Artifices

[AntSou]

@Boris Gudenuf Have you not played the Victoria games? That's probably the closest you'll get to a representation of economic systems in a game, plus the social political aspects are fun.

I haven't played the 3rd installment yet though, only seen some videos.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

@Boris Gudenuf Have you not played the Victoria games? That's probably the closest you'll get to a representation of economic systems in a game, plus the social political aspects are fun.

I haven't played the 3rd installment yet though, only seen some videos.

I have not played the Victoria series, but there are many other games that attempt to simulate some aspect or characteristic of 'economic' systems:

Anno 1800 has very complex trading and production systems which also either generate immense wealth or expense (and sometimes both, depending on where you are in the system).

As I mentioned elsewhere, the old Railroad Tycoon had a pretty good, if a bit simplistic, rendition of the stock market and its manipulation by both human and AI players - and some of the AIs were modeling some of the most vicious stock market traders of the 19th century USA, so that element of the game could be more competitive than the railroad part!

Virtually all of the 'city-builder' games, like the old Caesar II, III, IV, Pharaoh, etc, included Trade with other cities to help maintain your city, and the economics of pricing and sale of your own products to pay for what you needed was part of most of the trading systems.

The Patrician and Port Royale series were/are specifically about managing trade, buying and selling in various markets, and manufacturing stuff you could sell for a fat profit by moving it to where it could not be manufactured - for all the elements of pirates, city building, sea fighting, etc, these are basically faintly-disguised economic games.

In all of these (as, from what I read, in the Victoria series) economics is part of the game, sometimes a major part, but not the primary focus of the games. That is the same situation we face in Civ: economics is an integral part of building and maintaining any human civilization from trading well-made stone tools or raw meat to building a production chain spanning continents to assemble jet airliners, so it HAS to be modeled, but it also HAS to be as 'invisible' (the infamous 'invisible hand') as possible - because, in my experience, only some very Special People would enjoy a complete economic game, while such a game would send the rest of us running screaming for the nearest Exit.

 

[AntSou]

In all of these (as, from what I read, in the Victoria series) economics is part of the game, sometimes a major part, but not the primary focus of the games

I've played most of those. I like the production chains in the Anno series and the Impression Games titles. Also played a lot of Settlers 3.

I would say Economics is the game in Victoria, compared with those titles. It's directed towards that aspect like Hearts of Iron is directed towards warfare.

The socio-politics tend to revolve around the economy in Victoria.

https://gamerant.com/victoria-3-detailed-economic-system-unique-different-sim/

"Civilizations in Victoria 3 have their economies valued using the gold standard, and stockpiling gold without putting it to use can devalue a player's currency due to inflation."

Edit: though like I said, I've only played 1 and 2. I'm waiting for the price to drop and the game to improve a bit. Might need a handful of patches.

 

[Abaxial]

It's really not relevant to me. Keeping capital cities seems to have greater gameplay potential than razing them, imo. If we apply your logic to every facet of the game, we end up with no game at all. And how can a game mechanic be anything other than artificial?

I think you miss my point. Of course all game mechanics are artificial in their way. What I'm looking at is mechanics that actually encourage or force stupid play. Such as situations when it would be logical play to raze a capital city but you are forced not to by something totallly arbitrary. Or being obliged to vote for yourself to lose diplomatic points in order to win.

It's sort of an exploit in reverse.

 

[AntSou]

2I think you miss my point. Of course all game mechanics are artificial in their way. What I'm looking at is mechanics that actually encourage or force stupid play. Such as situations when it would be logical play to raze a capital city but you are forced not to by something totallly arbitrary. Or being obliged to vote for yourself to lose diplomatic points in order to win.

It's sort of an exploit in reverse.

I understand your view and I agree with the diplomatic points exploit being silly, but I don't think being unable to raze Capitals is at the same level. Like I said, I'd rather Capitals be unrazeable, unless you develop an interesting mechanic to go with it.

 

[reddishrecue]

I think that shrine cities also should be unrazable.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Parenthetically, one of the best 'inclusions' of economics into a game was in the old Railroad Tycoon, in which aside from building railroads and industries and hauling cargo and passengers around, you could also play the stock market, manipulate your own and other railroad company stocks and drive your opponents into bankruptcy almost regardless of how your railroad was doing. And economic 'game within a game' but, as you pointed out, also in a game severely limited in time and place in its design compared most of the 4x historicals

Which iterations of Railroad Tycoon? the First, the Second or the Third (Which argurably one of the 'Best Railroad Business Sim' that nothing that came about a generation later could match beyond more realistic tracklayings. some of these games had even becomes more arcade and shallow than what it should be.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Which iterations of Railroad Tycoon? the First, the Second or the Third (Which argurably one of the 'Best Railroad Business Sim' that nothing that came about a generation later could match beyond more realistic tracklayings. some of these games had even becomes more arcade and shallow than what it should be.

Railroad Tycoon II and III were the two that I played the most.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

^ Actually my favorite. too bad it is not available on Steam in my region.

