This thread inspired by the numerous HRE threads, which is more important to you in the game, Historical Accuracy or Balance.

I'd have to go with balance because if it were really historical Rome would conquer all (whoever suggested a Prat smiley deserves a cookie, we need one)

I vote for balanced gameplay . . . however I'm not sure how it matters if you call the balanced civilization "holy roman empire" or cherokee, except on world maps, where europe is so crowded game balance wise . . . except for the feel . . . the wow factor . . . which comes from playing with a civlization you personally like the history of. It's the "Oh cool" factor that I'm missing seeing all these threads.

Game balance wise "HRE" or "Native Americans" could be Radioactive Butt Monkeys for all the difference it makes to the actual number crunching AI.

This is kind of a false dichotomy. I voted for historical accuracy, but personally both are important. You can have accuracy and balance. Most of the historical errors in the game are not ones of balance, but of wrong graphics and ridiculous names.

One pet peeve of mine: the Praetorian. Come on, people, they were called Legions. Changing something as simple as that wouldn't affect gameplay balance.

BTW, I was the one who suggested a Roman Legionary smiley. Where can I get my cookie? :D
And you can still conquer all as Rome even in a balanced game.

Um balance is very important. But the fantasy of this game is to enter an alternative history, and it is difficult to do that without some sort of historical flavor/realism. That's why some people demand more accuracy/realsim, it is not because they want to make the game not fun. Goodness, why would they want to make the game not fun when they play it as much as the rest of us? Simple answer is that they don't.

That was not aimed at anyone, just a general open question.

i prefer historical accuracy with enough balance so that there is possibility to different paths of history.

most people prefer to go either way, depending on their idea of "fun", but whatever.

Balance all the way.

If I wanted accuracy, I'd read a book.

heres an example of fun historical accuracy:

take any of the big mods for Rome Total War. there is much historical accuracy (all nice-looking, realistic units, excellent details). and its still fun rampaging around with your armies.

I voted for game balance for the epic game. After all, when I want historical accuracy, I play Rhye's.

how about the poll has the option "HISTORICAL ACCURACY AND BALANCE"

(but then again, it is pretty hard to balance the two)

It also depends on what is meant by Balance. I assume it means balance so it is fun, but it could also mean balance so certain things aren't overpowered.

Historical gameplay is the best.

I think a lot of you guys are missing the whole point. Methos in particular is taking the classic anti-historical approach. ;)

To me, historical realism means your units reflect the real life strengths of your civilization, and so does your UB. It DOES NOT mean that if you play as Rome, you automatically start out at an advantage so you can conquer the world, nor does it mean that your empire has to end in 476 AD.

What is DOES mean is that your units are named properly (!) and their roles are fairly close to history, the graphics are realistic (I don't believe the Civ 3 legionary looked anything like the real legions did), and the Civilopedia entries are correct. Civ 4 does a pretty good job overall, but there are some very dubious choices. Navy SEAL for the American UU? Are you kidding me? (No disrespect to the poster above!)

Both as it is very easy to design a game that is both balanced and historically accurate. Therefor the poll fails as there should be a third option , both.

BTW, I was the one who suggested a Roman Legionary smiley. Where can I get my cookie? :D


i thought it was you. How bout you get a spanking instead of a cookie :spank:

how about the poll has the option "HISTORICAL ACCURACY AND BALANCE"


i was going to do that, but then everyone would vote for that, this is about what is more important

i thought it was you. How bout you get a spanking instead of a cookie :spank:


There'll be none of that, now!

what if i bake so cookies and throw them at the computer screen, will that work?

For me, game balance is definetley the most important. I don't care if a certain civ dominated an era, the UU, UB and leader traits should all be balanced. Of course, they should give an edge in their field or era, but not to the extent that it can be hard for the opponent to overturn this advantage. For the most part, I feel Civ is pretty good at this.

Of course, that shouldn't mean that stupid historical mistakes are made. There's no reason that the Praetorian shouldn't be called Legion, and the Phalanx never made sense to me. Why not Hoplite?

If i have to make a choice , historical accuracy . The game offers enough options so that a player may rebalance * the game as he wishes by either playing against stronger leaders , higher level , different options and so on. Different adds flavour to the game and although Balance is something that is up to the player wishes , by selecting different options , historical accuracy is not.

how about the poll has the option "HISTORICAL ACCURACY AND BALANCE"

(but then again, it is pretty hard to balance the two)

That wasn't the "Radioactive monkeys, duh" option? Oops.... :rotfl:

More seriously...... Signed under

Im with niether of those options, Gameplay is the golden cup for Civilization. Not Removing unikeness from Unikue units to make them 'balanced' and historical ackuracy to some people means you should only be able to build Praetorians for 13 turns of the game before Rome was destroyed.

