Underlying a lot of the bickering on this and other forums about Civ4 and, in particular, its military units is a disagreement between whether the Civilization franchise should focus on being a GAME for pure fun or a SIMULATION that bears a resemblance to "the world as we know it."
GAMERS complain when a unit is "unbalanced" (in being either over- or under-powered). People who like SIMULATION complain when a unit is named "Praetorian" rather than "Legion."
I believe that Civilization should fundamentally be a fun GAME. However, I feel that what distinguishes it from, e.g., "Rise of Nations" is that it doesn't just use historical flavor to "skin" what's essentially a complex version of chess/rock-paper-scissor, but rather that it makes some effort to reproduce history (and, paradoxically, alternative histories) accurately and in a way that feels "right." This is a difficult balance, and I applaud Sid, his team, and everyone else involved with the project (modders included) in striving to balance both.
Although I am a relative newcomer to the franchise (I was first addicted to SMAC), I feel that Civ4 is weighted towards the GAME side and worked just a little less hard on SIMULATION. If you read the appendix, I think you will see that the designers focused on FUN (which I agree with) but there's very little mention in there of trying to make the game feel "right" (other than trying to minimize the "tank vs. spearmen" phenomena, which I would argue is BOTH not fun AND not realistic.).
I cannot fault Firaxis for choosing this path, as the computer game market is competitive and not exactly exploding. I also think that I'm probably in the minority in my feelings about this game (critics who I'm sure will respond with "Go play SimCiv" are totally right, except that there is no such game!).
Here are just a few of my thoughts about Civ4 "realism." I know that attempts to make the game more realistic will probably reduce the "fun" element (hence my initial attempt to identify the two as in tension), but personally I would like a somewhat better balance:
I do think that it's an impossible challenge to model such a long sweep of history with the same game engine, and that the C3C Conquests in some ways captured the "feel" of a particular slice of history better than Civ3 as a whole did. Since you can't change the rules of a game willy-nilly as the game proceeds, I suppose I'm also in the camp waiting for some cool, era-specific mods to come out. (As a final aside, I'm happy that Civ4 captured the feel of my favorite C3C mod, the Seven Wonders, in giving you all the super-early choices on worker techs... accurate or not, that IS fun in my book!).
Thoughtful responses welcome!
GAMERS complain when a unit is "unbalanced" (in being either over- or under-powered). People who like SIMULATION complain when a unit is named "Praetorian" rather than "Legion."
I believe that Civilization should fundamentally be a fun GAME. However, I feel that what distinguishes it from, e.g., "Rise of Nations" is that it doesn't just use historical flavor to "skin" what's essentially a complex version of chess/rock-paper-scissor, but rather that it makes some effort to reproduce history (and, paradoxically, alternative histories) accurately and in a way that feels "right." This is a difficult balance, and I applaud Sid, his team, and everyone else involved with the project (modders included) in striving to balance both.
Although I am a relative newcomer to the franchise (I was first addicted to SMAC), I feel that Civ4 is weighted towards the GAME side and worked just a little less hard on SIMULATION. If you read the appendix, I think you will see that the designers focused on FUN (which I agree with) but there's very little mention in there of trying to make the game feel "right" (other than trying to minimize the "tank vs. spearmen" phenomena, which I would argue is BOTH not fun AND not realistic.).
I cannot fault Firaxis for choosing this path, as the computer game market is competitive and not exactly exploding. I also think that I'm probably in the minority in my feelings about this game (critics who I'm sure will respond with "Go play SimCiv" are totally right, except that there is no such game!).
Here are just a few of my thoughts about Civ4 "realism." I know that attempts to make the game more realistic will probably reduce the "fun" element (hence my initial attempt to identify the two as in tension), but personally I would like a somewhat better balance:
- Culture: I had this problem with Civ3 as well. While it's a fascinating gameplay mechanism, I find it hard to "believe." The very term "culture bomb" points to the fact that this has become a game mechanism more than any kind of accurate portrayal of history. Just for my own satisfaction, I would be curious to learn of instances when cities "flip" as a consequence of culture -- I'm sure there are some.
- Military: This has been debated ad nauseum in these fora. I feel like the biggest indicator to me that the military aspect of the game has been skewed towards "GAMER" is that units were ahistorically renamed, e.g. the "Praetorian" instead of "Legion" or "Phalanx" rather than "Hoplite" just to keep the game "fresh" and "different." A minor quibble, IMHO, but to me it points to a different underlying set of priorities.
- Religion: I rather like the way religion is handled in Civ4, or at least feel like it's a good start. It adds a new dimension of complexity and mostly feels "right," and is a brilliant mechanism to set up worldwide factions that, in Civ3, was inadequately modeled by a loose idea of "race" (the Euro, Asian, MesoAmerican, Ancient/Middle Eastern blocs). However, I do think that, probably in the interest of PC-ness, religion was handled too "soft." Having multiple religions in a city is usually a good thing, and unlike in, e.g., Medieval:Total War, never seems to cause tension, riots, etc. This is, of course, totally historically inaccurate, and while I can see how setting it up this way would reduce the "fun" factor, I also think there's more work to be done on religion as a game mechanism. I would have liked to have seen more or perhaps different religions for the sake of ahistoricity, e.g. what if the Greek pantheon had survived to modern times, etc? Perhaps another example of trying to include modern "major" religions for the sake of PC and thus avoiding a decision about what the "great" religions in history have been, even if waning or extinct.
- Along with religion, Diplomacy is a BIG step forward in Civ4 in realisim AND fun from Civ3 (in this case, the both definitely go hand-in-hand).
- Civilizations as city-states. There is no way for me to make this critique without questioning the underlying premise of the entire franchise, which is to build a civilization on the backbone of powerful cities. This is all true, particularly in early history, but as modern transportation arises, the idea that a city the size of, e.g., New York can only exist if there's a big fat cow pasture sitting somewhere in Westchester becomes rather weird. I will say that the concept of hamlets is a MAJOR step forward (and away from the city-state). Also, the removal of city-specific "corruption" is also a major step away from this problem. Cities are a good way to give the player a "unit" to play with, but I wonder if there isn't a better way to represent the entire nation-civ in addition to civics?
I do think that it's an impossible challenge to model such a long sweep of history with the same game engine, and that the C3C Conquests in some ways captured the "feel" of a particular slice of history better than Civ3 as a whole did. Since you can't change the rules of a game willy-nilly as the game proceeds, I suppose I'm also in the camp waiting for some cool, era-specific mods to come out. (As a final aside, I'm happy that Civ4 captured the feel of my favorite C3C mod, the Seven Wonders, in giving you all the super-early choices on worker techs... accurate or not, that IS fun in my book!).
Thoughtful responses welcome!
