Props to the devs for designing the Civs to be played as they existed!

The Furor Teutonicus thread got me thinking about something I had already pondered: many of the mechanics of Civs in this game encourage them to be played in a manner consistent with their history. For example:

Rome
-Early expansion facilitated by powerful UUs.
-UA encourages development and expansion after early aggression.
-UUs are very strong compared to contemporaries, but gain nothing from upgrading, encouraging player to sit on the UUs as long as they can get away with; Rome's lack of military modernization was one of the historical reasons for its downfall.

Germany
-Early game focused on barbarian-hunting; i.e. pulling together disparate tribes into a force to be used against other major civs.
-Mid-game with cheap defensive units encourages a defensive posture around what would be the time of the Holy Roman Empire.
-Late-game strong UU encourages a late-game aggressive push.

England
-UUs and UA encourage player to use a highly mobile fleet coupled with a few extremely strong ranged units to defend territory or make aggressive pushes.


I think this design aspect is really cool. Some of the civs are designed just with flavor or gameplay in mind (I'm looking at you, Huns) but some of the more oddball abilities like Furor Teutonicus or the decision not to let Legions keep their terrain improvement powers when they upgrade actually do have some thought behind them in creating immersive gameplay. Anyone else notice anything like this?

I hate to say it, but I don't think it was a decision to keep the Legions from upgrading with their powers. They give each unit special improvement abilities, which are normally limited to the worker and the workboat, but they gave these abilities to the Legion also. It would be complicated coding to make it upgrade so that only Roman Longswordsmen are able to make roads and such. The rest is spot on though.

Peng Qi said:

Rome's lack of military modernization was one of the historical reasons for its downfall.

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Not flaming here, genuinely interested , but is this correct?

I always assumed the fall of the Roman Empire was down to corruption, internal power struggles, external tribal pressures & possibly religious turmoil rather then military ineffectiveness.

I'm not aware that the Vandals, Goths etc.. had anything militaristic a well resourced Roman Legion couldn't handle.

Perhaps I need to read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" which has been gathering dust on my bookshelve for years...

TM Moot said:

Not flaming here, genuinely interested , but is this correct?

I always assumed the fall of the Roman Empire was down to corruption, internal power struggles, external tribal pressures & possibly religious turmoil rather then military ineffectiveness.

I'm not aware that the Vandals, Goths etc.. had anything military a well resourced Roman Legion couldn't handle.

Perhaps I need to read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" which has been gathering dust on my bookshelve for years...

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Yeah... not to be a jerk, but the OP isn't correct about Rome. Their military was perfectly up to date when they collapsed.

Plumfairy said:

Yeah... not to be a jerk, but the OP isn't correct about Rome. Their military was perfectly up to date when they collapsed.

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This is not at all true. Eastern Rome lacked the funding and wherewithal to upgrade their Legions' armor to superior mail armor once it had been developed, and often relied on mercenary armies with inferior equipment.

Peng Qi said:

This is not at all true. Eastern Rome lacked the funding and wherewithal to upgrade their Legions' armor to superior mail armor once it had been developed, and often relied on mercenary armies with inferior equipment.

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There are many notions, yours is based on Vegetius, however he didn't ascribe it to failed technology, but rather the cultural dilution of employing so many Germanic barbarian mercenaries.

Virtually all the theories consider cultural, economic, or moral decline to have played the central role, though few assign only one single cause. To my knowledge, technological inferiority is not considered a significant factor in any of the leading theories.

Oh I don't mean to imply that they didn't HAVE the technology, merely that they didn't have the necessary funding to provide enough men with the most up-to-date equipment. (Then of course there's the severe manpower shortage in the late Empire, but that's not the era of which I'm speaking.)

P.S.: Hey Vegetius, what's up?

Some nations are too limited though. Does anyone pursue any victory other than domination with Germany? Arguably you could go Science, but that's a direct result from conquering a bazillion cities...they didn't really represent the cultural side of Germany very well, or the artistry of the Japanese.

A lot of the civs that were serious world powers kind of got the shaft on the cultural side. America would have made a lot of sense as a culture civ (Coca-colonization is the closest thing the real world will ever get to the in-game VC) but nope straight up warmongerer. Same with the Greeks and focusing in on Alexander's annexation of basically everything rather than the cultural contributions of Athens that would eventually be much more significant to the development of the world.

Peng Qi said:

This is not at all true. Eastern Rome lacked the funding and wherewithal to upgrade their Legions' armor to superior mail armor once it had been developed, and often relied on mercenary armies with inferior equipment.

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I disagree that mail armor was superior. It's different and better against certain weapons, but it's actually quite inferior against others.

Actually there are hundreds of theories concerning the Fall of Rome, and there is not any concensus about any of them. In other words, we don't know why Rome felt.

Some people pretend that every thing have an end, and that our own civilizations will be extinct more or less soon.

For my Civ ideas, I usually consider that Rome felt because they got caught back "technologically" by barabrians. See the post http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=479211 , where i consider that Rome would fell in Civ5 around the fifth century because a special military tech tree that normal civs don't have. (in the same way Mongolia rises in the twelveth century becacuse of a superior army, here again a special military tech tree other civs don't have)

I think it makes pretty much sense, as barbarians are known to be superior individually on regular civilized troops. (they were good in forest ambush, where trees prevented Roman soldier to organize themselves) However, Roman people were far better in discipline, and for open field battles it seems discipline is prevalent.

However, in my imagined scenario, barbarians just inspire themselves of the Roman discipline with time (in Civ: technology ?), while remaining still superior individually. The same triggers with Mongolia, their way of life makes every single member of the society a warrior since its tendering age, with competition around war abilities and horseback riding. Hence their supriority on the field.

Arachnofiend said:

A lot of the civs that were serious world powers kind of got the shaft on the cultural side. America would have made a lot of sense as a culture civ (Coca-colonization is the closest thing the real world will ever get to the in-game VC) but nope straight up warmongerer. Same with the Greeks and focusing in on Alexander's annexation of basically everything rather than the cultural contributions of Athens that would eventually be much more significant to the development of the world.

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Never understood this as well. If anyone has culturally "conquered" the world it would be the Americans.

triheptyl said:

Never understood this as well. If anyone has culturally "conquered" the world it would be the Americans.

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And technologically, economically. I think the developer was constrained to what passes for our history in schools these days. America the imperialist, killer of injuns, etc.

triheptyl said:

Never understood this as well. If anyone has culturally "conquered" the world it would be the Americans.

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A truly American America would focus in on city-states. Playing the part of Big Brother and forcing the little states to assimilate without actually annexing them is what America has been about since the Monroe Doctrine. I think for a theoretical cultural America there should be a Great Capitalist replacement that, when used on a city-state, gives a big one turn culture boost. It would have to be huge to compensate for the fact that that could have been an Artist, though.

Give them Containment for the UA and make the influence of other civs decrease faster when you have a spy in the city-state and you are good to go.

Rome fell I think mainly because they couldn't aquire more slaves (qonquest eventually halted) and they kinda ignored technological advance in some areas because of the slaves they used to have.
IMO barbs were the final blow.

They also had tons of mercenaries in the army later on and that can bite you in the ass when the coffers begin to empty.

TM Moot said:

Not flaming here, genuinely interested , but is this correct?

I always assumed the fall of the Roman Empire was down to corruption, internal power struggles, external tribal pressures & possibly religious turmoil rather then military ineffectiveness.

I'm not aware that the Vandals, Goths etc.. had anything militaristic a well resourced Roman Legion couldn't handle.

Perhaps I need to read Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" which has been gathering dust on my bookshelve for years...

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Let's not forget about the spread of disease!