Balanced historical gameplay. If we restarted history from the beginning, it would likely be much different. It isn't set in stone at all. History is organic, not a river or a stone upon which fate is carved....it happens, and none may say what will happen next. Why people equate historical accuracy with rigidity, and lack of balance and imagination is beyond me....

Balanced historical gameplay. If we restarted history from the beginning, it would likely be much different. It isn't set in stone at all. History is organic, not a river or a stone upon which fate is carved....it happens, and none may say what will happen next. Why people equate historical accuracy with rigidity, and lack of balance and imagination is beyond me....

thats probably the best.

enough historical accuracy, but leaving enough room for endless possibilities.

I think we should be able to have both. Every empire has had a weakness, and those weaknesses should be part of the balance. Personally, I dont think there are enough internal conflicts to deal with. As I recall, most empire rot from the inside out.

thats the only part of Civilization i never liked, the fact that empires don't really decline unless they are invaded. i mean for some people its not fun when your awesome world-dominating empire is falling apart because of internal corruption and natural diasasters, but it is a part of civilization. it would actually be fun in a way, to test your real skills of civilization.

Rhye's mod implements something called "stability" which reflects this. I'm not sure how it works exactly, but if you overexpand, have too little culture for a huge empire, have lots of foreigners, etc., it leads to an unstable government and could collapse your empire. I don't much care for some of the particulars of it, and it would never be included in the game on the basis that no player would ever want his empire to disappear suddenly, but it's worth looking at.

I'd rather have Historicle Accuracy, with a hint of Balance.

The major hint of balancing is making every civ and equal chance of winning (like because the romans were superior doesn't mean they win) But when it comes to nerfing to fix UU's etc. it's gone to far for me.

Overall Historical Accuracy is my choice.

Rhye's mod implements something called "stability" which reflects this. I'm not sure how it works exactly, but if you overexpand, have too little culture for a huge empire, have lots of foreigners, etc., it leads to an unstable government and could collapse your empire. I don't much care for some of the particulars of it, and it would never be included in the game on the basis that no player would ever want his empire to disappear suddenly, but it's worth looking at.


i've played Rhye's before. i only seen the stability go waaaaaaaaaay down once. playing as China, i led a huge land invasion of Persia. nothing much at first when i took two cities or something... but when i began attacking their heartland, their stability began going down... and down... and down... until finally, when i was beseiging their last two cities, stability just went kaploop and they became barbarians. yipee

but i overexpanded... China ruled pretty much all of Asia from the tip of Korea to the Levant... and i didn't get instability... and i was playing on Warlord level (so something should have happened)

I assume "balance" in the OP is synonymous with "gameplay"?

Little things like calling the Legion the Praetorian are insignificant - they're cosmetic. I wouldn't even consider them under the heading of "historical accuracy" because they have absolutely no bearing on how the game is played.

I see "historical accuracy" as trying to make the game mechanics reflect the nuances of historical fact. However, I much prefer to see gameplay, balance and fun take precedence.

I've said this before, but trying to make the Civilization games more historically accurate almost inevitably means sacrificing a pound of gameplay for the sake of an ounce of accuracy.

They're fine - and fun - as they are.

also understand this, it doesnt need to be completly historical or balanced, you get to decide how far you want to go with the option you picked.

For example, someone who picked historical accuracy could just want the Prat and Quencha changed to the Legion and something that isnt a language. Another person might want it to be like Rhyes or Total realism, and a third person might want it even more accurate(like america only being good at the end of the game) it is up to you to decide

i don't quite fit in (as usual). i'd never even heard of civ until i met hubby. he's a history buff, i am decidedly not. i never would have tried the game if i hadn't picked up the civ2 manual when he was playing it (after not reading it, typical for him *giggle*) and going "man this looks complex, i wonder if can figure it out?"

well, i could figure it out, and i have a heck of a lot of fun playing it. but i honestly don't care at all about the historical accuracy of it. and in threads about which leaders should have which traits to go along with their actual personalities, i don't even read them since i have no idea what their personalities were :crazyeye:.

i did not have good history teachers in school when i was young. i do like reading about the history of science, and read "a beautiful mind" before the movie, and eat up everything i can find about the atomic bomb, etc. but the actual history stuff in school? to me it was always "memorize this date" and they never encouraged us to think about it, and i missed out on a lot of stuff and never got the bug to follow up on my own. which is a shame.

heck i didn't even know there were troops called impi til i played civ, many many examples like that. i didn't realize that the line from the robbie williams song was a quote from Gandhi until i saw it in somebody's sig here! i'm a wee bit uneducated that way *giggle*.

so, of course i voted balance all the way.

