Dawn of Civilization - an RFC modmod by Leoreth

[Tomorrow's Dawn]

Now now, we don't want to abuse these poor students as test subjects, do we?

The current version (dunno if it's 1.11 or 1.12) is a good enough starting point, even if it still has some oddities in it.

Actually, you're right. The stability system is practically unplayable for anything other than UHVs at the moment, so the vanilla download will suffice.

 

[Leoreth]

We have not been using DoC in class, though from what I read on this forum you have been doing amazing work with this mod, and though it is of limited use to my approach to the use of Civ in the classroom, it clearly has educational value.

I would say that RFC mods would help teaching or encouraging learning about historical events and processes more than ideas and concepts from political science.

I haven't read your blog yet (but I'm planning to), but from what I've gleaned you have used some of Civ4's game elements to start discussion of subjects like international diplomacy or forms of government. I've always thought it is a weakness from an educational point of view that Civ is rather unrealistic here, but you are completely right that recognizing this lack of realism is already quite an insight for a student and could serve as a starting point for subsequent discussions. These subjects are usually pretty dry for students who aren't already interested in history or politics so this provides an excellent context.

RFC mods are probably more useful to get a general idea of a broad strokes story of history. I mean, everything is very abstract and generalized, but it's still surprising how much people can become aware of even from that. As TD said, most of East Asian, Indian or Middle Eastern history is pretty much a blank space for most people. Learning that stuff like the Mughal Empire existed is not much information in and of itself, but at least it gives people the idea that there is more to learn about.

As a teacher I was fascinated reading in this thread how you encourage each others to sign up for Coursera classes to improve the factual accuracy of your mod. This emphasizes one of my strong beliefs when it comes to education: Exactly what students learn is of far lesser significance than building the ability and motivation for further learning later in life. Ability and motivation to learn should be worked towards in school, but much of this comes from informal settings like this community. Formal education has a lot to learn from communities like this.

I'm in complete agreement with the bolded part

This picture was found somewhere on the web using a google image search. When I ran this project last year I was putting together a quick powerpoint to show my students how to use WorldBuilder and screen casting tools. Though I make a habit of lecturing my students for not being sufficiently aware of the sources they make use of, I forgot to make a note of where I found the image. When I later put together my blog post, I found the image in my archive of screenshots believing it was from either one of my own games or one of my students´. I´m sorry I didn´t credit you write away, but as soon as I got the information, I edited the caption.

Though we didn´t use DOC in formal class setting, it´s not unlikely that some of my students used it for making their screencasts. I recommended use of one of the RFC maps, but I also encouraged them to explore the various mods that were available on CivFanatics.

I suspected something like this. Good call, in any case.

I am an avid Civ4 player myself, but you "fanatics" clearly have significant level of competence that I will never be able to match. If any of you have any input on how I can make this unit better, I would be happy to hear about it.

I'm not sure how we are supposed to match your competence in education. But I will offer feedback if I have anything to add.

I also would encourage you to read and comment on my students´blogs. You guys clearly have insight that my students could benefit from. Last week they published texts on Games and Gender, Games and Addiction, and Games and Learning. I´d appreciate it if any of you would engage with their texts. I´m grading the next batch of blog texts that will probably be up this weekend. These are more directly related to the parallels we draw between game concepts and concepts in Social Science. Student blogs can be found here

I'll definitely read those, too. That you let your students focus on such a variety of topics (games and gender, awesome) while making use of modern media and having your students express themselves in English is incredible.

The world needs more teachers like you.

(I'm interested in the school you're teaching at. Is it a public school? Because I could never imagine anything like this being possible in Germany with the strict curricula and textbook centered courses [I had great history teachers too though]. In any case, it's great that you have the degree of freedom as well as the motivation to do this.)

 

[TeacherAleks]

MrRandomPlayer, Leoreth and Tomorrows Dawn: Thank you for your kind words and for your reflections.

I´m not sure of the policies regarding off-topic chatter, so if I am committing a faux pas in continuing to post in this thread, I apologize.

I have been reading a couple of the threads on the Tales and Stories forum. I haven´t even considered the possibility of using the game as an inspiration to write fiction. I might very well try to incorporate that as an alternative task in next year´s run. Thanks for the tip MRP.

When it comes to the use of Mods for the "base" sections of this project I am split. The largest challenge that I face in running this project is that there are significant differences in how quickly students pick up on the game mechanics. A fairly large proportion were well into week 2 before they had sufficient understanding of the UI to be able to reflect much on how the game concepts related to the real world. My understanding is that most mods are more complex than Vanilla Civ. I would be extremely reluctant to introduce more game complexity from the outset of a project like this.

