Although Civ5 makes improvements, combat remains the series' weak point

[brianshapiro]

its tragic and bloody and even if it is sometimes necessary, it isn't FUN.

We're not talking about Twister, though. Chess isn't 'fun' in the sense you're talking about either, its not the point. It engages and involves you.

 

[Calouste]

I think this is a really weird idea, that realism is always is the inverse of good gameplay, so the more realism you have the worse the gameplay you have, and the less realism, the better gameplay.

Obviously people generally like the realism thats been added to the game since the first Civ, they like cultural borders, and they like that your stack isn't defeated with one unit. Having more realism in the game won't automatically make it like Europa Universalis.

I like cultural borders because they provide good gameplay. No more AI cities being settled in corners of my empire I don't think worth settling and those cities just being in the g**d*** way. No stacks of foreign units in the middle of my empire ready to attack the next turn. They are not very realistic. If they were, tiles wouldn't flip after the weaker party had discovered Nationalism.

 

[brianshapiro]

I like cultural borders because they provide good gameplay. No more AI cities being settled in corners of my empire I don't think worth settling and those cities just being in the g**d*** way. No stacks of foreign units in the middle of my empire ready to attack the next turn. They are not very realistic. If they were, tiles wouldn't flip after the weaker party had discovered Nationalism.

How do they provide good gameplay, exactly?

How does AI cities being settled in the corners of your empire violate some principle of good gameplay? How do stacks of units in your empire violate some principle of good gameplay?

They don't. You can perfectly well have a game built on those things. They suck because you think "they shouldn't be able to do that (realistically)!"

 

[Calouste]

We're not talking about Twister, though. Chess isn't 'fun' in the sense you're talking about either, its not the point. It engages and involves you.

Chess doesn't have a lot of realism in it btw.

 

[brianshapiro]

Chess doesn't have a lot of realism in it btw.

And for people here arguing that if you wan't realism don't play Civilization -- if you don't care about realism, play Chess.

I think the point is having as much realism as possible without ruining gameplay. The fun of Civilization -- why we want things like cultural borders -- is because we want to engage in a recreation of history. To some degree it is a simulation game, although not a perfect one.

 

[Babri]

Perhaps I'm using my Jumping to Conclusions Mat a bit to early, but from what I've seen from the confirmed features, there will be no armies and units are limited to one per hex, so combat remains a 1v1 affair where your archer gets destroyed by a horseman even though your pikeman is right next to it.

I'm not trying to have the Civ series become like Total War, but combat in the Civ series has always been about stats and random chance, which leads to tedious war-making

Firstly your archers won't stand in the first row so don't fear so much.
Secondly zone control won't allow horsemen to dodge your spearmen easily. And even if the knight is able to reach there it will not get any time to retreat & will get destroyed/badly injured the next turn by spearmen. So you'll need very good planning during combat

 

[Abremms]

We're not talking about Twister, though. Chess isn't 'fun' in the sense you're talking about either, its not the point. It engages and involves you.

i don't believe i was speaking of either chess or twister. Chess is actualy a prime example of emphasizing gameplay over realism to make a fun and engaging game. each piece has a move that is, at least somewhat, tied to the reality of the real life concept it represents, but it is all abstracted for the sake of making it a fun game.

my comment on war was simply to question why anyone would be interested in a trully realistic wargame. video game war is all glory and epic awesomness, real war is ugly.

I think this is a really weird idea, that realism is always is the inverse of good gameplay, so the more realism you have the worse the gameplay you have, and the less realism, the better gameplay.

Obviously people generally like the realism thats been added to the game since the first Civ, they like cultural borders, and they like that your stack isn't defeated with one unit. Having more realism in the game won't automatically make it like Europa Universalis.

i think your missunderstanding me, or im doing a poor job communicating. i did not say that fun and realism are mutualy exclusive, i only said that gameplay needs to be a higher priority than realism. for a game like civ, they are both required, but when push comes to shove and you absolutely must make a choice between fun gameplay and something that may be boring, but more realistic, you should choose gameplay.
If you happen upon something that is both realistic AND fun gameplay, then its a win-win and you should take that little nugget and run with it.

 

[brianshapiro]

i think your missunderstanding me, or im doing a poor job communicating. i did not say that fun and realism are mutualy exclusive, i only said that gameplay needs to be a higher priority than realism. for a game like civ, they are both required, but when push comes to shove and you absolutely must make a choice between fun gameplay and something that may be boring, but more realistic, you should choose gameplay.
If you happen upon something that is both realistic AND fun gameplay, then its a win-win and you should take that little nugget and run with it.

