Civ4: strategy GAME vs. historical SIM (long!)

[White Elk]

I think the concept of Realism in Civilization is overrated. I do appreciate some flavor of reality in my game, But it's the meat and potatoes of game mechanics that feeds my hunger for the Great Game of Civilization.

 

[BeefontheBone]

I was first addicted to SMAC

Lol. Can't believe I'm the first to pick up on that - genius.

Gameplay for me - what would be the point of playing a history simulator for fun?

 

[Goombaz]

Actually, there is one force in the game that trumps realism AND fun. Balance. I mean it's OK that a tank is better than a spearman, and its fine if the roman legions are better than regular swordsmen. Balance doesn't mean making everything the same, but this is how I see it:

1) Imbalance results in "false choices". This is the PRIMARY reason why all games MUST be balanced. To use the popular example of MMORPG classes, the "Don't play X class, they suck". To me the DEFINITION of a balance problem lies in the creation of "False Choices." If Napoleon is hands-down a better pick than Ghandi, then you don't need Ghandi. If Spearmen are so much weaker than Axemen that you never ever need them(I am not saying this is the case, I am saying what if it was.) Your average game has "20 unique character classes" or some rot like that. Too bad usually two or three of them are so much better than the others that they may as well be the only choices. Self-hating gamers who are willing to play a blatantly gimped class/race/army/faction only feed into the problem by taking their underpowered status as a badge of honor.

2) Imbalance tends to create a very set-in kind of static play style if it remains unpatched for a long time. The internet is rife with guides that boil down to "NEVER take this option, ALWAYS take this option, NEVER EVER take this option."

3) In an imbalanced game it often comes down to silly things like micromanagement or sheer reflexes or memorization. I do not like this. This tends to destroy the "game" and just turn it into a sort of contest of focus and intensity. The reason it comes down to this is because in a competative environment everyone will be well aware what the "best" choice is, and it will come down to very small margins of sheer focus on using the "best" class/race/gun whatever 5% better than everyone else using the same damn class/race/gun.

So to me you can't even BEGIN to talk turkey until a game is very close to balanced. It's not so much that balance is better, it's just that to me if the game is imbalanced the other aspects become totally irrelevant. The analogy that comes to mind is batteries. Fun and realism etc represent what the toy does, but they are useless if batteries are not present.

EDIT: Note that I am not saying that all STRATEGIES should be equal. In the case of Civ 4 what I am referring to is the idea that all the Civs themselves should be roughly equal *IF* they are played correctly. I am also not saying that Washington needs to be as powerful in the early game as the Khans, or the reverse. I am saying that viewing the game as a WHOLE, that all civs should be perfectly valid choices and not divided into "strong and weak" sets as they so often come to be.

 

[Bayazid I]

yes but if the game balance screws up the whole historical nature of the background of the game what is the point.... grenadiers were obsoleted by accurate muskets let alone rifled muskets... why do they have +50% against rifleman... a grenadier is not going to throw his grenade farther than a rifleman will fire... i now they would like to balance against gunpowder infantry... but they should come up with a way that works within some context of the background of the game... i know its a GAME... but its a game that is intricately interwoven with history out of the developers/designers own volition... i know this is a small thing... and i like the game a lot... a lot of Gee Whiz effects, and new things to keep me interested... but the flow of the game seems to have been altered too much to give a faster game of CIV... i haven't played on epic yet... maybe that's what i'll have to do...

 

[Goombaz]

Sorry if it does appear to skew things. Good balance usually does some damage to both realism and fun, but as I said, I view the realism and fun of a game as pretty much irrelevant if there are more than a very small number of balance issues. To me even small balance issues cast such a huge shadow over a game that balance DOES have to trump both fun and realism.

The thing is I think that imbalance so severely damages a game, that you can do SIGNIFICANT damage to fun and realism directly by way of balancing changes, and you still come out ahead on fun and realism, if that makes sense.

 

[Padmewan]

IN my book, efforts to balance the game are precisely efforts to make the game more fun. I'm OK with that, as long as the attempt doesn't completely undermine believability (as others have said, sometimes balance helps reinforce believability when talking about tanks vs. spearmen, etc.)