One important thing I will do differently next time around is that I want all my students to have installed the game well in advance of us using it in class. Many probably wouldn´t play much, but my idea is that I would "recruit" 5-7 students to function as game experts/ambassadors to assist the rest of the class with game mechanics. That would free me up to be able to focus on the learning material which I admit we did not cover as well as I´d like in the first two weeks. It was important to me that students would from the start explore the game as freely with as little "directed play" as possible. If I gave too rigid instruction I feared that students would miss out on the "game" aspect of CivIV, yet there were specific types of situations that I wanted all my students to encounter as to facilitate good classroom discussion. I have yet to find the right balance between freedom and control.

I would also like input on how we should go about learning the basics in as short amount of time as possible. The first couple of classes they were basically left to explore the game on their own, and possibly watch playthroughs on youtube. If you were to introduce this game to a new player - How would you go about it?

I do teach in a public school. Teachers have a fairly high degree of independence, but this varies significantly across the system. I am fortunate enough to work at a fairly new school with a leadership that actively encourages out of the box thinking. There is a lot of innovation going on in some parts of the Norwegian school system, but schools vary from the very rigid to the quite flexible.

In the 4 years I have been working at Nordahl Grieg, I have not once used a text book. As long as we cover the national curriculum, my colleagues and I have the liberty to select the material we want to use. I try as much as I can to focus on authentic material - that is material not written primarily for school use, but I do rely quite heavily on NDLA which is an online national pseudo-textbook.

That you let your students focus on such a variety of topics (games and gender, awesome) while making use of modern media and having your students express themselves in English is incredible.

One of the ways I believe educational systems (including the Norwegian system) fails students, is that we do not sufficiently give our students a sense of purpose in their work. In their 13-year stint of schooling students produce massive amounts of text that serves no other purpose than to be marked and graded by a teacher. This does not motivate students to produce quality, and in the long run this causes a reluctance in a large proportion of students to produce text that will be consumed by a wide readership.

In order for text production to be meaningful (especially for older students) it must have purpose. The blogs that my students write are read by an authentic, interested audience. They do still get assessed, but the thought of actually being read by "real" people motivates my students to write better texts.

Though I am very proud of the program me that I have put together, there is nothing sensational about it. The methods that I use with regards to Civ 4 are not that different from the methods I´d use working with novels, articles or films. The only difference is in my view of video games as a legitimate learning medium.

I truly believe that within few years, computer games will be applied on a much wider scope in education than it is today. This won´t revolutionize learning, but it will be one of many steps taken to assist students in their pursuit of life-long learning.

 

[TeacherAleks]

Oh - And thanks to those of you who have already taken the time to comment on my students´blogs. I hope you will continue to follow us as we near the completion of this project.

 

[mrrandomplayer]

MrRandomPlayer, Leoreth and Tomorrows Dawn: Thank you for your kind words and for your reflections.

I´m not sure of the policies regarding off-topic chatter, so if I am committing a faux pas in continuing to post in this thread, I apologize.

I have been reading a couple of the threads on the Tales and Stories forum. I haven´t even considered the possibility of using the game as an inspiration to write fiction. I might very well try to incorporate that as an alternative task in next year´s run. Thanks for the tip MRP.

No problem. Happy to have helped.

One of the ways I believe educational systems (including the Norwegian system) fails students, is that we do not sufficiently give our students a sense of purpose in their work. In their 13-year stint of schooling students produce massive amounts of text that serves no other purpose than to be marked and graded by a teacher.

That sums up nearly the entire American educational system. Unless you have a very good teacher, the above statement is sadly true.

In order for text production to be meaningful (especially for older students) it must have purpose. The blogs that my students write are read by an authentic, interested audience. They do still get assessed, but the thought of actually being read by "real" people motivates my students to write better texts.

Though I am very proud of the program me that I have put together, there is nothing sensational about it. The methods that I use with regards to Civ 4 are not that different from the methods I´d use working with novels, articles or films. The only difference is in my view of video games as a legitimate learning medium.

I truly believe that within few years, computer games will be applied on a much wider scope in education than it is today. This won´t revolutionize learning, but it will be one of many steps taken to assist students in their pursuit of life-long learning.

I completely agree with and respect you for your teaching ideas. I think teachers like you are the key to good classes.

 

[Leoreth]

MI´m not sure of the policies regarding off-topic chatter, so if I am committing a faux pas in continuing to post in this thread, I apologize.

