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Hi All.
Recently I played Civ3. Have you tried it? Personally, it took me about 3-4 hours to hate it. One thing is certain: I'm not in Sid Meier's target market.
My intention with this thread isn't to describe my experience with Civ3 and what pros and cons it has, from my point of view, compared to previous versions. What happened was that, playing it, I remembered all the things I disliked about the CIV series and got me thinking in game-level perspective. The latter is something I haven't done in a while, because since I took the lead in govt+social models I've been more focused on those specific parts of our game than in the whole thing.
I confess I know little about the rest Clash models. I just have a rather general idea of what they do and how they do it. Although I felt we here are in the right track to create a much better game, playing Civ3 I had doubts all those annoying things I hate about Civ are "corrected" in Clash models. So, what I do in what follows is just expressing my fears of finding in Clash those same irritating elements. Of course, hoping the corresponding model lead take my opinion into account now that still isn't too late to affect model design (it isn't, right?).
Technology
I find it very boring in the Civ series all civs have almost the same technological evolution. You're technologically advanced or backwards in all fields. It's too "flat". The game experience regarding techs is IMO extremely poor. Every time you play you face almost the same tech evolution and that's, at least for my taste, very boring.
One of the things that impresses me the most about world history is the sometimes gigantic technological difference between cultures in specific fields. FE, it's amazing the Incas didn't have writing, while other peoples developed it literally thousands of years before. However, Incas were in no way behind in, FE, construction. They actually had really good techniques to protect buildings from earthquakes. Or, while in Europe the use of steel is constrained to modern times, in China it was discovered pretty much at the same time iron working was discovered, and used ever since.
You all know I worry a lot about historical accuracy, but in this case in particular it's only a matter of fun for me. I think a game where tech evolution can be substantially different each time you try it, would be much more interesting. If a player can't control exactly how techs evolve (which, as far as I know, is already a characteristic of our tech model) then he'd have to adjust his strategies and his decisions to the particular "mix" of techs he has available. That's entertainment.
Can our tech model do something like this?
Warfare: defense vs. attack points and terrain
Why in Civ my bronze-age soldiers have the same attack rating a stone-age warrior has? Why my bronze-age soldiers defend greatly but are useless to attack? I don't understand why the Civ series makes such a sharp distinction between units, where some are meant to attack and others to defend. Maybe it's a requirement of the AI they used. I don't know. But I sure know I don't like it. Once I develop bronze working, I want to use it and attack those stone-age neighbors. I don't understand why I only can defend myself better.
In general, IMO, the whole concept of attack and defense is incorrectly handled in the Civ series. Did you see the movie Braveheart? Sure you did. Two armies met at some point in the countryside and fought each other. You can't really tell who's attacking and who's defending. Both armies are attacking and defending at the same time. They are just "fighting".
IMO, there's a problem of scale. We know some type of military, like cavalry, were used to "attack", in the sense they were more effective when launched against the enemy than waiting for the enemy to come to them. But that's true only at the battlefield level. When the player moves a unit to other square to attack an enemy, his troops are traveling hundreds of km's to meet the enemy and start a battle. The map isn't a battlefield. It is at a higher scale. If someone attacks my cavalry unit on the map, that doesn't mean my men have to stupidly see the enemy come from afar and decide not to charge. The cavalry should attack/charge them once the enemy has come in range. On the game map, my cavalry should have the same strengths (in the general sense of the word) no matter if it's attacking or repelling an attack.
IMO all (or at least most) units must have the same attack and defense rates. I bet some of you would refuse this arguing it'd be boring because you wouldn't have to make "tactical" decisions (attack with the cavalry first, then send the legions, etc), but in Clash, really, that type of tactics is already dead once we chose to use task forces. (at least that's what I expect if the task force sums up all strengths from all units)
The important tactical decision is, like IRL, where the battle takes place, due to the relation between different types of units and the terrain. In the Civ series you can use your cavalry to attack a unit in a jungle..... give me a break! The cavalry shouldn't be of any use attacking a walled city either. Nor defending it! What's my cavalry inside the walled city supposed to do if the city is being attacked? Open the door to attack them outside? No way, leave that door closed! Shouldn't also cavalry be more effective in plains than in a forest?
The Civ series doesn't treat terrain correctly IMO. The terrain defensive bonus only covers some situations. I think Clash must do better than Civ in this regard.
Finally, note that fortifying a unit is a special relation between a unit and terrain. When you press "f" what you're saying is "take a defensive stand, taking advantage of the terrain". IMO that should be the only case where a terrain defensive bonus can be applied. If the attacked unit isn't fortified, then both attacker and defender are in the same type of terrain (it's the place where the battle takes place) with no advantage for neither of them, so terrain shouldn't give a bonus to the defender (remember the issue about scale).
