the historical researchers at firaxis?

[-proletarian-]

Originally posted by WarpStorm


Well said, -proletarian-, well said.

-nods-

[bigvic]

ok, let me try with this rate every civ thing...........

romans - fine as they are, except i think industrious would have been close. all those aqueducts and roads.....but then they were notoriously greedy, taxing the crap out of everyone they conquered, and one of the 2 powerful, influential classes was the "equestrian" class - descendents of plebes who had made enough money to buy their own horses to fight with. in time rivaled the patricians in power, then basically fused with thhem.....of course all those roads could easily have been built by those hordes of captured workers they had........

greeks - yeah, commercial/scientific works great

french - commercial/industrious? yeah, after being reminded of those kick @$$ engineers and all, industrious does make sense. they also had the corvee, an obligatory work detail all peasants participated in. commercial? sure, sounds good, they had early joint stock companies and all. besides, i can't think of any alternatives that would fit........

english - hard to argue with expansionist. commercial is as good as any, too, closely followed by industrious, but i think they got it right....

germans - militaristic is a must. the scientific part though..........again, industrious is awfully tempting, but - yes i do think of game balance, should stay as is

you know, i'm just going to skip all the ones i have no problem with that no one has seriously commented on.....

america - gee, i think its good as is. hard to not think expansionist - look at the manifest destiny thing. religious? hmmm.... well, i guess the way we have been able to switch to what scholars call "war socialism" during big conflicts and back to republic or democracy so easily might warrant this classification, but i like it as is

russia is a case where even if you don't agree with scientific, what alternative do you have?

here are the only 2 i would change in the original game...

china - industrious and scientific - for all the reasons mentioned above

japan should be militaristic/industrious - look at that work ethic! besides, despite the whole emperor/god thing (not terribly uncommon in many societies, just not so late in history - but perfectly explainable by japan's historical peculiarities without applying "religious" as a trait) plus, japan has never had really smooth government changes, you know.... this would also help game balance, in that the duplicate trait civs would now be china and persia, with japan filling the slot of china

ok, now for the new ones

spain - expansionist/religious - nough said on that

celts - mil/exp? sure, i guess so.... they sure loved fighting (usually to their detriment, with each other!) and did spread all over europe and even into turkey (galatia) ok, sure

vikings - what are they in ptw? i forget... mil/commercial/scientific are good, defendable choices, as well as expansionist..... i'll rule out mil/sci to avoid duplicating their german cousins, so lets try.....mil/commercial, though sci commercial is tempting i just can't leave out mil, though, in light of the viking reputation, but also the swedish "lion of the north" period as well......for commercial, the vikings traded a much as they raided, and look at sweden, again birthplace of 2 major outo companies and such a relatively small country....

carthage - i'd have to fo with commercial/industrious - isn't that what they are? makes sense - shrewd semitic businessmen, and though i can't justify industrious, i can't justify any other trait and this combination sort of compliments commercial nicely and goes along with their rep for being businessmen.....

arabs - ok, how can they NOT be considered scientific/religious? islam? islamic universities? saviors of classical learning?too bad it duplicates their semitic cousins and antecedants, the babs.....perhaps rel/expansionist would be better - boy did they expand! yeah, i think that is better, in terms of game balance religious/expansionist

ottomans (why not turks?) big booboo here in considering them scientific. 3 traits i see are militarist, expansionist and religious tough call here, as any choice duplicates others, but i'll go with mil/expansionist again - their identity to early modern europe as islamic stems more from the fact that they were the only islamic power the europeans dealt with regularly. they too expanded prodigiously and did so on the strength of their arms....

koreans - what are they? scientific/industrious? sounds good to me.....

mongols - definately militaristic and, gee, i guess expansionist, though i hate to duplicat this combo again. gues this means i have to say the turks were mil/religious to balance things again, since i can think of absolutely no other trait for the mongols......

ok, time for bed

[Traelin]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
Traelin, we're in danger of going off-topic again. Should start a whole new thread, America, religious civ or no. I so want to write a long response.

You've almost listed every civ as militaristic! There would be no reason to include the trait, just take it for a given. To reduce thousands of years of chinese development to militaristic expansionist is hard to bear. I don't see why the coice of leaderhead should limit the definition of the civ.

HAHA gsmoove, sometimes I just have fun waiting to see your reaction! Seriously though, I'd love to start a new thread about America, but let me try to stay on topic. I see your point about listing many Civs as Militaristic, but let me remind you that I didn't choose the Era in which each Civ was represented. Firaxis has chosen to display certain leaders for each Civ, ergo I react to them in the manner in which I feel is "correct". If you look at the leaders of the Civs that I listed, you have to admit I'm correct in my reactions.

[sun_tzu_159]

Would it be a good idea to list all the traits then assign a percentage to each one.

So China could be 30% Military, 5% expansion, 10% religion, 30% industrious, 15% science, 10% commercial. All adds up to 100%.

This would give flexibility to those who want to include two traits who just set 50% for each. And those who want more detail can set up further traits with %>0.

With so many civs now in the game I dont think that just two traits is enough to make each civ 'unique and historically accurate'.

A further refinement would be to change the traits through the ages.

Regards
Sun_Tzu

[SanPellegrino]

Originally posted by Martinus
I think the traits are the mostly for game balance (and suitable peacefull GA trigger - that's why Chinese are militaristic - so that Great Wall can trigger their GA).

As for Spanish being commercial - well, the Commercial trait does two things - it allows you to have big-area spanning empires and gives you more gold. That's what Spain achieved actually - the exact name of the trait is irrelevant - the Commercial effect suits Spanish civ quite well.