Don't worry about it, we're quite opn to natural conversation around here. In the worst case I can split off this discussion into another thread, but I don't think it's necessary.

When it comes to the use of Mods for the "base" sections of this project I am split. The largest challenge that I face in running this project is that there are significant differences in how quickly students pick up on the game mechanics. A fairly large proportion were well into week 2 before they had sufficient understanding of the UI to be able to reflect much on how the game concepts related to the real world. My understanding is that most mods are more complex than Vanilla Civ. I would be extremely reluctant to introduce more game complexity from the outset of a project like this.

I agree. Mods like RFC might be beneficial because they take things into a familiar context (you're playing on a world map and depending on your civ, you might at least be vaguely familiar with your starting situation). But in general ease of learning and a common ground for all students is most important and therefore I would stick to the base game. Maybe without expansions even.

One important thing I will do differently next time around is that I want all my students to have installed the game well in advance of us using it in class. Many probably wouldn´t play much, but my idea is that I would "recruit" 5-7 students to function as game experts/ambassadors to assist the rest of the class with game mechanics. That would free me up to be able to focus on the learning material which I admit we did not cover as well as I´d like in the first two weeks. It was important to me that students would from the start explore the game as freely with as little "directed play" as possible. If I gave too rigid instruction I feared that students would miss out on the "game" aspect of CivIV, yet there were specific types of situations that I wanted all my students to encounter as to facilitate good classroom discussion. I have yet to find the right balance between freedom and control.

I would also like input on how we should go about learning the basics in as short amount of time as possible. The first couple of classes they were basically left to explore the game on their own, and possibly watch playthroughs on youtube. If you were to introduce this game to a new player - How would you go about it?

Whew, good question. The best way to learn the game is as you said, just starting to explore it. But that's also probably not efficient enough in your situation.

The "experts" idea seems like a good one to me. I'm sure you did something like pairing students into groups where an expert and a beginner could play together?

Another possibility are succession games. One student plays for a couple of turns or minutes and then hands his game over to the next while sticking around when the successor plays. No matter their relative experience with the game I imagine that would help at least one of them to learn from the other, and provide some sense of direction to those who are lost.

I do teach in a public school. Teachers have a fairly high degree of independence, but this varies significantly across the system. I am fortunate enough to work at a fairly new school with a leadership that actively encourages out of the box thinking. There is a lot of innovation going on in some parts of the Norwegian school system, but schools vary from the very rigid to the quite flexible.

In the 4 years I have been working at Nordahl Grieg, I have not once used a text book. As long as we cover the national curriculum, my colleagues and I have the liberty to select the material we want to use. I try as much as I can to focus on authentic material - that is material not written primarily for school use, but I do rely quite heavily on NDLA which is an online national pseudo-textbook.

Awesome. Not that I think that textbooks are all bad (good textbooks can make good classes if your teacher is good), but in general they're forcing everyone into a rigid way of teaching. And I think this is a major problem in all Western education systems.

One of the ways I believe educational systems (including the Norwegian system) fails students, is that we do not sufficiently give our students a sense of purpose in their work. In their 13-year stint of schooling students produce massive amounts of text that serves no other purpose than to be marked and graded by a teacher. This does not motivate students to produce quality, and in the long run this causes a reluctance in a large proportion of students to produce text that will be consumed by a wide readership.

In order for text production to be meaningful (especially for older students) it must have purpose. The blogs that my students write are read by an authentic, interested audience. They do still get assessed, but the thought of actually being read by "real" people motivates my students to write better texts.

Yep, I suppose that's like making a mod and knowing people actually play it

Who else is reading their blogs, by the way? Other students?

Though I am very proud of the program me that I have put together, there is nothing sensational about it. The methods that I use with regards to Civ 4 are not that different from the methods I´d use working with novels, articles or films. The only difference is in my view of video games as a legitimate learning medium.

I truly believe that within few years, computer games will be applied on a much wider scope in education than it is today. This won´t revolutionize learning, but it will be one of many steps taken to assist students in their pursuit of life-long learning.

Well, I think it's the "games" aspect that is more novel in this approach than the fact that it happens to be a computer game. Games have been traditionally seen as something frivolous that could only be used to teach elementary schoolers at best, not something that can have an equally complex expression of our world as traditional forms of media. Fortunately this perception is currently changing.