Warfare and Economy
In Civ, wars last hundreds or thousands of years. That's absurd. In part the failure comes from ignoring you need men to fight wars, which are subtracted from your productive population. As far as I know, Clash will take that into consideration, so it'll be in fact impossible to be in war for such long periods w/o seriously destroying your productive capacities. But even with this, I think the relation between economy and war can't be in Clash like it is in Civ.
In Civ there's a factory-like production of units. When in war, you put all or most of your cities to build units and send them to the front, all in a continuous fashion. You actually create a constant flow of units. That wasn't the case IRL. Not at least prior to the 20th century. That incorrect treatment of units production is the one that creates the endless wars when the two adversaries have similar production rates.
Certainly this is very related to the length of the game turn and the conflict between the "civil turn" and the "military turn". If the game turn lasts 25 years, then it's quite realistic that your cities produce units as a flow, even if you're not in the industrial era. What isn't realistic is troops from either side being unable to defeat the other side within the first 25 years.
The discussion about the military turn vs. the civil turn was long. What was concluded was that we can't have a realistic game without playing with very short game turns (like a month). That'd make the game too long. On the other side, we can have a shorter game, reasonable in terms of real time, but as long as some bizarre effects are accepted. I don't want to bring back to life that discussion and I beg you all not to do it because if you do Mark's gonna kill me. All I want to say is the player should be able to control the "bizarre level" (or the realism level).
What I propose is to adjust units' movement points according to the length of the game turn, so units move more as the time involved is longer. Of course, with some limit to avoid too much bizarreness in mobility. And at the same time, allow the player to change the length of the game turn whenever he wants. With this, people who care a lot about realism, like me, can set the turn length to something like a few months when at war and enjoy a realistic war in terms of the relation between production and movement, while at the same time players with other priorities can sacrifice realism at will. And you can switch back and forth whenever you want, choosing when you want high realism and when it isn't of much importance.
(I proposed something very similar a long time ago, but to my knowledge there was never a decision about it)
Trade
IMO trade is simply too important to be wrongly modeled. Complete empires IRL were built on trade. And in Civ3 and in other strategy games I've seen, trade is wrongly modeled. Either because its modeling is too simplistic or because it's too complex.
I don't know how our economic model is handling trade right now, but this is what I personally would like to see: defining specific resources like salt, silk, etc and make civs trade them is, for my taste, optional. If they make players take strategic decisions involving possible wars or things like that, then cool. But if they seem hard to model or add little excitement, then I won't be sad to let them out. What is key for me is modeling what we might call "bulk" or "general" trade. That is, the exchange of all sorts of goods, from oranges to TVs, internally in each civ or between civs.
In each province there's internal bulk trade, simply because some guys have orange plantations while others have apple ones, so they can (and IRL they do) exchange production and increase their "utility function" (increase economic welfare) due to differences in people's preferences. Bulk trade needs a very abstract modeling, where the only interesting variable is overall tech level. The more techs you have, the greater diversity of goods (people produce TVs if they have the appropriate techs, which adds diversity to what was already possible to produce) and the greater the number of possible exchanges.
At an aggregate level, grouping provinces, you can simulate bulk trade between provinces and between civs. The A-B trade system, so typically used in games of this type, is IMO too restrictive and to model the simple, abstract bulk trade, simply grouping provinces could generate interesting results.
Unless we're talking about an incredibly primitive society, in every province there'll be always merchants enhancing the distribution of goods from producers to consumers and earning some coins out of that. With this I'm saying that we don't need to model merchant agents as a "thing", but simply consider them part of the demographic composition of society. The more bulk and the more diversity of bulk, more merchants there'll be.
This isn't a detailed proposal for modeling trade. All I'm saying is IMO we must model the massive trades of general goods and don't restrict trade to strategic or specific goods. If we don't do this, I'm afraid we'll be missing a key source of economic welfare of civilizations.
Distance
It's impossible to have any sort of diplomatic relation with a civ that's too far (given communication and transportation techs available at a given time).
It's impossible to conduct military campaigns in places too far away (given communication and transportation techs available at a given time).
The Earth is flat... or is it not?
Crossing oceans is more than a matter of naval techs. It's more a matter of ideas. If you truly think the world's edge is right on that line in the horizon, you won't sail there even if you can. In Clash I'd like to see a "tech" called something like "round world" representing the idea that the earth is round. We can have two types of seas. High seas and coastal seas. You sail normally in coastal seas, but your sailors refuse to go to the high seas unless they believe the world doesn't end there (given by the mentioned tech).