Yea I think everyone agrees with that. I understand some people have different tolerances for tedious interfaces and some people enjoy Europa Universalis, I don't. But, I still think there's always a way to combine realism and good gameplay and I think thats what the designers should look for. Because fun, in terms of the game, means engaging players with a feeling as if though they really are participating in historical events.

my comment on war was simply to question why anyone would be interested in a trully realistic wargame. video game war is all glory and epic awesomness, real war is ugly.

A lot of good war games take things like morale into play.

 

[Schuesseled]

tiles don't represent "thousands of miles", they never have done, a tile is just a tile!

 

[SalmonSoil]

I applaud the changes made in Civ5 combat from the super stacks in Civ3 and Civ4, but in the end it's still inherently flawed and completely unrealistic. War is not fought as 1v1 duels between units stretched over thousands of miles of terrain (if you think of each hex as hundreds of miles). Ever since the massive armies fielded in Ancient China and Mesopotamia, war has been about combined arms and tactical maneuvering. Civ5 once again fails to capture this accurately.

In my opinion, combat was the closest to reality in the Civilization-clone Call to Power II, where units fought in armies. Even though the player could not control the action, the fighting was remarkably intelligent: spearmen and other melee units would form the first ranks and clash with the enemy. Archers form up behind them, providing support fire, while knights and other mounted cavalry attacked from the flanks. Dale's Combat Mod for Civ4 used similar mechanics.

Oh and before people say "it's just a game" in response to how unrealistic Civ5 combat is, keep in mind this game strives to be a historical simulator of sorts, so realism should be high on the priority list.

Ok, tactics and duels No these are not duels. Just as the civilizations take turns moving their units and such, your army does too. Although you will direct each unit to attack another the idea is that this represents a battle in which all sides clash at the same time. It also offers excelllent opportunities for manouvering, 2 move speed average, forcing armies to actually think about terrain (Not going to fight in a forest if your strong suit is cavalry are you?) artillery and archers are great for supporting fire but will likely be very weak if attacked directly... Sounds like some tactics will be going down.

And think about it this way, when you are building that empire, those hexes are 100s of miles, but when your armies clash the hexes instead represent a battlefield of appropriate size (100s of feet). I think that is what the developers are going for and is the best way to explain it in terms of realism. I certainly think that the storytellers among us will use that method to explain battles in their stories.

 

[Tylerryan79]

If you want to say that civ is a simulation, then it's an abstract one at that. Everything about civ could be picked apart as "unreal", and maybe given a better example of how to do it from another game. Realism is definetly NOT high on the priority list.

 

[brianshapiro]

If you want to say that civ is a simulation, then it's an abstract one at that. Everything about civ could be picked apart as "unreal", and maybe given a better example of how to do it from another game. Realism is definetly NOT high on the priority list.

Of course its high, gameplay is just higher. In a lot of cases the designers just didn't find a way to make realism work with gameplay.

My only point here is to argue that they shouldn't give up on that goal.

 

[Tyrael]

Of course fun, realistic gameplay in a game like Civ should be the gold standard, but there's a deadline and only so much you can implement. And it may not be possible to make a fun element of the game realistic, or a realistic element fun, even with near-unlimited time and resources. I'm sure they always look for ways to do both, but when it's not possible then they take the good gameplay element, tune it a bit, and move on to something else. They HAVE to stop looking and tweaking at some point, or else there would be no Civ

 

[JonoLith]

Of course its high, gameplay is just higher. In a lot of cases the designers just didn't find a way to make realism work with gameplay.

My only point here is to argue that they shouldn't give up on that goal.

I actually have to agree with what brianshapiro is arguing for. Gameplay certainly is an important aspect of any game, but things like setting, visual appearance, and an adherance to accuracy tend to matter as well, even if it is less so.

To put it another way; we would find it odd if the Aztec special ability was largely passive, and forced them out of the military game. This is entirely because, in reality, the Aztecs were quite warlike. We can appreciate that it is unrealistic that when the Aztecs kill a unit they gain a cultural bonus, and yet we appreciate that it encourages an overall gameplay experience which is actually quite fitting with the reality of those people. A highly cultural warlike civilization.

At the end of the day, I feel a call to realism is important, as it reminds us of the fundementals of what Civilization was built upon. If the developers could make a hyper-realistic Civ game, while maintaining the fun of it, then more power to them. Most systems that exist in the game are attempting to be reflections of reality, and as the game grows and more iterations are created, the reflection might become sharper then ever before.

All of that said, of course, if the choice comes down to reality versus gameplay, then gameplay should win out. No one is really saying otherwise.

 

[TheArsenal]

They could make the battle between armies controllable, even down to the unit level where you march troops around on a battle map instead of the world map.

The Total War series does this. Although the strategic map leaves much to be desired as compared to Civ, but, in fairness it is a different type of game and doesn’t aspire to that level of complexity.

