Civ3 - Should Be a Game or a History Manual?

[Dervish]

With all these arguments and discussions going on this board, it would be interesting to know whether the Cv3 game should be more like entertainment or stick closer to reality in History?? To my mind, it should be a great deal of both. Now, we are talking about including more civilizations or nations. I especially like when games like that reflect more History pages that are not recorded and/or not well known, prehictory, stone age. Their primitive technologies, advancements, ideas, beliefs or lack thereof. And from there they start evolving in different directions. The game doesn't cover prehistoric, stone ages enough (tool, copper age - whatever you call it). At the end of the game - you end up having very modern society full of happy citizens with modern up-to-date equipment and technology, and you still have those spearmen or clubmen of your neighbouring civs walking along near your borders. Some of them hitting badly your marines???!!! The other very interesting thing to mention is Barbarians, rebels, may be they should get civilized too???

 

[Toecutter]

Remember the game DESTINY! It had a great tech tree to build up from stone age to modern, but the game play was crap and the graphics sucked:frog:

 

[Troyens]

The game should at least ATTEMPT to be historically accurate. There is no reason not to be. But Civ III fails in that regard.

Here are just a few samples of Civ III historical idiocy:

1. Elephants (and tanks and cavalry) with airlift capability. They didn't, and coudn't - impractical on all counts. But much lighter units such as workers, leaders, and cannon, can NOT airlift. (I corrected all this in the Editor).

2. Longbowmen: should be English-specific and with a high defense value especially against horse.

3. Elephants should have a LOW defense value.

4. Privateers and submarines should be attacking enemy trade routes and merchant shipping - not warships.

5. Cruise missiles with a range of only '2'??

6. Destroyers can NOT see subs??

7. Nuclear subs treated the same for visibility as regular ubs? Nuclears always stay submerged and move very fast, unlike the diesel varety.

8. Bombers cannot sink warships!!

And on and on. . .

Civ III makes a mockery of realism and history.

 

[tpasmall]

i agree with you troyens, since when in real history have catapults, cannons, artillery etc. been unable to kill ground units?

If you fire multiple cannonballs at a unarmored warrior in real life, wouldnt they eventually kill him?

 

[Furry Spatula]

Why do so many people want to be able to "re-create" history.

Im sorry but if you want a realistic game you'll never find one. There is no way you can live for thousands of years sorry people.

ANd also scientists don't say ... hmm today lets discover currency, but first we need to discover mathematics, or lets discover Republic, but first we need to discover Philosophy.

But some of these "historical idiocy"'s that troyens mentions are in there to preserve game balance. If you could do whatever you could do in real life in this game the balance would be screwed over completly. And also the game therefore shouldn't have random number generators. And yes you can airlift tanks. You cannot airdrop them but you can certainly airlift them.

When a "game", hmm that word again, is created and has so many unrealistic elements in it, trying to make it realistic would create a compleltly different game with completly different gameplay, it would cease to be part of the civilization series.


Ok one last question, has civ made a claim to be realistic or historicaly accurate in any way? i'm not sure on this one but if they did they certainly shouldn't have.

 

[Venge]

Ya, I did not buy Civ3 for a history lesson.
I did change a few things though, like my Destroyers can see subs. No biggie though, the creators of Civ3 have designed it so it takes about 10 seconds to make that change.

But if given the choice between historical accuracy or balanced gameplay, there is no doubt in my mind what I would go with.
I want a fun game, and if that means some units or whatever do not represent their real life counter parts, that is fine by me.

 

[Dervish]

I think you are all right, gentlemen, each in your own way to some degree. As I mentioned before, when the game stays totally (or at very least mostly) in line with real History, it is kinda cool, ya know!! At the same time if it breaks game balance or AI or it gets too heavy on hard drive it is not good either!! So, I don't know, how can we keep these two goodies - Entertainment and History as close as possible to fun making through learning.

I still think, Toecutter, that we should all start the game as "cave people" and "barbarians", it is the first stage of the human society that we always tend to forget or omit, but, oddly enough, we do resort to barbarism at the worst of our time and regret about that later. What is it now? Is it sado-masochism or what? OK. It is conscience struck materialism.

And then we continue to play at first stage called Prehistoric Age without cities or with some few cities, rather villages, with may be stupid names like "Rotten Cave", "Hairy Arse", "Mammoth Hole" and etc. and then after we are done and through with the Prehistoric Age (of course, certain things would lead to this breakthrough and something on top of that triggers the transfer from one Age to Another, let it be, knowledge, advancement, a stockpile of resources, science, religion, or culture, or all together, now I understand these would be primitive in Mammoth Hole, but still.....) and then a popup menu will show up prompting you, that you are now entering new Age, your tribe has become truely versatile and complicated to such a degree that they start dividing between themselves in languages, and popup menu would ask you to choose Indo-European Tribe, or Afro-Asian, or Ural-Altaic, or Sino-Tibetan and etc. And you live with that tribe further through Stone Age to Copper Age, collecting and building you empire, tribes, collecting knowledge and wealth, may be, fighting all the way through, may be, using diplomacy, very primitive one, of course, until something triggers the Advent of Copper Age, whereupon another popup menu springs up and prompts you that time and people have become so sophisticated that they divided into further nations and tribes (if you chose Indo-Euro, you would be divided next into, Romanic, Germanic, Slavonic, Iranian, Indian and etc.). Same thing happens if you chose Ural-Altaic it would ask you to choose further among Uralic, Finno-Igric, Altaic, Turkic, Japanese, Korean. I must be wrong here, scientists or some of you can correct me. I am still obsessed with this idea. Did I mention this before???

And it goes on, and on, until the Iron Age when mostly all nations took the shape more or less of the modern nations.

Cities would be primitive at the first stage, building only one unit at the same time, but next, into Iron Age or Medieval Age, may be cities should be able to build several things simultaneously.

You can add more pecularities. Government types should vary more with Military Juntas like in Latin America, and Theocracies like in Saudi Arabia.

The option of civilization leaders should vary as well, there are 10 or 20 famous leaders that used to be in each nations, why not include them? How's that sound to choose French and choose French as your enemy, and have Joan of Arc fight herself??