How realistic is Civ?

Hey all, I've always wondered how realistic people think the game is in terms of representing the power that you yeild in the game in the various positions you can hold [King, Despot, PM, President etc], do you reckon it's part of the game that has been developed succesfuly or is it a little thin on the ground?

It's not realistic at all. Even much more complex games like Europa Universalis or Hearts of Iron are not quite "realistic".

Umm, you wield absolute power at all times, down to every arctic Scout party and menial worker detachment in the Empire. So, I'd say *not* well-developed, if indeed developed at all. Maybe Darth Vader would find the current model realistic in terms of power use... The Europa Universalis series has always been a much better bet if you want realism. Ofc, it is my opinion that that series is *choked* with realism to the point of not being fun anymore, but I suppose part of it is due to the steep learning curve that I've never bothered to get past. I'd rather play a few more games of Civ where it's actually possible to conquer the whole world fairly easily and have fun doing it.

In Civ II you had the Senate that prevented aggressive wars if you were a Democracy, but it was more of an annoyance really; I'm glad they got rid of it. Ofc now there's no war weariness at all... Except unhappiness from captured cities which is temporary to a great extent. And the warmonger diplo penalty punishes war in a different way, but that happens if you so much as glance at a spear, so might as well do some proper carnage for it. I think the Civ IV model of WW that gathers over time, while still flawed, was a better model than the current waves of denouncements.

My latest game was realistic. Let me tell you about it.

I was expanding peacefully and got up to about 10 cities. Then, Attila was declaring war on me time after time, so in the end I took his 3 cities. Reasonably realistic.

So, then it's me and Romans splitting the continent half and half pretty much, but me with the bigger half. I get to Biology and am horrified to find that I only have a single Oil deposit in all my territory, yielding only 3 Oil. There are gobs and gobs of Oil in Roman lands.

So, I build up my Military, and go to war over Oil. How realistic is that

Cheers.

The game does a decent job simulating realistic scenarios, but I'm not sure if that answers your question.

It seems rather unrealistic to me. I would say it`s 40% realistic and 60% `what the heck is the logic here?`

From the standpoint of realistic leaders, no. You are a 100% dictator of your civ, no matter who you choose. As for how your leader interacts with other leaders, it's all in how you decide to play your civ, as the AI leaders will treat you pretty much the same way whether you are Atilla or Ghandi... all depends on your actions.