I’ve always thought the greatest game ever would be a Civ/Total War hybrid: Civilization: Total War. Never mind competing companies and the probable impossibility of melding the two very different games, it would still be something to behold.

 

[Tylerryan79]

Of course its high, gameplay is just higher. In a lot of cases the designers just didn't find a way to make realism work with gameplay.

My only point here is to argue that they shouldn't give up on that goal.

This was meant more towards the OP. Basicly I'm trying to say that everything is created with the whole idea being behind gameplay. City, production,tiles, warefare, pretty much everything is created with gameplay in mind, and not a "real" simulation of it, everythings done abstractly for gameplay reasons. Putting workers on tiles etc is for gameplay, there's not 12 people living in a city somewhere. That's why I said it's not high. If they were going to male a game with realism in mind then I don't think we'd have mechs. Most concepts and ideas are from real places/people etc, but none are represented in civ in a real manner, or even a realistic manner. For the game it's "real" and works great, but just saying 1upt isn't real, NO Kidding!!! Is culture!? Are my borders going to pop into Canada? The whole games represented in ways like 1upt, so get use to it. Sorry this isn't a rant at you Brians, Still just in general at the op, So don't attack, put the claws away man!!

 

[Zechnophobe]

Realism makes games more intuitive. Intuitive games can be more fun.
Good gameplay mechanics make games deeper and more interesting. Deeper and more interesting games can be more fun.

Realism can inform the designer as to what elements and ideas to consider.

However, realism can also destract from good mechanics, even if they are more intuitive.

It is generally a good idea to side with mechanics, and then use realism to support them.

A good example of this complicated design area is catapults in Civ 4. They were changed multiple times in their exact effects, upgrade options, etc. This was mainly because they weren't really pinging people intuition very well (not realistic) but had been designed to be VERY important part of the gameplay. Removing the 'retreat chance' from catapults greatly increased the realism of the unit, and made it more intuitive in how/when you should use it.

That make sense?

 

[Tylerryan79]

tiles don't represent "thousands of miles", they never have done, a tile is just a tile!

This here! You can't go too deep with everything in the game, or else it will ruin it for you. Just except it for what it is, not 1000's of miles, but a tile, in a game.

 

[brianshapiro]

This was meant more towards the OP. Basicly I'm trying to say that everything is created with the whole idea being behind gameplay. City, production,tiles, warefare, pretty much everything is created with gameplay in mind, and not a "real" simulation of it, everythings done abstractly for gameplay reasons. Putting workers on tiles etc is for gameplay, there's not 12 people living in a city somewhere. That's why I said it's not high. If they were going to male a game with realism in mind then I don't think we'd have mechs. Most concepts and ideas are from real places/people etc, but none are represented in civ in a real manner, or even a realistic manner. For the game it's "real" and works great, but just saying 1upt isn't real, NO Kidding!!! Is culture!? Are my borders going to pop into Canada? The whole games represented in ways like 1upt, so get use to it. Sorry this isn't a rant at you Brians, Still just in general at the op, So don't attack, put the claws away man!!

I think my point is, if we don't really care about realism at all, in the way that a lot of people in this thread are seeming to say 'realism is meaningless', borders and culture should have never been added to the game. There's no point to it. There's no reason why you couldn't have a game mechanic where people can settle in the middle of your empire. There's no reason to have religion in the game, like some people want, because there's really no point to that either. There's no reason to have catapults and trebuchets at all, if they pose too much of a problem to implement correctly, lets just leave them out. Would any of you be OK if they did that? Just decided catapults were too much of a fuss and got rid of them?

I just think when people downplay realism they're forgetting the original point of the game. The point of realism isn't just to make things intuitive, Civilization is a game where the player expects to live out some version of history, build cities, armies, build culture.

If one of you have an argument about a proposed feature and want to say that it won't work in the game, or it'll end up making the game boring or too complicated, we can have a discussion about it. Those are the discussions we should be having! We should be discussing whether we can or cannot make the game more realistic in certain ways without ruining it. But the response "eh, realism just doesn't matter" just makes me feel people are missing the point.

 

[bob_page]

I think my point is, if we don't really care about realism at all, in the way that a lot of people in this thread are seeming to say 'realism is meaningless', borders and culture should have never been added to the game. There's no point to it. There's no reason why you couldn't have a game mechanic where people can settle in the middle of your empire. There's no reason to have religion in the game, like some people want, because there's really no point to that either. There's no reason to have catapults and trebuchets at all, if they pose too much of a problem to implement correctly, lets just leave them out. Would any of you be OK if they did that? Just decided catapults were too much of a fuss and got rid of them?

They are saying that gameplay takes priority over realism, not that there is a negative correlation between the two.