Increasing historic and overall realism should be the focus

There are obviously many thread concerning various new features and details that should be added to Civ 4. I agree with many of them. But I think Civ 4 needs to focus on the "big picture" and in my opinion that should be increasing the historic and overall realism of the game. I think that if the game were approached from this angle, many of the issues of gameplay and balance would be solved.

What I am suggesting is that we really need to look at how a "typical" Civ game and civilization develops over time and then critically ask,

Is what's happening making sense or should the game be changed with new features or adjusted so that it is more realistic?" Note that I don't mean realism of minute detail but "overall historic realism"

Here are some example (maybe not great ones) to explain what I mean.

1. In Civ, from 4000BC you typically sent out scouts to explores all four corners of the world. You'd build cities and pump out settlers as fast as you can to claim as much territory as possible. Originally in Civ 3, you were able to trade maps, techs and contacts right away so that by 1000BC you had knowledge of half the world.

But let us think about it. In real life terms does this make sense? Did ancient Egypt send scouts out to explore all corners of Eurasia, spreading city after city and trading techs with distant civilizations as far away as India, China and know what the most of the world looked like? Obviously not. Then we ask ourselves why not? Well if the real ancient Egpyt sent ancient units, they would have probably gotten lost or died. Maybe we need to model this. Perhaps scouts out of range of city radius behave like like the galley with an increasing chance of the death the further away it is from civilization?

Perhaps the population growth model and production models and mechanics should be altered so that there are real risks and penalities for sprawling tiny little villages everywhere? In real ancient Egypt and most of the ancient world, life was at a subsistence level and also there was much disease and stuff so population growth was very slow. If Egypt spread out and thinned out its population in ancient times, most likely disease and barbarians, etc would have wiped out this "spraw" attempt at empire growth.

2. World conquest
In Civ 3 terms, superpowers like the USSR should have been able to conquer half the world. Yet USSR was not even able to conquer Afganistan let alone half the world.

In "Civ 3" once I take over very city of Afganistan, I have completely conquered and subdued it and it is a productive and content part of my empire and it will contribute to my productivity and power. But in "real life" Afganistan, the opposite happened. Although every single city was occupied by USSR and every major army defeated, it continued resisting and draining more and more money and lives.

There are many other examples. Anyway, the point is that gameplay, balance, and IMHO fun would exist if the developers of Civ 4 looked at the game from the perspective of "overall realism". Thus what I suggest is that as the developers of Civ 4 play the game, they should take note of the "historical development" of a typical Civ 4 game and then ask, "Does this make sense?" If not, then that is when changes should be considered.

interesting, and a very good perspective, usually people try to convince us to kill gameplay so we can see the color of the uniform on the shoelaces, and have the abitlity to chose to equip our troops with sub-machine guns or *gasp* sniper rifles, but this is a very interesting perspective, and will not sacrifice much gameplay

Fun should trump realism every time.

Yes, fun should trump realism. Unless more realistic things could be more fun, and more interesting. In this case, I like the 'level' of realism stated by you, polypheus. Actually, in the time of the ancient Egyptians, trade with places such as India did exist, though on a very small scale. And the influences Mesopotamia and India had on each other are quite interesting. And this was at the dawn of civilization. In the ancient world, trade existed between the Iberian peninsula and India, and northward a ways also. However they had no accurate maps of these areas. Actually, in my recent Conquest games, unless I'm a seafaring civ, I usually have only very limited knowledge of the map, even my own continent, for a long time.

To get to the point, though. There do need to be some greater limits on sea exploration especially, though it needs to be improved greatly later on, for realism's sake as well as for fun. I sometimes build vast fleets, but... they aren't that useful! That should change.

Sorry, I'll continue later... I am forced to leave for the moment.

To continue: With military expeditions, as you said, it is more complicated than simply taking every last city. Though there are 'resistors' when you conquer, they are not effective in the least. To improve this, resistors should have a chance every turn to commit attacks upon your units, and if they expel you from the city, to control it themselves. When I talk about attacks, I mean things like taking hit points away, or even killing units if they are too heavily damaged. Also, units should be unable to heal at all unless they have built a barracks [of their own nation's, not one left over] in that city. To quell resistors, it is best to have many units in the city, though that only increases the chances of quelling them, but does not make it certain. Possibly, new trade into the city will pacify it, and more options with handling them, such as ordering a purge of the city, that kills a 'citizen', or ordering the destruction of things such as temples. [because, in real life, many times such things weren't destroyed.] And to deal with these problems, unhappy citizens need to be dealt with, because even after all resistors are gone, civil disorder for any amount of time will cause new ones to appear. Also, in time, guerrila type units may begin to spawn from points within borders, like encampments, though with the ability to take over cities, if there are enough resistors for long enough.