Civ3 attempted to balance warmongering with building by introducing culture as a potential tool of "conquest;" it was an interesting idea, and some people in this thread have given some fairly good examples of how this has happened in real life. As long as I'm convinced that this MIGHT happen IRL, then I'm OK. (It helps that culture flips become harder and harder over time -- I know one problem I do have with the game is that its rules become harder and harder to imagine in the modern world. For example, when was the last time a boundary shifted between two nations because of "culture"?)

While we're on the topic of historical reality vs. Civ4 reality -- does it make sense that a unit can retain promotions throughout centuries of time? I guess when you think about the storied regiments or whatever of Scotland, etc. you can see how this can happen. Thoughts?

 

[oldStatesman]

Sorry if it does appear to skew things. Good balance usually does some damage to both realism and fun, but as I said, I view the realism and fun of a game as pretty much irrelevant if there are more than a very small number of balance issues. To me even small balance issues cast such a huge shadow over a game that balance DOES have to trump both fun and realism.

The thing is I think that imbalance so severely damages a game, that you can do SIGNIFICANT damage to fun and realism directly by way of balancing changes, and you still come out ahead on fun and realism, if that makes sense.

Not really...if you take away the fun, it is no longer a game....that is the whole point of a game, to have fun. Who cares if it is balanced or realistic or not...if it is fun, people will spend their time doing it...if it is not fun, no matter how realistic or balanced (or neither), it will simply collect dust on a shelf.

 

[Tearin]

OO best post I have read outside the strategy forum. I miss the movies of civ2. You should have seen them. I wanted to get wonders to actually see them in real life. It was awsome.

Now as for culture flipping...USSR. USSR fell apart mainly due to cultral influence not military. The difference is they became their own country not join someone else. I guess it would be cool that if you flip a city it first became its own independant nation. (random name). This new nation would be super friendly toward you, but over time relations might change depending on how you treat them.

 

[CyberChrist]

...that is the whole point of a game, to have fun.

Agreed.

Who cares if it is balanced or realistic or not

Well I do (among others). In fact those aspects are major factors in deciding whether a game is fun or not.

Perhaps realism is too strong a word. What all entertainment product needs in order to work (be it a game, movie, book, theatre play etc.) is 'Suspension of Disbelief', meaning that even if what is going on is not realistic as such(in the real world) it should make sense and follow the rules and explenations as set up by the environment of the entertainment product. In other words you will (and should) be able to instinctively say "Oh ok, I can buy that" to anything that happens within the framework of any succesfull entertainment product.

 

[siroxo]

Quite a good example, but a rather unusual situation: the East Germans were Germans all the way through, so they were just rejoining the rest of their own people.

In Civ, you're more likely to see completely different ethnic groups suddenly merging with each other: very uncommon in reality.

On the contrary, in Civ, revolts (and then flips) occur when the population of the city is mainly of the ethnic group that is not in control of the state. If the population of a Russian city is primarily German, the city will eventually flip to being german, unless there are troops and such to prevent it. Revolts don't occur if the city's population is of the same "ethnicity" as the nations.

Civ models the ethnic group idea via culture which is very accurate to real life. Culture, in general, is prerequisite to ethnicity. People won't just call themselves "American" unless there is some "America" they identify with, and that America is not an abstract ethnic group at all, but rather a culture.

 

[siroxo]

• 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.

The idea of a culture bomb doesn't seem all that rediculous. The term culture bomb isn't even included in the game as far as I've noticed, its just the inevitable thing people are going to call the effect in the game. Consider the cultural siginificance of Johann Strauss II, the city of Vienna and world fell in love with the waltz. Or, that of William Shakespeare, whose work inspired the masses, so much that he is now considered the great English playwright. Consider even someone like George Lucas, who reinvented the idea of what a movie could be. Any one of them, and certainly many others, could have been considered to have "dropped a culture bomb".