I didn't know who the Zulu were until Civ. I always thought it had something to do with time... (it does) ;)

What I was saying is this....when you play your typical game of civilization, the game is already historically inaccurate...it's not taking place on our Earth. Furthermore, historically speaking, there aren't enough people around. So a game of civilization cannot be historically accurate, because...for example, the conditions that caused Acheamenid Persia to dominate the Near East or for Rome to become an empire....don't exist. So really, when I say "historical accuracy" I am speaking of properly reflecting a civ's strengths and weaknesses(something I doubt, from their philosophy[understandable from a business standpoint], Firaxis will do itself) as well as its leaders. The leaders are anachronistic, but they must embody something of their civ. And it is also important to use only bonafide civilizations, because, when you get down to it, Civilization is successful on its huge time scale because it is an abstraction. Details, for example, including the HRE AND Germany, aren't good. They aren't very much different, and arguments for the HRE can be made for many, many permutations of existing civs.

It also, of course, skews the game when you DO play on the Earth. Even further, at least.

I see the series evolution in tackling some of its quandaries, one of the biggest(I think) is forming an accurate abstraction of Nomadism, so that a civ could exist in a nomadic state(without any cities), and for that state to be different....but not entirely inferior, to a settled state. And, before you ask, yes, more than just the Mongols were nomadic at some point in their existence. The Turks, the Persians(via the Parthians, who can be assumed and included in a loose Persian identity), the Native Americans. Even the Greeks, a very long time ago. I think they have this in mind because of the Mongols scenario in Warlords. If done well, it would really...open up the game.

I could type for hours...but, in the end, to me, historical accuracy to me means the Civs are portrayed distinctly and accurately, but also organic enough to adapt to the many different circumstances found in your typical game of Civ...

I'd say balance. Historical accuracy is something best left for scenarios- I believe Rhye's was mentioned- but the main game should focus on balance. It's a game where Taoist Aztec Riflemen can invade Islamic Kore through Hindu France with their Buddhist Egyptian allies, realism is already down the toilet. The historical details are there to provide flavour, and, while accuracy helps this, it should always be secondary to the gameplay.

hahahahaha i can hardly breathe for laughing at Gaius Octavius's sig. did you sneak that in there right now? *giggles galore*

Example of Historical accuracy's that most request . Historically accurate accordingly to the games own rules. Therefor it isn't something foreign of our used gameplay. For example All Leaders are given traits with some names it would be historically accurate not to give Genghis Khan peacefull traits or some other Leaders traits that don't correspond to his/Her rule. I can't see how this is bad. Likewise they may not add pseudohistoric or unimportant Leaders such as Boudica or pseudohistoricall UU. Being historical accurate is not necessarily a sacrifice. I don't remember many supporting changing fundamentally the game but most angree that with more effort it could be more historically accurate without sacrificing balance/gameplay.

A little more effort...

Balanced gameplay! But like Gaius implied, it doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Thematic flavor is part of the fun, and in the case of epic Civ, that means having a degree of historical accuracy as well as historical breadth.

Example of Historical accuracy's that most request . Historically accurate accordingly to the games own rules. Therefor it isn't something foreign of our used gameplay. For example All Leaders are given traits with some names it would be historically accurate not to give Genghis Khan peacefull traits or some other Leaders traits that don't correspond to his/Her rule. I can't see how this is bad. Likewise they may not add pseudohistoric or unimportant Leaders such as Boudica or pseudohistoricall UU. Being historical accurate is not necessarily a sacrifice. I don't remember many supporting changing fundamentally the game but most angree that with more effort it could be more historically accurate without sacrificing balance/gameplay.

A little more effort...
Indeed...Civilization has a bit of a bad habit of selecting overly-symbolic leaders. Boudicca, and past leader choices(Cleopatra and Xerxes come to mind.) They're compelling, perhaps, but they're not much substance. There are more worthy Celts, such as Dumnorix and Vercingetorix, and many others, I am sure(not an expert on Celtic history.)