It should become harder in the more modern times, as well. After nationalism, in particular, things should begin to get nasty. And this is right when communications improve and corruption based on distance is no longer valid. Ancient empires will have much trouble also, as it was usually very hard to hold an empire together. You had to constantly reconquer territories, unless you were smart enough to try and make those lands 'part' of your own culture.

I would appreciate responding opinions on this.

I think these sorts of things have been discussed elsewhere, in numerous disparate threads!
One problem which seems to be emerging though, IMHO, is this idea that realism/fun is some kind of 'zero sum game'-i.e. you have to decrease realism in order to increase fun. I don't see that this needs to be the case. By simply adding only a little more 'complexity' to the government, research, resistance, revolts and assimilation models, we could add enormous amounts of realism AND boost game play-if only by reducing the snowball and 'player exploit' effect.
Of course, simply adding a model for Civil War and protectorates would add a TREMENDOUS amount of realism to the game AND, IMHO, make the game so much more interesting.
Lastly, making the UN MEAN something would add a little more realism to the game, but also add a great deal more interest to the late game!
Of course, certain elements of C3:C DID help to improve realism, without sacrificing realism AT ALL. For instance, a change so small as pushing communications and map trading back to the late middle ages has done a huge amount for keeping different civs as isolated as they might have been in real life!
Anyway, just some rambling thoughts!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

BTW, I've recently had my computer fixed, which means I have CIV3 again !!! With that in mind, I was wondering if any of you guys would be interested in a PBEM game?

I think polypheu's perspective does not impair gameplay in any sense.The opposite.
As it has been pointed out in numerous threads what impairs gameplay is that in most of the cases victory or defeat is decided too early, and at later ages the player can enjoy (?) the crushing of mostly subdued ennemies that collapse after the loss of 3 cities and 4 SoD, or he is completely desperate...
So, every step towards slowing the imperial growth of both Human and AI is a step to the right direction, which IMHO is to sustain interesting gameplay throughout the whole game.
@Ybbor I think you've just opened a can of worms:expect to see "sniper" threads blooming like poppies in Afghanistan...
(OMG how hypocritical of me...I once used "invisible" Spetsnaz in my mod)

I think a better term than "realism" would be "immersiveness."

Its a game, so its inherently unrealistic. If it was realistic, you wouldn't get to control an entire civilization for 5000 years, you'd just get to go to work and buy groceries and do your laundry and whatnot. Improving realism doesn't make it more fun, it makes it more like real life (by definition) and usually play games in the hopes of having more fun than the other things they do in real life.

On the other hand, part of what makes civ fun is the immersiveness: the sense of history you get when playing it. If they kept the exact game mechanics, but renamed the civs "Green Team", "Yellow Team", etc, and the units "Offensive Unit A," "Offensive Unit B", "Defensive Unit A", etc, then the game would be distinctly less fun. Civ is not a purely abstract game, like checkers or tetris. Its a game where things are intended to represent certain historic military units, buildings, achievments, etc. That representative nature allows you to become much more immersed in the game than if it were purely abstract.

Warpstorm is right, fun is more important than realism, but Aussie_Lurker is quite correct that its not a zero-sum situation, especially if when you say "realism" you really mean "immersiveness." Certain things that make the game more "realistic" are really all about making it easier to forget that its just a game, i.e., drawing you deeper into the artificial world of the game, so that you enjoy the experience more. But its important that the artificial world of the game be a fun world, or else why would you want to be drawn in? Since the real world is not always a fun place, modeling reality too closely will decrease the fun of being drawn into the game world.

Polypheus' post argueing for more realism is the first one I haven't completely disagreed with, because it argues for realism in order to improve gameplay, not at the expense of gameplay. Any time something can be made more "realistic" in a way that improves gameplay, that's a good thing, since it makes the game more immersive, and that's fun. But we should never tell ourselves that the world that we're trying to immerse ourselves in should be as realistic as possible: we play it as a diversion from (and an entertaining alternative to) reality. That's why fun should always be the most important factor.

Well said!

I partially disagree with you, and I basically disagree with a lot of your critics

One is that historic realism should NOT be the primary goal... but neither should the ever elusive and subjective "fun". I think most of these people come from a position that it's only fun if you're winning.

My goal is gameplay. And gameplay means challenge and choices. Bad gameplay is when there's a guaranteed path to victory. Bad gameplay is when it's easy to win. On the other hand, bad gameplay happens when you take choices and control away from the user.

(Take a football game where people accidentally get injured. While realistic, it is not fun... but more importantly, there's no gameplay to it, since it is random and unpreventable, and only frustrates the user.)

I think your suggestions, more than being realistic, ARE, in fact good gameplay. They prevent people from dominating the game in the first 1000 years. And to me, that's a real big flaw in all the past civ games, despite being fun (because it's so easy and predictable).

How about supply lines? The further away a unit travels, the more food you need to provide it.