Excellent, but overlooked points. Bigvic, as Martinus wrote, the exact name is irrelevant, it's what it does.

IMHO Firaxis did a pretty good job assigning the civs their (although cliché-)personalities.

you can always argue about this and that but understand that not only civ 3 but the idea of nations as one "body" itself is an abstract idea.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by sun_tzu_159
Would it be a good idea to list all the traits then assign a percentage to each one.

So China could be 30% Military, 5% expansion, 10% religion, 30% industrious, 15% science, 10% commercial. All adds up to 100%.

This would give flexibility to those who want to include two traits who just set 50% for each. And those who want more detail can set up further traits with %>0.

With so many civs now in the game I dont think that just two traits is enough to make each civ 'unique and historically accurate'.

A further refinement would be to change the traits through the ages.

Regards
Sun_Tzu

That's a really cool idea. I don't know how they'd implement the special abilities though.

[ranskaldan]

why don't we have 20 civpoints for each civ, and assign each civ with a tailor-made list of abilities??

e.g. Chinese:

workers work faster - 6 points
extra production at city center - 5 points
battlefield promotions more likely - 4 points
reduced science improvement costs - 5 points
adds to: 20 points

[sun_tzu_159]

This is good stuff ranskaldan - if we use linked minimum and maximum numbers of points cross-referenced to the national traits on the special abilities table there will be maximum flexibility.

So for commercial trait set at 50% (maximum for any single trait), gold production could be set at 1.75 to 2.25 times normal)

For Industrious trait set at 50% workers speed could be set at 1.25 to 1.75 times normal.

and so on with sliding scale down to 0% trait. This would make even the traits with 0% important choices to how you play.

Important thing is though that all special abilities have a maximum of say 3.5 points which are multipliers for each special ability

So in above example you would have to set the workers to 1.25 minimum setting and then could put the gold production
at the maximum setting of 2.25. Good for rushing production of improvements.

But alternatively you could set workers to work at the fastest rate of 1.75, but gold production would have to be lowered to 1.75 so that the total is still 3.5.

There could then be endless tweaks to the relative merits of each special ability for the even as the game is going on. Of course the traits of the nation are fixed at the start but the special abilities can be varied according to your situation.

This idea definetly has mileage and if at the start of the game each AI Civ was to have a default trait set-up which may vary by +/-10% you would have a tricky time figuring what the exact levels are that the AI is using.

Anyway just yet more thoughts.
Thanks for reading

Regards
Sun_Tzu

[ranskaldan]

(not sure I got everything)

So with two variable traits? Yeah, certainly.

However, I think at this level, we should simply have individual customizable traits for each civ. For example, for the Chinese, we would, say, have:

* Workers work 100% faster
* Granaries reduce food storage by 60% instead of 50%
* Science buildings at 75% cost
* -1 war weary citizen in each city
* Anarchies last 50% longer
* Corruption is 20% higher
etc etc

just like Age of Empires.
This way we are free of the restrictions of "traits" and have real characteristics.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by ranskaldan
(not sure I got everything)

So with two variable traits? Yeah, certainly.

However, I think at this level, we should simply have individual customizable traits for each civ. For example, for the Chinese, we would, say, have:

* Workers work 100% faster
* Granaries reduce food storage by 60% instead of 50%
* Science buildings at 75% cost
* -1 war weary citizen in each city
* Anarchies last 50% longer
* Corruption is 20% higher
etc etc

just like Age of Empires.
This way we are free of the restrictions of "traits" and have real characteristics.

Hrm your suggestions and sun_tzu's are really cool IMHO. Kinda like when you allocate your ability points in 3rd Edition D&D. Really nifty idea.

[bigvic]

now if we could just program.............lol

[WarpStorm]

I can.

[bigvic]

Originally posted by -proletarian-



Ha. I like the way that you try to equate b***ching about "historical accuracy" with somehow being more enlightened than the rest of us. You're nothing special.

The crux of your argument is basically this: "waaaaa, this isn't a true-blue history sim, I'm too intelligent for this game!"

Civ isn't a history sim, and doesn't even strive to be one. It's a fantasy game that centres around being at the helm of one of the greatest civilizations ever to have graced the face of the Earth. Once in the game, the aim is to create your own history, not just re-create the past 6000 years of human history on a monitor. That's where you go wrong in your assumptions.....

wow, how did i miss this post?


well, to each his own. in fact i question the "Waahhh", in this case and whether it applies more to my posts/opinions than yours. . i also assert that i am no more intelligent than you, at least in that i am aware, though i am certainly better educated, historically than you or most others who agree with you and therefore am more bothered by blatent historical accuracies.

of course your right, game is game. i just kind of think a little more historical accuracy is merited in this than your typical shoot 'em up arcade game. but then that is the beauty of civ 3, its modability and all.

and by the way - i am not wrong in my assumptions - you are wrong in your negation of my assumptions. why? because just because -

[-proletarian-]

Bigvic, you can discount most of that reply, at the time I wrote it I was in a foul mood.



I still think that your rather anal pursuit of "historical accuracy" is misguided. Sid has stated at every opportunity that fun and gameplay will trump accuracy every time. EU2 is a game that espouses the opposite gaming philosophy. Now, which game would you rather play?

[Cyclotron]

bigvic, the best way to convince people of things is decidedly not to inform them of your superior intelligence and/or educational background. In fact, it's a great way to make otherwise reasonable people hate your guts.

I would venture to say that not wanting historical accuracy has nothing to do with intelligence and education... I for one have an opinion on games that I have voiced above that would not change no matter how many diplomas I racked up on my wall.