Another thing I was thinking of was having "variations" for Civs. Greece, for example, could have the base Greece as well as an Athenian and a Makedonian "skin." Civs would have subtle bonuses that affected their play(China, for example, could have a bonus representing its ability to project a common identity across a massive swath of territory) and the skins would offer variations. The Athenian skin, for example, might offer a small benefit to science and GP generation, whereas the Makedonian skin would have more of a military-bent. The "base" civ would more or less be an "average" of the skins. Skins could also shuffle and alter the city list(Makedonia's first city, for example, would be Pella.)

But I digress...

Indeed...Civilization has a bit of a bad habit of selecting overly-symbolic leaders. Boudicca, and past leader choices(Cleopatra and Xerxes come to mind.) They're compelling, perhaps, but they're not much substance. There are more worthy Celts, such as Dumnorix and Vercingetorix, and many others, I am sure(not an expert on Celtic history.)

Another thing I was thinking of was having "variations" for Civs. Greece, for example, could have the base Greece as well as an Athenian and a Makedonian "skin." Civs would have subtle bonuses that affected their play(China, for example, could have a bonus representing its ability to project a common identity across a massive swath of territory) and the skins would offer variations. The Athenian skin, for example, might offer a small benefit to science and GP generation, whereas the Makedonian skin would have more of a military-bent. The "base" civ would more or less be an "average" of the skins. Skins could also shuffle and alter the city list(Makedonia's first city, for example, would be Pella.)

But I digress...


Indeed...Civilization has a bit of a bad habit of selecting overly-symbolic leaders. Boudicca, and past leader choices(Cleopatra and Xerxes come to mind.) They're compelling, perhaps, but they're not much substance. There are more worthy Celts, such as Dumnorix and Vercingetorix, and many others, I am sure(not an expert on Celtic history.)


Exactly i am sure that Firaxis success hasn't been on the inclusion of "households" names such ax Xerxes , Boudica ,etc but due to the quality of the game they produce. I see it as a win win situation ... Just a little more effort ...



Another thing I was thinking of was having "variations" for Civs. Greece, for example, could have the base Greece as well as an Athenian and a Makedonian "skin." Civs would have subtle bonuses that affected their play(China, for example, could have a bonus representing its ability to project a common identity across a massive swath of territory) and the skins would offer variations. The Athenian skin, for example, might offer a small benefit to science and GP generation, whereas the Makedonian skin would have more of a military-bent. The "base" civ would more or less be an "average" of the skins. Skins could also shuffle and alter the city list(Makedonia's first city, for example, would be Pella.)

But I digress...[

That is a nice idea , especially if we are to include leaders of a civilization from a very different time frame. It is a step forward for historical accuracy but imagine the workload that it would be needed for over 20 civilizations.
Hence the motto would change from a little more effort to simply more effort.

But i would play with such mod.

civilization taught me to love history even more than i already did. its because of civilization i knew so much geography, history, culture, and a load of stuff compared with my more ignorant peers.

but, on topic, the "historical accuracy" that most of us here are talking about, i.e. FLAVOR, is necessary for the game to actually be historically accurate enough. no, it is not likely that Romans would ever run around with Aztec Jaguars, or that the Chinese would have huge altars dedicated to nothing but sacrifice. but yes, it is possible that the Romans could have founded Islam. yes, it is possible that the Chinese discovered how to make Tanks first and use it to dominate the world.


Another thing I was thinking of was having "variations" for Civs. Greece, for example, could have the base Greece as well as an Athenian and a Makedonian "skin." Civs would have subtle bonuses that affected their play(China, for example, could have a bonus representing its ability to project a common identity across a massive swath of territory) and the skins would offer variations. The Athenian skin, for example, might offer a small benefit to science and GP generation, whereas the Makedonian skin would have more of a military-bent. The "base" civ would more or less be an "average" of the skins. Skins could also shuffle and alter the city list(Makedonia's first city, for example, would be Pella.)

now that is actually a pretty good idea. could actually fix the HRE problem too.

I find that I have fun with more historical realism than most.

I accept random events, revolutions, high-powered legions and redcoats. The greater the realism, the greater my sense of immersion. If I can out-perform the historical civ, I would still consider it a victory.

As I so often say, "It's a game, it's meant to be fun." If it's not fun for most people, then they won't play, if they don't play, they won't be educated or made curious about history, geography, economics, etc.

So while I'll always want more realism and more historical accuracy, I'll still understand when it's nerfed to be fairer and more fun. ( but I reserve the right to complain ).



Complaint- It's a legion. It should be simple as patches go. :crazyeye:

Civ 4 needs Historical Accuracy, but Balance is needed as well. To Much balance and the game becomes less fun, OR more fun. That is open for debate.