 

[Jonathan]

The idea of a culture bomb doesn't seem all that rediculous. The term culture bomb isn't even included in the game as far as I've noticed, its just the inevitable thing people are going to call the effect in the game. Consider the cultural siginificance of Johann Strauss II, the city of Vienna and world fell in love with the waltz. Or, that of William Shakespeare, whose work inspired the masses, so much that he is now considered the great English playwright. Consider even someone like George Lucas, who reinvented the idea of what a movie could be. Any one of them, and certainly many others, could have been considered to have "dropped a culture bomb".

But did any of these people cause national boundaries to expand or foreign cities to change nationality? I don't think so.

 

[Jonathan]

In reality, national boundaries are expanded mostly by military power. Occasionally by wealth. Never by culture, as far as I know.

Culture can make your civ more popular among other civs. This could reasonably give you a diplomatic advantage in the game, by improving other civs' attitudes to you.

Another thing: when flipping occurs in reality, it's normally whole countries that flip, not individual cities or small regions (can you think of any example?).

 

[Pvblivs]

[*]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.

To write something about "names". A hoplite was the soldier that fought in a phalanx. The main difference is the dimension. A hoplite identifies a person, "the hoplites" are a number of those soldiers (without identifying some unit), the phalanx is the word needed for the formation of multiple rows of hoplites, wearing a lance and some (at macedonian times) light armor, the unit.
What I do not like about this is that a) civ takes the name of the soldier in most cases and it would be therefore consequent to call this unit "hoplite" and b) even though Greece seemed to have invented the phalanx it has become a common word for such a formation that was typical for any battle in the ancient world (see the Roman "classis" which means the same, except that it was smaller and more flexible as well as the "phalanx" of pikemen in switzerland withstanding the knights of Germany and austria or the "phalanx" of musketmen even in the American war of independence (armies of breech-loaders standing in rows shooting at each other) until the area of Napoleon who was quite the first to break with it and conquered half Europe with advanced technology and tactics). "Hoplite" would be the fitting name, as it without doubt identifies the elite, in military as well as society concerns of ancient Greece.

To refer to the second: A Legion of course is THE Roman regular army. If you read this sentence carefully you may recognize the word "army". A legion has been a whole organization, including artillery, archers and other helping units (auxillarii), cavalry (eques), some workers and even families ... settlers? . (When a legion had usually a size of 600 to 6000 soldiers, those numbers did not include the baggage of the legion. It was common that the typical legion could consist of about 10.000 men and women working and fighting for it.
As a name more fitting would be "legionary" as this would be consequent in respect to the naming of the other UUs and identifies without any doubt the roman soldier with pilum, short sword, shield and some light armor that is meant here. Interesting about "legion" as the UU name is that every legion also included a very efficient organization.
BUT was it the elite really? A legionary was the regular soldier of Rome. He had a very respectable position in the Roman society as a legionary was a free citizen of the Roman republic/empire. One may argue that in the Greek society of "Sparta" this had be the same and that it was quite typical for a respectable citizen to either serve as a hoplite in the phalanx or in a classis, a fleet of Greece.
A praetorian in contrast to this was really elite in concerns to his position in society, his pay, his military training. Nevertheless the military influence of the praetorians can be considered generally low. (except from the violent influence the praetorians gained over the caesars from time to time, but this is more politics).

I have to admit, that, in the beginning of this article I thought "Phalanx" and "Praetorian" to be names that fit. Now, after reading and writing a lot about this topic, I have convinced myself of the opposite. I hope for your kind understanding As names that would fit into the game I propose "Hoplite" and "Legionary" for the Greek and Roman UU.

Discussing about simulation: Civ units are not really something that is simulating military organization. A unit is just a chunk of soldiers of a certain type that is comparable to some other chunk of soldiers of some other type in some way. The size of such a chunk is typically tailored to the needs of gameplay and game balance (it should not last too long to build such a unit and all units should be easily comparable, e.g. a Praetorian unit is as expensive as a Swordsman unit but much stronger). Therefore the historically accurate size of such a unit must be disregarded. Obviously Civ4 can not be seen as a simulation in concerns of units at all. Therefore the name of the unit can not be chosen historically accurate, but should rather stick to a consequent pattern (e.g. we take the name of one regular soldier/device of such a unit.) to avoid confusion and uneccessary discussion . Nevertheless for example the unit "SAM Infantry" is a bit strange to be named by a soldier. Such should be considered as well.