Recently I played Civ3. Have you tried it? Personally, it took me about 3-4 hours to hate it. One thing is certain: I'm not in Sid Meier's target market.
My intention with this thread isn't to describe my experience with Civ3 and what pros and cons it has, from my point of view, compared to previous versions. What happened was that, playing it, I remembered all the things I disliked about the CIV series and got me thinking in game-level perspective. The latter is something I haven't done in a while, because since I took the lead in govt+social models I've been more focused on those specific parts of our game than in the whole thing.
I confess I know little about the rest Clash models. I just have a rather general idea of what they do and how they do it. Although I felt we here are in the right track to create a much better game, playing Civ3 I had doubts all those annoying things I hate about Civ are "corrected" in Clash models. So, what I do in what follows is just expressing my fears of finding in Clash those same irritating elements. Of course, hoping the corresponding model lead take my opinion into account now that still isn't too late to affect model design (it isn't, right?).
Technology
I find it very boring in the Civ series all civs have almost the same technological evolution. You're technologically advanced or backwards in all fields. It's too "flat". The game experience regarding techs is IMO extremely poor. Every time you play you face almost the same tech evolution and that's, at least for my taste, very boring.
One of the things that impresses me the most about world history is the sometimes gigantic technological difference between cultures in specific fields. FE, it's amazing the Incas didn't have writing, while other peoples developed it literally thousands of years before. However, Incas were in no way behind in, FE, construction. They actually had really good techniques to protect buildings from earthquakes. Or, while in Europe the use of steel is constrained to modern times, in China it was discovered pretty much at the same time iron working was discovered, and used ever since.
You all know I worry a lot about historical accuracy, but in this case in particular it's only a matter of fun for me. I think a game where tech evolution can be substantially different each time you try it, would be much more interesting. If a player can't control exactly how techs evolve (which, as far as I know, is already a characteristic of our tech model) then he'd have to adjust his strategies and his decisions to the particular "mix" of techs he has available. That's entertainment.
Can our tech model do something like this?
Warfare: defense vs. attack points and terrain
Why in Civ my bronze-age soldiers have the same attack rating a stone-age warrior has? Why my bronze-age soldiers defend greatly but are useless to attack? I don't understand why the Civ series makes such a sharp distinction between units, where some are meant to attack and others to defend. Maybe it's a requirement of the AI they used. I don't know. But I sure know I don't like it. Once I develop bronze working, I want to use it and attack those stone-age neighbors. I don't understand why I only can defend myself better.
In general, IMO, the whole concept of attack and defense is incorrectly handled in the Civ series. Did you see the movie Braveheart? Sure you did. Two armies met at some point in the countryside and fought each other. You can't really tell who's attacking and who's defending. Both armies are attacking and defending at the same time. They are just "fighting".
IMO, there's a problem of scale. We know some type of military, like cavalry, were used to "attack", in the sense they were more effective when launched against the enemy than waiting for the enemy to come to them. But that's true only at the battlefield level. When the player moves a unit to other square to attack an enemy, his troops are traveling hundreds of km's to meet the enemy and start a battle. The map isn't a battlefield. It is at a higher scale. If someone attacks my cavalry unit on the map, that doesn't mean my men have to stupidly see the enemy come from afar and decide not to charge. The cavalry should attack/charge them once the enemy has come in range. On the game map, my cavalry should have the same strengths (in the general sense of the word) no matter if it's attacking or repelling an attack.
IMO all (or at least most) units must have the same attack and defense rates. I bet some of you would refuse this arguing it'd be boring because you wouldn't have to make "tactical" decisions (attack with the cavalry first, then send the legions, etc), but in Clash, really, that type of tactics is already dead once we chose to use task forces. (at least that's what I expect if the task force sums up all strengths from all units)
The important tactical decision is, like IRL, where the battle takes place, due to the relation between different types of units and the terrain. In the Civ series you can use your cavalry to attack a unit in a jungle..... give me a break! The cavalry shouldn't be of any use attacking a walled city either. Nor defending it! What's my cavalry inside the walled city supposed to do if the city is being attacked? Open the door to attack them outside? No way, leave that door closed! Shouldn't also cavalry be more effective in plains than in a forest?
The Civ series doesn't treat terrain correctly IMO. The terrain defensive bonus only covers some situations. I think Clash must do better than Civ in this regard.
Finally, note that fortifying a unit is a special relation between a unit and terrain. When you press "f" what you're saying is "take a defensive stand, taking advantage of the terrain". IMO that should be the only case where a terrain defensive bonus can be applied. If the attacked unit isn't fortified, then both attacker and defender are in the same type of terrain (it's the place where the battle takes place) with no advantage for neither of them, so terrain shouldn't give a bonus to the defender (remember the issue about scale).