 

[Mouthwash]

This emphasizes one of my strong beliefs when it comes to education: Exactly what students learn is of far lesser significance than building the ability and motivation for further learning later in life. Ability and motivation to learn should be worked towards in school, but much of this comes from informal settings like this community. Formal education has a lot to learn from communities like this.

This kind of sentiment was completely alien to every school I've ever been in (most of which were A-rated).

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, I have met many people who are completely unaware of this idea.

It's still a widespread sentiment that a school is successful if it has successfully imparted whatever knowledge is considered necessary for a subsequent professional or academic carreer.

 

[NKN]

The Vikings and Japan both start not long before 600, so I often use the late start so I don't waste half an hour on autoplay. But is there any actual difference between the early and late starts for these civs? Do they get more techs to make up for the lost decades?

 

[Leoreth]

The units and techs are different. I'm not sure about the Vikings but 600 AD Japan has more techs than they could research in the lost turns but loses time for developing their cities and infrastructure.

 

[hanfschwert]

Hi Leoreth, I was wondering if it's possible when you grant independence to a civilization you could instead release them as a vassal. Later on if you wish to fully release them you could use the same function already in place I imagine. EU4 for example handles vassalization this way.

World conquest can be a bit tedious with all the micromanagement so I like to indirectly rule through vassalizing instead.

I know you're busy working on other features, but this is one feature I've wished was in this mod for a very long time.

Let me know what you think, still thank you for an amazing mod!

 

[Leoreth]

We've recently talked about this here already, and I think it's a good idea especially for players going for domination.

I cannot just enable it though because I also have to make sure that it's balanced, i.e. that you cannot control territory through vassals without cost. That means you should have to work at keeping them happy or they will break free (peace vassal rules).

I should also tackle the conditions when civs vassalize and break free while I'm at it.

 

[sebzilla]

You'd probably want some way of tracking whether you conquered the territory directly from the civ you then release (effectively having the new vassal as a puppet state) or have conquered it from a third party (which would presumably make the civ happier with you and existing as some sort of protectorate or willing client-state). This could result in either them being set up with peace-vassal or capitulation-vassal conditions.

For example: Human player conquers Inca, releases as vassal, Inca is resentful at being conquered as it would be as a war-vassal. But, if Inca is first conquered by another AI (say Spain) and the human player then conquers the Spanish holdings and releases those as Inca, the Inca vassal should be much happier to remain a vassal.

Just a thought.

 

[Leoreth]

Yeah, that could work.

 

[The Diocletian]

On the subject of vassals, mine always collapse. For example, vassalizing the Inca or Aztecs leaves them at Solid or Stable, but their stability then slowly declines for no discernible reason, until they ultimately collapse. Is this intended? Do civs get a stability malus from being a vassal or some such?

 

[Leoreth]

They don't. But don't expect them to survive if you vassalize them after annexing their core.

 

[The Diocletian]

They don't. But don't expect them to survive if you vassalize them after annexing their core.

Nah, I give them all their cities back.

 

[hanfschwert]

Thanks for the response! I apologize for asking something that's already been discussed.

One of the best games I played in DoC was where I tried to turn all the civs of the world into my vassals. I had to cheat of course but it led to some interesting gameplay. What I would do is fully conquer a civ, release them, and then go into world builder where I would make them my vassal. I did this until all the civs that can be released in the world were my vassals.

Doing it this way didn't have as much drawbacks as it should if this were actually put in the mod as you mentioned. All my vassals were either pleased or friendly with me with me for not only being "released", but also for receiving techs and resources. Some vassals did have stability issues and would collapse. This kept things interesting, but I usually had troops standing by ready to march in and re-establish order just like any good hegemon would do . It would be interesting if the civs could declare a war for their independence though instead of just collapsing.

My stability was surprisingly good because I only kept 5 cities to myself so I could benefit from the civic bonuses and I had all the resources I could want.

Anyways this was a lot of fun and led to a lot of new interesting gameplay. I recommend other people try it if they're interested.

 

[NKN]

Playing as Japan, having conquered most of East Asia, in 1775 I discovered Assembly Line. Simultaneously, Thailand declared independence from me, with ~15 infantry, plus 7 cannons, 4 cavalry, and 4 grenadiers, easily outnumbering my entire army.

BUT... my stability the turn before was +10. (-4 from razing a city, +13 from economy, +1 for compatible civics). So is independence now completely divorced from stability?

EDIT: Somehow I was able to investigate their cities right away, and each city had a huge number of buildings (maybe even all possible ones). I'm starting to think this is a bug.

 

[Tigranes]

Can we see a screenshot? It is probably that infamous overflow bug...