I think I agree with everything. The issue here is that the gameplay mechanics (I'll leave it up to Firaxis to come up with those ) needed to create such things would drasticly alter the point of the game. Civ 3 added some much needed fresh views of winning, such as cultural victory. To do what has been suggested would make the current conquest victory impossible. I know some angsty people who would get even more angery if they can't take over the world

Obviously realisticly nations dont take over the world but we do have more technologicly advanced and culturaly advanced nations of various sizes. I feel that the next logical question to ask is how would one win Civ IV?

CULTURAL VICTORY

I think cultural victory should not happen just because you have the most wonders and old stuff... but because your country exports its culture all over the world. Indian silks in the age of colonization, or American movies in the post-modern age.

UTOPIAN VICTORY

I think there should be a form of victory if you achieve a certain level of immigration, plus a certain standard of living. If your people are happy, well-educated, with no poverty, disease, or crime, and people are flocking to your country by the boatfull, you should achieve a "utopian" victory. Something for the small nation to strive for, against the corporate military empire

DOMINATION

Domination is under the most discussion right now as many people discuss ways to curtail the ease that nations CAN dominate -- criticizing it as both unrealistic and, more importantly, boring. I think you can make domination both more challenging and less tedious.

Rather than it being an issue of your actual borders (although this certainly wouldn't be a bad thing) ... if you introduced the idea of commonwealths, colonies, and puppet states, domination could be much more strategic than pumping out military units.

The winner is the person who essentially makes other empires and nations surrender to them, and carry out their deeds... no need to invade every individual city. When German tanks show up in France, they surrender. As ruler of France, much of what you earn goes to Germany, and to produce your own military is forbidden.

Domination could follow this path.

ECONOMIC VICTORY??

I don't know how this might work, but it remains a possibility and a strategy people play for, in my mind.

SUMMARY

I think the key is to remember how Civ 3 developed from Civ 2... to dominate, you don't need to kill everyone, but assume so much power that anyone would be stupid to fight against you. The idea is to emerge as the decisive worldwide leader, not to wipe everyone else off the planet.

dh_epic said:

I think the key is to remember how Civ 3 developed from Civ 2... to dominate, you don't need to kill everyone, but assume so much power that anyone would be stupid to fight against you. The idea is to emerge as the decisive worldwide leader, not to wipe everyone else off the planet.

Click to expand...

I completely agree. The one thing to remember, though, is that some people enjoy wiping everyone else off the planet.

I think the main goal should be to have a variety of different ways to win, and to have the challenge of winning by each method well balanced, within each difficulty level.

That leads to two different things:

(1) When you play a difficulty level high enough that winning the game is no sure thing, then all the various methods of winning should be balanced enough that you're not pressured to employ one particular tactic to try to win. In other words, the challenge of coping with a high difficulty should not force me to become a warmonger if I'd rather be a building, or vice versa, or force me to play either extreme if I prefer something in the middle.

(2) When you play an easier difficulty level, it should become easier to win by all the different methods, not just some of them. For people who like the thrill of supreme victory more than the challenge of a close game, they should be able to achieve any kind of victory they desire without being hampered by the rules.

The problem with many of the suggested ways to "balance" the game better is that, in the process of achieveing #1, they go against #2. In Civ 3, domination is the easiest victory type to achieve on the higher difficult levels: the challenge is to make it harder at the high levels (and thus more balanced with other strategies) without making it irritatingly hard at the easier difficulty levels.

judgement said:

I think the main goal should be to have a variety of different ways to win, and to have the challenge of winning by each method well balanced, within each difficulty level.

Click to expand...

I agree. At the highest difficulties, you shouldn't be forced to squeeze a "cheap victory" out, because there's some method that's just impossible.

On a specific but related note,

I think there should be a "banana republic" award, too, to encourage civilizations to surrender (rather than fight to the death). Like a consolation prize. This would speed up a domination victory and make it more strategic. Domination victory could be achieved by "I'll give you back paris if you enter into a 'puppet' agreement with me". France would be more willing to comply, forgoing a domination victory themselves, but maybe achieving some other prize.

I seriously think puppetting could make the easy domination as easy as the hard domination is hard. Watching nations around the world surrender, to me, sounds like more fun than genocide -- but that's just my personal taste. I think surrender/puppeting is still a compelling video game concept.

There's no question that what matters is overall enjoyment. However, I believe that developing Civ 4 with the mindset of increasing overall historic realism would enhance that rather than detract from it.

Now keep in mind that I do NOT mean literal realism or realism of details but "realism" in the sense that the overall development of a Civ game flows in a way that would be "broadly" plausible and realistic.

Now Civ 3 did move in that direction. But the thing is to realize is that many of the game mechanics that were made to improve overall historic realism were actual very simple concepts to implement. And the increased overall historic realism of Civ 3 over Civ 2 also made it a far superior game in terms of enjoyment and gameplay.