Warfare and Economy
In Civ, wars last hundreds or thousands of years. That's absurd. In part the failure comes from ignoring you need men to fight wars, which are subtracted from your productive population. As far as I know, Clash will take that into consideration, so it'll be in fact impossible to be in war for such long periods w/o seriously destroying your productive capacities. But even with this, I think the relation between economy and war can't be in Clash like it is in Civ.
In Civ there's a factory-like production of units. When in war, you put all or most of your cities to build units and send them to the front, all in a continuous fashion. You actually create a constant flow of units. That wasn't the case IRL. Not at least prior to the 20th century. That incorrect treatment of units production is the one that creates the endless wars when the two adversaries have similar production rates.
Certainly this is very related to the length of the game turn and the conflict between the "civil turn" and the "military turn". If the game turn lasts 25 years, then it's quite realistic that your cities produce units as a flow, even if you're not in the industrial era. What isn't realistic is troops from either side being unable to defeat the other side within the first 25 years.
The discussion about the military turn vs. the civil turn was long. What was concluded was that we can't have a realistic game without playing with very short game turns (like a month). That'd make the game too long. On the other side, we can have a shorter game, reasonable in terms of real time, but as long as some bizarre effects are accepted. I don't want to bring back to life that discussion and I beg you all not to do it because if you do Mark's gonna kill me. All I want to say is the player should be able to control the "bizarre level" (or the realism level).
What I propose is to adjust units' movement points according to the length of the game turn, so units move more as the time involved is longer. Of course, with some limit to avoid too much bizarreness in mobility. And at the same time, allow the player to change the length of the game turn whenever he wants. With this, people who care a lot about realism, like me, can set the turn length to something like a few months when at war and enjoy a realistic war in terms of the relation between production and movement, while at the same time players with other priorities can sacrifice realism at will. And you can switch back and forth whenever you want, choosing when you want high realism and when it isn't of much importance.
(I proposed something very similar a long time ago, but to my knowledge there was never a decision about it)
Trade
IMO trade is simply too important to be wrongly modeled. Complete empires IRL were built on trade. And in Civ3 and in other strategy games I've seen, trade is wrongly modeled. Either because its modeling is too simplistic or because it's too complex.
I don't know how our economic model is handling trade right now, but this is what I personally would like to see: defining specific resources like salt, silk, etc and make civs trade them is, for my taste, optional. If they make players take strategic decisions involving possible wars or things like that, then cool. But if they seem hard to model or add little excitement, then I won't be sad to let them out. What is key for me is modeling what we might call "bulk" or "general" trade. That is, the exchange of all sorts of goods, from oranges to TVs, internally in each civ or between civs.
In each province there's internal bulk trade, simply because some guys have orange plantations while others have apple ones, so they can (and IRL they do) exchange production and increase their "utility function" (increase economic welfare) due to differences in people's preferences. Bulk trade needs a very abstract modeling, where the only interesting variable is overall tech level. The more techs you have, the greater diversity of goods (people produce TVs if they have the appropriate techs, which adds diversity to what was already possible to produce) and the greater the number of possible exchanges.
At an aggregate level, grouping provinces, you can simulate bulk trade between provinces and between civs. The A-B trade system, so typically used in games of this type, is IMO too restrictive and to model the simple, abstract bulk trade, simply grouping provinces could generate interesting results.
Unless we're talking about an incredibly primitive society, in every province there'll be always merchants enhancing the distribution of goods from producers to consumers and earning some coins out of that. With this I'm saying that we don't need to model merchant agents as a "thing", but simply consider them part of the demographic composition of society. The more bulk and the more diversity of bulk, more merchants there'll be.
This isn't a detailed proposal for modeling trade. All I'm saying is IMO we must model the massive trades of general goods and don't restrict trade to strategic or specific goods. If we don't do this, I'm afraid we'll be missing a key source of economic welfare of civilizations.
Distance
It's impossible to have any sort of diplomatic relation with a civ that's too far (given communication and transportation techs available at a given time).
It's impossible to conduct military campaigns in places too far away (given communication and transportation techs available at a given time).
The Earth is flat... or is it not?
Crossing oceans is more than a matter of naval techs. It's more a matter of ideas. If you truly think the world's edge is right on that line in the horizon, you won't sail there even if you can. In Clash I'd like to see a "tech" called something like "round world" representing the idea that the earth is round. We can have two types of seas. High seas and coastal seas. You sail normally in coastal seas, but your sailors refuse to go to the high seas unless they believe the world doesn't end there (given by the mentioned tech).
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