 

[Abaxial]

I understand your view and I agree with the diplomatic points exploit being silly, but I don't think being unable to raze Capitals is at the same level. Like I said, I'd rather Capitals be unrazeable, unless you develop an interesting mechanic to go with it.

I don't see that unrazeable capitals is an interesting mechanic; it seems to me more like a cludge. I suspect that first the definition of Domination Victory was written; then in playtesting someone pointed out that if a capital city had been razed, no-one could fulfill the conditions for DV. Rather than rewrite the DV definition, they just slapped in an arbitrary rule that capitals could not be razed. I have seen a situation where a capital city was surrounded by a huge barbarian army which attacked every turn. The city was at zero health, but attack after attack failed, simply because it's the rule that barbarians have to raze every city they take, and because it was a capital, it couldn't be razed. This went on for turn after turn. It looked totally stupid. All because of an arbitrary rule. It should not happen like that.

Do you have a justification for unrazeable capitals besides fitting in with the DV definition?

 

[AntSou]

Do you have a justification for unrazeable capitals besides fitting in with the DV definition?

The entire Liberation aspect of the game. It's difficult enough to trigger it. And because I like it that there's a chance Civs can return to the game, even if there's nothing more to it than that.

I also like that it stands as a sign. "America was here". It would be impossible to tell if all cities were razeable.

 

[Abaxial]

That doesn't sound to me like sufficient justification. So what? Think of all the real world civs that HAVE vanished without trace. It's actually an argument against protected capitals that it prevents a civ from vanishing. Also, at least if a capital were captured by a player, it could be renamed. Capture Washington and rename it Bogota - that'll fool 'em!

 

[vorlon_mi]

Impassable Mountains: I thought it was artificial and arbitrary in Civ4 and Civ5. It's only kinda-sorta fixed in Civ6. Both armies and civilians have moved over mountains for millennia, but this game introduces a mechanic that confounds pathfinding algorithms. Make them slow to pass through, as they were in Civ3 and earlier games, but not impassable.

 

[AntSou]

Impassable Mountains: I thought it was artificial and arbitrary in Civ4 and Civ5. It's only kinda-sorta fixed in Civ6. Both armies and civilians have moved over mountains for millennia, but this game introduces a mechanic that confounds pathfinding algorithms. Make them slow to pass through, as they were in Civ3 and earlier games, but not impassable.

Or just remove them altogether for overall map elevation. You could then have impassable peaks.

I've said this before, I'm 100% convinced map elevation will be one of the main features to be introduced to the series in Civ 7.

 

[nzcamel]

Or just remove them altogether for overall map elevation. You could then have impassable peaks.

I've said this before, I'm 100% convinced map elevation will be one of the main features to be introduced to the series in Civ 7.

I like the idea, but just as Civ maps aren't large enough for TSL to work well IMO, I don't think they're large enough to do map elevation well... assuming by map elevation you mean like what was in SMAC?

 

[pokiehl]

I like the idea, but just as Civ maps aren't large enough for TSL to work well IMO, I don't think they're large enough to do map elevation well... assuming by map elevation you mean like what was in SMAC?

Humankind maps are only a tiny bit bigger than Civ maps, but they pull off elevation just fine. I hope they implement it in Civ 7.

 

[bbbt]

Humankind maps are only a tiny bit bigger than Civ maps, but they pull off elevation just fine. I hope they implement it in Civ 7.

I found Humankind's use of elevation visually challenging (like most of the game) and involving a lot of squinting at my screen and hovering to figure out unit movement. Civ is generally much better at that, but the one of the weakest aspects of Civs graphics is the depiction of hills, so I dunno.

In that vein, elevation as done by Humankind would be a nightmare with Civ's current 1UPT implementation which is already enough of a pathfinding cluster. Adding bottlenecks in created by cliff/height differences would make things even worse.

 

[Zaarin]

I found Humankind's use of elevation visually challenging (like most of the game) and involving a lot of squinting at my screen and hovering to figure out unit movement. Civ is generally much better at that, but the one of the weakest aspects of Civs graphics is the depiction of hills, so I dunno.

HK, like Endless Legend before it, is a visual nightmare. Districts all look the same. Terrain all looks the same. Whatever other problems Civ games might have, I have every confidence that elevation would be more visually readable in Civ7 than in HK. That being said, if elevation just means "tables of land" like in EL and HK I'm not extremely interested. If we can get more subtle elevation changes, sure.

 

[reddishrecue]

The main issue with HK other than the visual problems it has is that you can't make a lot of large cities and expand fast since there's so much revolutions and barbarians popping out of the different sides of the continent. Even if you have a good tech lead and nice upgraded units and you try to expand to the new continents, you still can't make it to the latest era. I wonder if this was fixed but the only fix I had was dropping the difficulty but when you get to the beginning, it becomes kind of repetitive.

 

[nzcamel]

Hey, if elevations can be done well, I'm interested. I certainly agree with @bbbt that the hills in VI leave me less than confident in Firaxis getting it right! Hopefully at the same time they make larger maps, as to simulate elevation well you need more land between the coast and any mountains. I'd hate to see continents where the only mountain ranges were down the middle. Map variety could plummet pretty badly if they're not bigger.