For example, in Civ 2, units had "home cities" supported by that city's shields and if the "home city" was taken units were destroyed. This was such BS and utterly unrealistic and hurt rather than enhanced fun and gameplay. It didn't remotely make sense. So Civ 3 switched to national armies supported from a national treasury and not only is this much more realistic, it enhanced gameplay immensely!

In Civ 2, you could steal technology easily, in fact you got to steal technology everytime you conquered cities, you could easily buy cities, etc. But none of this make any sense. In Civ 3, they got rid of this and IMHO technology tree and development is much more realistic.

In Civ 2, you could use enemy railroads but in Civ 3, for instance, this was prevented as in "real life" you would not be easily be able to use enemy railroads. When you took over cities in Civ 3, they implement (although IMHO not as complete as I would like), the idea of nationality and resisting laborers to attempt to mimic continued popular resistance.

And as Aussie Lurker pointed out, in Civ 3 itself in a later expansion pack, communications and tech trading was pushed forward to the Middle Ages so that the early isolation and lack of knowledge and lower level of technology was better modelled to be more "broadly realistic".

They are many other examples but IMHO and I think the vast majority agree, the changes from Civ 2 to Civ 3 was a "quantum leap" in improving overall historic realism and I'd like Firaxis to develop and improvements and changes with this theme in mind.

dh_epic said:

I think most of these people come from a position that it's only fun if you're winning.

Click to expand...

To me, fun (in a strategy game), is struggling to win. Not actually winning. Some of the most fun games were the ones where I really wasn't sure whether I'd pull it off or not.

But I also want to feel like I've got options to how I'm going to do it. If there is only one way to win, then it's not strategy any more. It's just following the rules.

To follow a previous poster, immersiveness also trumps realism.

Having said that, if realism is also fun, challenging, and immersive, then I'm all for it.

Now I have pointed out examples of where Civ 3 is a huge improvement over Civ 2 in terms of increasing "overall historic realism" and feeling of "historic immersion". Here are two major flaws that need serious correction. I'm sure others can point out other major flaws as well.


1. Early rapid expansion and claiming nearly every square of land in ancient times FLAW

Something must be done to change the game mechanics and rules so that this is NOT the default strategy. It is utterly ahistorical and totally unrealistic. Ancient Egypt, Greece, Iran, etc did not send out settlers in all directions to try and claim every last square of land because there were real impediments and drawbacks to doing so. There should be some real impediments and tradeoff so that while this is a POSSIBLE strategy it is not the DEFAULT strategy. Of all the flaws, this is a major one which unfortunately was not only not corrected but made worse in Civ 3. I would also like to see a lot of land be unclaimed so that there can be exploration and land grabs well into the early modern age.


2. Exponential Power Growth FLAW

In real life and real history, despite conquering half the world the British did NOT continue to grow in power and become even a bigger and powerful and more technologically advanced than every other power. That is because like all multi-national empires, it drains as much as it contributes to national power. This could be easily corrected by implementing a much better nationality model (new citizens of conquered territories continue to be foreigners), continued sporadic resistance and guerrilla attacks, decreased stabilty leading to civil wars, etc. This will help to counter-balance exponential power growth flaw and allow "perfectionist" but smaller civs to keep up and "compete".

I'd also like to point out that I approach a game NOT from the perspective of trying to figure out how to "win" or "beat" the game by using every trick and exploit but by the overall historical immersive experience. I do understand that many people DO play Civ to "beat" it but I don't favor this approach.

What I hope Civ 4 can achieve is a detailed, realistic and immersive historical experience so that it is fun and enjoyable whether one is dominating or not. This is the key because if there is enough detail and concepts to make the game broadly realistic, it is a much more fascinating and immersive experience. Even if you are not the dominate player, if there is enough things to do to make it fun and exciting that you want to continue the "historic simulation" of your virtual planet to see how it all plays out.

In fact, I really prefer if Civ 4 got rid of these "victory" conditions and just made the game end with assessment and rating of your Civilization. The enjoyment should be the immersion in the simulated history of your planet not "victory".

polypheus, I know what you are suggesting and I would enjoy such a game but I am concerned because it would be a major paridime shift. Going from what is basically a Risk type game to something more along the lines of SimCivilization. Would a 'sandbox game' option allow for both or would it be to difficult or cumbersom?

(sorry about my posts i'm drugged up on allergy medication and a bit out of it)

I'm sorry, polypheus. I disagree. Civ to me is a game to try to beat. I don't like sandbox 'games' where there is no victory condition. There is not one of them I really enjoyed. I don't think I would buy Civ4 if they went that direction (or even play it when it'll be given to me).

I feel that Firaxis won't go in that direction, though.

(Oh yeah, Alexander the Great had every intention of conquering the entire known world and was making reasonable progress before his untimely death).