 

[Pvblivs]

In reality, national boundaries are expanded mostly by military power. Occasionally by wealth. Never by culture, as far as I know.

This issue was treated better in Civ3. Even a strong culture should hardly affect the borders to a neighbor. Borders once made, should endure. I propose that units should somehow "conquer" to push borders. Example: move your unit into enemy land and push the button "conquer" which is busying a unit for two turns (borders are pushed in the beginning of the second next turn if the conquering unit(s) is not destroyed).

The other way to conquer is to take cities. And even then the border is pushed only thus far into enemy territory as enemy cities have no influence (culture). To conquer the other tiles you either have to take other cities or conquer them with units.
If another civ takes a neighboring city the new border is negotiated over culture.

In any other case culture only pushes borders towards non-influenced or barbarian tiles. Nevertheless culture may still cause flips.

I don't find flips of single cities that "unrealistic". A city in civ isn't a city in reality. In civ a city is more like some province, considering the size and the influence a city can gain. At least that's the way I see it to satisfy my need of realism when I see Rome covering whole Italy Therefore it is a more or less some chunk of land that flips, like Texas or Alaska (ok that was bought), or East Germany (more or less 3 to five cities that you can call cities ).

By the way, what nation has Taiwan been flipping to from China and was the back flip of HongKong etc. to China a real flip or some "rent-a-city" deal with Britain that has been cancelled after a hundred turns?

 

[Padmewan]

Civ models the ethnic group idea via culture which is very accurate to real life. Culture, in general, is prerequisite to ethnicity. People won't just call themselves "American" unless there is some "America" they identify with, and that America is not an abstract ethnic group at all, but rather a culture.

Maybe this was true in ancient times, but if you think about this in the American and European context it sounds pretty xenophobic! The fact that Mexicans are crossing the border to work in TX doesn't mean they want to Texas to join Mexico. Maybe even quite the opposite! Of course, you could also cite the race riots that happened in the 70s and now in France and Australia (!) but you can't really argue that these are due to the cultural influence of a nearby city (on a Civ map, Paris would not be in the cultural "radius" of any other nearby Arab city).

OTOH there is throughout history examples of nations forcibly settling areas in order to eventually assimilate them (Kirkuk and Kosovo are, IIRC, examples of this). However, as Jonathan mentioned, this is more an example of military than cultural muscle.

 

[chriseay]

Honestly how many people know what a Preatorian was compared to a legionary?

Off topic, but I have a funny story relating to this. I work in the main library of a major state public research university (see my location to figure out which one) and one day while at a reference desk I had a man come up to me and ask "Hey, can you tell me what the Praetorian Guard was?" I proceed to answer, giving a pretty detailed spiel. He looks at me shocked, amazed that I knew what I was talking about. Apparently, he was a Classics or History professor, and didn't expect me to know the answer to his question. He didn't know that I have a degree in history, and soon will be working on a second. The look of shock on his face when I answered, in detail and with correct facts, was priceless.

 

[Pvblivs]

Off topic, but I have a funny story relating to this. I work in the main library of a major state public research university

So how many beakers do you need until you research the next future tech?

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

Nice thread, with many interesting points.

One thing that springs to mind, is what may be a kind of example of a 'culture bomb' historically, namely the influx of American culture into Europe following WW2, along with the Marshall Plan.

Everything american was popular in Europe for a long time (and even is still today), be it hit songs, movies, smoking, fashion. Denmark for instance, was culturally much more connected with Germany prior to the war, but after the war it was everything British-American.

Agreed, I can't think of many historical incidents of this happening, but the 'bomb' may be interpreted in this light, although it still seems like a loony concept ;-)

 

[Scholastic]

Just wanted to comment that Praetorian probably works better than legionary. The praetorian gaurd specifically refers to the elite Roman soldiers gaurding the emporer. All soldiers are technically legions. Not all legions are praetorians.